Latest / Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ) / Equipped 2026: Preaching: "Preaching Apologetically" by Jody Apple

Transcript

Equipped 2026: Preaching: "Preaching Apologetically" by Jody Apple · Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ)

• 0:00
  Morning. So I learned one thing from Dan Winkler's lesson this morning. You have to let his coke settle because there's a lot of fizzy bubbles at the top and that takes a little while to digest. Is that what I heard?
• 0:20
  I'll make sure everybody's on the same page. I have a habit of speaking quickly, so I hope you started listening about 10 minutes before I got up. And I apologize for that in advance. I'm thankful for the opportunity to be here.
• 0:35
  So preaching apologetically, that sounds kind of scary to some people perhaps. But I want to start off by saying something about what we hope to accomplish in our lesson today. So I use slides because my mind wanders and if I stick with what my slides say, I stay on topic. And I don't want to read everything verbatim, but I'm going to stick pretty close to what you're going to see on the screen.
• 1:01
  When we think about apologetics, sometimes we think about it very positively and sometimes we think about it very negatively. And there's legitimacy to each of those perspectives. But apologetics, especially in the context of preaching, isn't about debating. It's not about taking everybody down. It's not your side winning or anything like that.
• 1:21
  We will see as we work our way through several different examples in the context of the New Testament especially, that it's a very positive thing. It's intended to be something that's reaffirming to those who are already believers and something that's positive from the standpoint of leaving those who are not believers in Scripture and the existence of God, the nature of Christ, Deity, and so forth, to become believers. So it has a very positive role in the context of Scripture, to say the least.
• 1:49
  It's a way to prove, to uphold, that God's truth is not just true, but it has a function. You don't just claim to believe in truth because it's true. There's a purpose to it. Truth is purposeful. It's meaningful. It's rationally grounded.
• 2:06
  Some people are very intuitive based. They're very emotional based. Some people are much more rational, logical based. You don't see that sort of dichotomy in the nature of God. God is both of those things. Dan, I apologize. I made light of something you said this morning, and I'll be glad to rehearse it later for you.
• 2:26
  It's meaningful. It's rationally grounded. It's morally objective. And when I say it's universally relative, I don't mean the opposite of moral objectivity. But it's universally relative in the sense that it connects and relates to every human being, because every human being is an image-bearer of God. And ultimately, it's redemptively centered in Christ, and that's the key that I want us to see as we go through all of this.
• 2:51
  So let's speak about this in some detail. We're going to look at an example of John's introduction of the gospel, and it's just the first of examples. We're going to look at some others, and Luke, and Hebrews, and Peter, and so forth. We're going to notice that God's nature is a guaranteed revelation in two ways, physically, but also spiritually by means of the revealed word. And incidentally, if you want copies of these slides, reach out to me. I'll be glad to share them with you.
• 3:17
  So Jesus reasons from a really existing world that's the same for everybody. So sometimes in the context of dealing with difficulties in sharing the gospel, people say something like, your truth's not my truth, you live in a different place, that's not the world that I live in.
• 3:34
  Jesus dealt with that in principle by pointing out things that were physically, visibly obvious, not only to himself, but to everybody who heard him and lived in the same world that he lived in, walked in the same space, the same streets. And he used that in order to teach them not only physical meteorological lessons, we'll allude to that later, but spiritual truths.
• 3:57
  If you can reason physically about these things in the world, you can come to an understanding of spiritual truths. And that's a very natural place to start, because all of us live in a naturally existing world created by God.
• 4:10
  New Testament texts often open with, and or at some point include, some apologetic posture. And that simply means a posture that answers questions, that presents things positively, that are ultimately going to lead us to conclude who Jesus is and what he expects and what he desires of.
• 4:29
  Let me say this from the very beginning. From the very beginning of Genesis, and everything this week is about how Genesis starts everything off. God made people in his image, not just to say, hey, look what I've made. But God made people in his image so that they would adopt his nature as much as possible, as fully as possible.
• 4:49
  So God is rational, God is relational, God is loving, God is volitional. All of these different aspects of the nature and character of God, God's created us in such a way that we can emulate, that we can imitate all of those in our own life, for our own benefit, for the benefit of those around us, but also to the honor and glory of God. And that's by design.
• 5:10
  So there's nothing anywhere that's presented in the context of scripture that doesn't uphold that sort of model that's presented at the very beginning of the first chapter. And we see it especially in the life of Christ when we imitate. And so we also want to note that the work of preaching is philosophical and that's not intended to be scary.
• 5:29
  Philosophy from the standpoint of a discipline might be scary, but it simply means those people who love and pursue wisdom. And obviously as we read through the wisdom literature, Psalms, Proverbs, and so forth, in the Old Testament we understand we're talking about wisdom from God's perspective. That draws input from the worldly perspective of wisdom, but also emphasizes God's more so than that.
• 5:50
  But it's also theological. And when we say theological, we don't just mean scriptural from the standpoint of scripture revealing things, but coming to an understanding of who God is and what God's about. I've already heard people reference, we know lots of things that God says, but do we know God? You're hearing a lot of things that I'm saying, but you may not know me.
• 6:12
  And so hopefully the things that I say are a reflection of my character. And obviously the things that God says and God reveals are a reflection of his character. And so for me to better understand what God is and what God's like and how my desire to be like him should grow, I have to listen to what he says. I have to ingrain that in my own conscience, my own psyche, in order to emulate who he is and what he's about.
