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Andy Stanley - The Irresistible Church · Andy Stanley Sermons

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In this session, I'm going to ask you to suspend your judgment of me
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until we get to the end, and then you can judge me. And
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that's fine because you know we're actually supposed to judge each other. That whole
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judgment thing gets taken out of context in the New Testament, but Jesus was
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really clear when you actually read what he said, because we're supposed to hold
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each other cautbull and we're supposed to use good judgment. And there's a difference
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between judging somebody and using good judgment. All of you parents know that,
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right, you should, you will. So what I want to do for
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the next few minutes is I I want to I mean, you know,
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it's I have lots of leadership content and to be easy to come up here
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and just talk about something that is helpful, and I want to be helpful.
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But I want to push you in your thinking as it relates to what
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I think our responsibility is for the next generation in terms of how they think
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about our faith because there have been significant you know this, you know better
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than I do. There have been significant changes in our culture, and I
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just feel like the church has to change its approach and its language or we're
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going to continue to fall behind. And I feel so urgent about this that
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sometimes I think I over communicate it, and so people hear me say things
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I don't mean to say. And I've tried to get better. And a
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couple of people said, Andy, just shut up about all that and just
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go back to your normal thing. You know you've been successful. I'm like,
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no, no, no, because here's the deal, and you're the
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same way. I did not get into ministry to babysit a generation of Christians.
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I got into ministry because I want to reach and speak into the lives
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of the next generation. And you're a catalyst because you feel the same way.
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Right. It's like I said yesterday, I don't know what the next
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generation church looks like, but I want to be a part of it.
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I want to fuel it, I want to fund it, I want to
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help with it, and I'll do it because it's it's all about what does
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the church look like for the next generation. And any local church that is
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for the next generation is the church is going to figure out how to reach
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the next generation. Any church that settles into just talking to who's already there,
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the game over just don't know it yet, right, And you're not
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a catalyst because you just want to take care of a generation and want to
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play it safe. You want to do us next. And so for the
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next few minutes, I'm just just gonna download as quick as I can a
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whole bunch of stuff. And I really, really, and I've never said
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this before to callous conferences our twentieth year, I want you to buy Irresistible
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and I want you to read it, and if you hate it, you
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just send me the book jacket to North Point Community Church. I will send
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you your money back, no questions asked. It's going to be very difficult
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with the audio version of that, but I'll just trust you. Just emailed
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me and say, Andy, your book sucked, okay, So and I'll
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just send you your money back. I promise, because I am absolutely convinced
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that we have to have to have to tweak our approach, not our theology,
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not our view of the Bible, tweak our approach for the sake of
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the next generation. I've raised three kids, they're all in their twenties.
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I know a little bit about what I'm talking about. So even if I'm
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not super clear, would you just give me the benefit of the doubt for
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the next few minutes, would you do that? Thank you? Okay,
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so here we go. If you were to ask the even some of the
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most mature Christians in your church or your mature students in your you know,
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stupid ministry, hey, do you believe that Jesus died on the cross for
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your sins and rose from the dead? They would say yes. And if
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you were to say to them, why do you believe that, most of
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them would give you some version of this answer, because the Bible says so.
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In fact, if I were to ask many of you, hey,
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do you believe Jesus down the cross for your sins? Say yes? Why
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do you believe that? Well, that's what the Bible says, That's what
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the Bible teaches. This represents a could be I don't want to exaggerate,
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but certainly represents a flaw, maybe a fatal flaw in our current version of
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Christianity that did not matter much. And I'll explain why I say that in
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just a minute. That really didn't matter much until recently. But things have
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changed and we must address this or we will continue to lose generation of Christians
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and continue to undermine our efforts to reach the next generation, not just in
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this country, but literally all around the world. And if you don't believe
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me, you just need to visit what used to be churches in Europe because
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the European flogians and church leaders never made the transition I'm going to beg of
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you to make in the next few minutes. This is why, about eight
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or nine years ago, I made some significant changes in the way and my
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approach to preaching. I never announced them to our church. I just made
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them. And then about five years ago I started talking about it. And
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then eventually, because I kept being misunderstood, I talked to one of my
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professors from seminary, doctor Norman Geisler, who, by the way, this
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will help you, wrote the textbook on Inerrancy. If you have ever studied
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Inerrancy in seminary at or graduate level, you have read or been asked to
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read the book in Errancy. My professor from Dallas Theological Seminary who edited the
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papers for the Chicago Statement on Bidiblical Inherancy. Whenever you hear anybody talk about
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Biblical inherancy, that there's a group of scholars, three hundred scholars got together.
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You've heard of some of them or haven't heard of most of them back
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in the seventies and they defined this is what the church means when it talks
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about the Bible being an errant. Doctor Geisler was part of that council edited
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it. And this is the editor of the book called an Errancy. And
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he taught me so much of what I'm about to teach you. So this
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has nothing to do with disrespecting or having a you know, gaining disrespect for
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the Bible. So after I kind of got raked over the calls by some
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seminary professors, doctor Geisler, he's in his eighties now, he called me
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at home and he said, Andy, it's not enough to talk about it.
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It's not enough to preach about it. You have to write about it.
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And I said, I don't have time to write about this. He
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said, you have to write about this. So I love doctor Geisler.
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He's so shaped my thinking about the whole world and especially about the Bible.
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And so I did. And so for the next few minutes, I want
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to tell you why I feel like this is urgent and why I think you
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can do this. You can do this in your sleep. Once you decide
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to do it because you're smart and because you're leaders and I really do believe
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the faith of the next generation. To some extent hinges on this, we've
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been part. This is what's so cool and Tyler kind of touched on this.
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We as a Catalyst Movement have been part of a really a historic transition
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and how the church looks, how the church feels, how the church sounds,
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how the church has led through catalysts. We have raised the bar in
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terms of leadership. Churches have been pastored well forever, churches have not necessarily
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been led well forever. And the Catalyst Movement has said to church leaders,
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hey, let's talk about leadership, not just pastoring. And here's the deal.
