Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age

Anthony Bosman

Jordan Reichert

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age - Part 1

This is a five-part seminar, so the theme is reasons for hope.

And we're looking for a case for faith in a secular context.

And so we're really looking at how we can make the case for faith in a way that's attractive, that makes sense to our friends who maybe come from more of a secular background, or have some basic questions about Christianity.

And so it's in 5 parts as Israel indicated.

Today we're talking about faith and reasons, what's the relationship between these 2, is faith irrational, is faith entirely rational, how should we think about these.

Tomorrow we'll talk more about science and how does faith in science relate?

Should we think about these being intention or do they fit together quite well?

And then throughout the week, we'll look at history, on the problem of evil, the problem of suffering.

And Friday, we really have quite a bit of time for Q&A, but hopefully today as well, we'll have a little bit of time for some questions, so if you can't wait till Friday, we're trying to take some of those today as well.

So what I want to do is to begin setting up the the whole theme of Reasons for Hope, is I want to look at this Word of Counsel from Peter.

Peter tells us in his epistle, 1 Peter chapter 3, Peter tells us that 1 of the ways that we honor Christ is by always being prepared to make a defense, the Greek word there is apologia, to make a defense, an apologia, to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you.

So that's where our title's coming from, a reason for the hope that's in you.

And so Peter says, what about Christian duties is you need to prepare yourself, such as by coming to a seminar like this, so that you can make a defense, an apologia, or give a reason for those who ask you for the hope that's in you.

Now already there's a lot of things that stand out in this passage.

What Peter sees here is he sees people be coming up asking you questions, right?

It's not just you going out and engaging, but actually he envisions people will be coming and asking you questions.

And so Peter already has in view Christian community that's mingling with, and interacting with those of other worldviews, so that people have an opportunity to ask them questions, right?

And so, my own experience very much is this thing placed in the context of a university campus, but this could take place at your workplace, maybe even in your family, through service projects, whatever- wherever you're coming into contact with people where you're living out your faith and they're beginning to ask you questions, Peter says, think ahead of time so you're ready to give some kind of response to the questions they might ask you.

I also appreciate this passage because while Peter emphasized you should be given a reason, it should appeal to the intellect.

He also indicated it's more than just intellectual, it's ultimately a reason for hope.

And so what Peter is indicating is that ultimately what we're doing is not just giving a philosophy but we're providing people with hope.

And so what we're gonna do in this presentation is appeal to intellectual questions people might have, but really in such a way that can give people hope.

So the purpose of apologetics, apologetics coming from this Greek word apologia, or defense, a defense of the Christian faith.

There are 2 basic purposes of apologetics.

So the early church, especially by the second century, there were 3 main criticism the early church was accused of.

The early Christians, believe it or not, were accused of being atheists because they did not worship the Greek and Roman gods and so it's, oh these must be some kind of atheists, not a very negative connotation.

There were some Christians who had gone out and done all kinds of immoral acts, and so they gave a bad name to Christianity.

But in particular, 1 of the main charges of immorality against Christianity was cannibalism.

Can anyone think why the Christians might have been accused of cannibalism?

There was confusion over what the Lord's Supper was, and so they heard that there was individuals coming together and they're eating the body and the blood of their leader, and so they thought it was some kind of cannibalism.

And the last 1, a final critique that was very common by the second century was disloyalty to the Empire.

Why might people be criticizing Christians in this way?

That's right, they talked about this King Jesus, right?

And so when they talked about this different kingdom it sounded like oh is this some kind of insurrection and then when they refused to do various kinds of loyalty oaths to the Emperor it came across as insurrection.

Some people thought that they were trying to overthrow the Roman government.

And so what happened by the second century is there was a need to respond to these criticisms.

So Justin Martyr was 1 of the first Christian apologists and he wrote something called the first apology where he goes and he addresses this to the Emperor of Rome and he tries to systematically go through each of these critiques and clarify the Christian position.

He says yes that we don't believe in these many gods but we do believe in the 1 true God.

He says, well, some Christians are the immoral things.

That is not to be representative of Christianity as a whole.