• 6:36
  So let's move a little bit forward. John's introduction. So John's introduction begins with the creation of the physical world. In the beginning was the word of God, the word was God, and so forth. When anything that was made except that it was made by means of the word, that became incarnate as you continue in John chapter 1, going through about the verse 18 verses itself.
• 6:55
  So it talks about the physical world created and it talks about the word becoming flesh, that's the incarnation of Christ. And that's the beginning of the gospel message. Dan's already emphasized that sometimes the beginning refers to epics or periods, and sometimes it refers to the point in time.
• 7:11
  So John plays off this not only here but also in the context of 1 John, talks about in the beginning, sometimes at the beginning of your Christian life, and sometimes it builds off the beginning that you find at the very beginning of the text, Genesis, creation. But also it talks about how that impacts you spiritually.
• 7:29
  So we're affirming everywhere, from Genesis to the end of Revelation, that redemption is not detached from creation but flows naturally from it. The God who made the world, big deal here, entered the world in the person of Christ.
• 7:44
  So in the person of Christ, the Father died. In the person of Christ, the Father gave himself as a servant. And so we want to consider that, all the suffering, servants, strokes that we see in the context of the book of Isaiah are fulfilled, obviously in the life of Jesus.
• 8:05
  And the Christ, the Son of God who entered, is the one that the gospel proclaims. And so everything about proclaiming who Jesus is, is a proclamation of the Father. You've seen me, you've seen the Father, you've heard me, you've heard the Father, and so forth. So that's John's introduction.
• 8:22
  Revelation doesn't cancel creation, it fulfills its deepest, redemptive purpose. God didn't create just to show he could create. We don't do things just to show, hey, look what I can do. There has to be a purpose beyond ability that's going to be demonstrated, and obviously God shows that in his own life.
• 8:43
  God doesn't leave things in abstract ways. God reveals himself intentionally so that he can be fully understood as much as possible within human limits. I'm not saying that God restrains himself in some way, that we know less than God that we need to. Everything that we need to know about God is fully revealed.
• 9:02
  I love this expression, God cannot not reveal himself. Have fun sometimes, just pop back into your circus engine and let people say, and whatever AI tool you're looking at says, that doesn't make any sense. God is unrestrained from the standpoint of wanting to let people know that he is, who he is, and what he's like, so that we'll fall in love with him and become like him as much as possible.
• 9:27
  That's just built into the very nature of God. And as much as we assume the nature of God in our own lives, it ought to be built in us. That we cannot not say something about who we are as reflectors, image bearers, of God's nature. God reveals in scripture and in the world as rooted in who God is. He's rational, he's moral, he's relational, he's purposeful in everything that he does.
• 9:54
  And as we are involved in preaching and teaching, and we talk about preaching apologetically, teaching apologetically, living apologetically, all of that's assumed. So this is not just for preachers in the formal sense that we think about it, it's for all those who profess to be Christ.
• 10:10
  Revelation is not arbitrary. It's the outflow of divine character. God can't help but reveal himself because of the care and the love that he has for all of humanity. That matters for apologetic preaching because it means the preacher is not, and this is powerful, not trying to manufacture meaning. It's going to come up later.
• 10:32
  Preaching is not trying to demonstrate, and apologetic preaching is not trying to demonstrate how smart you are. How smart I am is nothing compared to who God is. I think about this all the time. God's knowledge is unlimited. On a scale of zero to infinity, God's at the end of infinity. On a scale of zero to infinity, I'm just about zero.
• 10:54
  And so I have to remind myself of that because when I see something incredibly profound, and it's moving to me, I realize that it moves all the time. I'm just not discovering that. That humbles me, and that gets me big headed. And that I have to remind myself of.
• 11:12
  Especially as you get older, I learn how much more I don't know than what I do know. If I could live to be a thousand, I'd feel that ten times more. And so that model that we're presenting here, apologetics is a defense of God's truth and God's character, not of my ability, not of your ability, not of anybody's ability.
• 11:38
  If it doesn't come into play to exalt God, it rather exalts me in some way, or that's perceived in some way by others, I'm not doing something right.
• 11:52
  Somebody said to me not too long ago about preaching. I don't want people after they hear me speak or preach or teach, come up to me and say, how great a preacher you are. I want people after hearing something I said, how great the Father is. How great the Son is.
• 12:12
  That means we lose ourselves behind the cross so that the apologetic preaching that we do can be seen first and foremost. So God's calling attention to what He has already made known, and obviously what He has known since He is the Messiah of God, His very nature is to exist. He's revealing that to us by means of His creation and by means of His revelation. In this context, we're speaking specifically about the Inspired Word.
• 12:39
  So this is a powerful thing from the standpoint of reaching out to souls. Many years ago, Brother Christ was very evangelistic in his outlook, nothing wrong with that, but sometimes his intent was clouded by his style, by how he approached people.
• 13:00
  We've set up an exhibit on the streets of Pennsylvania just outside of Philadelphia in a work that we established many years ago. He saw somebody come down the street, we were in a street fair, and we were allowed to talk to anybody who came to us. He said, I'm going to share the gospel with that person. And he came back and had a rather disappointed look on his face. He said, that person is not interested in the truth.
• 13:24
  And I looked at him and said, David? Because his name was David. I said, what's his name? He said, I don't know. I said, where's he from? He said, I don't know. What is he religiously? He said, I don't know. I said, how did you start? What did you start?
• 13:40
  In the context of teaching people, we have to know where they are and who they are and have to do something in connecting with common experience with them. And so in the context of walking around my neighborhood, I walk, I do a lot of speed walking, I walk the dog a lot, I talk to people all the time. And there's always something that I can't say to them. When the kids come up and want to pet the dog, how old is your dog? What's your dog's name? Tell me about your dog, that sort of thing. Sometimes they even talk about me.
