Giving an Answer–Part 9
Old Testament: Confrontation and Reaction
1 Peter 3:15; 1 Kings 18:22–19:2

Open your Bibles with me to 1 Kings 18. We are continuing with ElijahÕs confrontation of the priests of BaÕal. What I have been endeavoring to do as weÕre walking through these situations in the Old Testament is to understand that when we are talking to an unbeliever there is a confrontation; not in a negative, hostile sense. But there is a collision of thought between the believer who is thinking biblically and the unbeliever who is thinking according to whatever relativistic worldview or pagan worldview that he has.

 

TheyÕre not talking the same language, even though they may use a lot of the same words. Sometimes, especially if you were living in 1950s, 1960s, maybe even some of 1970s America, you didnÕt recognize there was much of a collision, because a lot of unbelievers operated on biblical presuppositions. Even if they were not believers, or even if they didnÕt know anything about the Bible, that was part of our cultural heritage; it was part of the way that people thought. So people thought there were absolutes, even if they denied the existence of a god, or a basis for absolutes, people thought that there was right and wrong and held to views of right and wrong that were historically shaped by biblical Christianity.

 

But we are not living in the 60s and 70s anymore. The baby boomers who went through the academic institutions of the 60s and 70s and were taught by liberals often had their faith destroyed because they didnÕt know how to give an answer, even in their own mind, for why they believed what they believed. And they felt like they were committing intellectual suicide if they believed in the Bible, believed in Christianity, and believed what their pastor taught.

 

You may not have had the experience I did to some degree. But I have heard from students who have gone out from churches that I have pastored that in some classrooms students are overtly attacked for their Christian beliefs. That was the framework for this film [GodÕs Not Dead] we were going to watch. I encourage you; you can rent it from Amazon Prime. I donÕt think itÕs on Netflix. ItÕs on Amazon Prime. Watch it. I will talk a little bit more about it at the end of class, but there are some interesting things that are going on in the film. ItÕs got a number of different characters; itÕs got some interesting twists and turns.

 

ItÕs a fairly good movie, but when youÕre just watching the core story, itÕs important to think through why this young man is saying what he is saying and how he is structuring his answer to this professor. This professor is taking a position that God doesnÕt exist, God is dead. He thinks that it is just nonsense to have any kind of religious belief, and so he doesnÕt want his students to be shackled by these antiquated ideas of believing in some old man in the sky that somehow oversees all the affairs of men.

 

He wants every student to write out on a piece of paper, ÒGod is dead,Ó and then turn it in. If everybody will do that, then they will just be able to skip past some of that nonsense, as he views it, and go on to really important things in this Introduction to Philosophy class. Well, this one student in there, a prelaw student, has to take this class; itÕs a required course.

 

HeÕs a Christian, so he wrestles with this a little bit. He says heÕs not going to do it. In fact, he writes down that GodÕs not dead. So the professor is going to force him to teach the class and to get up and give a series of lectures to try to prove his proposition that GodÕs not dead. Now, how would you do that? ThatÕs an important thing to think through, because while many of you may never see the inside of an academic classroom again, you have grandchildren or children that might and itÕs important to teach them.

 

We as a church, as a congregation, have young people that are growing up. Statistics show that about 80% of evangelical kids that leave home have rejected their parentsÕ political and religious beliefs within two months of going off to a secular university. You may think, ÒWell, thatÕs not going happen to my kid.Ó Let me tell you, donÕt live in that dream world. WhatÕs the definition of a neurotic? He constructs castles in the clouds. The psychotic is the one who moves in, and the landlord is a psychiatrist. Well, donÕt be neurotic or psychotic.

 

This is reality. This isnÕt new. I mean, people in the baby boom generation. This was happening. I canÕt tell you how many of my friends, some of whom came back, some of whom did not, but who basically had a spiritual blowout on the highway of academia. Some of them never figured out how to repair the flat. So this is a major issue.

 

Whenever weÕre talking to an unbeliever, thereÕs this kind of challenge, confrontation, that comes between two people. Earlier I used the diagram of a missionary. Thinking in the most extreme sense, a missionary like Grace Hearsling who was here at the Chafer Conference going off to Columbia, going up into the mountains to a relatively Stone Age tribe, having to learn the language, taking years to be able to communicate, that thatÕs very similar to what we are as Christians surrounded by a pagan, non-Christian world.

 

We have to understand how to present the gospel in humility and in graciousness as Peter emphasizes in 1 Peter 3:15. That means we have to think, and there are some folks who donÕt do a very good job at thinking. ThatÕs a challenge for all of us, sometimes, to think. But I had a seminary professor who, though he said a lot of things I didnÕt agree with, he did say one thing that was quite profound. He said, ÒIf you think itÕs hard to think, itÕs very difficult to think about how you think.Ó ÒVery difficult to think about how you think.Ó So we have to analyze not on how we think, but how the other person thinks in being able to communicate to them.

 

This gets a little challenging for a pastor, and for people in the congregation, because this isnÕt the normal kind of thing that you get in the motivational messages of church-growth-philosophy-run churches today. This brings up the quote I used on Sunday morning, which I still like, by Sir Lancelot Andrewes, who was the chief editor and major translator for the King James Version and was the pastor to King James I of England and the court.

 

He said, ÒIt is not our task to preach what people wish to hear ÉÓ We could paraphrase that, ÒItÕs not my job to teach what people want to hear—or what they think is easy to understand.Ó He said, ÒItÕs not our task to preach what people wish to hear, but what one day, in some sad future ÉÓ YouÕre going to be in some circumstance that you will wish you had heard.

