If you have a copy of the Bible, please open with me to 1 Peter 3. If you looked at your calendar or your newspaper this morning, you will know today's date is very significant. Today is 9-11-04. And it was on 9-11 three years ago that America came under attack. We were attacked by fanatical Muslim terrorists. But the Church of Jesus Christ has been under attack for a lot longer than three years. For 2,000 years we've been under attack, and this warfare is not waged by terrorism with airplanes, but it's a battle for truth, the faith. The Bible says in the book of Jude that we are to contend earnestly for the faith. The word there means to contend, to fight, to defend the faith. And that is the theme of this weekend's conference, contending for the faith, defending the truth. But how do we do that? We know that we should do that, but many Christians are at a loss how to do that. Well, by God's grace, I would like to show you from the Bible how you can defend the faith. With your Bibles open before you, we'll look at our first verse for this morning, 1 Peter 3, verse 15. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Paul uses the word defense in the middle of this verse, and the word there is very important. It's the word apologia. It means to defend or to state your case in a way that's persuasive and conclusive. It is used even in the New Testament and in secular Greek of a legal defense in a courtroom. For example, when the Apostle Paul was on trial in the book of Acts and over in 2 Timothy, he mentions his giving a defense when he was on trial. Now it's from that word that we get the English word apologetics, a statement of the Christian faith and a defense of it and explaining it and defending the faith against non-Christian objections. And specifically that word is used of defending the faith against non-Christian philosophy and the arguments that they throw to us and the hard questions that we have to answer. primarily from a philosophy. And it's answering their objections and showing that Christianity, the gospel, really is true. So the word apologetics is very important, but it's similar to another word that you may not have heard as much, the word polemic. The difference is that apologetics is the defense of the faith against non-Christian philosophy. Polemics is usually used to describe how we defend the true faith against pseudo-Christian imitators, such as the cults or liberalism. But they're very, very similar. We're defending the truth against all comers. Now, how do we do this? Well, some Christians like to study this and are very involved in it. This sort of book sells very popular in Christian bookstores. But amongst evangelicals that believe the Bible, there are three main ways that people use to defend the faith. There's a little bit of overlap between them and much variety, but they basically fall down to these categories. Number one, evidentialism. In other words, the use of evidences outside the Bible to defend the Bible, the existence of God, the Gospel, the claims of Jesus Christ, and so forth. The use of evidences, tangible evidences primarily. Perhaps the best example of this book is a bestselling book by Josh McDowell, Evidences that Demand a Verdict. Other writers that generally fall into this category would be a John Warwick Montgomery, a William Lane Craig. Most of those that write on the subject of biblical creationism generally use evidences. This system would say, well, we need to use a form of the scientific method and specifically that form of philosophy called empiricism. The only actual conclusive proof is that which can be measured by the senses or put in a test tube and subject to the scientific method. You base your conclusions only on what you can measure by the five senses. To give a very brief summary of this method would be this. We believe Christianity because we have sufficient evidence to prove it. Now the second most popular system of apologetics amongst Bible believers is very similar, and this would be generally called Christian rationalism. And this isn't so much the use of tangible evidence as the use of logical proofs. For example, the old Scottish common sense realism of Princeton Seminary basically was a form of this. Joseph Butler and his very popular book. More recently, people like Norman Geisler or R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, Jonathan Edwards, Ravi Zacharias, and the list goes on. This basically comes under the general heading of Christian rationalism. And what they emphasize is the use of reason and logic. Not so much tangible proofs, but reason and logic. For example, they would appeal to this verse here and says, give a defense to everyone that asks you to give a reason. Or they appeal to Isaiah 118. Come, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Or Acts 17, 17, where it says Paul reasoned with the Jews and the Gentile worshipers. So they emphasize logic and especially what's called the law of non-contradiction. A cannot equal non-A. That's a contradiction in math, same thing in logic, and in Christian rationalism. And, oh, there are various proofs that they use, but the proofs are more logical ones, like the five famous proofs for the existence of God, the ontological proof, the cosmological one, the moral argument, and so forth. And there are various other arguments that are used. Another popular argument that's used by Christian rationalism is generally called Pascal's Wager. What's that? Well, some 200 or 300 years ago, there was a famous philosopher, mathematician named Blaise Pascal, and he argued like this. He says, well, Let's say there's a Christian believer and an atheist unbeliever. And he says, let's say they have a wager. And the Christian says, you know, if I'm wrong, I really haven't lost anything. But if you're wrong, you've lost everything. Your entire eternity, you've lost your own soul. So that's a popular tool with Christian rationalism. Well, where did it come from? Probably the most famous exponent of this basic form of argumentation was the Roman Catholic Thomas Aquinas. And many of the evangelicals that practiced this system even give him credit. John Gerstle used to say, should old Aquinas be forgotten? No, let's build upon his arguments. And he even said that he was a Protestant before the Reformation. Well, where did Aquinas get it? He got his arguments, and he explicitly stated this. He says, we don't get it so much from the Bible, but from Greek philosophy. He explicitly said we get it from Aristotle, who he called the philosopher and almost put on a par with scripture. He says, that when we use natural reason and philosophy, that's what we use to prove supernatural revelation and so on. So its basic conclusion using this method is, well, yes, God probably exists and Christianity is almost certainly true. And how would you summarize this method in one sentence? It would be basically this. We believe in Christianity because it is logical and rational to do so. We have sufficient reason. Now, the third popular method that's used today, in my opinion, is better than the first two, but it also has its exponents and its weaknesses and its varieties. It's a system known as Presuppositionalism. Long word. Some of you may know it. Some of you may not know it. Presuppositionalism. Its leading proponent was the late Cornelius Van Till, but he still has disciples like John Frame or the late Greg Bonson. In a lesser way, Francis Schaeffer altered this and then Gordon Clark also had a form of rational presuppositionalism. Some of you may be familiar with another system called reformed epistemology. Alvin Plantinga and other ones like that. That's kind of an in-between rationalism and presuppositionalism, kind of a bridge between them. What does presuppositionalism do? Well, it says every man has unproven assumptions, presuppositions that are unproven, and what we do is we compare them. We compare Christian presuppositions and non-Christian presuppositions, and that's where the battle is. And they would say that unless you assume the existence of God, you can't logically talk about anything, even proof or evidences. You have to logically assume that in order to have a life and a conversation about anything. Now, to sum up their whole position, I would just quote one of their leading exponents, Greg Bonson, in a very popular debate called the Great Debate some years ago when he debated a well-known atheist. It came down to the crunch, and they had to sum up their formal arguments, and he summed it up like this. He says, we believe in Christianity because of the impossibility of the contrary. And he says, that's the essence of it. Unless we assume Christianity and the existence of God, everything else is nonsense. You can't even argue unless you assume this. It's a kind of mathematical cross-checking that, well, the other side is self-contradictory, but unless you assume our position, you can't even argue or discuss anything. Now there are other variations of these and other approaches, but that's just a brief summary of the three most popular ways that people that believe the Bible will try to defend the faith. Now these approaches all have some validity and much truth in them, and I for one am sure that their proponents certainly mean well and accomplish a lot of good, and at one time or another in my Christian life I have used one or another of these methods. However, I am persuaded from the Word of God that as good as they are, they're not good enough. They're all inadequate in light of the Word of God. Perhaps presuppositionalism is closest to the truth, and it kind of points to the approach I'm going to lay before you this morning. But even that has certain weaknesses. They all have inherent flaws. And if you've ever used one of these, you will probably have noticed that people you argue with will be very quick to seize upon those flaws, especially if they know philosophy, because this is an argument of philosophy, and people will spot those weaknesses. It's my conclusion that by using any of these methods, at best, you can only arrive at a tie, a stalemate. You can't win, but you might hope for a tie if you are very clever to use these arguments. you will probably lose, especially if you're up against somebody that's really studied logic and philosophy and knows semantics and analytical philosophy, you'll probably lose and it ends up quibbling about things. You see, one flaw of each of these systems is that they do not adequately take into account the effects of sin on the mind, or what in theology we call the noetic effects of sin. Each of these more or less argues like, well, yes, we are all arguing and discussing things in the same way. A Christian does not argue in the same way. We have the mind of Christ. Our minds have been liberated from some of the effects of sins. Theirs hasn't. And we have to keep that in mind. Also, each of these systems and most other ones are basically using philosophical methods to answer philosophical arguments and to defend Christianity. And they say that, well, we play by the rules of the people that we are debating. That's the rules of the game and informal arguments and debates that will say, well, we'll lay down the rules of the game and we'll all agree to abide by it. But those rules are the ones that are, as it were, automatically stacked in favor of those that we're arguing with. In other words, you can't win if you play by their rules. For the simple reason that they are their rules. And besides that, they cheat. And we're not allowed to cheat or to use bad logic or to be inconsistent. I would also argue that those approaches are often inherently self-defeating. Even when they appear good, let me give you three or four quick examples. Here's one that some of the rationalists and evidentialists use. They say, well, unbelievers will say there can't be miracles. And we'll say, well, there is. Well, what about Jonah and the whale? Jonah and the whale. No fish could swallow a man, even if it's a shark or a whale, and a person survived. And so I have read frequently evidentialists that say, oh, wait a second, we have evidence. of other men that have survived being swallowed by a certain fish. They usually talk about this alleged account of a James Bartlett, I believe his name was, somewhere in the 1890s off the coast of England. And he fell overboard and his mates found him a few days later inside of a fish that they caught. And he was alive and his hair was bleached and all this. And they say, well, there you have it. There's evidence that it's happened already in other cases. And so it happened in these other cases. So there's tangible proof. It sounds good, but you see what they've just done. They have defended Jonah in the whale by making it non-miraculous and say it can happen naturally. How do you defend miracles by pulling the carpet out from underneath miracles? That's what I mean by saying it's inherently self-defeating. Same thing is true with, oh, here's another example of this. Norman Geisler has written several books on the resurrection, and he actually said this. He says, well, When Jesus rose from the dead, the Bible does say, you know, he was he went through doors and walls. And but wait a second, he says, modern physics has shown that the human body is mainly air. And, you know, you've got these molecules. So actually, it is theoretically and naturally possible for those molecules to line up in such a way as to go through. You see what he's done? He has just said it is not miraculous. So you see, it's inherently self-defeating. Third example, what about Pascal's wager that the believer has nothing to lose and the unbeliever has everything to lose? That is exactly opposite of what the Apostle Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15. He says that if in this life we only have hope and there is no God and no life after death, Then let's eat, drink and be merrier, as the old beer commercial said. If you only go around life once, get all the gusto you can. What he is saying is if there is no God, you better live it up to the full. And that's exactly what the atheist would say. But Paul says, but there is life after death and he doesn't use the wager. He appeals to something higher. Evidences are kind of like circumstantial evidence in a law court. It's not conclusive. It may be probable. In fact, Christian rationalism usually says, yes, we can probably prove Christianity. There's probably a God. And you've heard various ways of saying, I remember in seminary hearing a fellow argue like this and saying, you know, I can give you logical proofs of the existence of God and all this. And he says about the mathematical odds that it's not by God. He said, and he got very picturesque. He said, he says, it's like if you were to cover the state of California to a depth of two feet with silver dollars and had to go find just one of them that's been marked. Well, if that's the sort of odds for the existence of God, highly probable that God exists. All it will take you is someone that's read Bertrand Russell to shoot that down immediately and say, highly improbable, but not absolutely certain. And then Wittgenstein and other ones come in and Heisenberg's probability principle. In other words, probability is not good enough to defend the faith. You need certainty. Another one is where they say, well, evidence will convince the unbeliever, tangible evidence. Have they never read Luke 16, 31? Some of you know what that story is about. A man said, you know, let me out of Hades. I can go back to earth and give them tangible evidence of life after death and resurrection, and then they will believe. And what did Abraham say to him? He says, no, if they don't believe the law and the prophets, they won't believe even if somebody gave tangible evidence by rising from the dead. And so, again, if you say, well, we give evidence, somebody that's been reading David Hume would say, I wouldn't believe a miracle even if I saw it, because miracles are inherently impossible. There must be some other natural explanation. Now, those are just a few examples of how these popular methods are inherently self-defeating, even though they are well-meant. But the real reason those methods are not adequate is simply this. They're not biblical. You don't find the apostles or the prophets using those anywhere from Genesis to Revelation. They don't use evidences, rational proofs, presuppositional systems. What was their system? Basically this, thus saith the Lord, it is written, God says. So, if we take away these inadequate systems, you might say, if you take it away, What am I left with? If you take away my use of evidences and proofs and presuppositions, what do you put in its place? Only one thing, the Word of God. And that's all we need to adequately and successfully defend the faith. And that's what I'm laying before you this morning, somewhat building upon what Phil Johnson has already said. Someone said that, you know, great minds are simply midgets riding on the shoulders of great giants. So, I'm going to build upon what Phil said this morning. What I propose is a new system which is really the oldest system of all. Simply going back to the Bible and using the Bible itself to defend the faith. If you want to get a name for it, I would call it biblical apologetics, using the Bible itself to answer all questions and objections. Now, these other approaches that are put forth by Bible believers speak highly of the Bible, but they don't use the Bible itself. It's like in a warfare where a man says, look at my sword. He comes up to his enemy and says, look at my sword here. I've polished it. I've honed it. It's very sharp. But it's no use if he doesn't use it. Most of these systems, they talk about it, but they don't use the Bible in the way the Bible should be used. Let me show you another good verse. Turn over to Second Timothy, chapter three, verses 16 and 17. Some of you probably have this memorized from Sunday school days. Classic verses on the inspiration of scripture. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. What's that got to do with what I'm saying this morning? It's got everything to say with it. This right here is your biblical basis for biblical apologetics. Look very closely here. He says, Scripture is given by God and it's profitable. Look at the four things for doctrine. That's in other words, the teaching explanation of truth, but also for reproof and correction. Those two words are. Very, very similar in the Greek. Some have said one has to do with correcting bad behavior, the other one wrong thinking. One of them is mainly negative, showing the false, and the other one showing the truth, perhaps. But they're both saying the Word of God is all we really need. It is sufficient to withstand the objections of all those that would fight against Christianity. It is sufficient. It's profitable. And this is all we need, because Paul goes on to say, so that the man of God may be complete. So Paul doesn't say, if you've got the word of God, that's good enough. Yeah, but if you come across a really sharp philosopher, the Bible's not good enough, you're not complete. You also need to know your Aristotle and your Hegel and your Freud and all the rest of them. No. If that was the case, the Bible would not be complete and we would not be adequately or thoroughly equipped for every good work. And every good work includes contending for the faith and defending the gospel. Now, what are these, the ways that we use scripture? Well, Phil has already quoted us, 2 Corinthians 10, about Spiritual warfare requires spiritual weapons. And what is the weapon? Ephesians chapter 5 tells us. In addition to all the defensive warfare, the shield and all that, the offensive one is the sword of the Spirit. And lest anybody think that that's some sort of charismatic mysticism, Paul says, no, it's the Word of God. The written and scripturated Word of God is the sword we are to use in this battle with spiritual forces, and over truth. This is our weapon. This is how we defend the truth, is with the Bible alone. The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. So apologetics is warfare, so we are to use the Bible as our weapon. And nowhere does it ever suggest in that catalog of weapons that in addition to the sword and the shield, we're to go out there lugging around the complete works of Aristotle or Aquinas. No. The scriptures of itself is all we really need. In fact, let me point out one or two things at the risk of sounding like I'm redundant. Something that Phil mentioned, 2 Corinthians 10 says that, you know, these are spiritual weapons, not carnal weapons. I would suggest on the basis of passages such as 1 Corinthians 1 that the use of philosophy is a carnal weapon. That is a fleshly weapon. And there's much truth in that, but it's inadequate. It's often self-defeating, but it's still basically a human weapon. It is a fleshly weapon. And you can no more defeat a fleshly weapon with a fleshly argument with a fleshly weapon than you can defeat a ghost with a baseball club. You need a spiritual weapon. And that's what the word of God is. So that's why Paul says we use spiritual weapons. The spiritual weapons of our warfare are not natural, not fleshly, but they're spiritual. And so God in that passage calls on all men to submit their thoughts to him. Even unbelievers, so we don't say, look, I will set aside the Bible and my presuppositions and my belief, and I'll argue on the basis of your own logic and your own proof. That's not the Bible way. That's not God's way. That's their way. And it's self-defeating. Christianity is supernatural. And it's not to be defended in a natural way, but in a supernatural way. You can't prove the supernatural by the natural. Now, the natural and the supernatural have some laws in common, but there are definite differences between them. For example, evidently in the supernatural realm, there's no law of gravity. Angels move around here freely, unhindered by the laws of natural gravity. That's just one example. But you don't prove the supernatural by natural means. For example, What about creationism? That's one of the key areas of debate, defending the faith. You've all had arguments with people that say, I don't believe in that. I believe in evolution. Well, how do we defend creationism? Well, you get the evidentialists say, well, we've got the evidences. And so they go down to Glen Rose, Texas and look at footprints in the sand and say, there you have it. Jurassic Park, as it were. Or the people would say, well, we look at the fossil record and other things. Is that how the Bible teaches us creationism? No. Just look at Genesis 1.1. It tells us by God's own Word, but specifically look at Hebrews 11.3. You don't have to turn there, I'll read it to you. Here where God says, by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. How do we know? Not by a scientific method, not by witnesses or evidence, but by faith we understand this. Faith in what? Not faith in evidences, but by faith in what God says. God says that he did this, and that's good enough. In fact, that's sufficient. And that's the only way you can know the origin of the universe, by God saying it. Does that mean that evidences and logic has no place whatsoever? No, it does have a place under the Word of God, subservient. I would generally say, well, these evidences and these logical proofs, It might be useful to confirm truth to people that already believe the truth, but not to prove it to unbelievers. There's an old saying, maybe you've heard it. For those that believe, no evidence is necessary. But for those that will not believe, no evidence will ever be sufficient. So evidences have their place, kind of useful for those that are already believers. But it's like second place or third place, not primary place. The Word of God is all we really need. It also has to do with the nature of true faith. The Bible says we walk by faith, not by sight. We fight the good fight of faith with spiritual weapons, not carnal ones, based upon the scientific method and sight of what we can measure in a test tube. For example, most of you here today are believers in the Gospel. You believe the Bible. You want to defend it. Let me ask you, why do you really believe in Jesus Christ? Is it because you went through a long philosophical search and process and that you went through all of this and you got the evidences and then you finally believe? No. Some of you might say, yeah, no, no, you really didn't. Nobody comes to faith like that. According to the word of God, you come to faith by a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit working through his chosen ordained means. The Word of God. That's how everybody comes to faith in Christ, is by the Word of God. And so why do we really believe the gospel? Evidences, proofs, logical? No, no, no. Ultimately, every believer believes because he knows the Bible says so. He can't understand it all, but he knows God said it and I believe it. True faith is based upon, I would say, it's based upon the raw Word of God. You don't need anything else. Ultimately, your faith is based upon God's Word. Now, let me give you an example of this from the Bible itself. What about the proof of the resurrection of Christ? That's a popular debate even today. Jesus had risen from the dead. Some of the apostles had seen him. They reported back to Thomas, and Thomas says, I'm not going to believe unless you give me evidences. Give me Josh McDowell's book. Evidences that demand a verdict. Unless I can see and touch and feel, I won't believe. Well, Jesus showed up, and so he showed himself. But what did he say after he showed himself to Thomas? He says, you believe because you've seen blessed are those that have not seen. They don't have the physical evidences, and yet they believe. As it were, he was stupid to give evidences to one man for that one exception, not as an example for us today. We can't say, look, I can give you tangible evidence. Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus will walk in. You can touch him. No, he's in heaven. So we are not to rely upon evidences. Jesus rebuked Thomas for not believing the report of the apostles. In fact, you find that in the resurrection account. He says, Oh, you that are slow to believe, believe what? You that are slow to believe the prophets and the law that have predicted this. You have been slow to believe what God said. You've been waiting for evidences. You have all the evidence you need, the word of God. And that's a very crucial point. We don't need physical evidences. In fact, we don't have sufficient evidences. But we do have the Word of God, which is more than enough, and it outweighs any other supposed evidences. And when we resort to these other ones, it's like we incur the rebuke of the Lord Jesus to the apostles for resorting to something else other than the written Word of God. If faith is based upon evidences, Faith is really no longer faith, it's just simply sight. If faith is based upon reasons and logic and philosophy, it's no longer based solely upon God's Word. So it's a very subtle compromise of the sufficiency of God's Word. Now, one argument against this approach would be, well, what I'm advocating, they say, is what's called fideism. There's probably not five people in the whole room that know what that means, but I'll tell you what it is. I won't labor the point. But they say fideism is like the old view of Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, that instead of using evidences and reasons, you just simply take a blind leap of faith into the dark. You have no reason or any hope whatsoever. You just go ahead and do it, this existential leap of faith into the dark. Fideism. That's not what I'm advocating. It's not a leap into the dark. It's a step into the light, believing not faith in faith, but faith in the Word of God. You believe it because God says so. So this is not predeism. True faith is based upon the Word of God, and the only legitimate biblical apologetic is one that's firmly rooted in the Bible and uses the Bible. Biblical apologetics doesn't use philosophy. Interesting, get out your concordance, look up the word philosophy. It's used once. In a bad way in the New Testament, warns us against it. Colossians 2.8. Philosophers are mentioned in Acts 17 as being opponents, not proponents of the word of God. First Corinthians 1 warns against worldly wisdom. What is philosophy? Well, there are many forms of it, but it's basically this. They say philosophy is the use of autonomous human reason. But if you know your Bible, you know there's no man that has an autonomous mind. It's governed by sin. It's distorted. We have broken minds. And so the Bible warns us about philosophy. Now, some philosophies are closer to the truth than others. Like someone said, even a broken clock is right two times a day. Well, philosophy will have some truth in there, but its basic system is inherently flawed. And all forms of Christian apologetics, that are basically using baptized philosophy are also inherently flawed and come under the same condemnation of scripture. Now, these systems, for example, that I've mentioned earlier, that are used by a lot of Bible believers, they will usually argue like this, well, I'll tell you what, we're going to beat them at their own game. And a Christian, he can stand on his own two legs in any fight, and we'll play by their rules, and we can show you that we can beat them even at their own game. No, you can't, because they don't play fair. You ever play with someone that cheats? You play by all the rules in the world, and he's going to still win because he cheats. So they say, well, we'll use their rules. No, you can't. Well, how about this one? They say, you've got to fight fire with fire. Any firemen in the building? You don't fight fire with fire, you fight fire with water. You don't fight philosophy with philosophy, you fight philosophy with the Bible. Not Bible and philosophy or a combination of the two. No, you can't win like that. Biblical apologetics, I'm convinced, is the only approach that uses the principle sola scriptura, scripture alone. Not scripture and philosophy, not scripture and reason, not scripture and evidences. Scripture and scripture alone is our tool. Now, what I'm calling for is somewhat like the revolution that happened 30-something years ago in Christian counseling. Up until then, most Christian counselors, they kind of closed the Bible and they used Sigmund Ford or Carl Rogers or other secular psychology. And along came a Sola Scriptura believer named J. Adams and says, let's just close those. And we don't need Ford. We need Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Scripture is good enough. And so there was a Major revolution in Christian counseling, since Scripture alone is enough. We take a situation before some counseling, and then we go to Scripture, and we analyze what the Bible says, and if the Bible says you need to repent, repent. Here's the promise of God, and here's how you change your behavior in the light of the Word of God. The Bible is sufficient for counseling. Unfortunately, some people still practice what's called an integrationist form of counseling. James Dobson, Lawrence Crabb and other ones, they say, well, we use secular psychology and the Bible in counseling. But that's flawed. Someone that defended the Bible alone practice wrote a book called Why Christians Cannot Trust Psychology. I'm thinking of writing a book called Why Christians Cannot Trust Philosophy or Philosophical Apologetics. The same thing is true of popular apologetics. Some Bible, but much philosophy. Now, let me kind of bring this down to a very simple level. If you're a believer, you say, I believe the Bible and I want to defend the truth. I don't know anything about philosophy or Aristotle. Who is that? Was that Jackie Kennedy's second husband, Aristotle Onassis? Who's Plato? Was that Mickey Mouse's dog? No, that's Pluto. And you say, well, who is Hegel and Nietzsche? And then you read some of the arguments and you say, I can't understand this. I guess to defend the faith, I have to have a college degree in philosophy. And you throw up your arms like that. It gets complicated. I've got good news for you. You don't need all of that. All that will be a hindrance. Just like Phil said, it's like David going out to fight Goliath in Saul's army. He says, I don't need all this. He just took the slingshot that God had given him. So the good news I have for you is it is actually simpler than you think. Just know your Bible and use it in the Bible way. How does it work? Well, you hear the objection or the hard question from somebody and you want to say, now, can you boil it down to some very simple thing that you disagree with us? Ask him. He'll usually be able to tell you where he disagrees. And the old timers would say that's looking for the state of the question where you affirm something and he denies it. OK, can always be summed up in one sentence. You believe in God, they don't believe in God. You believe in hereafter, they don't believe in hereafter. Usually can be summed up very simple. OK, you get the state of the question and then you go to your Bible and you automatically Google search in your mind. Now, what does the Bible say about that objection, about the existence of God, life after death, resurrection? What does it say about these? Of course, this means if you're going to defend the faith biblically, you better start learning your Bible, friends. You don't have to know philosophy, but you have to know your Bible. But you find out what your objection is, you know what the Bible says, and you weigh it together. It's like it says in the book of Daniel, you weighed in the balances and found wanting. What you've said contradicts the Bible. And since the Word of God is infallible, therefore, you must be wrong and God is true. And you apply that very verse or that very truth from the Bible to their argument. And that's really the end of their argument. It's like what Isaiah 820 says. If they speak not according to this word, it's because they have no light in them. Now, we generally do this in polemics dealing with cults. You know, you get some Jehovah's Witness comes along and says something. You say, wait a second, the Bible says Jesus is God. The Bible says there is a Trinity. The Bible says this. But why don't we use that same method when we're dealing with non-Christian religions and philosophies? Why is it that we think we have to use a different method for these other ones? That's very clever. They've already pulled one over on you. It's like they're the great intellectuals, and you have to have great intellectual tools. No, you don't. The Word of God is sufficient. The Bible is God's chosen and ordained means of defending Himself and His truth. It's inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit still uses it. Hebrews 4.12, the Word of God is living and active. In the book of Hebrews itself, Paul quotes, I think Paul did write the book of Hebrews, footnote, Paul quotes the Old Testament and says, as the Holy Spirit says, the Spirit of God is still speaking through this. So when you quote it appropriately, you are simply, as it were, opening the cage and let the Holy Spirit defend the truth Himself through His ordained means. And His ordained means is not evidences, logic, and so forth. In effect, it is appealing the case up to God and letting God defend His own case. I would also address, call your attention to certain phrases in the Bible that point to this method. It is written, thus saith the Lord. What saith the scriptures? God says. Some of you know that every other Saturday I write a little newspaper column called The Bible Says. That's the final court of appeal. God says it. And we don't appeal to other things. Why do we believe in Christianity? Because God says so in the Bible. Period. End of argument. Some of you have heard that little three-line jingle, God said it, I believe it, that settles it. Well, my fellow welder has an improvement on this. Gary Cathwood would say, wait a second, we don't need three lines. God said it, that settles it, whether we believe it or not. That's the end of the argument. We need no other argument or any other play. Now we find this in scripture. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 22. Jesus himself gave us the master plan of apologetics. Years ago, Robert Coleman wrote a book called The Master Plan of Evangelism. What's that? He says, just see how Jesus did it, and you go and do likewise. See how he answered this and that and evangelized these people. How about a master plan of evangelism and apologetics? Can we approve upon his method? No. Jesus quoted the Bible to answer Satan in the wilderness and the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the temple. Now look at Matthew chapter 22, where here Jesus is doing apologetics and he's hearing the argument from the Pharisees and now the Sadducees gang up on him and they fill this little situation about the resurrection and the woman with all the husbands. How did Jesus answer? Look at verse 29, he gets right to the heart of the question. Jesus answered and said to them, you are mistaken, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. How does he start off? With a little dialogue, give and take. You know, you've got a good point. You might be right and I might be wrong. Who can say? No, Jesus just jumps in politically incorrect and says, you guys are wrong. I'm right and you're wrong. And by the way, that is very wrong with postmodernism. Everybody's right and everybody's wrong and nobody can really know. That's not the biblical method. Jesus just starts off by saying, no, you're mistaken. You're wrong. He gives us the example. When we answer objections, we can say, no, no, no, your objection is wrong, and I'll tell you why. So how did Jesus back it up? He appealed to Scripture. He goes on to quote it, verse 32. He quotes it, and it's the appropriate verse that debauches their objection. The biblical method of apologetics will say things like, you were mistaken, you were wrong. But then when you go on to quote Scripture, the little bridge is something like this. No, I'm sorry, you're wrong. That's not what God says. This is what God says. It's really as simple as that. You say, no, your objection is ill founded because that's not what God says. Now, in case you're interested, here's what God says. So you take away the negative and you replace it with the positive. So you're saying just what Jesus did here, so we have biblical precedent for this. It's using the Bible itself. It's quoting it. Quoting the appropriate places and the right time and the right place. It might mean paraphrasing it because occasionally the New Testament writers paraphrase selected portions of the Old Testament. But you will quote it, you explain it, you use the appropriate verses that specifically speak to that objection. That means you have to know your Bible. You don't have to necessarily quote the chapter and verse. That sometimes sounds like, you know, your little Sunday school child is trying to earn a gold star by giving the chapter and verse. You don't have to give that. I would suggest you might know where to look it up in case somebody says, oh yeah, where does the Bible say that? You quote it. You might want to be able to back it up and know where it is. And if you don't say, well, I'll get back to you. I'll phone my preacher and he'll tell me where it is. But my point is, Quote the Bible, paraphrase it, explain it, but you take what the Word of God and immediately apply it to that specific question and objection. The best defense is a good offense. So go on the offensive. Be aggressive. Now be humble, meek, and all the rest of what the Bible says, but be bold and stand up for the truth. And don't be ashamed of the Bible. If you're a Christian, you really aren't ashamed of it, are you? Don't be ashamed to use it in the realm of apologetics. Now, this approach can be used by all Christians. You don't need to know a lot of philosophy or science. A Christian that knows and uses his Bible is better equipped than a seminary professor that knows logic and evidences, but doesn't use the Bible. Let me give you an example. When I was in seminary, there was a woman in our church named Agnes. She wasn't very intelligent. She wasn't stupid, but she left school at age, I think, about 15 or 16. She was by no means an intellectual. She knew her Bible, and she really loved God. She had a very trying life. Her son was in the penitentiary. Two of her daughters were not saved. Agnes was a scrub woman. She earned her living on her hands and knees scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets. Very humble about it, but boy did she love God and defend the faith. Her husband was an abusive alcoholic. Several times a week would come home drunk and would try to beat her up. One night, I remember she came to our prayer meeting and she had a certain smile on her face and said, well, what happened? She said, my husband came home from the bar drunk and came after me with fists. I said, well, what did you do? She said, well, I went into the kitchen and got a cast iron skillet, let him have it, and knocked him out. She knew that she was no match for his fists, so she used what she had available. She did the same thing answering objections. People would come and ask me questions. You know, I was talking to some people and they threw all these objections. I said, well, Agnes, what did you say? Well, I don't know what they're talking about. I would just say, well, the Bible says this and God never lies, so I believe God. You see, it's appropriate for anybody, Agnes the Scrub Woman or some college professor, seminary student, just the average Christian. If you know your Bible and use it appropriately, you are more successful and more biblical than any apologist that uses all the philosophical arguments. Quickly, there are five objections that people will use against this method from other Christians. Number one, they'll say, well, that's okay for those that already believe the Bible, but what if they don't believe the Bible? Well, if they already believe the Bible, there wouldn't be any objection. So that's like a true wisdom. So what do we do? We use the Bible anyway, whether they believe it or not. You believe it, don't you? That's good enough. Let me quote James Kennedy in one of his books. He said this. The Apostle Paul, as he preached in the Greek cities, appealed to the Scriptures even though the people listening to him did not believe in the Scriptures. He did not try to convince his audience of the veracity and authority of the Scriptures. Rather, he proclaimed them, and the Holy Spirit worked and used this proclamation to save some who then believed the Bible to be true. In witnessing, our primary function is proclamation, not defense. Give me another illustration. Years ago, I read a story about, I think it was in New York, a businessman got on an elevator and after that a gang member got on after him and the two go up and the gang member stopped between floors, reaches in his pocket and said, Mr., this is a switchblade. Give me your money. What would you do? Locked the elevator, got off the switchblade. Well, the man just kind of shrugs and says, okay, reaches in. And this is a gun. I'm a cop. You're under arrest. A gun will beat a knife in any battle. The Bible is all you need, so when they pull out philosophical arguments, don't be afraid. Just pull out your Bible and say, well, I can trump your arguments with the Word of God. It's like that scene in Indiana Jones. You remember that? This ninja comes out and swinging a sword and everybody's running and Indiana Jones pulls out a gun and shoots a dead ninja. But that's what we do. We use the Word of God and that's all we really need to use. Ezekiel 2.5, you may want to write this down, is very poignant. God has commissioned Ezekiel to go and preach, and Ezekiel says, they're not going to believe me. He says, go and give the word of God anyway. He says this, as for them, whether they hear or