• 14:07
  And so I connect with them. Who are you? Are you near here? Yeah, I'm a couple blocks from here. I walk over here to the park on a regular basis. And I go frequently with the dog. If I'm there without the dog, they say, where's your dog? And so there's always something to talk about. What's your name? Where are you from? Are you from this area?
• 14:25
  And in the greater Atlanta area, there's a very diverse population from the standpoint of where people are from and why they end up there. Where were you born? I was born here. Well, what are you doing here? And that leads into discussing things that relate to where they are, common shared experiences. And so Jesus did that not only with reference to talking to people. I know who you are. I know something about your character. I saw you under the tree. I can't do that unless I ask questions.
• 14:52
  But Jesus talked about observable things that you see all the time. There's a drought in the state of Georgia. The lower half of Georgia is experiencing a lot of fires going down into the state of Florida. And people talk about it all the time. Oh, we have a property we're trying to sell. To know about how to buy a great house in the mountains, let me know. And there was a fire a few weeks ago in the back part of our property park. And so, you know, that's something that people talk about. Why? It's observable. It's going on all the time.
• 15:19
  It personally impacts us. It's in the news. It's impacting where we are. And so Jesus talked about these kind of things all the time. He addressed obvious contradictions. We'll talk about this later in the way that people spoke. He talked about alternatives that people didn't want to discuss because it put them in a corner of their own making because they didn't want to deal with the realities of truth. And so there was always something that Jesus could say to make people think sometimes they don't want to.
• 15:45
  My favorite non-Biblical quote of all time was written by Bertrand Russell in 1926 when he wrote a book explaining Einstein's theory of relativity called the ABCs of Relativity. On page 26 of the initial edition it said, most people would rather die than think in fact most do. That's a pretty damning quote.
• 16:07
  But that's not only the nature of the way people are generally, that's the nature of the way people are spiritually. They don't want to think outside the book. And Jesus made people think even when they didn't want to think. He wasn't trying to make them feel bad, he was just trying to make them think.
• 16:26
  One of the greatest things I've ever heard Tom Warren say, I don't want you to think like me, I just want you to think. I can't forget that. It's been gone 26 years, I think about it almost every day. Because thinking is what Christians do. Because thinking about who Jesus is makes me want to be more like him.
• 16:49
  So Jesus expected people to reason from the evidence that they see in the world around them and draw conclusions about ordinary life. And he rebuked them when the same level of reasoning that can cause them to see what goes on in the world produces this kind of response. How come you can't see that spiritually?
• 17:07
  And so he didn't just use powerful illustrations and parables and analogies and so forth to impress people, he respected reality, he respected the evidence, he respected logical proofs and so forth, but he also respected moral accountability. And he wanted people to draw conclusions that they were desiring to draw from the world of evidence around them.
• 17:27
  So the New Testament texts often open with, or in some form in the middle of those texts, include an apologetic posture. So many of the New Testament books start like that. John does that, 1 John does that, Luke does that, and a whole series of slides just on the incredible language that Luke uses in the first four verses about servitude and the ground on which it stands and so forth.
• 17:51
  And the ability of credible, non-eyewitness testimony to lead others to Christ for the next generation. Paul does that in 2 Timothy chapter 1 verses 1 and 2, and he only includes three generations there, from him to Timothy to Faithful Man to others who have been proclaiming the gospel.
• 18:09
  But he overlooks, but it's implied, in that what the Father revealed to the Son, the Son revealed by special revelation to Paul. So there's at least five generations involving six different segments of people about how the gospel moves from those who witnessed things to those who did not, based upon the strength of credible testimony. And if Luke can do that 2,000 years ago, and credible testimony has a fact to weigh it all in the context of the last 2,000 years, then it still works today.
• 18:37
  And that's what we're about. So Luke stresses that orderly investigation and the eyewitness testimony. He makes a very strong distinction between us, where he is, and them, those who are actual eyewitnesses.
• 18:51
  So John, we've already alluded to this, ties the deity of Christ into creation. First, John stresses the same sort of thing. We've seen him, we've heard him, we've touched him, we've gazed upon him, and based upon that testimony, he relates that decree of faith to others. Peter is going to talk about that, we're going to see that in just a minute.
• 19:09
  You didn't see what I saw, but you loved him. You didn't see what I saw, but you believed in him. And in 2 Peter he says, you have a like, precious faith. Your faith is equal in value to mine. And that's just incredible, talking to people a generation later who weren't anywhere near where Jesus was when Peter saw these things.
• 19:27
  Hebrews opens with prophetic revelation, focuses on creation, and superiority of the Son. There's an apologetic there that goes throughout the rest of the text. We've already talked about Peter's appeal to eyewitness testimony. Apologetics, this is important, is not a manufactured, modern method forced onto scripture. It starts that way, and it never goes away.
• 19:51
  So the very word apologetics might scare us, because we don't use that all the time. We're used to it in the context of who we are, and the people that we associate with. It's part of scripture's own rhetorical, and that's not meant to mean anything other than it's a tool to be used to reach people. There are all kinds of different genres of literature, the Old Testament, the New Testament, and each one of them has strengths to reach a certain sort of mindset, a certain sort of condition that you're going to engage with as you read.
• 20:21
  As you're talking to people, and that's one of the methods that we can use to make people think. It's part of scripture's own rhetorical means to reach people.
