The Ministry of Apologetics

Introduction

We were in this same passage last week, and I felt like we needed to spend two weeks going over chapter 17 because there are two major themes taking place. One, Paul continues to be evangelistic. I don’t think we could place enough of an emphasis on being evangelistic in our lives.

I would go so far to say that your spiritual maturity is directly linked to how often you share the gospel with non-believers. Now, not everyone is called as an evangelists, but everyone is called to evangelize. The Scripture makes that clear.

But, a lot of the reason that people don’t evangelize, the reason that people don’t share Jesus, is because they don’t feel prepared to do it.

One, I’ll take the blame for that…because I’ve been here, getting close to two years, and I haven’t given any real training on how to evangelize.

Two, if you don’t know how to share Jesus, then you just gotta learn it. It takes study, it takes time, and it takes effort and dedication. It takes rejection and it takes understanding people.

When preachers preach on evangelism, we can either make it seem harder than necessary and people get afraid, or we make it seem like it’s so easy and people get discouraged because they don’t feel good enough or prepared enough to share their faith.

But the truth is that it’s easy and it’s hard. It’s easy because all you’re doing is sharing the truth that you learned when you first got saved, that trusting in Jesus is the only way to heaven, and that anyone can trust Jesus.

It’s hard because people who are really interested start asking honest questions. And, if we don’t know the answers to those questions, we’ll feel like we did a bad job, so we’d rather just not begin the conversation.

Well, there’s really only one thing that remedy the challenging part, and that’s for you to get busy studying and preparing yourself to share. It also means practicing. It means taking the loss. Lord knows I have.

I really learned how to go door-to-door from a man name Paul Thomas. Elizabeth and I joined Dauphin Way Baptist Church, and that first Sunday, Mr. Paul came right up to us and said, “Will you go with me to evangelize”, and so I did.

He owned this 1979 crown vic, and he had a led foot, and he’d punch it, and off we’d go, regardless of oncoming traffic, to find three houses that he printed off of map quest.

He’s driving, he’s a retired machinist, he can barely see or hear, and he was constantly looking down at those paper directions, but we always got to where we needed to go.

We’d walk up to that door, Mr. Paul would knock…and if they didn’t answer he’d knock harder…and when he heard them coming he’d get his pen ready, and he’d get his clipboard ready, and he would wait for them to open that door.

And when they opened that door, Mr. Paul would stick his foot inside the door jamb, and, very slowly, he would go down those list of questions.

He’d say, “I’m Paul, I’m from the church, and I want to ask you a few questions. First question, ‘Where do you go to church?”

And if they tried to say, “no thanks, and shut that door, they couldn’t do it because his foot was in the way.

Then I’d see him write, “doesn’t attend anywhere, not a Christian”

Then he’d ask, “What do you know about Jesus?”

Most of the time people gave up and just started answering his questions…and Mr. Paul would always invite them to know Jesus, and he would always invite them to church.

After one year of visiting, Mr. Paul and I finally had someone accept Jesus Christ.

Now, you’d think after one year of no one being saved, Mr. Paul would give up…but he never did. He took loss after loss after loss, and sometimes people were rude to him, sometimes they rolled their eyes, but Mr. Paul wasn’t ever phased, he just wanted them to know Jesus.

About a year after that, Elizabeth and I are no longer at Dauphin Way, and we’re now involved in evangelism ministries.

We go to Washington D.C. during the runoff between Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton, and we are there to share the gospel.

I was trained, I was prepared, I was well studied…just not for Washington D.C.

Talk about taking some losses. Talk about humility. There were so many conversations in which I just got flat out embarrassed. So many of those people asked questions that I’ve never heard before, they were mentioning philosophies that’d I had never studied…of the whole team, the only person that won someone to the Lord in those two days was Elizabeth. Out of hundreds of people that we shared the gospel with, two were saved, both at the same time. It was a, in our opinion, a fruitless mission.

However, those failures, whether they were with Paul Thomas or they were in Washington D.C., taught me so many things about dealing with people and how to share my faith with them.

So, yes, I can share the gospel…I can answer the tough questions and handle the philosophical debates, but that skill came through failure after failure…and it came from a resolve to know what the Bible said concerning sin, concerning man, and concerning God.