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The better you lead, the more people will be pastored. This isn't
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a pastor versus leader. This is creating context where better, more people are
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pastored better. We've been part of the multi society, you know, the
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deal that's all happened while all this has been going on, more church planning
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than ever, more women involved in higher levels of leadership and the church than
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ever. Right, And I'm and it's it's just been such an honor for
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these twenty years to be a part of this, and some of you I
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was just you know, some of you were three when we started. I
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get that some of you were five when we started. But you've been swept
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up in something that you didn't know was any difference. Because different because this
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is all you know. I kid my kids all the time. You know,
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the only church you know is our church. If only you had been
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a part of some of the churches that I had grown up in, you
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would be so grateful for your church. And every once in a while they
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visit their grandparents' church and they're like, oh my gosh, I go I
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know, but thank God. You know, the church is alive and well,
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and there are leaders who aren't content to just babysit a generation. They
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are concerned about the next generation. In fact, I tell people all the
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time, you know what, you know what a great church is. This
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is what a great church is. A great church is a church full of
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people who love Jesus, who love like Jesus, and who have a plan,
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who have a plan for determining that the next generation will love and love
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like Jesus. And if your church didn't have a plan for the next generation,
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you're not a great church. You're just waiting for time to go by.
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And the reason you don't have to be concerned is you wouldn't be at
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a conference like this if you weren't all about what do we do to ensure
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that the next generation has an extraordinary, extraordinary faith. But here is the
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challenge. We have made the church more interesting than ever. I mean,
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the church is way more interesting than it used to be when some of the
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way some of us grew up. But the truth is, if Pew and
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Barna and everybody else is right, fewer people are actually interested. And this
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should bother us. And we can't play games and pretend. And just because
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you have a full service at eleven o'clock and I have a full service at
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eleven o'clock doesn't mean oh, we're winding. We're not. But we can
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and we will. This is always so emotional to me because one day on
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the hillside, out in the middle of nowhere, incessity of Philippi, the
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region with two first names, Jesus turns to these guys who had no idea
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what was going on most of the time, and he said, I'm gonna
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build my assembly and the gates of death will not stop it. And Peter
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you got it right on this declaration that you are the Christ, the son
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of the Living God. I'm gonna build a brand new movement. And my
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death and Peter your death, and John your death, and Andrew your death.
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All of you guys are gonna die and it's not gonna stop it.
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So I'm not worried about is the church gonna survive? But we are stewards
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of this generation of the church. So we got to get it right,
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and we gotta think, and we gotta think ahead, and we can't be
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afraid and we can't be cowed by people who have a system that you know,
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I just love everybody I really have. You know, when people are
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critical of me, my first thought is, oh, you just misunderstood me.
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That's that five thing that controls me. Sometimes I think, oh,
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no, if you have enough time with me, I could explain it.
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And Sandra's like, no, they just don't like you. They're not ever
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gonna I'm gonna. I know, no, they would like me if they
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had more time with me. She's like, you're such a five only anyway.
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So so I'm I'm I'm convinced of this. The time has come for
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us to take our next big step, and our next this big step is
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not going to be cooler buildings and cooler music, and cooler preaching styles and
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bigger or smaller flat screens and the steps that I want to encourage you to
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take. Our steps that will bring you a bit of criticism. But let
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me just tell you something, and I'm not looking for sympathy or applause.
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Twenty five years ago, when some of us fully embrace the modern church movement,
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we were criticized like crazy. But you know what, we didn't care.
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Rick Warren didn't care. I mean the people who were the help we
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didn't care. You know why we didn't care because we were thinking about the
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next generation. And that's all I want you to do. As I think,
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talk about what we talk about the next few minutes. So if you
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have to leave early, or you fall asleep, or this just isn't interesting
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to you, I want to just give you the bottom line. And if
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anything I say from this point forward gets confusing, you just come back here,
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because this is the bottom line, whether I explain it very well or
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not. And this is all I'm asking you to do. And you're preaching,
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you're teaching, your curriculum, writing your music, writing, everything you
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do. I'm just asking you to. In fact, I'll just say it
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the way I want to put it on the screen. We must we must
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tether the faith of this generation to the event that sparked the movement that brought
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us the Bible. We must tether the faith. If the anchor is the
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anchor, and we're gonna tether our faith and our children's faith to something,
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we must tether the faith of this generation to the event, the resurrection that
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launched the movement the church that brought us the Bible. And the challenge is
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this, for generations, we have tethered people's faith to the Bible, all
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sixty six books, not the event that launched the movement that brought us the
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Bible. If there was no resurrection, there would be no THG, B,
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I, B, l E. It would not exist. There would
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be no New Testament, there would be no Old Testament. When I say
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that, people go, oh, no, no, no, there'd be
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an Old Testament. No, there wouldn't. Gentile Christians named the Jewish Scripture
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the Old Testament. Don't call it the Old Testament. They call it the
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Law. Then the first entry they call it the Law, and the prophets,
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virtually everything you know about the Old Testament you didn't learn in school,
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you didn't learn in synagogue. You learned at church. And if there wasn't
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a resurrection, there would be no church, there would be no Bible,
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there would be no Christianity. And it's time that we learn and discipline ourselves
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to tether to anchor to fasten the faith of a generation of Christians to the
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single event that launched the movement that eventually brought us the Bible. That's what
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I want to talk about for the next few minutes. Any questions so far,
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good, All right, we'll we'll keep going. But we don't do
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this for the sake of growing our churches. This is not a church growth
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strategy. In fact, this may be a church shrink strategy for a while.
