I'm excited to be out here with you guys, not only because it's home, but also because of the subject that we're going to look at. We're going to deal with the subject of Christian apologetics. And let me, before we even move further than that, let me ask a couple questions concerning that. You see on the front of your outlines there, or even at the top of each one of the outlines, you see this terminology, relational apologetics. I think most of you would know what a relationship is, but what is apologetics? I'm not going to do this, this isn't to embarrass, this is just to know who's heard the word. Apologetics is not a normal word that we use nowadays, so a lot of people don't walk around talking about apologetics, so if you've not heard that word, you would be quite normal actually, because nobody speaks in those terms, but does anyone not know what the word apologetics means? I would not have known what that word meant if I was you guys sitting here, if I was your ages. So, does anybody not know what that word means? So I can call on anybody to give me a definition, right? Let me just, who wants to take a stab at it? What are we talking about when we talk about apologetics? Does anybody know? What does it sound like? the word. It sounds like what? It sounds like apologizing. Does anyone else hear that in the word? Apologetics? Apologizing? What do you do when you normally apologize? You're saying you're sorry. There's a That's not what we're talking about. Let me just tell you up front, we're not going to be saying sorry for being Christian. So that's not what Christian apologetics is. Sometimes in an apology, what do you do though when you're trying to explain to the person something of why you did what you did? What would you maybe engage in if you've done something wrong and you're issuing an apology? What would maybe some of the parts of your apology include? Any thoughts on that? Forgiveness would be great. Hopefully the person you're apologizing to would give you forgiveness. What I'm thinking of is you'd begin to give them maybe some reasons why you blew it. That kind of thing. That's kind of the key connection between this word apologetics and the word apology. Apologetics is simply giving a reason or giving a defense for your faith. Does that make sense? You might want to write that down because we're going to be working with that as we go along. Apologetics is giving a defense for the faith. It is the word from which we get the word apology, but again, it's different because we're not saying we're sorry for being Christians. What we're doing is we're trying to give a good defense for why we are Christians and for why we believe what we believe as Christians. Now, maybe I can ask, has anyone ever been challenged Have you had your faith challenged? Has somebody at school or a friend ever challenged you and said, why do you believe what you believe? Again, when I was your age, not many people had ever asked me that question, but I'm curious if anyone's ever challenged you on why you believe what you believe. Yeah? That's happened to you, and it's happened to you. What about parts of your faith? You go to church on Sundays. Does someone say, why do you do that? Or if you're one that, if your family keeps the Lord's Day, like, well, why don't you play sports on Sundays? Or something like that. All of that becomes part of the whole thing of giving a reason for why you do what you do. Why your life is what it is. Now, Here's the other side of apologetics. How many of you have ever struggled with your faith? Struggled with believing the gospel, the Christian truth? Have any of you just struggled with believing? Because belief, struggle with belief is actually a very normal part of the Christian life. There's times when things happen in the world that seem to be inconsistent with what God has said in his word. And that can become a great challenge to us. God, I thought you said this, and yet this is happening. And so, Christian apologetics can be a very helpful thing in our own hearts, because sometimes our own beliefs are challenged, and sometimes we don't tell anybody else, and we wonder, does anyone else struggle with the same things I'm struggling with? Wondering if some of this is true, or if all of this is true. Now, when it comes to apologetics, oftentimes, and I think there could be an expectation as we come into a conference like this, that maybe you're thinking, I'm going to come in here and show you how to completely destroy someone who doesn't believe. So in other words, maybe we can use like a karate illustrator. How many of you have seen the movie The Karate Kid? There's actually been two. There was one of them when I was a kid that came out, and then there's one of them that came out when you guys were kids. Has anybody seen Karate Kid? Maybe raise your hand so I know who it is. This is probably the the the conference this weekend is probably going to be a little bit like the karate kid You guys want to learn some like sweet ninja moves to wipe out? Unbelievers and it's like just tell me give me the arguments and so I can go out there and use them Well, what happens in the karate kid right at the beginning? The I don't even know what the kids name is. What's what's the main kids name? Oh We'll just call him Karate Kid, okay? What is his name? Anybody know? Daniel. Daniel, okay. Let's go with Daniel-san. Daniel-san. That's right, it is. I thought you were making that up on the