So, here we are back in Acts 17…and Paul was personally discipled by Jesus. And Paul took many failures in his ministerial life…and, everywhere he went, Paul would debate and reason with the Jews in the synagogues to show them exactly Who Jesus was according to the Scripture.

But now he’s in a different arena, he’s in the Areopagus. This isn’t a Jewish crowd, there is no Old Testament prophecy that is going to appeal to these people…so what Paul does is begins to share something called Natural Theology.

I know ya’ll country people understand what natural is. And theology is just a fancy word for studying God.

So, all Paul is doing is teaching them about God using nature. This is a tool of evangelism known as Apologetics

What is apologetics?

When I was called to preach, a man I knew told me to be careful and not to let anybody talk me out of my faith.

I said, “I’ll be alright, I’m an apologist, I can handle anything they throw at me.”

Then he said, “No, no, don’t apologize, stand on God’s word and tell them the truth.”

He didn’t know what apologetics was.

Apologetics is defending a belief with logic and reason

So, Christian apologetics is defending Christianity with logic and reason

Now, look, don’t get so uptight and think that this isn’t for you…and don’t think that this isn’t biblical.

1 Peter 3:15 NKJV

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense (apologia) to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;

That word “defense” is the word apologia (apple-oh-gee-ah), and you can see why it’s called apologetics.

So, it’s a biblical command for you to be acquainted with the ministry of Apologetics…and that’s the title of our message today, The Ministry of Apologetics

I. The Existence of God

Acts 17:22–23 NKJV

Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you:

Now, he begins with something called a truth claim.

What is a truth claim? It’s exactly what it sounds like:

A truth claim is claiming something is true

Now, the thing about truth is that it can’t be changed. People want to say that there is no such thing as truth…what they are doing is they are making they’re own truth claim. They are saying, “It’s absolutely true that there is no such thing as truth”. It’s a contradiction.

So, where Paul begins is by making a truth claim.

He is claiming that God the Father exists.

“The fool says”

There are all sorts of people out there, people you’re around every single day…and they don’t believe in God.

What they believe in is a god that they have created in their mind. And what they’ve done is they have rejected the God of the Bible. So, they don’t believe in God.

They claim they do, they think they do…

But if they don’t worship Him, how can they say they believe in Him?

The God of the Bible says the greatest commandment is “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all of your mind.”

And, so many people claim to know God, but they don’t worship God, and that tells me that they don’t know God. What does the Scripture say?

1 John 2:3–4 NKJV

Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

The Bible says very plainly, that if you do not keep the commandments of God, then you don’t know God.

What they’re saying in their heart is this by how they live is this, “There is no God”. And what does the Bible say about that sort of thinking?

Psalm 53:1 NKJV

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and have done abominable iniquity; There is none who does good.

Now, we get to thinking that Scripture is talking about atheists. People who say they don’t believe in God. The difference between an atheist and your everyday working man is that one of them is honest.

The man who claims to be an atheist admits that he won’t submit to God.

The man who claims to know Who God is, and claims that God exists, but denies God with how he lives his life, is a liar according to 1 John 2.

What does the Bible mean when it says, “the fool says there is no God”?

Proverbs 12:15 NKJV

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But he who heeds counsel is wise.

Now, the man who claims to know God, but does not worship God, is a fool. Because what the fool does is ignore the commandments of God and they live life how they want to live it.

They won’t submit to authority, they think that they’re way is better, they think that their morality is superior…and they won’t submit to the Word of God, they won’t submit to the counsel of God, they ignore His correction and His instruction, and the Bible calls them a fool.

So, when the Scripture says, “the fool says there is no God”, it’s not simply talking about atheists, it’s talking about anyone and everyone that denies the existence of God in their heart and by how they live.

Well, what does it mean, specifically, to deny the existence of God?

To deny the existence of God means that you have never accepted Jesus as Lord. You’ve never made Jesus the Lord of your life. You’ve never submitted to His authority and to His goodness. You have never trusted His Word.

Too many people think that just believing that there is a creator is the same thing as salvation and it’s not.

John 14:1 NKJV

Believe in God, believe also in Me.

Jesus is saying, “if you truly believe in God, then you’ll believe in Me too.”

So, the man that does not worship Jesus, and does not consider Him to be God, doesn’t worship God.

