Defending our Faith (09/08/24) | “the way” series SY24 @ PUNLA CoffeeTable

Episode 24S35 Defending our Faith (written by Dr. Kip Wehrman)

Before we get started today.  Let’s read our Scripture from 1 Peter 3:8-22 (NIV) ⁸Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. ⁹Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. ¹⁰For,“Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. ¹¹They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. ¹²For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”  ¹³Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? ¹⁴But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.”  ¹⁵But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, ¹⁶keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. ¹⁷For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. ¹⁸For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. ¹⁹After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— ²⁰to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, ²¹and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²²who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

The center section is a quote from Psalm 34.  You should have read it as homework, so you can see how Peter is drawing on the symbolism and overall message of Psalm 34.  He expects that his reader will know the entire Psalm not just the quote verses. N He also quotes from Isaiah 8 in the next sentence.  Paul wants us the reader to understand what he is saying based on what those old testament scripture said to the people of his day.  Paul ties all scripture together to help us understand, so we better use those quotes from the old testament to help our understanding.

Our focus verse today is 1 Peter 3:15 (NIV) But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. ALWAYS BE PREPARED TO GIVE AN ANSWER TO EVERYONE WHO ASKS YOU TO GIVE THE REASON FOR THE HOPE THAT YOU HAVE. But do this with gentleness and respect,

We must always be ready to share why we believe what we believe.  Why we have such hope.  The purpose of this series is to help you build the evidences and techniques you can use to have confidence in what we believe. We have an evidence based faith.

Let’s Pray.

Also, I am not a pastor, so I apologize in advance I have no pastoring skills.  I’m an engineer, what I say sometimes is rough and raw.  I do not mean to insult anyone, so don’t take anything personal.  I want you to question and challenge what I say.  We are in this together.  So, if you think what I said does not seem quite right, then please send email me or ask during our web meetings, so we can resolve it together.  Okay.

Before we begin, I need to tell you there is nothing we are going to talk about this year that will convince a committed atheist to believe in God.  Blaise Pascal put it best, “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.”

What he means is God will not override our will.  If someone honestly wants to know about God, then God will provide them with exactly what they need to find Him.  But if in your heart you don’t want there to be a God, then God will give you exactly what you need to avoid the obvious.  Just enough shadow to hide God, as not to override your free will.  

My prayer is you will earnestly want to find God, and we want to share evidence that will help to encourage you on our journey.  We are on this journey together.  We don’t have all the answers but I know who does.  This is going to be a lot of fun.

One of our missions at PUNLA Christian Ministries is to help equip people to stand strong.  Be prepared, for the battle which is raging around us in our world.

We must own our Faith.  It is not enough to believe what you have been told.  As followers of Jesus, we need to put effort into our faith.  Which is why you are all here.  There are a lot of critics out there who are eager to embarrass us or put doubts in our minds.  There is no excuse not to be ready.  It’s simple but that does not mean it won’t take effort.  It won’t be easy.  It is important to know why we believe and it is important to understand what a Church Tradition is and what is actually in the Bible.

We will talk about some of these this year.

Our priority as Christians is to effectively communicate the good news of Jesus to the world.  But we need 3 things in order to have effective communication about anything. 

• Knowledge
• Application
• Character

We need to know our subject matter to effectively communicate.  We need to have a plan to effectively apply this knowledge, or an application for the knowledge.  And we need the appropriate character to convey the message.

We need all three.  We will be working on knowledge and application in this series. And Character, well that is between you and God.  We are all works in progress.  But that is part of our walk with Christ, becoming more and more like Jesus.

The intent is for these sessions to fit together.  Is Christianity True and what is the evidence.  It is like a puzzle, with each piece building the case for what we believe.  We are going to talk about worldview a little later.  I’m not sure how fast we will go but I’m not going to rush it. 

Bottomline to all of this is to provide you with evidence and tactics to show Christianity is true and why.  We don’t have blind faith.  We have faith grounded in evidence.  And we are going to explore these.

Defending our faith is often referred to as Apologetics. What a terrible word. So What is Apolo-whatty. Or as I have said in the past Apolo-hewwy.  Because this word stinks.  Apologetics.  I hate this term.  It does not mean apology.  I really hate these seminary terms and unfortunately Christian theology is full of them.  We are going to use it just so you know the terms.  But okay what does this term Mean?  

Apologetics is a reasoned argument or justification. It comes from the Greek word apologia meaning defense.  This is the courtroom type of defense.  A sound argument.  Christian Apologetics is a reasoned argument to justify what we believe.

Apologetics is not only a Christian term.  There are Muslim Apologist, Jewish Apologist, Hindu apologist, and though they do like the term Atheist Apologist.

So Christian Apologetics or Defending the Christian faith entails three things; 1) QUESTIONS: understanding our questions and the questions of others.  2) ANSWERS.  Learning to provide answers to those questions, so we can address the concerns we have, and others have with logic, reason and the Bible. and 3) ARGUMENTS.  We must be prepared to provide reasonable arguments to address the skeptics and criticism.  This does not mean arguments like fighting but rather addressing the skeptics and criticism with grace and love, as well as reason and logic.  Giving the basis for what we believe and why.  And showing people that everything actually points toward Jesus.

Remember.  Be prepared.  The battle has already begun.  It is time to prepare for the fight.  God has His bigger, better plan ready for us if we are willing.  Oh, by the way we have already won.  Are you going to be on the side of Jesus or just a spectator.