fly. Daniel-san. Daniel is his name. What does he want to learn like right away? Karate, that's right. And he wants to get out there and learn to fight right away. What happens instead? Does he get super disappointed? Because why? Waxing cars it's the okay. This is going to be the Mr.. Miyagi Experience this weekend you come you want to learn some sweet. You know karate moves to go crush unbelieving thought out there and We're actually going to be doing wax on wax off. There's basics that are absolutely fundamental before you're going to be able to go out there and actually fight and So, we're going to look at those basics this weekend, and I want to begin by reading a passage here. It's the one we just sang, and let me emphasize something that Pastor Eshelman just said. I really enjoy retreats and things like that. There's going to be times of fun, and I like the schedule. I looked at it. There's going to be lots of time for fun. I'm only going to lecture actually three times, and then on the Lord's Day, I'll be preaching twice. One of those sermons is going to be part of the overall messages. But I'm not going to be speaking that much, so there's only going to be three sessions around all the other free time you have. I hope you guys have a blast, and it's really fun, all that free time. When we get into these messages, I hope that you'll get your Bibles out. I hope you'll have a pen. You need to have the outline in front of you. I think it's always good to have something of a roadmap. If you're anything like me, whenever I'm is one of the listeners, my mind will drift. It's always good to have something to get me back to, OK, this is going on. Sometimes I have a hard time keeping my mind focused on what we're doing. So I want you to have your outlines before you with a pen and your Bibles. Don't just open them and then shut them. You want to keep that Bible open so we can reference it as we go along. So let's turn to Psalm 119. Does anybody know what the longest Psalm in the Bible is? Psalm 119, without looking at the end of it, how many verses, does anybody know how many verses are in Psalm 119? It's not something you probably fill your head with. 176. In fact, I'll tell you a little bit more about this Psalm as we go on here, but turn to verse 41. Psalm 119, verse 41. You'll also see right above, most of your Bibles will have every eight verses, there's like a section break. If you're using the Pew Bible, is it like that? And the Pew Bible is where? Well, what's the word that's right there above verse 41? Wawa. I don't even know how to if we were to read it in English. I'll get to that word later because it's important for the section. But let's start at verse 41. Let me read the passage and then I'll lead us in prayer briefly and then we'll get going through our outline tonight or this afternoon. Verse 41. Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord. your salvation according to your promise. Then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your word. And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your rules. I will keep your law continually forever and ever, and I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame, for I find my delight in your commandments, which I love. I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes." Let's bow in prayer briefly. Our Father in Heaven, Pause as we've read Your Word to ask that You might bless us this afternoon with the illumination of Your Holy Spirit. We pray that He would take His Word and use it in our lives. Please draw us nearer to You in our relationship with You through Christ. Please use Your Word to further make us like Him and strengthen our faith and root us and ground us in our communion with you. I pray for these young people at this conference this weekend that you might use your word in their lives. That would be a time of growth. And so, please bless both the times of fun and these times of lecturing. And may it be all to your glory. For we do ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. One more matter of maybe ground rules is that if you have a question as we're going along here, please raise your hand and if you want to make a comment or you want to ask a question, please go ahead and raise your hand and I'd like to do this interactively if we can. So if something comes to your mind and you'd like to talk about it, let's do that. Well, this passage, these eight verses here, Psalm 119, verses 41 through 48, are very profound. And I think that if we can grasp something of what's going on here and what the psalmist is actually talking about here, that this would actually revolutionize the way that we go about thinking about evangelism when we're talking with our non-Christian friends, the way that we go about defending the faith, and in fact, how we live the Christian life in general. The subject that we're going to be dealing with this weekend is a subject I've been thinking about for more than a decade, just in my own heart and mind, and this passage particularly has been a key passage in my thinking. We're going to talk about something, and this terminology, we're going to talk about relational apologetics. apologetics and while this title in this kind of way of talking about apologetics it has multiple implications and It could take us in a few different directions And we're actually going to look at some of those different directions over the the next couple of lectures this weekend the core matter