 

My job as a pastor is to equip you to do the work of the ministry, and this is not easy. IÕm trying to encourage you by saying that. ItÕs taken me a long time. Even by teaching this again IÕm knocking some dust off of some areas in my brain that I havenÕt used in a while, and some things are coming together a little better than they have at previous times.

 

What I think is a value in apologetics is that it taught me how to think—and how to think about thinking. JohnÕs giving me a thumbs-up. That is the value of it, because it applies to every area of life. ThereÕs not any area of life ... Who did you vote for? Why did you vote for them? Why did you like what they were espousing? What beliefs do they have? What does the Constitution mean? Why do you believe it means that? Why do you think it should be applied that way? All of those are questions that mean you have to learn how to think about those issues.

 

If youÕre a Christian, then you need to learn how to think about those from a foundation, a starting point, that is the Word of God. Not going off and just saying, ÒWell, the Word of God just talks to me about my salvation and my spiritual life.Ó But the Word of God gives you foundational principles of thought that apply to every area under GodÕs creation.

 

Does that include literature? Yeah. How many churches do you think in Houston even get a hint that there is a biblical view of literature, or a biblical view of drama, or a biblical view of poetry, or a biblical view of art or music? But all of that is part of GodÕs creation and, as such, can be affected by the curse. As a Christian we have to discern whether something is biblically grounded or not.

 

All of that is part of understanding what apologetics is; itÕs giving a defense for what we believe. And what we believe isnÕt restricted to just what goes on in the church on Sunday morning when weÕre talking directly about biblical events and biblical stories. So apologetics teaches us how to think.

 

So weÕve gone through these questions. Defining apologetics as giving a reasoned answer for what we believe. That implies that you know what you believe. That assumes that you can somehow represent what you believe as being from the Bible, and you can go to the Bible to show what it is that you believe. That is step one.

 

Now you have to go to the next step and say, ÒWell why do you believe it?Ó I have said something for years—and people look at me and kinda scrunch up their faces a little bit, ÒYou canÕt believe something you donÕt understand.Ó You canÕt say, ÒWell I believe it because thatÕs what the pastor said,Ó or ÒThatÕs what So-and-So said.Ó Well, that doesnÕt mean theyÕre right. You have to understand faith.

 

Faith is a form of knowledge. To know something you have to understand it. Now that doesnÕt mean youÕre going to understand it thoroughly or exhaustively. I do not understand the Trinity—and probably never will—with a finite creaturely mind. But I can understand what the Bible teaches about the Trinity. And because I understand what the Bible teaches about the Trinity, I can understand and believe in the Trinity. But that doesnÕt mean I understand everything there is to know about the Trinity. ThatÕs part of learning what we believe and why we believe it. ThatÕs why we should learn about apologetics.

 

A part of apologetics that we will get to in a couple of weeks has to do with the evidences for our faith. We are not just parking our brain in neutral, and weÕre not just a bunch of people who are holding on to some religious opiate. As Marx says, ÒReligion is the opiate of the people.Ó We are not just using it as some drug to get through life so we donÕt have to deal with the real issues of life.

 

Some people object to apologetics because they donÕt understand what apologetics is. But any time you answer the question, ÒWhy do you believe the Bible says that?Ó youÕre doing apologetics. ThatÕs basically it.

 

Then weÕve been looking mostly at this fourth question, the claim by some that, ÒThe Bible doesnÕt use of apologetics, why should we?Ó ThatÕs a Fideist position. What IÕm showing you is not only how the Bible uses apologetics by looking at all these episodes—going through the Old Testament and into the New—but IÕm showing you that they all have certain things in common. These are things that we must remember when we are communicating the gospel and trying to help people understand what the Bible says.

 

WeÕve looked at this chart a lot. As IÕve told you for years, thereÕs four ways in which we know things. Historically, people have said, ÒWell, itÕs all based on reason. It all has to conform to logic. The starting point is whatÕs inside the mind, that weÕre born with certain innate ideas, and starting with those innate ideas as first principles, rigorously using logic and reason, we can argue from those first principles all the way out to the existence of God and truth. But thereÕs always limitations on reason, because we donÕt know everything.

 

Empiricism starts with the facts. ÒJust the facts, MaÕam.Ó ThatÕs empiricism—just starting with facts, starting with sense data.

Mysticism just starts with feeling, sort of your gut reaction to things.

 

Now, each of those systems of knowledge has a counterpart in these strategies for presenting the gospel and evidence for Christianity. The problem that you have with both rationalism and empiricism É This doesnÕt mean that in the revelational or presuppositional view that you donÕt use reason or logic or you donÕt use evidence—itÕs how you use it. ThatÕs where it gets a little sticky for some people, and weÕll try to point out some actual events of that as we go along tonight.

 

But what happens here is all this gets you is probability. Probability. There is one line that this young college boy utters as heÕs presenting an argument for the existence of God—or presenting someoneÕs argument. He says, ÒThe existence of God is the most probable reality.Ó ThatÕs an evidentialist position.

 

As a presuppositionalist, I say, ÒNo, The Bible is clear. I have to assume God does exist. ItÕs not based on probabilities; itÕs based on the reality that God has made me in His image, and Romans 1:18–23 makes that very clear.Ó ThatÕs our foundation.

 

So thatÕs that bottom view. The counterpart to revelation as the ultimate authority is presuppositionalism. WeÕre going to start with Scripture. That doesnÕt mean we start our conversation with Scripture, but that means everything that I say has got to be consistent. IÕm not going to compromise Scripture by saying that there is some area of GodÕs creation, such as either logic, for the classic apologist, or evidentialism; theyÕre saying that there is some area of GodÕs creation that is totally neutral and unaffected by sin. ThatÕs the starting point. We will look at this a little more.