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This is for the sake of your children. This is for the sake
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of your grandchildren. This is for the sake of the college freshman that comes
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home. And imagine this. You've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in your
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student ministry. You have put done small groups, camps, Bible study,
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scripture memory, You've done it all. You send them off to college and
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you know half a semester in or two semesters in. One professor who doesn't
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even know their name, has a single lecture that undermines their faith, and
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they come home to mommy and Daddy with questions about the bibl that mommy and
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Daddy can't answer, and there goes their faith because the church has anchored their
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faith to a book and not an event, and that must change. Once
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upon a time, think about this. Once upon a time, a person
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had to read the Bible to know what was in the Bible. Can you
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imagine that once about you couldn't do this. Nobody did this. This was
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playing the piano. That's all that meant. Nobody did this. This meant
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nothing. Once upon a time a person imagine this is like back in you
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know the Earth's crust that just you know, formed and the dinosaurs are still
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roaming around. You actually had to find a physical Bible, open it up
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and read it to know what was in it. And the good news and
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the bad news is this, very few people read it and the only thing
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they knew about it was what preachers told them about it. And you're a
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preacher, so I can say this to you. I wouldn't say it outside
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of the room, and I hope it doesn't get outside the room you think
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it will. Yeah, we only preach our favorite passages and our favorite themes,
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so people only knew our favorite passages and our favorite themes. And even
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those of you who preach exegetically, verse by verse by verse by verse,
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because you do that, you actually skip through all the difficult things quickly because
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you got to pick it up with the next verse. And so well,
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no matter how you preaching, what your approach of preaching and teaching is.
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So Consequently, we taught theological systems, and we skipped big chunks of the
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bib el e. And nobody knew because nobody was reading it. And if
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they read it, they read it devotionally, or they bought a devotional book
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that skipped all those parts too. So here's a wake up call for you.
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Then two things happened. The first thing that happened was the Internet.
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And now your middle schoolers and your children, and your high school students and
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your college freshmen can discover what else is in the Bible without owning think of
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this, without owning or opening a Bible. Once upon a time, you
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couldn't do a Google word search to find out what was in the Bible,
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you had to go steal one out of a hotel or borrow one from your
15:35
parents. And the print was so small, and the concord and some nobody
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who knew how to. But now those days have been long gone, and
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you know that, but you can discover a person can discover what else is
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in the Bible without ever owning or opening a Bible. The second thing that
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happened was nine to eleven. After nine to eleven, as you know,
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a group of atheists went on the war path against all religion, not just
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Christianity, all religion. They wrote a slew of books. They became rock
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stars on university campuses. They they sold millions and millions of books. Even
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though you haven't read their books necessarily. Their books have made an incredible impact
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on our culture, YouTube sensations. But this new generation of skeptics, who
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are basically saying what skeptics have said for one hundred years, this new generation
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of skeptics had something that previous generations of skeptics didn't have. An all access
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passed to everybody everywhere. Once upon a time, you had to go to
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a library and check out their books. Once upon a time you had to
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go to a university and hear a lecture. Once upon a time you had
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to buy a ticket, get in a car and go and watch a debate.
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Now they have an all access passed to every middle schooler, high schooler,
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college student, skeptic, wandering, husband, wandering, you know,
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a wife who's just looking for a reason to leave everywhere. Nobody had to
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read their books, or attend their seminars, or go to their debates to
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hear their doctrine. The Internet put all this misinformation at people's fingertips, and
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then it happened. These skeptics exploited This is what we're going to talk about.
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They exploited a flaw in the modern version of Christianity. They exploited a
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flaw. The flaw has been there for since the Reformation. Honestly, the
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flaw has been there all along, but it wasn't all that important and it
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wasn't a big deal because the world was the way the world was. And
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the flaw that they have exploited is what I call a shared assumption. And
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I say it's a shared assumption because it's an assumption that most Christians hold,
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and it's an assumption that most skeptics hold, and so skeptics have drawn the
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Christian should have drawn the Church onto a battleground of their choosing. And the
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shared assumption is this, the Bible is the foundation of the Christian faith.
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It's not. It never has been. If the Bible is the foundation of
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our faith, there was no Christian faith until the fourth century when Constantine allowed
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scholars to come out of the darkness into the light to assemble the first the
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b I B l E. And when I say the Bible, I mean
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the Old Testament and the New Testament chaptered, verse, mapped, and wrapped.
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That's what I'm talking about when I say the Bible, not the term
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scripture, the Bible. When you go if you ask somebody for a Bible
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and they say, well, here's Matthew, you wouldn't say thank you for
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the Bible. You'd say thank you for Matthew. I'm looking for the Bible.
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That's what I'm talking about. They didn't exist till the fourth century.
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Many of you knew that. So clearly the Bible, as we think about
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the Bible, can't be the foundation of our faith. There wasn't one for
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over four or for a little over four one hundred years. Certainly, the
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foundation of Peter's faith wasn't the Bible. The foundation of Paul's faith wasn't the
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Bible, and the foundation of John's faith wasn't a Bible. Not a single
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Christian who was rounded up and marched into Nero's circus to be fed to wild
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animals believe that Jesus rose from the dead because they read the Bible. Their
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faith was anchored in something different. And all I want us to consider ispping
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back onto that fertile, blood soaked piece of real estate and take our stand
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where the first century Christians took their stand, because it is defensible all day
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long. In fact, if you're taking notes Ephesians two twenty, look it
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up later. Jesus Paul who I think Paul knew what he was talking about,
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and he was close to the action, right. Paul said, foundation
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of our faith? Oh, I know what that is? What is that,
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Paul, Jesus? He tells us, the foundation of our faith is
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in the text. The foundation of our faith is a person to which skeptics
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are people to say, way, we don't know anything about the person of
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Jesus except for the Bible. That's completely wrong. Don't leave early. The
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other part of this shared assumption goes like this, as the Bible goes,
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so goes Christianity. That's not true either. As the Bible goes, so
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goes Christianity. This is what most Christians believes. Some of you've always believed
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that, And the reason you believe it you were raised in church like I
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was. This is, you know, preachers get up every week the Bible
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says, the Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says. Well,
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if you say the Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says,
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long enough people think the Bible is the foundation and the ultimate authority of
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our faith. By the way, Jesus covered that too on his way out
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his you know, farewell address. He said, oh, yeah, by
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the way, this is the part we don't focus on because we like the
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part that follows. He said, oh, by the way, and what
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an arrogant thing for anyone to say, unless it's true. Ready for this?