What they do is they worship a false god that they have created in their own mind.

Paul’s Natural Theology

So, Paul, makes this appeal that they aren’t worshipping the true God.

He says to them in v. 23, “by your own admission, there is God that you don’t know, and I am here to proclaim Him to you.”

The first thing that Paul does in his apologetic sermon is open the door to prove the existence of the God of the Bible. He claims that God exists

II. The Nature of God

To reveal the nature of God, he talks about three things. He talks about God’s eternal nature, he talks about God’s sovereign nature, and he talks about God’s divine nature.

God’s Eternal Nature (The Uncreated Creator)

Acts 17:24–25 NKJV

God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.

What Paul is saying is that God is the uncreated creator.

Today, in modern Christian philosophy, we call this the Cosmological argument.

Cosmology is the study of the universe; the study of the origin of the universe

Again, cosmos means universe, ology means study of…the study of the universe.

Think of the crowd he’s talking too, we described them last week, but here we go again… they are apathetic towards life, and they either believe that the universe is alive and the universe is God, the other half believes the universe is eternal and that there is no creator.

Paul, in these verses, is claiming exactly the opposite.

He’s making these claims right there in v. 24-25:

God has always existed

He is the Creator

He is involved

We call this the cosmological argument.

As Christians, we claim, and we believe these three things.

Not only does Paul use this logic in Acts 17, he uses it in Romans 1 too.

Romans 1:20 NKJV

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

That is that God is the creator…and people should come to the logical conclusion that since there is creation…there must be a creator…and that Creator is God.

Ok, so now we have established that God does exist. The question now is, “Who created God?”

The answer is that God is uncreated, but that He has always existed, He is eternal in nature…He is the Uncreated Creator

We know this is true based on two Scriptures.

Genesis 1:1 NKJV

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

God always existed and He initiated the beginning.

John 1:1 NKJV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Because Jesus is God, Jesus has always existed.

So, Paul appeals to God’s Eternal Nature

God’s Sovereign Nature

The word sovereign simple means, “over everything”. It has to do with power and authority.

By saying God is sovereign, we are saying that God has power over all things.

That’s what Paul says in v. 26-27

Acts 17:26–27 NKJV

And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;

And what Paul does is he explains God’s sovereignty by pointing to three character traits of God.

God is all-powerful (Omnipotent)

v. 26, “He made from one blood every nation of men”

By itself, the truth that God created the world from nothing is a claim that He has all power.

God is all-knowing (Omniscient)

v. 26, “God determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.”

That means that God sees everything and knows everything. God is not bound by time and is not bound by a mortal body, but He is sovereign, which makes Him all knowing.

God is ever-present (Omnipresent)

v. 27, “He is not far from each of us.”

He’s just saying that He’s a personal God. He’s not in everything but He is everywhere, and He stands ready for people to call out to Him to be saved…He is an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present God, Who loves His creation.

So, here’s where we are…Paul made the claim that God exists, he then talks about the nature of God…that God is the uncreated creator, that God is sovereign or he is over all things…now Paul is going to talk about God’s Divine Nature…

God’s Divine Nature

When we think of God, too many people think that He’s an old man sitting in the clouds with a long beard and a staff. They think of the paintings on the ceilings of the cathedrals…but that is not God.

Scripture says that God is Spirit.

John 4:24 NKJV

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

God is not a man, He doesn’t look like a man.

Numbers 23:19 NKJV

God is not a man, that He should lie

People get this confused because the Bible says that He made us in His image.

When it says that He created us in His image, it means that He created us as perfect beings, and that He created us as eternal beings, but that doesn’t mean that God is a man…it simply means that we are eternal in nature…and that at one time, before sin, we were perfect just like God was perfect.

I’ll tell you another reason why we know that God doesn’t have flesh like a man.

John 1:14 NKJV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us

To come to Earth, God became flesh, He wasn’t flesh, He was Spirit, and He became flesh to dwell among us.

Paul says this very thing…that God cannot be physically pictured, because in He is a Spirit.

Acts 17:29 NKJV

Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising.

God is divine, He is Spirit, and we cannot worship Him with an image.

What is worshipping in spirit and truth?