 

Everything in Scripture is, to some degree, polemical. An aspect of apologetics is showing that Christianity is true and other positions are false.

 

Polemics—I revised one word here—is the act of engaging in a verbal or written refutation of another viewpoint. That doesnÕt have to be a hostile, angry refutation, but it can just be helping somebody understand that they really canÕt live consistently with what they say they believe.

In theology, polemics describes an element in a biblical passage which is designed to show the superiority É Last time I had ÒChristian theismÓ there; itÕs biblical theism. Because a lot of these passages are in the Old Testament, we just want to use the term biblical theism; thatÕs more accurate. É To show the superiority of biblical theism over other religions and philosophies. Much of the Old Testament is a polemic against the idolatrous pagan religions surrounding Israel, which is what we see in the passage that weÕre in.

 

Now, just a quick background. Elijah had announced that it wasnÕt going to rain until he said it would. That goes back to GodÕs promise to Israel that if they violated the Law, in the second cycle of discipline, God would bring a drought. ThatÕs Leviticus 26:19. This is what theyÕve been experiencing.

In the Northern Kingdom they had come under the influence of BaÕalism due to Ahab marrying Jezebel. She came in and brought her 450 priests of BaÕal and her 400 priests of Asherah. This was just a horrific religion. It was sexually promiscuous. They had temple prostitutes. ThatÕs how you got the gods to do anything; you went down to the temple and you had sex. They had these sex orgies all over, everywhere.

Another part of it was human sacrifice, in order to get the attention of the gods, and self-mutilation. All of this was part of this religion. It was destroying the culture of the Northern Kingdom.

 

This is why Elijah announces itÕs not going to rain, and then after three years God sent him to announce that He would send rain.

 

He was dealing with BaÕal. We talked about this last time. HeÕs the chief god in the Canaanite pantheon. HeÕs the storm god responsible for rain, lightning, thunder, and productivity. So heÕs been impotent for three years—no rain! Tthis is a direct attack. The reason itÕs a drought is that itÕs a direct attack against the beliefs of these pagan religions. In their mythology, drought indicated BaÕal was dead.

 

I love this picture here—Elijah with his sword over his head, getting ready to decapitate the priest of BaÕal.

 

We went through this and I pointed out that he does the same thing IÕve been emphasizing—that you ask questions. He asked the people; itÕs a question designed to get them to think about the ultimate reality in life. ÒHow long are you going to hop around—bounce back and forth— between two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow Him. But if BaÕal, follow him.Ó

 

They were assimilating BaÕalism to their worship of Yahweh, and they just chose to follow whomever they wanted whenever it made more sense to them and made their life a little more fun and better. ThatÕs why he uses this word; ÒfalterÓ means to hop around. The same word is used of the dancing that the priests are going to do in order to get BaÕalÕs attention.

 

At this point I wanted to stop. I went through this last time. I looked at the video last time and realized that the slides didnÕt show up very well, so I had to change the slides. But see, the issue here is that in the confrontation, the point isnÕt to win the argument, the point is to move people to change, to get them to understand that their views are wrong and they need to conform to God. The goal is to get people to trust in Christ as Savior and to help them understand that whatever it is theyÕre relying on is a broken cane. I think Isaiah used the word Òbroken reed,Ó but IÕve updated it to our culture. You got a broken crutch, and itÕs not going to hold you up.

 

Part of what you do, as you ask questions, is to help expose to the person that what heÕs depending on for happiness, or meaning in life, or success really, ultimately doesnÕt get him what he thinks it will get him. You donÕt get into that with everybody, but you do with some people.

 

I ran through these principles.

1.      Everyone has a philosophy of life: some of them have thought it through, others just bounce around with a lot of inconsistent views, ÒWhatever helps me get through today is all I need to worry about.Ó They havenÕt thought about things very deeply.

2.      Every worldview or religion contains universals. These are expressed by words like Òshould,Ó Òought,Ó Òright,Ó and Òwrong.Ó

Get in a discussion with anybody about whether or not Donald Trump colluded with the Russians, and theyÕre going to say, ÒWell, I think itÕs wrong,Ó or ÒI think itÕs right.Ó As soon as they use a word like ÒrightÓ or Òwrong,Ó youÕve got a window into their soul. ÒWhere did you get that value? How do you think thatÕs wrong?Ó ÒWell, I think itÕs wrong to say that thereÕs only one way to God.Ó ÒReally? How do you come to that view?Ó You can talk about that a lot. ThatÕll expose a lot of ideas.

3.      The entry point to their worldview is going to be, often through their statements related to their values or their ethics.

This is when you get into a longer-term conversation. There are short-term conversations and long-term conversations. But remember, even if you have to talk to somebody for 30 years before they finally have that Aha! moment, thatÕs a person thatÕs going to spend eternity in Heaven instead of the Lake of Fire. YhatÕs worth every bit of aggravation and all the ups and downs for those 30 years.

4.      Ethical principles are based on prior assumptions about the nature of truth or knowledge and the ultimate nature of the universe.

ThatÕs something to think about. This is where we get into that hard discussion about, ÒHow do you think? How do you think about what you think?Ó ItÕs not easy.

