Apologetics 1

Intro to Apologetics

Hello Imprint! Nice to see you guys all here after a week away, did you guys enjoy the banquet last week?

I want to start our new series with a story.

When I was in high school, I was a church kid and a pastors kid. I grew up knowing all the Sunday school answers and all the bible stories. However, one day in grade 10 I had a conversation with another student. He told me that science was the answer to the world. He said he knows for fact that the big bang is how the world was created and evolution is the process by which humans were made.

And I sprang up right away and I said no way man, God created the world and us. Now this guy was actually baiting me to say that because he knew I was a Christian. And he snapped back. And he started listing off all these “gotcha’s” to me to disprove God, in favour of this naturalism / scientific theory.

And I hate to say it but I was dumbfounded. I realized then and there that I had no response to this guy. Want to know why? It was not because there was no answers that I could have for him, but because I had no idea how to defend my faith. I grew up in the church so I knew what to believe, but I had zero clue on why I believed these things or how one would come to those conclusions.

So maybe you have had a similar experience to this, or maybe not, either way, something like this will come up in your life if you are a believer and we need to be prepared. That is why we are doing this series on apologetics.

No, apologetics does not mean you are saying sorry for your faith, apologetics comes from the greek word apologia which means “reasoned defence”. Apologetics : defending your faith.

So what is the point? Why do we teach this? Is it just to be able to respond to the trolls that want to make you look stupid? No.

The point defending the faith is so that those we speak to would come to a knowledge of the truth. That they would see God for who He is and submit to His truth. This is actually connected intimately with missions work… its NEVER about just being right or arguing for fun.

Another important reason we teach apologetics is because it tells us to in the bible.

1 Peter 3:15 “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,”

I could leave this whole introduction with this verse. Honour Christ as holy — in that — be prepared to defend your belief to anyone who questions you about it, and do it kindly. Thats so big.

However, I want to ask, what does doing it kindly look like? Does defending your faith kindly mean that you say: “but i don’t know” after every statement? or does it mean that you have to recognize that the other persons truth is good and is equally valid as your opinion? absolutely not!

Guys we live in a world where it is a horrible evil to say that one view is right and correct and another one is wrong. That is a terrible thing because you could be potentially hurting that persons feelings… right? Your truth and my truth… This is not what the bible means when it says to be kind.

Lots of you may know… but if you don’t i might blow your mind right now. The bible is truth. meaning there can be no truth outside of the bible that contradicts the bible. Meaning that there is no, “your truth and my truth”. The truth is the truth.

So Christians can come into a problem here, because some people might get upset at us for defending our faith because we believe that there is only one truth. But, we can still do it while being truly gently and respectfully and kindly. Don’t be a jerk about it.

My hope with this series is that we can stir up some thinking on these issues so that you guys can dive more into these things and be more prepared to defend your faith than I was in high school. Tonight we are going to look at the idea of the existence of God and how we can approach making a clear case for His existence in apologetics.

So when we begin to talk about this subject we need to know an important starting point. And that is that everyone has a worldview. I know the homeschoolers in the crowd have heard a lot about this in the past, but this is a super important starting point. Can everyone say worldview? A worldview is the lens through how someone sees the world.

Not everyone has thought a whole lot about this, but every person has an idea that they live by and have decided things about. Here are some of the main things that are considered in ones worldview.

-God. Like, is He real, what is He like.

-About the universe and reality, like how did we get here and where should we be going.

-About knowledge, how do we know things?

-Morality, what is right and wrong, what *ought* we to do

-humanity are we special or are we space dust floating around

These are very important things to work through, and depending on the worldview of the person we are talking to, it will change how we approach a question.

There was a story we heard at school where a rich man decided he wanted to be a missionary. This rich man bought a private helicopter and decided to post-haste fly into the jungle tribes of PNG as soon as he learned the common trade language. He was convinced he would be the tool that God would use to convert many many lost tribes to Him.

So he flew in and landed in the first unreached tribe in the area. He landed and of course everyone from the tribe comes and huddles around the flying machine to see whats going to happen. And this man comes out and he says, in their native trade language: “For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Now raise your hand if you want to be saved by God?”

And a few people responded by putting their hands up… and after a minute or so every tribes person’s hand was up. So, being very satisfied with his work, the man turned, got on his helicopter and flew away to find the next tribe.

What is the issue with that story? The issue is not that God could not have saved all of them, but the reality was for that tribe is that they had a worldview that was compromising to this specific gospel presentation. They were polytheists. They had many God’s that they worshipped. So at the sound of another God to save them, they were like yeah we will add another God to the mix for sure!

Who can tell me what the problem is with that worldview? The bible says there is only one God, and only through Jesus can one be saved, not through anyone or anything else.

This is a good example of how someones worldview matters in a faith or apologetic conversation. Another example you could use is that you could try to explain to one of your friends at school that God is like a loving father to you. But this friend might have no dad in the home or a dad that is not loving. And therefore that example of who God is to them is incomprehensible.

Okay I want to speak for myself here and give you guys why I think the Christian God does not only exist, but is the only true God.

Ultimately, I am a Christian because I have had personal experiences with God. He has drawn me to Himself and revealed Himself to me in many different ways every single day. He has shown me that He is good, powerful, sovereign and loving beyond my understanding. So although there are many really good and valid arguments for God’s existence. at the bottom of things, it is not based on proofs for or against God’s existence, but His working in my life that has led me to believe and follow Him.