of this approach to defending the faith or this approach to Giving an answer is really articulated perfectly there in the first two verses of the passage, verses 41 and 42. And I want you to look at that again, and I'm going to put emphasis there. The psalmist writes, Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, Your salvation, according to Your promise and notice. Then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me. For I trust in Your Word. Right there, that phrase, for him who taunts, that can sum up the unbeliever's posture towards your face. You're going to have people that are going to make fun of you for being a Christian. They're going to mock the Christian faith. We live in an age where more and more atheists are writing books just completely denying that there is a God, and making fun of Christians particularly, but even any believer in any kind of a God, but particularly in Christians. And what I find odd though is that when we normally talk about giving a defense of our faith, or when we normally talk about doing apologetics, we normally turn primarily to teaching what might be called a philosophical argument. We try to give a real logical or a real rational argument. Sometimes we could have filled a conference with, let's memorize proof texts, let's memorize passages, or not even that, let's memorize arguments, that will actually, if I could just, when someone says, well, why do you believe in God? If I could just rattle off an argument that I heard at a conference, then maybe I will be able to defend my faith, and in fact, maybe I can make an unbeliever feel stupid once in a while, because I normally feel stupid when I talk to people and they make fun of my faith. I hate that feeling, and so I want to learn how to crush them. I want to learn how to turn the argument on them. The sad thing about that approach to Christian apologetics is that it seems to have the idea that being a Christian is a matter of being smart enough. That we give the impression to people who don't believe that if you were just smart enough, and you could follow the logic, or you could follow these arguments, then you'd become a Christian. That actually is never the fact. That's never the way anybody ever becomes a Christian. I don't know, do you guys have on your outlines there, nobody comes to faith in Christ because of, if you want to write the word in, rationalism. No one comes to faith in Christ because of rationalism. In other words, just because they've thought about it hard enough, or it's made sense, or it's logically consistent. The only way that anyone comes to faith in Christ is by way of regeneration. That's another way that Jesus spoke of regeneration, and He used certain terms to speak about regeneration. Does anyone know, just take a stab at what does it mean to be regenerated? What is regeneration? To be born again. Yeah, that's the way Jesus described it. To be born again. Regeneration is like a resurrection from the dead. It's passing from being dead in your sins, being spiritually dead to alive, actually understanding the faith and believing upon Christ. So nobody comes to faith in Christ by rationalism. It's not that they thought hard enough and they decided, oh, Christianity, that's the smartest belief out there. I'm going to become a Christian because I'm smart. Now the only way anybody ever comes to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation is by a work of God. And that's called regeneration. It's Him taking us from being dead to being alive. And that always involves an intellectual humbling. And what I mean by that is nobody comes to faith in Christ by saying, God, I'm so smart, you have to give me a really good proof for yourself, and then I'll believe in you. The way they become a Christian is God actually changes their heart. And that always involves an intellectual humbling. Maybe I should put my hand over my mouth right now, like Job said. I don't understand the ways of the Lord. His ways are so much higher than my ways. And so, no one's going to come by an intellectual, rational argument. And if that's the case, and I think that that's proven on every page of Scripture, then why do we focus? Why is our apologetics always focused so extensively on the rationality of faith to unbelievers? In fact, I think that the most powerful and convincing arguments for the faith are always found in the relational, not in the rational. The most powerful arguments for the Christian faith are always found in the relational. They're not found in the rational. And I'm not at all saying that Christianity is for dummies or that there's no reasons for our faith. Those two shouldn't be set aside. But it is to say that's where the priority needs to be. The priority needs to be that we focus on the relational side of things more than the rational side of things. And this truth is clearly articulated here in the passage that's before us. And so, in this first lecture that I'm going to do for you guys, and that we're going to hopefully work through together, I want us to consider the very foundation of this approach to apologetics called relational apologetics. And we're going to begin first by considering the fact, and hopefully you have this on your outlines, I don't actually have a blank out, an outline in front of me, but the first point is you cannot, and does this have the fill in the blank there? In a second here I'll get going and know what you have in front of you, but you cannot