• 20:30
  So, let's continue. So, we mentioned this before. The work of what we're involved in philosophically deals with big questions. Are we here? How do we know we're here? And so the limits of how we know and how much we can know, those are philosophical questions, but they're also biblical questions.
• 20:48
  And the issue of morality is obviously a biblical question. The issue of what constitutes evidence that supports this particular conclusion, those are not just philosophical issues, but biblical issues.
• 21:00
  Then how do we deal with that biblically? How do we expose the text, and how do we read out the meaning of the text so that we don't misrepresent anything there? Rather than reading into, let's read out.
• 21:11
  And all the styles and the genres of literature have to come into play, reading it from the perspective of what they saw 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, not from what we see.
• 21:21
  So, it doesn't mean, and this is important, it doesn't mean abandoning exposition of the text. It doesn't mean to focus on abstract things that nobody connects with.
• 21:33
  If you read some of the contemporary religious, supposedly Christian philosophers today, some of them are very heavy duty in Congress, and they don't touch where people are.
• 21:44
  Some of them write tomes that are read only by other religious philosophers, and that's not what we need to be doing. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm simply saying that's not going to read the average person.
• 21:54
  So, what we're doing in preaching apologetically is supposed to expose the text in a way that shows how biblical truth addresses these things, not worldly philosophy, leading to reality, knowledge, morality, and so forth,
• 22:08
  to conclusively demonstrate that what we believe is really there. The blessing of assurance, the gift of the script that's presented in 1 John 3, all that can be dismissed from what we see in the scriptures.
• 22:19
  So, it's not just arguing for the sake of arguing. I really, really, really love, and before Dan was calling for amens, I was amening for the Vatican.
• 22:31
  We don't contend for the faith in a contentious way. I'm not saying we don't contend for the faith, but the attitude that we demonstrate means as much as the faith that we contend for.
• 22:50
  I know what Paul says in Philippians about some people preaching the gospel not of purest motives, and he was thankful that truth was being taught, but the preferable thing is that truth is taught in a loving, kind way. I hope all of us see that.
• 23:03
  So, it's not arguments for the sake of arguments, it's not technique, it's preaching God's truth about Christ, and if Christ was as loving as the text tells us he is, then that's going to come across in the way we preach.
• 23:17
  William Collins, Bill Collins, if anybody ever met him, he taught at Lipscomb for many years. I first met him at Tennessee Bible College in the 80s.
• 23:26
  He was an incredible guy, and the first time I heard him say this, it blew my mind. He said, infinite love cannot be diminished.
• 23:36
  And I thought, what are we talking about? And he exposed me to thinking about something that I cannot not think about.
• 23:43
  The nature of the love that the Father had for the Son existed before the foundation of the world. Jesus says so in his high priestly prayer in John chapter 17.
• 23:51
  That's powerful. What was that like? Well, I don't have a commentary on how Father and Son interacted before there was anything.
• 23:59
  But in the context of real time, love is always communicated. In the context of real time, the time that I'm familiar with, love always does things at cost or the benefit of others, even if that love is not accepted, and if it's rejected, if you're kicked in the teeth, so to speak.
• 24:14
  And it's always suffering and long-suffering. That reflects the nature of the Father through the life of the Son.
• 24:21
  But Jesus goes on to say something else. He says, the extent to which the Father loved me is the love that I have for you. Now watch that.
• 24:28
  It's not that I'm down. The degree to which the Father loved me is the love that I have for you. And because you love me, the Father loves you like he loved me.
• 24:40
  How can the Father love me like he loved the Son? Because I am not the Son. But yes, he does.
• 24:50
  Does that mean he approves of everything I do? No. But he still loves.
• 24:57
  Do you know the passage of Romans chapter 5, verse 8? We were still in sin. God commands his love toward us while we were still there. Why? Because he loves. He loves without restraint.
• 25:07
  God goes to the nth degree to rescue the one sheep, even though the 99 are a safe place, because he loves them, because he cares.
• 25:15
  In the context of preaching and teaching, that's the kind of love that we have to demonstrate to others.
• 25:21
  So it's preaching truth about Christ, calling people to respond by means of centering on that message.
• 25:28
  Many hear apologetics, debate specialists, cadet personalities. It's simply more pastoral.
• 25:33
  I use that. I simply mean shepherding in the sense of responsibility to souls, so souls can understand.
• 25:40
  It's not about mere assertions. It's not about mere claims. It's about reality, history, revelation, and the person of Christ.
• 25:47
  I'm not just saying, here's what we believe, but here's why, and here's why you need to take this seriously.
• 25:53
  What if Jesus was not just a real historical person? There are atheists who believe that.
• 26:01
  But what if he was? What if he was who he claimed to be? What if he was really the Son of God?
• 26:09
  I'm not just playing the what-if game to play the what-if game.
• 26:12
  But hopefully in the context of that, somebody's going to say, okay, let's play that game.
• 26:17
  In the second major debate that Brother Warren had, he had with Wallace Matson,
• 26:21
  and Wallace Matson was not opposed to having a panel of less-than-infinite God
• 26:26
  that combined would do something on par with what an infinite God would want to do,
• 26:32
  but he did like the concept of the seeming of God that the Scriptures teach.
• 26:36
  Well, that's interesting. So he's doing the weird thing of saying,
• 26:39
  I can see this in a cumulative way, but I can't see that any singular being is like that.
• 26:44
  Well, that's an interesting thing.
• 26:46
  And when I went up to him in the debate that he had in Ephora, when I had just recently been married,
• 26:51
  and was talking to him, I said, what caught you about what Tom Warren said about the nature of God?