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All authority? Wait? Wait, how much? All? You know?
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The little Greek word all means, Oh, yeah, it's not even
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tricky. Pass all all authority. Tell me who would say this? All
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authority in heaven and Earth belong to me. I'm the ultimate authority. Moses
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was your guy. There's a new guy in town, and Moses isn't offended.
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Moses pointed to me, you used to be people who followed Moses.
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There's a new guy in town. There's a new covenant in town. There's
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a new commandment town. It's all new. All authority is in me.
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And Paul says, yeah, and that in me, Jesus is also foundation
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of our faith. That's what I want our kids to understand. That's what
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I want your kids to understand. Now. This flaw was not easily exploited
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pre Internet culture because the pre Internet culture and earlier generations of people, they
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held the Bible in highesting, whether they believed it or whether they read it
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or not, because you know, the Bible was a holy book and I
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don't read it. I don't know what's in there, you know, but
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I you know it's holy. Do you read it? No? But I
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know it's holy. Do you believe it? I believe it. Do you
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read it no? Do you follow it? Yes? Do you know what's
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in there? No? But I mean, there was just kind of this
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weird cultural thing that just kind of worked for a long time. Those days
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are long gone. Those of you in student ministry and college ministry, you
21:41
know that in a Letter to a Christian Nation, this is the book I
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promote the most, which is so weird by Sam Harris. I'm just curious
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how many of you've read Letter to a Christiannation. I asked you this question
21:49
last year I was here. Yeah, virtually nobody. This book will basically
21:53
destroy your faith. It's about ninety pages. He wrote a book right after
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nine to eleven in the Faith that said all religion is bad. Everybody needs
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to do a way of all religion. He attacked this lom Christianity all religion.
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The Christians came on glued at Sam Harris. So Sam here says,
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oh you want to take me on, I'll write a book just for you.
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So he did Letter to a Christian Nation. If your faith can survive
22:14
this book, read it with caution. Then I want you to consider if
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the faith of the students in your student ministry and your college ministry and your
22:21
young adults, if their faith would survive this book. And if the answer
22:25
is no, change your approach, because if our faith can't stand up under
22:32
this barrage, either, our faith is not true, or we've been explaining
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it incorrectly. And my argument is we have depended on defending the Bible.
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We need to step back and defend the Resurrection because the Resurrection launched the movement
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that brought us the Bible. He makes this case like this, I mean,
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this is sort of the bottom line. The Bible is either the word
22:55
of God or it isn't. That's what he says. The Bible is either
22:56
the word of God or it isn't. If it is, he's as in
23:00
the book, then Christians win and I go to hell. That's what he
23:02
says. If the Bible is the word of God, then the Christians win
23:06
and I go to hell. If it isn't, then the Christians lose.
23:07
Then we all distribute our energy back to the universe. But in his mind
23:11
and his thinking, and in the mind of thinking of skeptics, it's all
23:12
about is the Bible true? And unfortunately, for generations Christians have taken debate
23:18
and said, okay, let's debate the Bible. Here's what he says in
23:21
the book. You believe that the Bible is the most profound book ever written,
23:25
and that his contents have stood the test of time. So well,
23:26
that it must have been divinely inspired and all that Christians say, that's right
23:30
the idea. He says that the Bible is a perfect guide to morality.
23:34
It's simply astounding given the contents of the book. Then he goes on to
23:38
give all these illustrations that make us blush and we say things, oh yeah,
23:41
yeah, but that was in the Old Testament. Oh that was when
23:45
we start, you know, scrambling. And most of us can scramble in
23:48
our fates in attact because we're seminary trained and we make a living. You
23:52
know, when you can get paid to do something, you believe it,
23:53
don't you. I hate to tell you this. When your livelihood depends on
24:02
believing something, it's hard to get you to stop believing in You. Just
24:04
need to think about that. The people that profit most from the status quo
24:10
are least inclined to let it go. Just need to think about that.
24:14
Different talk for another day. He goes on and says this, but if
24:21
the Bible is an ordinary book and Christ an ordinary man, the basic doctrine
24:26
of Christianity is false, and everybody wants to rush to defend the Bible.
24:33
And all I want to say today is this You do not need to do
24:36
that. Christianity does not rise and fall on whether the entire Bible is true.
24:41
And remember, I studied under the man who wrote the book and Errancy
24:45
and called me and told me to write Irresistible. This has nothing to do
24:48
with our view of scripture. It has everything to do where we dig our
24:53
trenches and mount our defenses for the faith of the next generation. I'll come
24:59
back to in just a second. Now, I'm not assuming that all the
25:03
students in your student ministry and all the young adults in your church, or
25:04
that you have read anything by you know, Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris or
25:07
Daniel Dennet or Christopher Hitchens or any of these guys. I'm not assuming they've
25:11
read any of those books. But our culture and the language of culture is
25:15
permeated with this thinking. And again it's right at everybody's fingertips every single day
25:21
of the week. What we know is that the given reason you can look
25:26
up the research yourself. What we know is that the given reason for why
25:30
people under thirty five leave the church and exit the faith is because they don't
25:36
This is what they say. At the bottom line is simply this, they
25:37
don't believe it, or they don't believe anymore. They just don't believe anymore.