 

In the past, as I pointed out last time—I went and got the slide for this time—weÕve got this iceberg illustration. At the top, it may be talking about political decisions or national issues; it may be individual life choices, but this is where we talk with people. ÒHow is your day going?Ó ÒWell, IÕm not doing so good at my job. My boss is a real jerk.Ó ÒReally?Ó Why is that?Ó

 

You start asking questions. Or, ÒI had a client that wouldnÕt pay me.Ó Well, what are you going to do about it? What do you think about it? Probe. Ask questions. ÒWell, I think itÕs terrible.Ó ÒWhy do you think itÕs terrible? What is your ultimate value? Where do you get this idea of right or wrong?Ó

ÒIf you believe in the survival of the fittest, where do you get an ethic that says that itÕs wrong for the fittest to take advantage of the unfit? Where do you get that idea?Ó So you start probing a little bit. ThatÕs where we begin to talk.

 

But as soon as you start asking ÒrightÓ or ÒwrongÓ questions, you get down into ethics. ÒWhere do you get these ideas of whatÕs right, whatÕs wrong, whatÕs good, whatÕs bad?Ó ÒWell, I donÕt believe there is such a thing as absolute truth; that doesnÕt work for me.Ó

 

So, you get into this issue of: How do you know what is true? This is really important for believers, because at the ethical level Christians hold to views that certain things are right or certain things are wrong. WeÕre not going to violate our beliefs just because the government says so. The government comes along and says that itÕs okay for same-sex couples to get married. As a Christian, youÕre like, ÒNo. I canÕt validate that; that violates my conscience.Ó Paul said that weÕre not to violate our conscience; it sets a principle for future violation of things that are really serious.

 

We have ethics. How do we know itÕs true? Jesus said things about truth. He said, ÒI am the way, the truth, and the lifeA claim to be truth. Later on, when He is talking to Pilate, Pilate asked Him if He claimed to be God. He said, ÒYou speak the truth,Ó and then Pilate said, ÒWell, what is truth?Ó So Jesus clearly affirmed that thereÕs an absolute truth.

 

So, for Christians, truth is an issue. We need to think about: How do we know truth? Where does truth come from? That takes us to the next level.

Now these terms—ethics, epistemology, metaphysics—are terms that come out of philosophy, but whether weÕre talking about God, truth, or right or wrong, itÕs the same thing. Where do you get your views of knowledge? What is true? What is false? Where does that come from? Does it come from just within the creation? Is this just something that people voted on, or are there universal absolutes that are right or wrong no matter what people believe? That has a lot of implications.

 

The foundation for all thought is this understanding of God—ultimate reality. Now if ultimate reality is a god who encourages people to go through sexual activity in order to stimulate him to improve the economy, then thatÕs going to impact what you do and what you think about right or wrong. ItÕs going to impact how you think about marriage and the sanctity of marriage, and itÕs going to impact how you think about all of these issues related to sexual morality. Ultimately, that is going to impact your view of whether that is related to success or prosperity.

 

In the ancient world they were just as concerned as you and I are with financial stability. They were concerned about success. ThereÕs nothing wrong with being successful. ThereÕs nothing wrong with having possessions. ThereÕs nothing wrong with being productive in life. But when that takes over and that becomes the end in itself, then that is classified in Scripture as covetousness or greed, which Paul says, in Colossians 3, is idolatry.

 

So you may say, ÒWell, weÕre not worshiping some sort of, you know, a sexually promiscuous god, and weÕre not going down to the temple and engaging temple prostitutes.Ó They had male and female prostitutes for men and women—it worked both ways. We donÕt do that. Well, if youÕre running on materialism as a motivator in life—that you think that you have to get all you can get so that you can survive and not trust God—then youÕre just as guilty of prosperity theology as they BaÕalists were or the prosperity evangelists on television. You have to think about how these things relate to each other.

 

Rarely do people think at the level of, ÒHow do my values, how do my decisions, relate to what I think about God?Ó ThatÕs the brilliance of Christianity, because our presupposition is we worship a God who created everything. Every fact is what it is because God made it that way. Therefore, we canÕt go in and try to think about it in some other way, because thatÕs idolatry; thatÕs saying that we have the ability to redefine what God made. We have all of GodÕs creation, and we need to learn to understand it as God created it and then live consistent with that; thatÕs called wisdom.

 

Bible study isnÕt just about learning stories about people who lived thousands of years ago, and ÒDonÕt they have some nice little morals for us?Ó ItÕs learning how we are to live and think within a creation where every molecule is designed by an infinite, holy Creator. We have to learn to live in a corrupt version of that, and we have to deal with it in terms of our own sin nature and that God is in a process of redeeming it. So thatÕs our framework.

 

Last time I set it up a little differently. I said that we start with this window: ethics, values, right, or wrong. So Elijah is going to this culture, to the Israelite culture, and they think itÕs right that you can go out and you can have promiscuous sexual relations with temple prostitutes in order to be financially prosperous. Your crops will grow and you will be productive, and the more you go down to the temple and engage in sexual activity, the greater the chance itÕs going to rain. They believe that with every ounce of their being.

 

So you have to challenge that idea of right and wrong at the beginning. ÒWhere are you getting this?Ó ThatÕs what his question is getting at.

Now, eventually, if you go to the next level, that takes you to the area that is not in the iceberg chart, where the implications of right or wrong and ethics affects what philosophers refer to as aesthetics, which is literature, music, art, nature, all of these kinds of things; IÕm not spending much time talking about that.

 

For ethics to work it has to come from somewhere. It comes from knowledge. That comes from that ultimate reality of God. We are starting with God at the top in this diagram and working our way down. Your ultimate view of reality affects what you know. And your understanding of truth affects your values. That affects politics. It affects the civilized aspects of culture: art, music, literature, theater. All of these things are products of man. And man is what? HeÕs a corrupt version of the image of God. So as Christians we have to address that. All these things go together.