• 26:57
  And he said, it's this constant contention about the singular objective morality
• 27:02
  rooted in the nature of a singular God, not a multiplicity of gods.
• 27:07
  He wasn't a dumb man, educated at Berkeley, taught at Berkeley,
• 27:12
  well-known in the philosophical world 57 years ago, since 1978.
• 27:17
  But trying to get people to think seriously, again referencing the quote by Brooks and Russell before,
• 27:24
  making people think, Jesus made people think.
• 27:27
  So the central claim, preaching declares, that makes statements, this is a declaration.
• 27:34
  Writing a declaration of independence didn't make us independent just by writing the document.
• 27:41
  A long war was fought after that.
• 27:44
  And so making a declaration, Jesus is the Christ, you have to make that confession, 1 John 5.
• 27:50
  You have to understand that he came in the flesh, 1 John 4.
• 27:54
  But declaring that is not the same as leading people to see that.
• 27:58
  And that takes time, that takes effort, that takes time to get down in the nitty-gritty part of where people live,
• 28:05
  and I don't mean anything negative about that, but getting to know them.
• 28:08
  And so it doesn't fear evidence, doesn't fear testimony, doesn't fear logic,
• 28:12
  it's not irrational to cause people to think that there's something transcendent in this world that makes this world work.
• 28:19
  I do this all the time just in thinking.
• 28:21
  You can't touch some things that must be in order for this really existing world to be here.
• 28:28
  You cannot touch gravity.
• 28:30
  It's impossible.
• 28:32
  The four major forces that govern everything physical are metaphysical.
• 28:38
  And yet they undergird everything that exists.
• 28:43
  How do you explain that?
• 28:45
  You can apply all kinds of mathematic formulations to show why they work, but you can't touch that.
• 28:52
  You can't touch two-ness.
• 28:55
  You can see two things, but the concept of two is transcendent of the two things in front of you.
• 29:02
  So one of the incredible things that Mr. Russell did that benefits Arguments for Truth
• 29:08
  is he and Alfred North Whitehead wrote two books called Principia Mathematica.
• 29:13
  Hundreds of pages to prove the reliability of math.
• 29:17
  Why?
• 29:18
  Because he came from a school of philosophy known as rational positivism
• 29:22
  that says unless it's immediately evident by means of senses or immediately deducible by means of the senses,
• 29:28
  everything else is in the realm of faith, which means it cannot be supported.
• 29:32
  Okay, Mr. Russell, how do you do the Mr. Math thing?
• 29:36
  Because you don't see it.
• 29:38
  You can't touch it.
• 29:40
  You can't deducible the conclusion of P implies Q and Q implies R, therefore P implies R.
• 29:47
  You don't do it.
• 29:48
  How did you do it?
• 29:49
  Hundreds of pages in order to defend the reliability of math
• 29:53
  that's involved in getting people to the moon and back safely.
• 29:57
  How does that happen?
• 29:59
  It's built on stuff you can't see.
• 30:01
  And so there's a world, a metaphysical world that upholds this physical world,
• 30:06
  and we need to be able to dig into that.
• 30:09
  I'm not saying I'm an expert in those things by any means.
• 30:11
  So it's not irrational.
• 30:13
  Conviction and compassion have to belong together.
• 30:15
  New Testament often proclaims and argues at the same time.
• 30:18
  When I say argue, I mean it's reasoning, leading people to draw conclusions that we should have.
• 30:23
  It doesn't reduce faith to bare feeling.
• 30:25
  It doesn't treat faith as hostile reason.
• 30:27
  It's not work versus clarity or concern, pastoral concern versus intellectual honesty.
• 30:34
  It's both of those at the same time.
• 30:36
  Let's move a little faster.
• 30:37
  I apologize.
• 30:38
  There's so much I would like to say, but I don't have a limited amount of time.
• 30:42
  So the beginning of the physical world, we saw this already.
• 30:44
  We're rehersing what we noted.
• 30:46
  The beginning of the Word of the coming flesh and the beginning of the Gospel message.
• 30:49
  The Gospel is preached in part through the message to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12,
• 30:56
  repeated in 15, 17, and so forth.
• 30:58
  The beginning of it in its fullest sense starts with the mission of John.
• 31:03
  Peter came and had his pen, Matthew 3, 2, 4, 17.
• 31:06
  Jesus preaches the exact same thing.
• 31:08
  And the fullest of those things comes to fruition in Acts chapter 2 with the preaching of Peter.
• 31:13
  So the creation, incarnation, and proclamation all comes together by design,
• 31:18
  rooted in the very beginning of the creation of the world that we see in Genesis.
• 31:21
  John connects these things to show that redemption is not detached,
• 31:26
  but drawn from what we see in the context of creation in Genesis.
• 31:30
  God made the world, entered the world, and He, the Father,
• 31:34
  through the Son of God, the Son, enters to the world and is now a priest to the world.
• 31:41
  So creation and incarnation are inseparable.
• 31:44
  The Maker entered the world that He made.
• 31:46
  God is not distinct.
• 31:48
  This is not God winding up the world and turning it loose.
• 31:50
  It is the kind of thinking.
• 31:52
  God's involved intimately in the creation itself.
• 31:55
  Christ isn't detached from the world.
• 31:57
  He came and lived like us.
• 31:59
  Tempted in all things like as we are.
• 32:01
  He hungered. He thirsted.
• 32:02
  He cried. He was sad.
• 32:04
  He felt pain.
• 32:06
  And all those things show that He was like us.
• 32:10
  And so He could take our sins and bear them to the cross, Isaiah 52, 53,
• 32:14
  in the fulfillment of Jesus in the context of the Passion Week.