25:42
I mean, some of them had bad church experiences, some of them
25:45
had didn't have bad church experiences. Some of them just lost faith. Some
25:48
of them read something, some of them read a book. Some of them
25:49
were exposed to friends. You know, there's all kinds of reasons. But
25:52
at the end of the day, all the research is this. You know
25:55
what, these are the people who grew up in your church and my churches.
25:57
You know, I just I just don't believe it. I just don't
26:02
believe anymore. And here's the question we have to ask, what did they
26:07
believe? What did they believe they had to believe in order to be a
26:11
believer. In other words, when they decided to walk that came up to
26:15
your church, a student ministry, or whatever, they walked away, I
26:18
don't believe it anymore. Okay, what exactly is it? What did you
26:22
believe or what did you think you had to believe in order to be a
26:26
believer. To say it a different way, what did they believe they had
26:30
to believe in order to not to leave? Now there's what did they think
26:33
they had to keep believing in order not to leave. Eventually, it comes
26:37
around to something in or about the Bible. Now, if you're raised on
26:41
the as the Bible goes, so goes to Christianity version of faith, then
26:45
it only takes the removal of one of the cards of the entire Bible House
26:48
of Cards for the whole thing to come tumbling down. Let me just make
26:52
it simple. If one part of the Bible isn't true, the Bible isn't
26:56
true. Goodbye Christianity. That is the fragile, fragile faith and the fragile,
27:00
fragile foundation that too many Christians had built their faith upon. The Bible
27:07
is the true, it's the word of God. Uh oh, there's a
27:08
problem here. The whole thing comes tumbling down. And if Jonah wasn't in
27:12
a fish for three days, why should I believe Jesus was in the tomb
27:15
for three days? It all goes together. That is not how Christianity got
27:21
launched. And the foundation of our faith is so much firmer and so much
27:26
more substantial than that. Otherwise, how in the world, how in the
27:30
world did this disenfranchise Since of the group of Jewish people following a dead Messiah,
27:37
who was sort of had their own version of a knockoff Jewish religion?
27:41
How did it survive being crushed between both the Temple and the Empire. And
27:47
think about this. The Temple was destroyed in seventy a d. And now
27:51
Rome is a tourist attraction for Christians. What happened that didn't happen because of
27:57
the bi b l E. The b l E formed the nucleus of our
28:03
theology and was embraced by Rome because of something far more dynamic. Jesus rose
28:11
from the dead and the eyewitnesses went into the world and documented it and died
28:17
not for what they believe. People die for what they believe all the time.
28:18
They died for what they said they saw. And that is why we
28:23
have to anchor the faith of our generation to the event that launched the movement
28:29
that brings us the Bible. So what has the church's response been to all
28:34
this plasma screens and skinny genes. That has been our response? That'll get
28:44
them? Oh man, I saw your light show during that opener. I'm
28:48
in I believe you know where do I sign up? I want to be
28:49
discipled and I bet our church that bought more moving lights than you know,
28:57
everybody in the center section all put together. I'm not against great production and
29:02
excellence. I'm just telling you it doesn't make the difference. It's not the
29:04
thing. The thing is an event. I better keep going. We preach
29:14
and teach is if nothing has changed. We preach and teach as if if
29:17
the Bible says it, that still settles it. It doesn't for most people.
29:22
Now. The good news is Christian authors and apologies have published many books
29:26
pushing back on the new atheist and defending the Bible. The good news is
29:30
if you have enough time, which you don't, by the way, if
29:33
you have enough time interest in none divided attention, you can defend the Bible
29:37
exactly. Laugh because you were with students and middle school kids, right,
29:41
Okay, we're gonna have a twelve week session a series on apologetics. Kids.
29:45
It's going to be fascinating. They're like, I just want to know
29:48
how to dance. That's what I want to know. I want to know
29:52
how to dance. Apollo, what right? What? Here's the good news.
30:00
The bad news is you're never gonna have enough of anybody's undivided attention to
30:03
cover. And here's the other thing about all the books that have been written
30:07
to counter the new atheists, and I've read lots of them. I love
30:08
John Lennox, read Robbie Zacharisa, love all that stuff. The thing is
30:11
they've already won in culture, that that battle is over. If you're interested,
30:17
there's all kinds of stuff to read, but your folks are not going
30:18
to read it. And they're all these other people are not. YouTube sensations
30:22
that have, you know, made it into college campuses and university settings,
30:25
so that that battle, in some ways is sword of lost and you know
30:30
that. But here's the point. Defending the Bible is the wrong place to
30:34
dig our trenches and mount our defenses, is my point. It's not that
30:37
you can't defend the Bible. Of course you can. You just it's just
30:41
good luck with that. The better news is we don't even have to because
30:44
the Bible isn't the foundation of our faith. Let me say it one more
30:45
time. We have to anchor. We have to anchor. We have to
30:49
tether the faith of a generation to an event that launched a movement that eventually
30:56
brought us the Bible. The better and easier approach to address this is to
31:00
address the false assumption that fuels all of this to begin with. But if
31:03
you do, you may be criticized. That's okay. If you do,
31:07
people may think you don't believe in the authority of the Bible. I can
31:08
tell you from personal experience. But as for me in my house, I
31:11
don't care, okay, because I want the next generation's faith to be anchored
31:17
in the reality of the physical literal in history, a resurrection of Jesus Christ.