 

In that culture, if youÕre Elijah, what are you thinking? What are the collision points here? As Elijah was confronting the priests of BaÕal, how are you as a college kid in a hostile classroom going to confront an atheist professor and present a case for the existence of God?

 

When you look at whatÕs going on in the contrast, what IÕm doing here in this chart is this in the upper right is expressing what the biblical view is. The divine viewpoint, the Bible gives us absolutes. Nonnegotiable absolutes. ThatÕs where we stand as Christians. As Martin Luther said, ÒHere I stand,Ó referring to the Scripture, ÒI can do no other.Ó

 

We believe God revealed His essence as the Creator. WeÕre the creature; weÕre in His image; thatÕs where weÕre going to get our values. God reveals right and wrong. He is a righteous God. He is a just God. His righteousness expresses the absolute eternal standards of His character, and His justice expresses the application.

 

But when you deny God, and all youÕre left with is the creature, the creature makes it up. So it becomes arbitrary. The creature is going to determine what right or wrong is. You can see this, especially in governments and in politics, where the governments come along and theyÕre just going to make up the rules.

 

We see a classic example of it right now. IÕm not arguing in favor of Trump or in favor of the Democrats, but what is happening right now is that you see that the standards that are being applied to Trump are such that if they were applied to an investigation of Hillary, the Democrats would be screaming how unfair this would be. ItÕs a double standard. Why? Because when you lose your anchor in a system of absolutes and righteousness, then the law doesnÕt apply equally to everybody, and itÕs all about who has the power. ThatÕs whatÕs happening here.

 

In the ancient world they had a priest-based power. The priests who ran the Northern Kingdom are being fed at the table of Jezebel; itÕs a state religion. ThatÕs a state base. But today we have a politics base. In the early 20th century you had the rise of these horrible 20th-century totalitarian governments: the communists under Lenin and Stalin, Nazis-Hitler, Mao, others, Cambodia, all kinds of horrible dictators who were violent, destructive, dehumanizing.

In the ancient world they had human sacrifice and temple prostitution. You know the Nazis had a human sacrifice—itÕs the Holocaust. These kinds of things flowed out of their view of God. If you donÕt have the God of biblical Christianity—not just any god, but if you donÕt have the God of the Bible—then thatÕs where it goes. See, the difference É If youÕre thinking about a classical or evidentialist apologetics, they get you to a god—there must be a God, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Who is a holy, righteous God. Okay? ThatÕs the distinction.

 

The God that we believe in as Christians is a specific God Who has a specific essence. If you donÕt have that God É If you have Allah, who justifies jihad and all kinds of homicide bombers and everything else É If you donÕt have the kind of God that you have in the Bible, then you are going to end up over here [points to left side of chart] one way or the other, because thatÕs where your assumptions eventually lead you.

 

On this next chart, where do you get your values? If youÕre operating on the Bible, you get them from the Word of God. God reveals truth. ThatÕs what He was doing with Adam and Eve in the Garden—HeÕs revealing truth to them. ItÕs absolute knowledge. ItÕs not based on trial and error of empiricism and its derivative. What do I mean by Òderivative?Ó It is derived, ultimately, from God. Because there is not one thing you, or I, or Einstein, or da Vinci, or Stephen Hawking can discover in this world that God didnÕt know about fully and thoroughly billions and billions and billions of years ago in eternity past. Everything we discover about GodÕs creation, God already knew about and never learned. He never learned it! He has always known it. His knowledge never increases or decreases. ThereÕs nothing in which He grows in knowledge.

 

Everything that we learn ultimately was in the mind of God before anybody came along and before anybody discovered it. We are just rediscovering what God has already known.

 

We look at knowledge differently—or we should—than the way anybody else looks at knowledge. In human viewpoint, all knowledge is just what you derive through observation, but in empirical observation thereÕs always something you can discover next year that invalidates everything you thought you knew today. So itÕs inductive; itÕs relative; thereÕs no absolutes. ThatÕs why the postmodern is absolutely correct, based on his assumptions. I think it was Dostoevsky who said, ÒIf there is no God, everything is permissible.Ó Think about that: ÒIf there is no God, everything is permissible.Ó You donÕt have any values. So all knowledge is relative; you canÕt know anything with certainty.

 

Then, God at the top [of the slide]. The challenge is YHWH vs. BaÕal. The issue is: Is God the Creator God of the universe, or is He part of the universe, which is how every pagan system had it.

 

As we look at the challenge, this just gives you the background. What are the mental dynamics that are going on here in this confrontation between Elijah who wants them to change. HeÕs not saying, ÒIÕve got a better idea. My God is better than your god. My religion is better than your god.Ó No, heÕs arguing, ÒMy God is the only God, and your god doesnÕt exist. Your whole life is built on something that is fabricated, and it wonÕt hold you up.Ó The only way youÕre going to be held up and secure in life and have real prosperity is if you align yourself to the God Who created everything and walk ethically, morally, spiritually, according to what He has said. Because if you donÕt, then you are setting yourself against reality, and your life will fall apart.

 

So Elijah challenges them. He says, ÒI alone am left a prophet of the Lord; but BaÕalÕs prophets are four hundred and fifty men.Ó ThatÕs in 1 Kings 18:22. There are 450 prophets of BaÕal and 400 prophets of the Asherah. And he challenges them.