defend the faith, you cannot defend the Christian faith unless you know God. That's the first point. You cannot defend the faith unless you know God. There is something of a secret out there in the Christian church that I think needs to be exposed, and that is that most of the energy and the efforts that go into Christian apologetics are actually not to try to convince unbelievers that our faith is true, but actually most of the energy that goes into Christian apologetics is to convince believers that the faith is true. There is a lot of people struggle with believing the faith and a lot of people would show up to a conference on apologetics because they want their faith built up. They want it strengthened because they're having doubts. about what they believe. But I find this kind of ironic when it comes to our faith that we would struggle so much with belief, and we would be so embarrassed at times, and we would fear if somebody's going to ask me about my faith, am I going to sound smart enough to them? Are they going to think I'm stupid? Am I going to give them an adequate answer? I think it's odd because we don't worry about this kind of thing in most every other area of our life. Let me just throw out just a stupid analogy. What if someone, or hopefully no one here doesn't like ice cream. Does everybody like ice cream? Pretty much? Okay. What if someone came to you and says, actually, ice cream doesn't taste good? What would you do? I mean, would you break into a philosophical argument with them, trying to convince them that because of the basic ingredients in ice cream, it does, in fact, taste good? Or would you go into some kind of historical argument that, well, you know, in most cultures that have ever had ice cream, I mean, the vast majority of everybody in that culture actually likes ice cream? I mean, is that the way that you would argue for your love of ice cream? No, you wouldn't argue that way. That's not the way that we argue for things that we love, things that are part of our lives. In fact, you'd much more simply probably either just have pity on the person, you know, because they don't know the glories of ice cream, they don't know how good it is, or you'd just hand them an ice cream cone and say, here, taste. and see. Ice cream is good. It actually tastes good. In other words, you wouldn't be thrown for a loop and wonder, oh man, I've been believing that ice cream was really good my whole life. And all of a sudden this guy's challenged the goodness of ice cream and I'm having a major life crisis here. I don't know how I'm going to ever answer them. You wouldn't. You would just simply go and you would taste it again and you would see, yeah, ice cream is good. I mean, you would just go back to it and be reaffirmed in your belief and your love for ice cream. Well, from cover to cover in the Bible, believers are called to come back again and again to the basic foundation of their relationship with God. How He has cared for you. What He has done for you. How good it is to be in a relationship with Him. We're going to sing, after this session, we're going to sing Psalm 34a, from which comes those words, Taste and see. Taste and see that the Lord is good. As the psalmist says here, right at the beginning of our passage, notice this again. Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise. Then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in your word. The first two verses here, Psalm 119, verses 41 and 42, are a call and a correction to not look for proof for your faith in anything but God Himself. When it comes to ice cream, you don't need proof in anything else but the ice cream itself to prove that it tastes good, that you enjoy it, that you love it. There's two specific things, though, about knowing God. You have to know Him if you're ever going to defend the faith. You'll never be secure in the faith if you don't know Him. I mean, if you've never tasted ice cream, how good would you be at defending the fact that it's good? Someone might ask you, well, is it sweet? I don't know. I've never tasted it. What does it taste like? I don't know. I've never tasted it. And you'll never be able to defend the tastiness of ice cream if you've never tasted it. And you're never going to be able to defend the Christian faith if you don't personally know God yourself. And one of the very first things that you have to know about Him is you must know, and this is our sub-point here, you must know, first of all, His steadfast love. You have to know His steadfast love. That comes right out of the first part of verse 41. Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord. Love is the ultimate bond and the ultimate ground of confidence. And it will be the ultimate bond and ground of confidence in your faith. Children are secure. We're all secure in our relationships with our parents, or a husband and wife are secure in their relationship with each other when they know and they feel that they are loved. When they know love in that relationship, that becomes the foundation of it. And it's an extremely important point to grasp here when it comes to defending the faith. Because we have to realize that when someone comes and attacks the Christian faith, they're not just coming and making a philosophical argument, they're not just arguing with us about abstract truths, they're actually attacking the most fundamental relationship that we have in our life. That's where the argument has to come out