31:23
Because if Jesus rose from the dead, game stinking on and if he
31:29
didn't, none of this matters. Anyways, we're going to discover in just
31:32
a minute, so we should not moving along. We should not let the
31:33
skeptics choose the battleground for the faith of the next generation. Right, We're
31:40
not gonna let them bait us into a debate that we can't win. In
31:42
culture, We're not going to allow them to bait us into a debate that
31:47
we can't win. In the thirty undivided minutes that we get with students on
31:49
a weekly basis, the question we must help this generation wrestle to the ground
31:56
is not is the whole Bible true? The question we must tell their faith
32:00
too is simple, did or did not Jesus rise from the dead, the
32:05
epic boy. This is so, This is why what you're doing is so
32:08
important, in who you are so important. The epic culture shaping story of
32:13
our faith did not begin with the book. It begin with an event when
32:16
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus removed jesus lifeless body from the cross. There were
32:22
no believers. Zero. They all stopped believing. No one hung onto that
32:30
veee e ling. That was a journey reference. Thank you. Nobody's outside
32:39
the tomb. Easter morning, counting down from ten nine, Ay que the
32:45
sun seven six. Easter's coming up. You can use this. Nobody ready,
32:55
nobody expected nobody. I'll preach that has for the last ten years on
33:06
Easter. But go ahead, think about this. Our faith didn't begin in
33:14
Genesis. Our faith begin on Easter morning, not because somebody read something,
33:22
some people saw something. The uniqueness of Christianity is it's rooted in history in
33:31
an event. I raised my children to think that way. I think we
33:37
have to raise the generation of church leaders and Christians to think that way as
33:40
well. The event of the Resurrection was the beginning. Our story doesn't hang
33:44
in the balance of whether sixty six books could be proven to be true.
33:45
The story of our faith hangs on a single event. Andy, where do
33:50
you get all this? I got this from the apostle, Paul. This
33:52
next statement you have read, you have taught the significance of this. In
33:55
fact, I could just read this three or four times and close. This
33:59
is it, I mean, Paul's you know what I've taken twenty minutes to
34:01
say. He said in a sentence. And if Christ has not been raised,
34:08
all of your cool outlines, all of your cool illustrations, all of
34:13
your cool power point, all of your handlifting music, all of those cool
34:16
lyrics, your cool camp, you out had more kids there than last year.
34:21
Your grandmama became a Christian on her deathbed, Your daddy became a Christian
34:24
because your grand her, granddaughter, all of that wonderful cool stuff that just
34:29
jazzes us up. Paul says, Oh, yeah, that's useless. If
34:34
Christ didn't raise from the dead, it wasn't raised from the dead. Your
34:37
preaching is useless, and so is your faith. So is the faith of
34:39
your grandmama, faith of your grand Listen it all one hundred. He didn't
34:45
say this about anything else. And now remember who he is. He was
34:49
a phariseeat. He knew the Old Testament inside and out. He loved the
34:53
Law and the prophets and the apostle. Paul the Apostle. Paul arrives at
34:58
the conclusion it all. It all rises and falls on the death and resurrection
35:04
of Jesus. Period. If he rose from the dead, game on if
35:07
he didn't, we are wasting our time. I want the next generation's faith
35:14
to be anchored to that single solitary idea. Paul introduced us to it two
35:19
thousand years ago. The Constitution did not found our nation. The company Handbook
35:31
didn't start your company. The Bible did not launch Christianity. The Event of
35:40
the Resurrection launched their faith. Now I'm gonna give a bunch of stuff because
35:44
they gotta keep going. So, as I mentioned, I changed my approach.
35:47
I did not change what I believe one bit. I just didn't.
35:52
I mean, in fact, the reason I felt so free to change my
35:53
approach is because my faith is so deeply rooted in the Event of the Resurrection
35:58
that I feel like I can defend all day long. I mean, I
36:00
better not go there. So I here's what I did, and here's what
36:04
I'm inviting you to do. This is all I'm invited to you do.
36:06
And you know what, once you decide to do this, you are smart
36:07
men and women. You write curriculum, you teach children, teach middle school,
36:10
you preach, you teach, you can. This is so simple to
36:13
do. And I'm not you know, all my sermons are on YouTube.
36:16
They're all free. I'm not trying to sell you anything. If the series
36:20
I'm doing now, I have been teaching. I mean I preach and teach
36:22
from the Bible all the time, and I never say the Bible says.
36:24
I just anchor everything to the resurrection, to the people who are there.
36:28
And it's so simple to do. And I've been modeling this for years.
36:30
And your church are gonna fall apart, and your kids aren't gonna rebel against
36:32
God. I mean, all the things I've heard, Oh, you're gonna
36:35
become a liberal, You're gonna become a German liberal. I'm like, wait,
36:37
wait, wait, wait, No, I'm fascinating people's faith to the
36:42
event of the literal physical I mean, what anyway, ignore all those things
36:46
you hear. So I adopted an approach and this is all I'm asking you
36:51
to do. I adopted an approach that argues from and you can do this
36:54
every single time you preach and teach that argues from and anchors to the event
36:58
of the resurrection rather than the authority of the Bible. That's all I'm saying.
37:01
Are you saying the Bible doesn't have any authority? Read irresistible? I
37:05
go into detail in in terms of what I mean by that, but the
37:07
point is, no matter what you think about what this statement means, I'm
37:09
just asking you to anchor your children's faith. And you're this generation's faith to
37:14
the event of the resurrection rather than the authority of the Bible. And here's
37:16
why. And I got to keep moving for generations. And I understand this.
37:20
My dad preested this, I was raised in this. It doesn't do
37:22
anybody, It doesn't hurt anything. The Bible, the Word of God says
37:25
the Bible, the Word of God says the Bible. The Word of God
37:28
says, the Bible, the Word of God says. But what that means
37:30
is the whole thing has equal weight and equal authority and equal application. And
37:38
I don't again, the way we got our Bibles is not the way the
37:42
world got their Bible. The way the world got the Bible started with an
37:45
event, and some eyewitnesses wrote documents documenting the life of Jesus, and those
37:50
documents were the Word collected and copied, and then the Old Testament of the
37:53
Law and the prophets became sacred to the early Church because they realized it pointed
37:57
to Jesus, and sequentially it got put in together. But when you were
38:00
four or five years old, somebody handed you the whole things that's the Word
38:02
of God, and they didn't explain the sequence. We have to explain the
38:07
sequence because it's a different day and age, and everybody can discover what else
38:12
is in there anytime they're tempted to do so. So basically I embraced the
38:19
acts acts the acts approach, and here's the act's approach. It's very simple.