 

He goes on. Verse 23, ÒTherefore let them give us two bulls.Ó ÒWeÕre going to put this to a test.Ó Now this is something that is typical in a number of different presentations of—we will call it—apologetics, but confrontations with human viewpoint. Without compromising his view of God, or revelation, what Elijah is doing is saying, ÒOkay, letÕs see if you can live consistently with what you believe.Ó

 

There are two aspects to giving an answer for the faith. One aspect is the positive, where you are saying what we believe, but somebody may say, ÒWell, I just donÕt believe thatÕs true.Ó ÒReally? Well, what do you believe is true?Ó And then begin to talk about their answers and being able to expose that they canÕt live consistently with their answers. That involves some thinking on our part and a lot of prayer.

 

This is what Elijah is doing. He is saying, ÒYou believe your view, so letÕs test it.Ó ÒTherefore let them give us two bulls; and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other bull, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it.Ó So theyÕve got two altars. They built these; they are quite large.

 

This [photo] is a drought time, so the Kishon River is down here. Now it is just a stream, because so much gets bled off into irrigation in the Esdraelon Valley. ThatÕs a pretty good hike. YouÕre looking downhill; itÕs probably about 700 or 800 feet above the ground. So theyÕve got to go down and haul these containers of water up to the top.

 

HereÕs another view, looking down to the Kishon River. Back in those days there was a lot more water there. Even in a drought it would probably get to where it is today, but they had a lot more water. Judges 6 talks about how this hit a flood stage and God brought a flood that helped destroy the Canaanites under Deborah and Barak in their battle with Sisera.

 

So he confronts, challenges, their human viewpoint assumptions. He says, ÒThen you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord.Ó In other words, ÒYou see if you can consistently live on the basis of your atheistic presuppositions.Ó I often tell this joke, that this is like the evolutionist in the lab who can finally create life. He says, ÒWe donÕt need God anymore. IÕm going to challenge God. Tell Him we donÕt need Him anymore. We can create life—He can go away.Ó

 

So he goes and challenges God. ÒWe donÕt need you anymore. We can create life on our own. We donÕt need You anymore.Ó God says, ÒOkay. Well, youÕve challenged Me, so you start first and show me what you can do in creating life.Ó So the scientist bends down and he picks up some dirt and God says, ÒNo, no, no, no. YouÕve got to make your own dirt.Ó

 

Their starting point doesnÕt work. They donÕt have any dirt. TheyÕre just trying to create life, and they are using GodÕs dirt. So what Elijah is basically showing here is that they donÕt have the foundation; theyÕve just created a god, a religious system, but thereÕs no foundation in reality. So he is going to show that their system just wonÕt work.

 

They go through all these gyrations; they dance around; they cut themselves. Elijah taunts them and says, ÒWell maybe your GodÕs taking a break.Ó Verse 27. ÒAnd so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, ÔCry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.Õ Ó Is it godly to mock the unbeliever? ÒOhhh É thatÕs wrong!Ó What are you going to do with that statement?

 

YouÕre talking to some snowflake millennial. ÒThatÕs wrong. Elijah is so mean. We couldnÕt worship a God like that.Ó ÒReally? Where did you get the idea that thatÕs wrong?Ó What if somebodyÕs eternal destiny in the Lake of Fire is at stake? Are you going to rescue them from that? Or because it might hurt their feelings that they believe the wrong thing, are you going to let them spend eternity in the Lake of Fire? Because, you see, what youÕve done is shift and you are taking the context and putting it into a biblical context. WeÕre not arguing probabilities; weÕre showing the contrast in the belief system.

 

So they go through all of this. Then after midday they go through it in the afternoon to the evening sacrifice, and nothing happens. I mean, theyÕre just getting upset! TheyÕre dancing, theyÕre worn out, nothing has happened.

 

We get down to verse 36. ÒAt the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice [around 6 oÕclock in the evening], that Elijah the prophet came near and said, ÔLord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word.Õ Ó

 

Starting in the verse prior to this, what heÕs done is heÕs built the altar. HeÕs built a trench around the altar large enough to hold two seahs of seed—thatÕs a couple of pecks of seed. HeÕs going to go down, get enough water to soak his wood, and enough is going to run off into this trench to where he has about two barrels or so of water left over, and then he calls on the name of the Lord to bring down fire from heaven.

 

In verse 37, in a simple prayer—no gyrations—he doesnÕt have to jump a pew, he doesnÕt have to wave his arms, he is just going to simply pray to God. ÒHear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.Ó The point of this conversation and the challenge when youÕre defending the faith is to bring people to an understanding of the truth to turn to God.

 

Then we have it. ÒThen the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench.Ó Everything! It is just immediately vaporized. What a contrast! Now the legend in Israel is that this bolt of lightning—the thunderclap mustÕve been incredible—could be seen from all over Israel, that this wasnÕt something that was done in secret. Everything is just vaporized.

 

I had a couple of pictures taken at that time just so we would have them in Bible class.

What this shows is that the God of Scripture, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is not just any god. See, heÕs not arguing for the existence of this God. HeÕs assuming the existence of God. He is not arguing for it. He is not trying to prove it through the argument of cause to effect, the cosmological argument, the anthropological or moral argument, or ontological argument, or any of those other things.

 

He just sets up this scenario where the people must confront their beliefs and consistently with them, and he shows that they canÕt. That is one aspect of apologetics. He does this with humility and fear. Now thatÕs interesting. This is humble. But remember, this is the same word group that is used to describe Moses as the most meek man in the Old Testament, and it shows authority orientation. ThatÕs what humility is, as IÕve taught you many times.

So that authority orientation. WhatÕs the authority? ItÕs the Word of God. HeÕs not saying, ÒOkay. We have some neutral area weÕre going to appeal to in terms of human reason or culture or something else. He takes a stand on the Word of God. That doesnÕt mean that heÕs spouting Scripture all the time.