• 32:18
  So creation is great, but incarnation is greater.
• 32:22
  Because that which was before the world, transcended the world,
• 32:26
  came to be part of the world in order to take away the sins of the world.
• 32:30
  Because we cannot do it on our own.
• 32:32
  Christianity is not nearly the claim.
• 32:34
  We've said this already.
• 32:36
  But it's the claim that He has worked in such a way that the world can be redeemed
• 32:40
  because of the evidence we see presented in Scripture.
• 32:42
  It's not an afterthought.
• 32:44
  It's part of a combatic divine act that was part of the storyline from the beginning.
• 32:50
  We use the word story.
• 32:51
  Some people are uncomfortable.
• 32:52
  They think of fables and that sort of thing.
• 32:55
  Biblical accounts are primarily narrative,
• 32:58
  which is the telling or the retelling of the story of everything that God has done through history.
• 33:05
  So I don't mean anything negative when I use that word.
• 33:07
  I know some people don't like to hear it.
• 33:10
  I use it that way.
• 33:11
  We talked about this already.
• 33:12
  God doesn't leave Himself in distraction.
• 33:14
  He always reveals because that's who He is.
• 33:17
  He cannot not reveal Himself.
• 33:19
  Creation reveals.
• 33:20
  Scripture reveals.
• 33:21
  Christ reveals most fully because it's a combination of all those things.
• 33:25
  He wants to be known, not merely surmised.
• 33:28
  And this is, again, not just knowing what He says,
• 33:30
  but knowing who said it and why.
• 33:33
  So it would be like Him.
• 33:34
  Grounded in who God was, is, and will always be.
• 33:38
  And that's the whole notion of the very nature of God is to exist.
• 33:42
  Where did God come from?
• 33:44
  He didn't come from anywhere.
• 33:46
  He always was.
• 33:48
  His very nature is to exist.
• 33:51
  My very nature is not to exist,
• 33:54
  because there was a time when I didn't exist,
• 33:56
  so I don't naturally exist of my own accord.
• 34:00
  Something else has to give rise to why this is here.
• 34:03
  That's not just a me thing.
• 34:05
  That's a how do you explain anything else outside of self.
• 34:07
  Where did it come from?
• 34:09
  This world is not self-existent.
• 34:12
  The nature of this world shows that it's winding down,
• 34:14
  that it's deteriorating,
• 34:16
  and something about it points to a point in time
• 34:18
  in which it came into existence.
• 34:20
  And this is totally off-subject, but time is powerless.
• 34:23
  Time has no power.
• 34:27
  In the context of the vehicle of time,
• 34:30
  things happen from outside of time
• 34:34
  that take place inside the vehicle of time.
• 34:37
  Time is powerless.
• 34:39
  Time is powerless.
• 34:41
  Time doesn't make your money grow.
• 34:43
  It's what happens in the context of time
• 34:45
  that allows your money to grow.
• 34:48
  The world doesn't change because of a lapse of time.
• 34:53
  Not tens of thousands, or tens of millions,
• 34:56
  or hundreds of millions of years changes that.
• 34:59
  Time is powerless.
• 35:02
  And to get people to think about that
• 35:04
  is going to arrest their thinking,
• 35:06
  because the general assumption
• 35:08
  from the evolutionary presumption is
• 35:10
  time does things.
• 35:13
  Things happen in time.
• 35:15
  Jesus lived in time.
• 35:17
  But Jesus came from outside of the world,
• 35:19
  into the world,
• 35:21
  to make things happen.
• 35:23
  The power was in Jesus and the Father,
• 35:25
  not in the time.
• 35:27
  And that's not just what represents
• 35:29
  the preaching and teaching of Jesus.
• 35:31
  That's what represents the physical of all things.
• 35:33
  So God demands that he be accepted and understood.
• 35:36
  So he's not arbitrary.
• 35:38
  I quote his divine character.
• 35:40
  The preacher's task is not to invent
• 35:42
  visibility for God.
• 35:44
  God is visible.
• 35:46
  Jesus used that illustration.
• 35:48
  You can't see the wind,
• 35:50
  but you can see what the wind does.
• 35:52
  And he uses that as an illustration
• 35:54
  to teach Nicodemus about what it means
• 35:56
  to be born again of one in the Spirit.
• 35:58
  Our job is to call attention
• 36:00
  to the things that God has already revealed
• 36:02
  about himself and make them known to the world.
• 36:04
  So why does this matter for preaching?
• 36:06
  It matters for preaching because
• 36:08
  there's always the question why.
• 36:10
  It's one of the first things that kids learn to ask.
• 36:12
  Why?
• 36:14
  Why?
• 36:16
  How many times do they ask it?
• 36:18
  They don't stop.
• 36:20
  We need to continue asking why.
• 36:22
  When you share something
• 36:24
  with somebody you've never heard before,
• 36:26
  one of the first questions is,
• 36:28
  how do you know that?
• 36:30
  Where does that come from? Why?
• 36:32
  What's the why behind it?
• 36:34
  Many times, especially in recent days
• 36:36
  and things that I've been reading,
• 36:38
  people are always talking about the what,
• 36:40
  the what, the what, the what, the why.
• 36:42
  Simon Sinek has an incredible book
• 36:44
  called Start With Why.
• 36:46
  Not just what,
• 36:48
  but why is the what there?
• 36:50
  Why did Jesus come?
• 36:52
  You're convincing me
• 36:54
  to believe that he came,
• 36:56
  but why did he come?