Why do we need to be trained in Christian Apologetics?  To be prepared for the Battle that is happening all around us.  The very nature of skeptics has changed and continues to change.  Skeptics have and are becoming more and more hostile to traditional Christian views.

But people are hurting and looking for answers to their questions. We work with them.  We see them at the store.  We see them in our churches.  They have questions. So, let’s get prepared to help them find reasonable solutions to their doubts and concerns.  Answers to their questions. Unanswered doubts often result in rejection of faith, and we don’t want that.

And if you are one of these with unanswered questions, then I hope we will address some of them in this series.  But if you have a specific question, you either would like addressed or want some more resources to research yourself.  Send me an email to questions@punla.org.  all messages are confidential so I’ll keep your name out of the discussions.  We all have questions.  I have had a lot of them.  But God is good.  I have not found any meaningful question that God has not answered.  Just remember God answers His way, not our way.  We have questions because our way has failed, so let’s let the creator of the universe show us His way.  I often call this God’s bigger, better plan for everything.

Make no mistakes, the culture is trying to cancel us.  The battle is right now, right here.  Jesus has already won, we know this.  But are you going to be on the winning side or are you going to just be a spectator and team supporter?

But wait a minute.  I’m sure some of you are saying in an open society, a tolerant society people must be open to our views as well.  Do you really believe that is the case?  They will hate us, that’s for sure.  Jesus warned us in the Bible 2000 years ago.  Christians in every century have face similar assaults.  We are not an exception to the rule, but we had better get prepared.  It’s not the end of the world, it is just the world.  Read Foxes book of martyrs, and then tell me we are seeing the end of the world.  It’s been much worse than what we are experiencing.  So, buckle up buttercup.  You have to realize that they hate everybody.  Christians have been the focus of this hate for 2000 years.  Also, whatever the topic is, there are always going to be those that agree and those that disagree.  But, for sure we have not experienced this level of violence in the west in the recent past, our lifetimes or so.  But as Christians, reason, logic, and science are actually on our side, which is what we are going to be learning in the weeks to come.  We have reasons, our faith is not a blind faith.  We have lots of evidence.  We have logic.  We can ask questions thoughtfully and uncover the origins of their anger and hate.  But we can only be useful in God’s kingdom, if we keep our cool and let the opponents of our faith unravel their own views themselves.  We have science.  Yes you heard me right, we have the science.  “Science says nothing.  But Scientists do.”  God created everything that includes all of science.  Science points to God, not away from God.  No matter how hard scientists try to point us away from God, their own research and data always point to the truth, which is God.  And we are going to talk about this a lot.  Obviously, I’m a scientist, a former researcher.  I did research for NASA in graduate school. and I’m an engineer, a practicing professional engineer in Texas.  So, I know the arguments and I’ve seen the flaws in their reasoning and logic.

Did you see how nonaggressive questions are.  But instead of engaging in the name calling.  Questions allow us to cut through all the posturing to the real question the other person has.  Don’t look for a, ”I got you moment” instead allow the other person to realize they are making emotional or antagonistic comments and help them to resolve back to the basic or core of the issue.  Then you can provide your perspective from an equal position instead of defensive position.  It’s not offensive, it is fact finding or fact reveling.

Our goal is to change the trajectory of their lives and shift them back in the direction of Jesus.  It is not going to be a one and done.  It is a commitment to invest in people.  That is time, energy, money, comfort, leisure.  You have to give whatever God is requiring you to give, in order to make a difference in the life of the person standing in front of you.

I only need to know my worldview completely. I do not have to defend what I don’t believe.  Don’t take on responsibility you don’t have.  Be prepared to communicate what you believe in a relatable way. Focus on what I believe and why I believe it.  Not what others say about our faith. 

Step 1 is Listen. Top priority.  

Step 2  Listen. 

Step 3 Listen. 

Do you get my point?.  Let them tell you what they know and believe.  Learn to ask questions.  Don’t defend views you don’t hold.  Don’t defend against views they don’t believe either. We only need to defend our worldview.  Effective communication begins with listening.  We take advantage of the specifics that God has given us.  That is our profession or from your former worldviews.  God has positioned you perfectly.  Now get prepared.  The great thing is this reduces the number of questions they can ask you.  Just about my hope and what is in the Bible.  If they ask you something else.  Well, you do not have to defend what you don’t believe.  Keep the burden of proof on the those who challenge you.

I want to give you a couple glimpses of what a properly defined worldview and educated plan can prepare you for. 

JP Moreland.  That’s how you shutdown false claims with their own failed logic.  The thing is most people that throw these statements out are not heavy hitters.  They have heard the talking points and slogans but have nothing to back it up with.  So, kindly and gently ask the questions and let them bury themselves in their own assertions.  JP Moreland did not debate and defend his position.  He simply used the logic and failed reasoning to completely tear down the argument.  And typically, they will run away.  But sometimes they will go, oh yeah.  Then you have them ready to hear your side of the story.

So does Science explain everything.  Of course not.  Science collects data or effects and then scientists search for the causes of those effects.  That’s it.  Science does not explain anything.  Science does not say anything.  But scientists do.  But what they say is not truth just because they have a bunch of degrees.  I have two doctorates, a PHD in Chemical Engineering and THD in Christian Apologetics.  But don’t take my word for it.  Test what I say, and if it’s true.  Truth has nothing to do with me and everything to do with Jesus.

So how are we doing so far?  Don’t forget if you do have questions you would like discussed email me at questions@punla.org.

We are going to pause this discussion for the moment and discuss Worldview in more detail next time. Thank you and God’s Blessing my friends.