 

There are eight things that we learn from this.

1.      All people have a religious system which demonstrates the truth of Romans 1:18–23.

That person weÕre talking to, no matter how much of an atheist they are, they are religious. Whether they like you are not ... See, theism is a religion. If theism is a religion, then the opposite of theism must also be a religion. The belief that there is no God must be a religion if the belief that there is a God is a religion. ThatÕs just logic.

2.      Because we understand total depravity, we know that people are not spiritually neutral.

ThatÕs why itÕs a bit of a confrontation. We know that the person is trying to suppress the truth. They donÕt want to face up to something like divine judgment; that is not part of their game plan.

3.      Third, weÕve seen that the purpose of the confrontation is to change their mind about God.

It is not to prove that ElijahÕs right and theyÕre wrong. This isnÕt about intellectual ability or debaterÕs technique.

Like weÕve seen previously with Job, with God in the Garden, and also with Moses going to Pharaoh, it begins with a question—probing. What do they believe? What are they going to do?

4.      HeÕs asking that question to expose the real issue and to challenge them to obey.

5.      ThereÕs evidence presented here. They were able to evaluate the evidence despite a prior commitment to suppress truth.

That means that they are not completely blinded in the sense that God has to regenerate them before they can believe—thatÕs a problem with hyper-Calvinists. They have enough intellectual ability to be able to understand whatÕs going on even though they are committed to suppressing truth.

6.      The evidence is not treated as neutral.

ThatÕs important. HeÕs not saying, ÒHistory is neutral. You and I can both look at history the same way.Ó HeÕs not doing that. This is God. This is what God does. God is the God of lightning, HeÕs the God of thunder, HeÕs the God of prosperity, HeÕs the God of life, not BaÕal.

7.      We see that God uses historic facts and evidence to expose their sin and rebellion.

We can do the same thing. ThatÕs why, in the coming weeks, IÕm going to talk about evidences. There are all kinds of evidences. ThereÕs so much thatÕs coming out—so much we can read, but I want to try to boil things down to a really simple thing that I can say, ÒOkay. Give me five basic reasons why I can trust the Bible. Give me five basic reasons why I can believe Jesus is God. Give me five basic reasons why I can believe in the resurrection.Ó Just something really simple like that that we can use, get into our heads, and will come to our minds when we are witnessing to somebody—if we need that. We donÕt always need that.

8.      Then we have to recognize that the reaction may be quite hostile.

We can put it on the line, but it may cost us something. This kid in the film—it may cost him his academic career. It cost him his girlfriend. It could have cost him more than that, but we have to be willing to do what weÕre supposed to do as believers. Are we willing to obey, no matter what the cost?

 

Elijah obeys, and after he has a little running contest with Ahab, Ahab beats him and gets back to Jezebel and informs Jezebel about everything Elijah has done and that he had executed all of her favorite little prophets with the sword. HeÕs up there. HeÕs massacred all 950 of those false prophets and taken them out.

 

Now what is she going to be? Is she going to be pleased? ÒWell, IÕm glad we finally understood the truth. IÕm glad that we have seen the light and that Yahweh is the God we should worship,Ó because she is committed to ultimately finding the truth. No! She is not spiritually neutral. SheÕs a truth suppressor. And sheÕs going to react in anger.

 

Then we see something interesting. Notice the inconsistency here. ÒThen Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, ÔSo let the gods do to me ÉÕ Ó

Wait a minute É do you get the inconsistency there? ÒLet the gods do to me.Ó What did Elijah just demonstrate? There are no gods! Not only are there no gods, but IÕve killed a lot of his prophets. ThereÕs nobody thatÕs going to help you talk to BaÕal anymore. So this is the irrationality of unbelief.

 

ÒÉ Let the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.Ó Then Elijah does what a lot of us do when we have witnessed to somebody and they didnÕt immediately trust Christ. He goes on a pity party, and he runs away to the Sinai to hide from Jezebel. After God has provided for him so much by the Brook Cherith, and then when he went to the widow of Zarephath, and God just demonstrates His power, and what does he do? Just like the rest of us. ThatÕs why James says, ÒElijah was a man with a nature like oursBecause we can fall into that same trap. All of a sudden, one minute weÕre believing God, and the next minute weÕre living as if God doesnÕt exist. This is our evidence of what we learn about the confrontation.

 

Now I want to bring up a couple of points, before we leave, about this film [GodÕs Not Dead]. IÕd like for you to watch it. If you can, rent it. IÕve got it tubed up on my computer and I was going to show it, but I thought, ÒYou know, weÕre probably going to run into some copyright issues, even though IÕm just showing clips at places.Ó It would be okay if it was just us, but live streaming and putting all these clips up on the website would probably get us in trouble. So IÕm just going to have to talk my way through it.

 

The situation, as I said at the beginning, is that this college kid is in a classroom where the professor is demanding that everybody write, ÒGod is deadÓ on a piece of paper. ÒAnd then we can go on and we can all have a happy semester, because we donÕt have to worry about God rearing His head in our classroom and waste our time talking about this myth.Ó The professorÕs using a combination of peer pressure and ridicule to intimidate the students to do what he says to do. Everybody does it except for this one young man. As a result of his unwillingness to do it, he gets even more threats from the professor who threatens to destroy his academic career; he will fail him in this class, and that will make sure he canÕt succeed in his desire to go on to law school and everything else. HeÕs got a girlfriend heÕs dated for six years, and sheÕs telling him, ÒJust get the grade and move on! DonÕt make an issue out of this!Ó He says, ÒBut I canÕt sign the paper.Ó

 

The question for many of us is, ÒWhat would we do in that kind of a situation?Ó Because as Jesus points out to His disciples when He is giving them their commission to go to the House of Israel and the House of Judah in Matthew 10, He told them, ÒTherefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. 33 But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.Ó ThatÕs not talking about salvation; thatÕs talking about rewards there. There are other places where that language is used, but the whole issue here is on being a faithful disciple.