• 36:58
  They're inseparable,
• 37:00
  but they are also distinguishable.
• 37:02
  Answering the why.
• 37:04
  Why does anything exist?
• 37:06
  How do we know it's true?
• 37:08
  What kind of a God are we dealing with?
• 37:10
  That's a major issue in the context of dealing
• 37:12
  with apologetics.
• 37:14
  One of the first uses of the term apologia,
• 37:16
  which is related to apologetics,
• 37:18
  is the answering the questions.
• 37:20
  Answering the questions.
• 37:22
  You don't have to raise your hand,
• 37:24
  but anybody know how many questions
• 37:26
  there are in the Bible?
• 37:28
  Probably more than 3,000.
• 37:30
  Where do they appear
• 37:32
  most frequently?
• 37:34
  About Job.
• 37:36
  10% of all the questions in the Bible
• 37:38
  are found in the book of Job.
• 37:40
  Why? Because Job had a lot of why questions.
• 37:42
  I have a lot of why questions.
• 37:44
  When I read the book of Job,
• 37:46
  I have a lot of why questions.
• 37:48
  Answering the question of why is powerful
• 37:50
  is the task of preaching to provide answers.
• 37:52
  Not that I make up,
• 37:54
  that are revealed in the context of the word.
• 37:56
  Why the world? Why suffering?
• 37:58
  You don't do this
• 38:00
  in one sermon, obviously.
• 38:02
  You do this over the course of time.
• 38:04
  It shows that New Testament Christianity
• 38:06
  should not be afraid of questions.
• 38:08
  Are there some things I don't know?
• 38:10
  Yes. Does that mean nobody knows them?
• 38:12
  No.
• 38:14
  But there are some things that are beyond human knowledge.
• 38:16
  I said something once the other day
• 38:18
  in the Post, and somebody
• 38:20
  wasn't very happy with it.
• 38:22
  They said, if you can prove all the things
• 38:24
  that we need to be able to prove,
• 38:26
  I know whom I have believed
• 38:28
  and persuaded
• 38:30
  that he is able to keep
• 38:32
  that which I have committed unto him
• 38:34
  against that day.
• 38:36
  Jody, that sounds great.
• 38:38
  That's not me.
• 38:40
  That's Paul.
• 38:42
  He knows. He believes.
• 38:44
  He's persuaded.
• 38:46
  He's committed in the faithfulness
• 38:48
  of the one who made the promise.
• 38:50
  There wasn't any doubt there.
• 38:52
  Was he being arrogant?
• 38:54
  No.
• 38:56
  He's placing his confidence
• 38:58
  in the promises of God.
• 39:00
  God made incredible promises to Abraham
• 39:02
  and Abraham didn't see all of them fill.
• 39:04
  His faith
• 39:06
  grew as he realized,
• 39:08
  God took me from this place to this place
• 39:10
  and brought me to this place.
• 39:12
  In the future, your generations
• 39:14
  are going to own this place.
• 39:16
  God's already taken care of me to this point.
• 39:18
  The fulfillment of the promise of seed
• 39:20
  prompted him to realize
• 39:22
  I believe in this.
• 39:24
  He was counted righteous
• 39:26
  because he came to faith in God,
• 39:28
  Genesis chapter 15, but he didn't know everything.
• 39:30
  I don't have to know everything to have the faith
• 39:32
  that God wants me to have.
• 39:34
  I'm not trying to backtrack from those things
• 39:36
  that we can know.
• 39:38
  Jesus preached from shared reality.
• 39:40
  We've already talked about that.
• 39:42
  Common observation
• 39:44
  and support.
• 39:46
  Founded a conclusion.
• 39:48
  Appealed to what people could see.
• 39:50
  Spiritual blindness by not being able to see
• 39:52
  what was plainly in front of them.
• 39:54
  You have eyes to see,
• 39:56
  you can't see. You have ears to hear,
• 39:58
  but you don't. That's a heart condition,
• 40:00
  not an eye or ear condition.
• 40:02
  And sometimes
• 40:04
  it's our hearts that get in the way
• 40:06
  of our spiritual vision.
• 40:08
  So he pointed to all of these things
• 40:10
  and telling us, in fact, that the reason
• 40:12
  that leads to the things I'm saying,
• 40:14
  they're already there.
• 40:16
  I didn't just create a special case and make them look
• 40:18
  there for you. They're already there.
• 40:20
  They've always been there. His point, again,
• 40:22
  was primarily moral and spiritual.
• 40:24
  So if you can draw these conclusions
• 40:26
  about the physical world, why can't we
• 40:28
  draw these things from the standpoint
• 40:30
  of what the word says
• 40:32
  spiritually speaking?
• 40:34
  Some conclusions, morally
• 40:36
  speaking, make us uncomfortable.
• 40:38
  Somebody years ago
• 40:40
  said in the context of doing something
• 40:42
  apologetically in a college setting,
• 40:44
  some people said, if we believe
• 40:46
  in this God that you're talking about, and we believe
• 40:48
  in this Jesus you're talking about, we have
• 40:50
  to change our lives, and some of us don't
• 40:52
  want to change. That's
• 40:54
  not God's fault.
• 40:56
  Not wanting
• 40:58
  to change is not saying
• 41:00
  you can't change.
• 41:02
  I know
• 41:04
  people who want to get off this addiction
• 41:06
  or that addiction and say,
• 41:08
  I can't do it.
• 41:10
  That kind
• 41:12
  of thinking will stop you from
• 41:14
  believing and working
• 41:16
  in such a way that you can change.