But its not just me that God has revealed Himself to. The bible says that God has sufficiently revealed Himself to everyone, But some do not want to believe. We do not want to think that there is someone bigger and in control of me. Someone that I have to follow.

Romans 1:18–20 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

It has been clearly perceived to everyone, but we suppress the truth. So aside from all the “evidence” there is never an excuse not to believe.

Now, with that being said, Christianity is the most powerful worldview in the history of the world. Want to know why? because Christianity has a sufficient answer to every single question and dilemma that has ever been asked. No other religion has that.

Now lets spend a few minutes on the arguments for God.

Okay, you guys are going to have to track with me here or this could get rough — but i believe in your guys ability to comprehend me.

The first argument — Presuppositionalism. *repeat w/ me* Or Presup for short

A presupposition is an assumption you make about the world. So the Presup argument is saying everything has to start from somewhere, so let us assume for a minute that God does exist. The only reason that anything makes sense, the only reason that world is as it is, and the only reason we can know anything is because of God’s existence and intentionality.

Here’s what I mean… Someone could argue that science and logic rule, God doesn’t rule. We have all these tools and all these smart people that can tell us how the world works and what to think.

Of course we can know things, but a worldview without God has literally no way to account for how we can know anything.

For example, people say that they can prove things with science and logic. And when asked how we can prove science and logic, the answer is always…. science and logic. there is nothing past or deeper than that.

But the laws of science and logic in the first place depend on the fact that they are universal. They depend on the fact that no matter where we go on earth these laws and rules are the same.

Apart from the reality of a real and intentional God with an intentional and ordered design, there is absolutely no reliable account for why these things are the way they are. Without God there is no way to know why tomorrow will be the same as today, yet it always is. Tomorrow always comes.

This argument is called TAG or the transcendental argument for God’s existence. — to argue for God based on the impossibility of the contrary. This argument suggests that that math, science, logic, reason and truth… all the things upon which we base all our knowledge have no foundation to account for them and their reliability outside of God.

Second argument — Cosmological

This one is a little simpler, but just as powerful.

For something to begin, there must be a pre-existing first cause. right? Everyone agrees that life has to be created, it has to be caused. Your parents created you, their parents created them, all the way back to the first humans… that had to have happened somehow, and the first people had to have happened.

Many scientists and atheists say that the human life began with a big explosion of pre-existing particles.

The question becomes, what is the *eternal* thing that caused everything else? Christian’s know it to be God that was always there. God created the universe and everything in it, including humans. Atheists say it was two little pieces of space dust after an infinite amount of time floating around that collided and created everything you see around you.

Third argument — Teleological

The odds of all of the constants in life being fulfilled to allow for human life are 10^138. Do you know how drastic and ridiculous that is?

If the force of gravity was altered by 1 part out of 10^100 we would not be able to live. Or if the sun moved out of its position even the tiniest degree closer to earth, we would all be burned up in seconds. It is that exact. There are many examples of this.

The complexity of the human body. How every part works together. you could even break it down to the complexity of the human brain, or even the human eye. How insane is it that they all work perfectly. And how insane is it to assume that these things could have been put in place by anything except an intentional designer. I would try to come up with a analogy that would explain how “lucky” you would need to be in order for all this to happen, but there legitimately is not an example that would even come close to the correct probability.

So we can either sit back and say, man we got lucky. Or we can say… there has to be an intelligent designer to this world.

Fourth and final argument for today I’m almost done bear with me.

Moral argument

This one is my favourite argument.

Each one of us has deep convictions about how things ought to be or should be. Like what is right and wrong and what things are evil and what things are good. These thoughts always originate from the Bible, and from God.

Some people argue that no, there is no true good or evil, only what we have decided as a culture based on what is productive or helpful for the society. They would say there is no objective morality, just what society decides. Which is so interesting…

I would ask that person who says that… is murder wrong? How about trafficking in foreign countries? They don’t seem to think its an objective evil, so is it okay for them to keep that up?

Or, you could ask them.. if a person is hanging off the side of the cliff who needs your help, but theres a 5k about to float away, and you have to choose one to save. No one would say saving the person is objectively evil because we all have an understanding of objective morality on our hearts. So whether or not we say we believe in objective morals, we will always act on it.

This points us back to God. Why would we all have pretty much the exact same objective morality on our hearts if it was not for God’s intentional rule and design for us.

I understand that my points tonight and for the next couple weeks of this series might not going to convince anyone who isn't saved to believe, no one is usually argued into conversion, we believe that is only by the work of God that that can happen. But I do encourage you if you're not saved to think about these things… look into them more and ask more questions.

Apologetics proves that God is a rational God. We do not follow a blind faith with absolutely nothing to go off of. I do believe we have more than enough to go off of and be convinced. But at the end of the day, we must answer if we believe Jesus is who He says, and that He was raised from the dead. That right there, the gospel, is the starting point. From then on there are lots of awesome questions and mysteries things to learn about.

Last piece before I’m done, although these things are super important and good to learn, we need to recognize that ultimately God does not need us to prove Him to anyone, He is the one who can reveal and open eyes in an instant… He doesn’t need us, but we are still commanded to defend our faith in the Bible.

Let’s pray.

Small Group Questions

1. Any initial thoughts?

2. What is apologetics? Why is it important?

3. Have you ever been challenged about your faith? How did you respond?

4. How do you think Christians can balance defending their faith with being respectful and kind to others? (without compromising the truth)

5. How can you start preparing to defend your faith?