That’s a loaded question…but the quick version is to worship through obedience. Worship through faith. That is to worship God by doing the things of God with the right attitude.

Did you know I can preach and not worship God? If I take the credit or the glory, then it’s not worship.

I can work in the church and not worship God. I can feed the poor and not be worshipping God…it has to be done with the right attitude to be considered worship.

And that’s why Paul says that we cannot think of God as something shaped by art…because God is Spirit.

Paul claims God exists, then He describes God by saying He is the eternal creator, that He is over all creation, and that He is Spirit and He is alive…He’s not some useless idol…He is a powerful God.

III. The Righteousness of God

Morality

What He is about to do is tell these people about God’ morality.

Morality is the difference between right and wrong

I’ll tell you another feature of morality:

Morality is defined by God.

When I taught kid’s church, I used to teach this principle. And we would repeat these truths every week because I wanted those kids to understand good and evil. Here’s what I’d say:

Preachers don’t get to decide what is right or wrong

Schools don’t get to decide what is right or wrong

Churches don’t get to decide what is right or wrong.

Then one time this little red headed girl interrupted and said, “Yeah! And the government can’t tell us what’s right or wrong

And then I’d ask them… “Who tells us right from wrong?”

They’d answer “God does”

Then I’d ask, “And how do we know what God says?”

Then they’d answer, “His Word”

God is the standard of morality.

And if God is the standard of morality, if only God determines what is right and wrong…then that means that good and evil are objective.

Objective means independent of people’s (including one’s own) opinion

We don’t get to determine what is good or bad based on how we feel. Good an evil are set in stone and they are defined by God

This is the opposite of subjective

Subjective is a matter of personal opinion

Too many people think they can choose what is good and what is evil. But good and evil cannot changed, they are objective standards because they come from God.

Let me give you this example:

It’s morally wrong to murder in Africa, same as it is in America.

It’s morally wrong to steal in China, same as it is in Australia

and you can apply that to any crime you want to think of…it’s wrong because it’s wrong, and it cannot be changed because someone or some culture decides to change it.

And since good an evil are objective, since it’s the same no matter what, then there must be an objective Being that defines good and evil. That being is God.

Since objective morals exists, God must exist.

When I was in high school I began to question whether or not God even existed at all. And this understanding of moral truth is what turned the corner for me and has held up my faith when I doubted…that because truth exists, God must also exist, and He is truth.

Scripture says,

John 14:6 NKJV

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

So, God is truth.

Look there in v. 30

Acts 17:30 NKJV

Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,

Paul is telling them to embrace God’s standards. He is saying “repent”

Repentance means to accept God’s standards, to turn from evil, and to follow Him.

It is an action of faith. It is a response to God’s truth, that we are evil and in need of a savior…that’s repentance.

So, Paul has declared God to be righteous and the standard of all that is good…now he is going to reveal that God is the judge of the universe.

Judgement

Acts 17:31 NKJV

because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness.

He says that God is the judge…because God is the standard of goodness, that also means that God is the judge. He is the only one that can meet His own standard of goodness.

That’s why Jesus came…Moses gave Israel the law, but they couldn’t keep it.

But, Jesus, God in the flesh, obeyed the law of God perfectly, and sacrificed Himself for the sins of the world.

Paul says, “Repent and follow Jesus, because God is going to judge the world.”

“I don’t like judgement!”

If you refuse to repent from sin and follow Jesus, and you choose to walk into God’s courthouse, you are making a judgement about yourself that says, “I’m good enough, I think I can get in.”

But the truth is that we aren’t the judge…God is the judge. He has declared the whole world guilty of sin…and God cannot tolerate sin.

And what God did to solve the problem of sin, is He sent His son Jesus Christ, to satisfy the blood payment required to be forgiven.

Jesus died on a cross because that’s what sin costs…that’s what moral evil produces…it produces death.

Romans 6:23 NKJV

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The gift of God is what we call salvation.

Salvation

Acts 17:31 NKJV

God will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

That’s the gift of God…Jesus is the ultimate gift from God.

Trust in Him, trust that He exists, trust that He is eternal, over all creation, perfect and divine….trust that He is the Son of God, and the savior of the world.

If you will acknowledge your sin today…and if you will trust in Jesus today, you will be saved.

Acts 16:31 NKJV

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved”