“Always Be Prepared to Give an Answer”

Dear Friends in Christ,                                                                                    I Peter 3:15

   Turn to the classified section of a newspaper and you never quite know what you’re going to find.  Consider a few ads that I received in an email sometime ago sent to me by Myra Moureau (show them on the screens).

   Indeed, a daily newspaper can make for some pretty interesting reading!  But so also can the Bible.  Open its pages and you can read in its opening chapter about the creation of this vast universe and this beautiful planet.  A couple chapters later you can discover what went wrong and why the world is in the mess it’s in today.  Keep going and you can read about a great flood that covered all land masses and destroyed the vast majority of living things.  Flip through the first half of your Bible and you can read of waters parting and mountains quaking, of giants falling and nations rising.  You can take a ride down and later out of the gullet of a great fish with a reluctant missionary named Jonah or know what it’s like to walk around in the midst of a fiery furnace with 3 teenage Jewish boys named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  You can stand in the presence of lions with Daniel or stand in the presence of God with Isaiah.  And that’s just the part of the Bible that we call the Old Testament. 

   Venture into the New Testament and you’ll find angels announcing the births of some pretty important people and demons possessing some pretty unfortunate people.  You’ll find a virgin giving birth to the Son of God and 12 years later you’ll find her and her husband losing that holy child while visiting the city of Jerusalem.  And when that child grows up, you’ll find him walking on water and stilling storms, feeding the hungry multitudes, healing the sick and raising the dead, being nailed to a cross and placed in a tomb, then rising from that grave and ascending into heaven.

   Listen, my friends, if you want a good book to read, you simply can’t beat the one that is commonly called the Good Book!  But for some strange reason, this book that contains the very words of God himself is being read less and less by Christians in our world today.  Which is why I’ve been preaching a series of sermons calling us to get back to the Bible.  And this morning we’re going to wrap up the section of this series in which we’ve been taking a look at some of the problems that can arise when we fail to read God’s Word.  Last week we talked about how Biblical illiteracy causes moral uncertainty.  And today we want to take a look at one more problem which is: Biblical illiteracy weakens our defense of the Gospel.

   We’ve all been there before.  Maybe it happened when you were standing around the water cooler or eating in the lunchroom with some of your co-workers.  Maybe it happened at school when the subject of God or religion came up in a classroom discussion.  Maybe it happened when there was a knock on your front door and there stood a couple of well-dressed Mormon missionaries or two people from the Watchtower Society.  And all of a sudden you found yourself in a position where you were being asked questions about what you believed as a Christian and why you believed it. 

   It happened to me a few weeks ago when I was bowling one night.  You may not be aware of the fact that back in September I started bowling in a church league here in Salem.  With Mike Quandt twisting my arm at a wedding reception last summer to join him on the Iuka Lutheran Church team and my wife encouraging me to do it, I finally gave in and am very glad I did because it turned out to be a very enjoyable experience.  Well, about a month ago during one of our games a fellow bowler and I got into a very interesting discussion about creation and the age of the earth.  Though he is a Christian, it was pretty obvious that he had been influenced by his secular education to believe in the theory of evolution or, I guess it would be more proper to call it theistic evolution, which is the belief that God is the Creator, but he used the whole evolutionary process with its billions of years to bring the universe and all life into existence.  Which gave me an opportunity to share with him why I believed in a literal 6-day creation and a young earth as it’s recorded in the book of Genesis.

   Now if we’re honest with ourselves, most of us here today will do everything that we can to avoid those kinds of discussions, right?  Why?  Two words: We’re afraid.   We’re afraid we won’t have or know all the answers.  We’re afraid we won’t be able to defend the essential truths of our faith.  We’re afraid that we’ll be hung out to dry by someone who knows their stuff better than we know ours.

   And yet at the same time we know that we’ve been called by God to be his witnesses, to look for opportunities to share the Gospel with others.  So there’s this tension that exists in the hearts of many Christians today.  They want to talk to others about the Bible and things that matter for eternity; they know that’s what they’re supposed to do; but they don’t feel qualified to do it.  So what can they do?  Or better yet, what can you do?  Very simple: Get into the Word.  Make it a daily practice to read it on your own.  Take advantage of the Bible study opportunities that we offer here at our church.  In fact, I’ve got a very special one that I’m going to be offering beginning next week that I’ll talk about later on in this sermon. 

   But for right now I want to familiarize you with a word that describes what we’re talking about today.  And that word is apologetics.  It comes from the Greek word apologia which means defense.  It’s the same word from which we get our English word apology.  And that’s kind of sad because when we deal with apologetics, we are not talking about apologizing or expressing regret for what we believe.  Rather, we’re talking about offering a defense for what we believe.  That’s exactly what Peter is talking about in our text for today, and boy, if anyone knew what it was like to have to defend his faith, it was Peter.  But here’s what he says: “Always be prepared to give an answer (an apologia, a defense) to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” 

   What that passage is telling us, my friends, is that if we are living the way God wants us to live, if we are living hope-filled lives rather than hope-less lives, if we are living selfless lives rather than selfish and self-centered lives, then sooner or later people are going to sit up and take notice and they’re going to start asking us questions about why we are the way we are, why we do the things we do, why we live the way we live.  So we need to be ready, we need to be prepared to answer those questions and to defend the faith and the hope that is ours in Christ.  And the only way that we can be prepared, my friends, is by becoming students of the Scriptures.

   And what I want to do for you right now is get real practical by doing a little role playing up here so you can see how this defense of your faith might play out in your everyday life.  I’m going to ask Dan Nielsen to join me and I want you to imagine that we are co-workers, let’s say, at NAL, and we just happen to be taking our break at the same time.   (P = Pastor; D = Dan)

P:         Hey, Dan, how’s it going for you today?

D:        Oh, pretty well, I guess.  I’m working with a few flunkies today who are really slowing things down.  I tell you what I really wish.  I wish I could be out in my boat fishing today.

P:         Yeah, it is a beautiful day the Lord has given us, isn’t it?

D:        What do you mean by that?

P:         Just what I said.  I believe that every day is a gift from God.

D:        Oh, I get it.  You’re one of those Bible-thumpin’ fundamentalist Christians, right?

P:         I guess you could say that, if by “Bible-thumpin’” you mean that I believe the Bible and if by “fundamentalist” you mean that I hold to the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

D:        So tell me, Doug, do you really believe in all those miracles that the Bible tells about?

P:         Sure do.  You see, the Bible says that with God all things are possible.  It says that he’s all-powerful, which basically means that he can do anything.

D:        So you believe that he really parted the waters of the Red Sea and let his people escape their enemies that way?

P:         I sure do.

D:        And you believe that Jesus walked on water and healed all those sick people and even raised some people from the dead?

P:         You got it.  Like the well known Christian song says, “Our God is an awesome God.”

D:        Well, I’ve got to tell you, Doug, you’re a rare breed these days.  Most of the people I know, myself included, have trouble going along with all that miracle stuff because it flies in the face of science.

P:         I understand that, but I’ve done a lot of studying of the Bible and I’ve become convinced that what it says is true.  Let me give you an example.  You’ve heard of Easter, haven’t you?

D:        Sure, that’s the day the bunny delivers all the candy to everyone’s homes, right? (laughs)

P:         Come on, Dan, I’m serious.  You know what happened on Easter, don’t you?

D:        Yeah, that’s the day Jesus supposedly rose from the dead.  And I guess you’re going to try to convince me now that that impossible event really happened.

P:         Well, I’m not sure I’ll be able to convince you, but I wouldn’t mind trying, if you’re ok with it.

D:        Alright, my Bible-thumpin fundamentalist Christian friend, give it your best shot.

P:         Well, those who deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus have a few problems they have to find answers for.

D:        Like what?

P:         Well, let’s start with the empty tomb.  There’s no doubt that the tomb of Jesus was empty that Sunday morning.

D:        How can you be so sure of that?  I saw a program on the Discovery Channel that said Jesus’ disciples could have come in the middle of the night and stolen his body and then started spreading the rumor that he had risen from the dead.

P:         Dan, do you know where those disciples were after Jesus died?  The Bible says they were hiding behind locked doors in an upper room in Jerusalem like a bunch of frightened mice.  They were afraid that because of their association with Jesus, those who put him to death might want to do the same to them.

D:        Really?  I have to confess that I didn’t know that.

P:         And besides, the Bible also says that some Roman guards had been posted outside the tomb of Jesus.  So anyone who was going to get the body out of the tomb would have to go through them first.  Do you really think those fearful former fishermen were capable of that?

D:        Uh…probably not.

P:         And one more thing, Dan.  We know from the Bible and other historical records that those disciples spent the rest of their lives traveling all over the world to tell other people about their risen and living Lord and that most of them were martyred or killed for their faith.  Do you really think they would have left home and family and given up their lives for what they knew deep down in their hearts was a lie?

D:        Hmmm…not very likely, is it?

P:         But not only did the disciples see Jesus alive after he was raised, the apostle Paul tells us in I Corinthians 15 that more than 500 people saw him at one time, most of whom were still living at the time Paul wrote that letter.  In other words, if somebody doubted the resurrection, Paul was telling them they could check it out with any of those eyewitnesses and get the facts from them.

D:        Huh…I didn’t know that either.

P:         Well, hey, Dan, time’s a movin’ on here and we’ve got to get back to work.  I appreciate your willingness to listen to what I had to say.  I’ve got a lot more I can share with you, if you’d be open to it.

D:        Yeah, I think I’d like that.  What do you say we meet back here tomorrow during our break again because you’ve definitely piqued my interest in some things I never really gave much thought to before.

P:         Sounds like a winner to me.  And hey, go easy on those flunkies you told me about earlier.  Maybe they just need someone like you to show them how it’s done.

   You see how it’s done, my friends?  That wasn’t so painful, was it? But in order to do it, in order to

offer a defense of your faith, you need to know the Word, which begins with reading it, studying it, digesting it and making it a part of you.  And to help you out here, next Sunday I’m going to be showing a series of videos in my Bible class featuring a Christian apologist by the name of Ron Carlson who has spoken in 78 countries around the world in defense of the Christian faith.  So he knows his stuff.  And he knows it well.  In fact, Marilyn and I heard him speak at the Worldview Weekend Conference we attended in April and we both agreed that he was the best speaker we’ve ever heard.  He explains things so clearly and makes them so easily understood.  And just to hopefully whet your appetite, here are just a few of the subjects he’ll be covering in these DVD’s:

·         Evolution vs. Creation

·         The Jesus of the Cults

·         Mormonism: Christian or Cult?

·         New Age Spirituality

·         Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Trinity

·         World Religions: What Makes Jesus Unique?

·         The Bible: Is It God’s Word?

·         The Religion of Islam

 \   I cannot encourage you enough to come and at least give the first one a try because I can pretty well guarantee you that if you do, you’ll be hooked and you’ll want to hear what else he has to say about all these other subjects.

   And as for our sermon series, next Sunday we’re going to discover that biblical illiteracy is not something new or unique to our time in history.  It’s been around a long time and we’ll be looking at a time when it even happened among God’s chosen people in the Old Testament in a way that you will find very difficult to believe.  Until then, may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds firmly anchored to the rock of ages Jesus Christ and his Word at all times so that you might be well-equipped and well-prepared to defend your faith when called upon to do so.  Amen.