of. When someone attacks Christianity, they're not just coming in and making some abstract thing about whether a truth statement or not. They're attacking the very most important relationship. that is in our lives. And so, our Christian apologetics, our answer has to flow out of that relationship. It's got to, our answer must come from that relationship. You know, again, another analogy. Think of someone telling you that your parents or your best friend doesn't exist. How would you answer them? Let me open it up. What would you do if someone came to you and said, your parents don't exist? You don't have parents. How would you answer them? No one's ever asked you that, right? That's probably good. Any thoughts on how you might argue the point with them? Do you think, let me ask you this way, do you think you would need to be an expert in philosophy to be able to answer them? No. How about an expert in theology to answer them? What about an expert in logic and argumentation? No, you wouldn't go into an elaborate a metaphysical argument as to how your friend does in fact exist or your parents exist, you wouldn't make arguments like, well, if they didn't exist, we wouldn't even be having this conversation or something like that. You'd probably just tell the person, look, I'm sorry you don't know them, but I know them. I mean, I'm sorry you don't believe that they exist, but I know they exist. In fact, I was just talking with them. Or, we love each other. I mean, I don't know how I'm going to convince you, but we love each other. They provide for me. They take care of me. In fact, you might say, hey, come meet them. Come actually meet them. In other words, you might find the question odd, you know, and you might even find it like as we just did here for a second, you might find it a bit hard to answer them, but I don't think you would be desperate and all of a sudden have a crisis in your life of, oh man, maybe they're right. Maybe I don't have parents. At all. Maybe parents don't exist. I don't think you would be thrown for a loop in the fact that you know your parents exist. You might not be able to give them a great answer and you might be befuddled at the moment. Like, that's such a weird question. I don't even know how to answer them. But it doesn't shake you. You know your parents exist. And you know they exist because they love you, they take care of you, you talk to them. They're why you exist. You couldn't exist if your parents didn't exist. The bottom line is, is you would be able to argue, or you'd at least be secure in the fact that you're in a vital relationship with them. Even if you couldn't convince this person that doesn't believe that your parents exist, You yourself know I'm in a relationship with them. I mean, I might not be able to be giving them a good answer, but my relationship is firm and vital. But look at this, if the Lord would let his steadfast love come to us, If His love comes to us in an ever-increasing depth, in other words, if your relationship with the Lord grows and the love between you and God deepens, then you will have an answer for the critic, and you will have an answer for your own heart. In fact, you need to come to realize that you will never, you will never, really be comforted by a long, airtight, logical argument for the existence of God. That will never settle your faith. some bomber, airtight argument for God's existence. The only way that your heart will ever become confident in the faith is actually through a long, close, loving relationship with God Himself. And therefore, that is what you need to seek. And this kind of relationship is only ever deepened by knowing God and His love which is expressed, and this brings us to our second sub-point here, His love, when you know His love which is expressed in His salvation. His salvation. Now, I've used relationship illustrations, and even though I've used those, and even though the Bible actually talks about our relationship with God, it actually uses the analogy of a marriage, that we're the bride and Christ is our husband. And even though the Bible talks that way, and even though I'm using that kind of analogy here, as we're talking about defending the faith and having answers for our faith, Here's a qualification. We should not expect that our relationship with God is going to feel like a human relationship. nor that our relationship with God is going to find its fullness and its closeness in the same way that human relationships find their fullness and their closeness. Too often in the church today, and in contemporary Christianity, it seems like people don't even know how to think about love between God and the believer in any other terms other than some sort of like a romantic type of a love. You hear songs written. When my family drives down the road and we have the radio on, if we're turning through the channels, sometimes it's really difficult to know that, is this actually a song about God, or is it about a guy and his girlfriend? Because the kind of love that's talked about, it seems that the world can only talk about love in certain kinds of terms, and that is some kind of like a boyfriend-girlfriend, or a husband-wife, or some kind of romantic feelings type of relationship. But God shows us His love. God shows His love for sinners toward us in that He did not even spare His own Son. that He gave Him up for us all. And this is so important to grasp, because the emotional feelings that are involved in