38:23
If you hear me preach, I say this every third sermon, my
38:25
congregation doesn't even win. It's very simple. If someone predicts their own death
38:32
and resurrection and pulls it off, we should go along with whatever that person
38:36
says. It's complicated, so I'm gonna read it again. If someone predicts
38:45
their own death or resurrection and pulls it off, we says so when my
38:47
when my kids were growing I told my kids, I said, hey,
38:50
in high school, when you get to college, if somebody says starts making
38:52
fun of the old testam matter asking you do you believe this? And you
38:54
believe that? Here's your answer. You know what Jesus did. Oh,
38:59
and here's the thing. I'm a simple person. I figure if somebody can
39:00
predict their own death and resurrection and pull it off, I should just go
39:04
with whatever that person says. So let's talk about Jesus. Because see,
39:07
everybody loves our culture. This is the great news. Our culture still has
39:10
a crush on Jesus. Everybody wants Jesus to be a part of their thing.
39:14
You give me a jay. I got Jesus, Yes I do.
39:15
I got Jesus. Everybody loves Jesus. So it's simple, It's real simple.
39:20
I know that's such a strange story. I know that doesn't really make
39:22
sense with science. I know, I know. But you know what,
39:23
the best I can tell Jesus believe that. And you know what, when
39:25
somebody predicts their own death and resurrection and pulls it up, I just go
39:28
with whatever that person says. That is the anchor has been the anchor of
39:30
my preaching for ten years because it draws people back to the foundation of the
39:36
event that launched the movement that eventually brought us the Bible. Every Easter,
39:38
here's what I say Easter. Hey, welcome North One Community Church. Walcome
39:42
about his church. We're glad you here. We just want you to know
39:44
that at our church we believe Jesus died on the cross for our sin and
39:46
arose from the dead. But we don't believe it because the Bible tells us.
39:50
So pause, it's much better than that, as we'll see in a
39:55
minute. So Sam's got it wrong. As the Bible goes Christianity doesn't go
40:00
as Jesus goes, So goes Christianity. Now, this is when the smart
40:04
people who ask the question, this is a great Christian. But Andy,
40:07
the only thing we know about Jesus and the resurrection is from the Bible.
40:09
No, that's completely wrong. But I understand why you think that, because
40:12
that's the way we were all raised to think. Here's something we've miscommunicated for
40:15
generations. We do not take We do not take the Gospels, the Gospel
40:22
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Gospels. We do not take
40:23
these documents seriously because they are in the Bible. But most Christians do.
40:28
The reason they take Matthew seriously is it's in the Bible. The reason they
40:30
take Mark seriously it's in the Bible. But thinking Christians and the generation that
40:35
you're going to raise, they are no longer going to say think that those
40:37
documents are valuable because they're in the Bible. Let me illustrate it this way.
40:43
Do you put things and when you get to a hotel, do you
40:45
put things in the hotel safe to make them valuable or because they're valuable?
40:53
Not a true question? Do you put They'll go over it again. Do
40:57
you put things in the safe so you know this is worth ten dollars?
41:00
But I put it in the safe and I came back later and it was
41:01
worth twenty dollars. I love it. Do you put things in a safe
41:05
to make them valuable? That's not worth much? Oh? Yes it is.
41:07
It was in a safe. It was in a safe. Well,
41:09
yeah, that's valuable. Let me ask it again. Do you put things
41:14
in a safe to make them valuable? Are because they are valuable? Because
41:20
they are valuable? These extraordinary documents written in the first century the Gospel of
41:25
Matthew, the Gospel of Mark Mark it was a Greek who God is?
41:30
Information from Peter tradition tells us the Gospel of Luke. Luke says, I
41:32
have thoroughly investigated all these things, most excellent theophilists, so that you could
41:37
have an orderly account of the things that have happened among us, John and
41:40
Eyewitness. These documents were included in the Bible because early Christians understood their value.
41:47
They were valuable and considered valuable long before there was ever a the bib
41:54
l e. We don't take Matthew seriously because it's in the Bible. It's
41:58
in the Bible because it's so valuable. We don't take John seriously because it
42:01
was in the Bible. It got stuck in this incredible collection of documents because
42:06
the early Church recognized it was so valuable. You say, Andy, are
42:08
you just playing with words in messing wars? No? No, No,
42:10
this is our story. This is our song praising my Savior all the day
42:14
long. Okay, this is this is our story that once upon a time,
42:20
when everybody thought it was game over, something happened and it sparked faith
42:24
in a person, and it started a movement that eventually brought us the Bible.
42:30
These documents were written in the first century, they were copied and collected.
42:34
They were distributed by the third century, and then in the fourth century
42:37
under Emperor Diocletian. Emperor Diocletians the first person to do a state sanctioned persecution
42:42
of the Christians in the fourth century early fourth century, and a part of
42:45
Diocletian's persecution, he realized, we have to get rid of all these texts,
42:47
these blasted texts that these Christians keep passing around and copying. So they
42:52
banned all Christian literature, and they went from home to home, and temple
42:55
to temple, and holy site the Holy site, and they would gather up
42:59
this Christian literature and burn it. And people risk their lives, not for
43:02
a Bible. There's still no Bible. They risk their lives for a copy
43:07
of John. They risked their lives for a fragment of Matthew. They risked
43:10
their lives because they had a bundle of three of Paul's writings. They didn't
43:14
even know he'd written anything else. And they risked their lives for these documents.
43:16
Why they considered them so valuable, And they were valuable for three reasons.
43:22
Who wrote them, what they contained, and when they were written.
43:27
See, this is very simple. This isn't seminary. This is basic.