 

Jesus goes on to say, ÒHe who loves father or mother more than Me [or his girlfriend more than Me] is not worthy of Me.Ó That was of textual emendation there about the girlfriend—itÕs in some rare manuscripts.

 

ÒAnd he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.Ó ÒI donÕt want to rock the boat. I donÕt want to cause a problem by bringing up my Christianity.Ó Well, you may do it in a wrong way, and thatÕs wrong. But youÕve got to think about doing it in the right way.

 

Jesus then said, ÒAnd he who does not take his cross and follow after Me [that is, who isnÕt willing to submit to the Father in all things].Ó ÒTaking up your crossÓ was an idiom in the Roman Empire for submitting to the authority of Rome. Then he goes on to say, in verse 41, ÒHe who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophetÕs reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous manÕs reward

 

In other words, He starts talking about a reward. There is an award if you stand in the gap and you donÕt deny Him. Well, this young man is put in that situation. Everybody seems to desert him, but as he talks to his pastor he realizes that heÕs in a position where he can provide a solid witness for the Lord in that classroom. So he starts doing his homework.

 

What would you do if you were placed in a position where to survive at all you need to defend your position that God is not dead? What are you going to do? How are you going to do it? Well, you can look at his approach. The first thing he does is come out and give a lecture. He says, ÒWe are going to put God on trial.Ó He can do this a right way or a wrong way.

 

I think he does it a right way, gives us a good example. He sets up a contrast between the biblical view of origins and the evolutionary view of origins. He doesnÕt look for some area of neutrality. What heÕs doing is showing that ultimately the evidence shows that the evolutionary theory of origins doesnÕt work. He has some good quotes. As he does this, he shows various inconsistencies in the Big Bang Theory, which is a relatively new theory contrasted with the Steady State Theory, which is a long-held pagan view. But he contrasts that and shows that modern science really canÕt be consistent with what they hold in terms of the Big Bang Theory. He read a quote from a well-known scientist who is stating what a Big Bang would look like, and then he said, ÒLetÕs look at Genesis 1. God spoke and it came into existence. How does that differ?Ó

 

See, he hasnÕt gone to a neutral. He is saying, ÒBiblical Christianity presents our God this way: He spoke, and it instantly came into existence. How does that differ?Ó The difference is thereÕs an Intelligent Being—there is God—Who is doing that.Ó So he answers that. The professor challenges him with a question with a quote from Dawkins. He says, ÒOkay. You say that there is a God. Well, who created God?Ó And he turned it back on Dawkins. He said, ÒWell, Dawkins has to answer the same question, which is, ultimately, ÒWho created the matter that was there to explode at the beginning of the Big Bang?Ó See, he cannot answer that question. HeÕs not getting trapped into looking for an area of neutrality.

 

HeÕs challenged by the professor with a quote from Stephen Hawking. He came back the next day with not only a statement from an atheist philosopher who said that, basically, Hawking commits three logical fallacies in his statement that the universe could create itself because it thought it needed to come into existence. By giving this quote from an atheist, he is showing the fallacy that is there in their argument. Also, he then quoted a statement from Hawking in the same book. Remember, this a philosophy professor. Hawking, later in the book, said, ÒPhilosophy is dead.Ó So what heÕs doing is showing the inability of the BaÕal worshipers to live consistently with their presuppositions. ItÕs very, very well done in that respect. He does that a few other times. And what he does is he will contrast to what the Bible says.

 

The one weakness I saw in it was that at one point, as he is talking about the existence of God and the arguments for the existence of God, he says, ÒThe most probable answer is that God exists.Ó ThatÕs where he sort of steps out of a more consistent presuppositional approach.

 

He addresses the problem of evil and some other things. At the end he says to the professor, ÒWhy do you hate God? Why are you so angry with God? Why do you hate God?Ó The professor is just so angry, ÒBecause God doesnÕt help people!Ó The kid just looks at him and goes, ÒHow can you hate somebody so much who doesnÕt exist?Ó What heÕs doing is pointing out the inconsistencies.

 

ThatÕs the two sides of the coin that IÕm talking about. Part of apologetics is being able to help people understand the flaws in their own rationale, and the other is showing how the Bible is internally consistent, and we can trust the God of the Bible. ItÕs interesting.

 

One factoid that I got out of it that I didnÕt know was that 70% of self-admitted atheists in this country were once Christians. Of that 70%, 34% of the total number were formerly Roman Catholic, 36.5% or something like that, were Protestants. So what you see is a lot of Christians get angry with God over something personal. ThatÕs what was exhibited in this film. His mother died when he was 11 or 12 years old. God didnÕt answer his prayers to keep her alive, so he was mad at God.

 

That kind of thing can come out when youÕre talking to people. ÒWhy donÕt you believe in God? Why are you so upset? Why are you so angry?Ó You are getting down to those issues that have been used; youÕre getting past the suppression mechanisms to get to the real issues. ThatÕs the whole point in apologetics: learning how to talk to people, present the gospel, and show that biblical truth is the only truth.

We will come back and look at Paul next time in Lystra and also in Acts 17 on Areopagus, Mars Hill.

Slides