human relationships ebb and flow. Have you ever had the sense, or maybe you haven't, and I think that would be a great thing, but have you ever, maybe when you were a little kid, your parents did something, like maybe when you got spanked or something like that, or they wouldn't allow you to do something, that you wondered, because of your feelings, you wondered, do my parents really even love me? Human relationships are feelings often ebb and flow, and that becomes a real danger for judging our relationship with God. If our relationship with God was based on feelings, then it could be up and down all the time. So God has said He doesn't want our relationship with Him to be based on feelings. He wants our relationship with Him to be based on faith. And the difference is that God has given us an eternally standing proof of His love for the whole world for every one of us to see very objectively. It doesn't move. And that is He gave His own Son. As the Scriptures say, what greater love is there than that a man would lay down his life for a friend? soldiers in a war, and say we were in a trench together, and we were fighting, and an enemy jumped in, and he had his rifle and a bayonet, and you were there, and your friend dove in the way as the guy was trying to stab you, and took that bayonet. Would you know that your friend loved you? Gave his life for you? And for the rest of your life, you would have that objective historic proof that, no, that guy, he loved me. He gave his life for me. There's an objective proof from then on that would never shake. Someone might come and say to you, oh, he didn't really love you. How can you say that in light of the fact that he gave his life? He gave his life for me. So God has given us this eternally objective proof that He gave His Son, so all the world could see, and forever we would have an objective proof of His love for us. And therefore, the psalmist here, notice, hopefully you have your Bible still out in front of you, the psalmist here seizes on the fact, that fact of salvation, and notice he equates God's love with his salvation in the second half of verse 41. In other words, this is what's called a parallelism. He says sort of the same thing two different ways. Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord. And then he means by what he wants to make a parallel there is your steadfast love is the same thing as your salvation according to your promise. In other words, Jesus is the proof of God's love for us. Jesus is the proof. The actual working and bringing and procuring of our salvation, that is the proof that God loves us. And therefore, and this might seem totally radical, but if that's the case, when someone asks you why you believe, Jesus Christ has to be the proof. for why you believe. God gave Christ as a proof of His love for you, and therefore Jesus Christ must be your argument to them. That there really is a God, and that you are in relationship with Him. Now, how many unbelievers do you know that will think that that's persuasive? Someone asks you, how come you believe in God? How can you believe all that hocus-pocus that you're actually in a loving relationship with God? And if your answer is what it should be, because God sent His Son, He gave His Son for me. Jesus came and laid down His life for me. How persuasive do you think that's going to be to your unbelieving friend? probably not very persuasive at all. I don't think many people will just all of a sudden buckle under that and say, oh, I didn't realize that the proof was that strong. I realize that you're going to probably be mocked and you're going to be ridiculed and you're going to be made fun of. You're going to be dismissed for citing Jesus as your answer to how you know that there is a God and that He loves you. But here's the Here's the fact of the matter. I'm actually not concerned with you being respected intellectually. That's not what Christian apologetics is all about. What I'm concerned with is you being confident in God's love for you. That's where I want your attention this weekend, is in God's love for you. Not in you being intellectually acceptable to the world. You're never going to be intellectually acceptable to the world as a Christian. And so that would be a waste of our time to try to come up with the bomber argument that every unbeliever is going to get crushed by. What you need to come to know is a confidence in God's love for you. You see, you can mock me, all day long and you can tell me that ice cream is not tasty. But the more that I eat that ice cream, my confidence grows that it is tasty and I know you're wrong. All I have to do is keep eating it. And I'm proving with every bite, you are wrong. It is good. I'm tasting it. You can mock me all day long and tell me that my wife doesn't exist. You know what? That's actually your problem, not mine. And I say that in the most gracious way I could say it. I'm not meaning it in a bad way to really offend somebody. I mean, I get to live with her. I get to walk with her. I get to enjoy her fellowship. You see, the world can mock us all day long and tell us that our God doesn't exist. But in reality, that is their problem. That's the confidence you guys need to get to. It's actually their problem, and it is a problem that has eternal ramifications and consequences for them. They are in the worst possible place they could be in. Not believing. They are the ones in the precarious position. You are not. But if we