43:30
This is the foundation. This is why I mean, I have more faith
43:36
than I've ever had in my life, and yet I feel even more freedom
43:39
to reach as far as I can across the aisles to communicate to unchurched people
43:44
that there's something to this, that God has done something in history on their
43:50
behalf. So as Jesus goes, Christianity goes. And if you want to
43:54
know how Jesus goes, and I'll wrap it up here. If you want
43:58
to know how Jesus goes, don't cross examine the Bible. This is where
44:02
skeptics have tricked us. You don't cross examine the Bible. If you want
44:07
to know about Jesus and whether or not Jesus is the real deal, you
44:09
have to cross examine Matthew all by itself, not the Bible. That's my
44:15
levigus. Let's talk about Matthew. And when you're done with Matthew, then
44:19
you have to take on Mark, who apparently got his information from Peter,
44:22
who was an eyewitness. Then when you're dying with Mark, then you got
44:25
to go to Luke, who said, I thoroughly investigated all these things,
44:29
so I'm excellent theophlist, so you'd have an orderly account of what happened.
44:30
And then you got to get to John, who'sn eyewitness. Then you got
44:32
to get to Peter, who wrote two letters and clearly he believed in the
44:36
resurrection. And then good luck with this, you got to get to James.
44:42
Come on, what would your brother have to do to convince you he
44:47
was the son of God? James shows up late in the story. James
45:00
doesn't show up until after the resurrection, and James shows up as a leader
45:04
in the church in Jerusalem. Josephus tells Us how he died. He was
45:08
stoned to death because he was considered a lawbreaker, because the Christians were considered
45:14
lawbreakers because they had a new law. They took all the laws and Jesus
45:17
condenced them to two and then in the last minute he said, we're done
45:20
with all those. I'm gonna give you one that covers all of them.
45:22
And James was stoned to death because of his faith and his brother. Imagine
45:25
this, James dies believing his brother is his lord. You have to explain
45:31
that to me, not the Bible. We'll get to that letter. Just
45:35
tell me. Let's just talk about James. Nobody disputes he wrote the letter.
45:38
Very few people anymore dispute he was the brother of Jesus. James believed
45:43
his brother was his lord. Now let's talk about Paul. Butbeos. Paul
45:46
gives us the earliest literature as it relates to the resurrection. The apostle Paul,
45:50
come on, who steps onto the pages of history is somebody who hates
45:52
Christians, who decides I'm gonna single handedly put this thing out of business.
45:57
It is a Jewish knockoff religion. And if we make God angry, we're
46:00
never going to get rid of the Romans. So we're trying to get everybody
46:02
to repent and act right so we can get our land back. And then
46:06
along companies Christians good grief. And then you know the story. What happens.
46:08
You know, God and Jesus are standing up there watching this whole thing,
46:12
and God says to Jesus, the father says the son, look,
46:14
it's not going very well. And the son says, I know, I
46:19
know, And the Father says, look, this one guy, the Saul
46:21
of Tarsans is like single handily dismantling the whole thing. I think you need
46:24
to go back down there and recruit some more followers. And then God,
46:28
the Father says, I think you should recruit Saul. And Jesus is like
46:32
to recruit Saul. I mean, he's a one man record machine. And
46:36
the Father says, yeah, but he's ambitious, he didn't mind Ray,
46:37
he's educated, he's connected, he's a pharisee. I mean, this is
46:40
a coup. Go get that guy. I don't think that's exactly how it
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happened, but something happened, and Saul of Tarsus becomes the advocate and the
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missionary to the Gentiles, and he says to his generation, I'm telling you.
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The whole thing rises and falls on the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,
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who declared that who punctuated his resurrection punctured everything, punctuated everything he taught.
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And the problem with Jesus is he said too much about himself. It wasn't
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his miracles and all that. The problem was he claimed too much. So
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when he died it was game over. I mean he told Mary and Martha,
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I am the resurrection of the life well, you can't crucify and kill
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the resurrection in the life. But he was dead and then he came back,
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and so did their faith. This is what we sing about that this
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isn't new. I just want us to tether the faith of this generation to
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the event that sparked the movement that brought us the Bible, so that when
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people question your children's faith one day, your grandchildren's faith one day, or
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your faith one day, they can say, I know that some of that
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stuff's kind of hard to believe, but you know, Jesus believed that.
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I just figure somebody, you know, prediction her own death and resurrection pulled
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it off. I guess, go with whatever that person said. And oh
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yeah, by the way, I don't believe all this stuff about Jesus because
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of the Bible. It's way better than that. I believe because of what
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Matthew said, and then Mark and then Luke, and then John and then
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Peter and paula, Hey, did you know we had a brother, James.
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And the other reason I believe is here's just what I've learned. Following
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Jesus has made my life better. And you know what, It's made me
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better at life. Following Jesus has made my life better, and it's made
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me better life. It's made me a better boyfriend, it's maybe a better
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father. It's made me a better husband, it's made me a better friend.
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Following Jesus made my life better. It's made me better at life.
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And one of the reasons it made me better at life is that at the
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very end, Jesus told us followers, we really just needed to do one
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thing well. He said, as I have loved you, so you are
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to love one another. And by this kind of unique love, everyone's going
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to know that you're my follower. So that's why I follow Jesus. I
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mean, I love the Bible, but it's not about the Bible. It's
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about an event that was documented by eyewitnesses, and it's about the difference that
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He's made in my life. Let's just do that, and here's why,
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and I'm done. I promise. I want to skip this slide and go
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to the slide about the next generation. This is the thing I want to
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bother you. What is the faith of the next generation worth everything? So
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let's get this right, not to make our churches bigger, but because we
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are the stewards of this generation. Of the church and things have changed.
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We have to change our approach and if we do, God willing, we
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will see something extraordinary happen in our country and all over the world. Thank
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you so much, love you callous. We'll see you next. Jor