whether they refuse, yet they will know that a prophet has been among them. Second objection, well, what if they ask you to prove the Bible? Well, the best answer I can give to that is taken from a preacher named Charles Spurgeon, who said, prove the Bible? Defend the Bible? I'd sooner defend a lion. Let it out of its cage. It'll defend itself. They may not follow your rationale, but when they hear the snarling of the Word of God, they get the point. In other words, we're not called upon to prove the Bible. God proves the Bible himself. You Presbyterians that are here, go look it up in your Westminster confession. We don't need proofs. The Bible authenticates itself. Thirdly, Well, they say, well, when Paul went to the philosophers in Acts 17, he didn't quote scripture to unbelievers. Oh, yes, he did. Go look up 1 Kings 8, 27 was a direct quotation in his speech to them. Besides that, Paul had apostolic authority. As it were, he was delivering revelation in his preaching to them. Now, we don't have that identical authority, but when we quote the apostles and prophets, it's as it were, we're using their authority. We're using the word of God. And Paul explicitly did not use evidences. He says, this we proclaim to you. He proclaimed truth, not tried to prove it by evidences. Fourth objection. Well, this method may be okay for some unbelievers, but not all. Why can't we use a variety of methods? Well, the person that put this to me says, well, it's like the same shoe doesn't fit all feet. So you use evidences for some and use this for that. And maybe there's scriptures for those, you know, that are maybe not too intellectual. Without wrong, it's not biblical. 1 Corinthians 1 and other passages, we find that we proclaim the truth on the basis of the Word of God, whether it's philosophers we're talking to or people that can barely read or write. Because the basic objections, basic needs of all men are basically all the same, and we're not to pander to the high and mighty intellectuals. In fact, to speak to them as if they were just children. Go to the heart of the matter and apply the Scriptures. Paul says if we don't get all these philosophical arguments, he says this in 1 Corinthians. He says when we came, we didn't use high and mighty wisdom. He says we preached Christ crucified. And over in 1 Corinthians 15, he says we preached Christ according to the Scriptures. Fifth objection. This approach is too simplistic. Kurt Daniel, this whole idea, this is simplistic. This is kindergarten stuff. In fact, it's not apologetics at all. It's assuming the very thing you're trying to prove. Wrong. If evidences prove the Bible, evidences are superior to the Bible. There are a lot of things in the Bible you cannot subject to evidences, like creation. But you don't need to. You've got the Word of God. The Bible is superior to evidences and all logical arguments. Is this simplistic? No, it's simple, but not simplistic. It's basic, not complicated. It's biblical, not philosophical. God's Word is all we need, not man's so-called wisdom. Well, I was going to give you a few examples of this, but because of time, I'll only give you one or two of them. And I've had a lot of debates like this. I'll give you one or two of the popular arguments. One person might come to you and say, well, why do you believe in God? Prove to me there's a God. You can just say, well, God says he has already proved it to you. Romans 1 says you already know there's a God. And you start from there. And you go from there and quote other scriptures. In the Old Testament, God says the foolish said, there is no God. It's foolish to deny something you already know is true. And so you're not arguing with a true atheist, you're talking to someone who already knows there's a God, so quote scripture. How about this one? Another form of atheism. If God were all-powerful and good, there'd be no evil. But since evil exists, God cannot exist. Answer? No, that's not what God says. God says there is evil and that he also exists. Evil is defined in the Bible as the breaking of God's law. If there was no God, there'd be no law, there'd be no such thing as evil. The existence of evil shows the existence of God. Besides, God says he exists and he permitted evil to exist so that he would be glorified in either punishing it or forgiving it. I know I went quick, but it's all alluding to the Word of God on that. Another argument. God is everything. God is all and all is God. That's the opposite of atheism. Atheism says nothing is God. This one says everything is God. Answer? You are mistaken. That's not what God says. God does not say He is everything. He is separate. Romans 1.25 says that man worships the creation rather than the creator. The creator is not the creation. Therefore, you are wrong. Another objection. There are many ways to God all religions are true. I want to get everybody to repeat in chorus, that's not what the Bible says. That's not what God says. God says all other religions are false. And then, you know, John 14 says, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but me. You see how it works. You find out the objection. You see what does the Bible say to that, and you quote it or paraphrase it, and you apply it directly to the situation, and you rest your case on the Word of God itself. Brethren, we don't need philosophical proofs or scientific evidences or forms of apologetics that are basically using philosophy against philosophy. We only need the Word of God. That's why we began our meetings today by singing that song that has these words, How Firm a Foundation, Ye Saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent Word. My dear brethren, if you've got the Bible and believe it, study it, know it, and use it, and that's how you can successfully defend the faith. Let us believe God's Word and use it alone to contend earnestly for the faith and to give a reason for the hope that lies in you. And what is that reason? Thus saith the Lord. It is written. That's all we need. That's all you need. May the Lord use this study to help us all defend the faith. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your all-sufficient and fallible Word. We believe it. Help us to understand it and wisely use it to defend You and Your truth. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.