know Him, and if we know His love for us in Christ, we get to live in communion with Him, we get to walk with Him, we get to enjoy Him as our God. brings us finally this afternoon, and much more briefly, to consider the second major point here, and that is that you cannot defend the faith unless you know the Word. Unless you know His Word. You cannot defend the faith unless you know God. And secondly, you cannot defend the faith unless you know His Word. We only know God by way of His Word to us. The Bible is His self-revelation, telling us about Himself. And so we know of Him by His Word. But in saying this, that doesn't mean that our relationship with God is somehow dry and dead, because His Word is living and it's active. And since it is his life-giving, creative word, and his word is constantly alive in us by the working of the Holy Spirit, notice the psalmist goes on here to extol, in the rest of the verses here, the glories of God's written word. So we need to consider first of all that you must know his written word. So the general point is that you can't defend the faith unless you know his word. But specifically, you must know his written word. Look again, beginning in verse 43, at the few verses here. And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your rules. I will keep your law continually forever and ever, and I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame, for I find my delight in your commandments, which I love. I will lift up my hands towards your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes. Do you notice God speaks to us? The psalmist is saying, I love your written word. I love the Bible. And God speaks to us through his word. And as our relationship with him deepens, and as his steadfast love and his salvation comes to us, we will, as an individual believer, we will increasingly desire to know God more and more in the manner that He makes Himself known. In other words, our desire and our longing for His Word, the Scriptures, should become more intense as we walk with Him. Now, I told you a second ago when we started that there's this word here, wawa, or something like that. You see that at the beginning right above verse 41. Psalm 119 is what we might call an acrostic psalm. Does everyone know what an acrostic is? I'm trying to think of one that everybody would know. What if we said R-P-C-N-A? What does that stand for? What's the R? Reformed. What's the next one? Yeah, and it follows the order of those letters, and it says something. All of Psalm 119 is structured on the Hebrew alphabet. So the first eight verses would be as if every line began with what their version of A would be. So every word, the first word, of every line of the first eight verses starts with a Hebrew A. The next section, the next eight verses, every single verse there starts with the Hebrew equivalent of the letter B. A word that starts with B. And every single verse in the entire psalm is like that all the way through. Well, this W-A-W, that's the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and it's actually pronounced with V's instead of W's put V's in there and it's Vav is actually the the letter Vav is a it looks like a look almost like an L a lowercase l it's just a straight down it's got a little thing at the top but it's a it's called a Vav and it's the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And here's the thing, and you're wondering, why do we need to know that? Well, when it starts a sentence, as it does every verse of this section, it has the sense of meaning, and, or, then. So whenever Vav starts a sentence, it basically could be read with, and this, and this, or then this, then this. I want you to read a brief quote that I think helps explain this. So, listen carefully. This is not just a device to provide for the letter Vav, which as a prefix, when it starts a word, it means and. But this is the whole point of this section. There are things which flow in sequence. And thus the significance of the and in verse 41, as if to say, and this is how we should be reading it, and of course this too, and this too, and then this. In other words, these things come in a sequence. These are the things that come and accompany salvation. So, look at these eight verses. I want you to have your eyes there, because what it's putting forth is what we might read as an, of course, then this. Of course, then this. All of these things are rooted and grounded in God's steadfast love. In other words, if we are in a relationship with Him, then the following things will, of course, be true in our lives. That's the point. So, let your steadfast love and your salvation come to me, O Lord, and then... All these other things will, of course, follow in my life. That's the point. So let me read it. And let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, Your salvation according to Your promise. And then I shall have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in Your Word. And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in Your rules. I will keep your law continually forever and ever. And then I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. And then I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame. And then I will find my delight in your commandments, which I love. And then I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love. And I will meditate on your statutes. You guys, do you see that the sense of the whole section is that if the Lord will