• 41:18
  So Jesus exposed bad reasoning,
• 41:20
  pushed beyond superficial answers.
• 41:22
  Beelzebub, you're doing things
• 41:24
  by the power of Satan.
• 41:26
  Then by whom do you cast demons
• 41:28
  out? That doesn't make any sense.
• 41:30
  A house divided itself can't stand.
• 41:32
  The baptism of John.
• 41:34
  Where'd you get this authority? Who gave it to you?
• 41:36
  I've got a question about John's baptism.
• 41:38
  Heaven or man? They looked at each
• 41:40
  of the alternates and said,
• 41:42
  we don't want to take this one because
• 41:44
  that doesn't work. We can't say.
• 41:46
  Jesus, I'm not going to answer your question.
• 41:48
  Only two alternatives,
• 41:50
  and they refused to take either one of them
• 41:52
  because either choice
• 41:54
  they made indicted them.
• 41:56
  I don't want to deal with that.
• 41:58
  That's not God's fault.
• 42:00
  The question about who's
• 42:02
  David's son?
• 42:04
  The Messiah, who is he? He's David's son.
• 42:06
  How then did David in the Spirit
• 42:08
  call him my Lord?
• 42:10
  That meant he's more than just
• 42:12
  a genealogical descendant in the seed line
• 42:14
  of David, that he was actually
• 42:16
  pre-existent before David,
• 42:18
  which made him greater than David,
• 42:20
  ultimately leading to the conclusion
• 42:22
  that he was the Messiah.
• 42:24
  Again, we already talked about this contradiction,
• 42:26
  talked about John's baptism.
• 42:28
  All of these are to make people think.
• 42:30
  I'm not going to go through all of this except to put it on the screen.
• 42:32
  I'll be glad to give it to you because we're running out of time.
• 42:34
  All of this is
• 42:36
  important. I love this line,
• 42:38
  and he's not embarrassed by mediated testimony.
• 42:40
  That's how we get everything.
• 42:42
  We get it through credible channels
• 42:44
  of information.
• 42:46
  John, we talked about this already, so I'm going to go quick.
• 42:48
  I love John chapter 5.
• 42:50
  Five different arguments that Jesus presents
• 42:52
  showing who he was
• 42:54
  and what he was when he claimed to be.
• 42:56
  All of them listed in that context.
• 42:58
  All right? Points to converging
• 43:00
  witnesses. That's incredible.
• 43:02
  Michael Shermer wrote an article
• 43:04
  in Skeptic Magazine, probably
• 43:06
  in the 90s, about the Neo-Nazi movement
• 43:08
  that was growing in Germany
• 43:10
  at the time, who denied only
• 43:12
  40 years later, after the Holocaust,
• 43:14
  the reality of it. And the article
• 43:16
  that he wrote was absolutely
• 43:18
  incredible from the standpoint of how
• 43:20
  he used converging witnesses to prove
• 43:22
  the reality of the Holocaust.
• 43:24
  And that's exactly what Scripture does.
• 43:26
  It merges witnesses
• 43:28
  together. Cumulative case
• 43:30
  reasoning is what it's called in that context.
• 43:32
  All right. Let me go very quickly to the
• 43:34
  end of this. I'm going to
• 43:36
  jump ahead, and I apologize
• 43:38
  for this, but I want you to see one
• 43:40
  thing at the very end.
• 43:42
  And that's this.
• 43:44
  So, when
• 43:46
  you talk about... This is from a totally
• 43:48
  different slide series I did many years ago.
• 43:50
  God is
• 43:52
  rational. God is emotional.
• 43:54
  God is moral.
• 43:56
  God has will, behavior, and so forth.
• 43:58
  His creation reflects that.
• 44:00
  Man is part of his creation.
• 44:02
  God reflects that.
• 44:04
  And the Word reflects that as well.
• 44:06
  All of these things show
• 44:08
  that creation was made
• 44:10
  in such a way that ultimately
• 44:12
  man can access not only God
• 44:14
  by means of the creation, but by means of
• 44:16
  His Word specifically about what
• 44:18
  it means to come
• 44:20
  to what God wants us to be.
• 44:22
  That's by design. I didn't make
• 44:24
  that. I made the chart,
• 44:26
  but I didn't make that.
• 44:28
  That's by design.
• 44:30
  So, making people think... I've often
• 44:32
  wanted to talk to somebody. Richard Dawkins.
• 44:34
  Can you reach in your pocket and
• 44:36
  pull out for me a handful of love?
• 44:38
  I think you can do it.
• 44:40
  But I know
• 44:42
  because I've read that you love your wife.
• 44:44
  What does that mean?
• 44:46
  Is it purely
• 44:48
  abstract? Has no substance
• 44:50
  to it? Has no real
• 44:52
  connection to the real world in which you live?
• 44:54
  We use words
• 44:56
  all the time that are conceptual
• 44:58
  that you cannot
• 45:00
  taste, touch, feel,
• 45:02
  or whatever. And we speak
• 45:04
  about them as if they are
• 45:06
  real because it fits our
• 45:08
  model to an extent.
• 45:10
  But if you push
• 45:12
  the model, it forces us
• 45:14
  to see there's a transcendent
• 45:16
  world, a metaphysical world
• 45:18
  that lies beneath
• 45:20
  the physical world that
• 45:22
  makes it all work.
• 45:24
  I wish we had time to express
• 45:26
  what's presented in the book of Hebrews in that line.
• 45:28
  Thanks so much for your time and your patience.
• 45:30
  Again, reach out to me. I'd be glad to send a slice
• 45:32
  to everybody.