root us deeply into His love, if His love is rooted deeply into our hearts, then of course all these other things will follow. If I'm secure in God's love for me, if I know His love as it has come to expression in my salvation, which comes through the Lord Jesus Christ, then my mouth will speak of it. So if I really love the Lord, if I'm really in relationship with Him, then I'm going to speak that way. I'm going to talk to people about it. Then my life will be lived in accord with His Word. And when that happens, that right there, when your mouth is speaking of Him and your life is consistent with what your mouth is speaking, that's the ultimate apologetic. That's the ultimate defense of the faith. Both from my own heart and for convincing unbelievers. And so we can say that all of this comes together And this is the final fill-in for this evening. All of this comes together when we know His, and I'll use the term, His incarnate Word. What do I mean by incarnate Word? Anybody take a guess at that? It sounds like the incarnation. Does anyone know what that means? What's a carnivore? It's the enfleshment. Is that what you said? Something like that? I can't hear you up here. Flesh. Yeah. His Word in the flesh. When was His Word, when did it come in the flesh? Nathan Yes, yes, Jesus is the incarnate word so You cannot defend the faith unless you know God You have to know His steadfast love and His salvation. You can't defend the faith unless you know His word, both His written word and His incarnate word. You have to know Jesus. Jesus is the foundation of God's love. Jesus is the ultimate expression of God's love. Jesus is the proof. of God's love, and thus Jesus has to become your confidence in God's love. And therefore, Jesus is our reason to unbelievers as to why we believe. Jesus is why we trust God's Word. Jesus is why we believe in God's existence. Jesus is why we desire to live and to walk in His ways. My relationship with Jesus Christ, so my relationship with the incarnate Word of God, is my argument. That is, I do not argue to this fact. I don't start by trying to make Christianity reasonable for somebody. I argue from this fact. I argue from the fact of Jesus Christ. As I rest in my relationship with Christ, and as I grow in that relationship, and as I come to know His love for me, and as I love Him more fervently, My answer to the gainsayer, my answer to the critic, my answer to the unbeliever is the natural outflow of my relationship with Christ. And that's what relational apologetics is all about. The more solid that your relationship with God is. The more solid your relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ is, that's when you become a great apologist. You will have confidence in His love. You will not be afraid to speak before kings. You will have an answer to Him who mocks and taunts you because you've trusted in His Word. I want to conclude the first lecture by reading these eight verses, and I'd like you, if I could plead with you for one more time, to have the passage before you, because I want to read it in a Christ-centered way. And I put this forward as more of a devotional exercise for reading Psalm 119. I'm not putting it in front of you as a technical interpretation, but I think it's totally justified in that Jesus is the Word of God in the flesh. And thus, every reference in Psalm 119 to the Word, we can understand it as a reference to Jesus Christ. And so follow along as I take us through these eight verses again. And let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation in Christ according to your promise. And then I shall have an answer for him who taunts me because I trust in Jesus. And take not the Word of Christ out of my mouth, for my hope is in His righteousness. And then I will have and keep faith with Him continually forever and ever. And then I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought Christ. And then I will also speak of Him before kings and shall not be put to shame. And then I will find my delight in my Savior Jesus, whom I love. And then I will lift up my hands in prayer and worship to Him whom I love, and I will ever be thinking of Him. Let's bow in prayer. Father, we pray that You would bring us into a deeper and more vibrant and vital relationship with Jesus Christ, Father, please strengthen us in that relationship. Root us and ground us in Jesus, so that we might have an answer for those who taunt us. Make us more secure in your love, and therefore, root us and ground us in Christ, who is your gift of love to us. The world, when they ask us, we might confidently answer. We know you exist, and we know you love us. because you have given us Jesus. I pray for these young people that as they think about their faith in a hostile culture, that you might incline their hearts and turn them back to a seriousness of pursuing Christ, that they would want to grow in their faith and become more conformed to Christ's image and come to love Him more. And so I pray that you would make us all, and I particularly pray for the young people here at this conference, that you would make them more serious about their relationship with Jesus. May it be the thing that they prize above all, and that is the ultimate matter of their life, is that they follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and that they have rested in Him for their salvation. So Lord, please root them and ground them in Him. I pray all these things in His name. Amen.