In fact, Christians are passionate about caring for the poor, and he gives a defense explaining the Christian position.

And he articulates what the Lord's Supper is.

It's, we're not literally eating the blood and the body of someone.

It's not cannibalism as you might have heard.

Rather, we do this in memory of the sacrifice of Christ.

And then the disloyalty, he stressed that although we can't do some of these oaths because we cannot worship idols, he indicates that we are loyal to the government for the kingdom we talk of is not a kingdom of man but a kingdom of heaven.

So he makes these distinctions to clarify the Christian position and respond to the criticisms.

Can you think of any prevailing criticisms or misconceptions of Christianity today?

Can you think of any common criticisms or misconceptions of Christianity today?

In the first century, it was atheism, and immorality, and disloyalty to the government.

Someone from a non-Christian background, what might be some of their criticisms or misconceptions of Christianity?

Maybe everyone might be ignorant that people think that Christians are blind followers, because it's ignorant of reality and science and all those things.

Okay, so they may believe that to be a Christian is to be ignorant and so they can't conceive of someone being well educated and Christian.

They think that Christianity is something that's like a superstitious or something of the past but once you become more educated or more engaged in the sciences then you naturally grow out of that faith.

Any other common misconceptions or criticisms of Christianity that come to mind?

They could think that we're self-centered.

That we don't reach out, that we're this little group where we don't reach out to other people.

They see us gathering together and they maybe get this idea that they're kind of exclusive, they're kind of cliquish, they're kind of self-centered.

In the school of alternative lifestyles and all of that, I think that a lot of times they think Christians are not loving.

Not loving or not tolerant of other kinds of lifestyles, other ways of living.

And so you can see today there's also a need for us to respond to these types of misconceptions or criticisms of Christianity and attempt to clarify just as they did in the second century.

And so we're going to try to begin to do that throughout this week.

We won't hit all the topics we engage with, certainly science will be tomorrow's topic, but a number of them we'll begin to engage with.

There's a second purpose of apologetics, and that's to remove intellectual objections to faith.

That is, apologetics, the goal of apologetics is not to produce faith in someone.

We're told in Romans that faith is a gift from God.

So we can't produce faith in someone, but what we're trying to do is we're trying to clear the road of these intellectual objections.

Because while someone is in the position that they think, you know, someone's thinking Christianity is bigoted or Christianity is ignorant or Christianity is- if they have these beliefs, it's tougher for them to respond positively to the Holy Spirit.

So what we're trying to do is we're trying to clear the way, remove some of those obstacles so that the Holy Spirit can impart in them the gift of faith.

Here's some data I was looking at recently of trends in North America.

So in the United States currently, this was a from last December, young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 were polled on their belief in God.

43% indicate that they have belief in the God of the Bible.

Now there may be lots of different interpretations of what that means but some basic belief in the God of the Bible.

This is the first generation in America where it's less than a majority.

So if you look at older age groups, 30 to 40 or 40 to 50 or 50 plus, and in these older generations it's always been above 50%, but now we look at young adults between the ages of 18 and 29, it's dropped only 43% hold belief in the God of the Bible.

39 percent, roughly the same number, believe in some kind of higher power.

Now they wouldn't describe to be the God of the Bible, they might say some cosmic force or energy or some other kind of higher power.

And 16 percent report belief in no such God or no such higher power.

And so what you've seen is as look at generations that in this generation in particular there's been a rise in those who believe in no God at all or in a vague higher power and a drop in those who believe in the God of the Bible.

And so I believe this shows evidence that we really need to, our work's cut out for us, to start clearing the road of some of those intellectual objections, right?

This generation in particular has a lot of intellectual questions and objections about belief in God and so the role of apologetics is trying to respond to some of those critiques so that the Holy Spirit can give the gift of faith.

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age - Part 2

Father God, we just humbly come before you.

I'm just wanting you to equip us to be faithful to the commission to go out and make disciples of all nations.

Father, I recognize part of that is answering the questions and the objections people might have.

And so I just pray today you might open our minds to be ready and prepared to answer the questions our friends might have.

Not only having the best answers but be able to answer them in a way that represents you, to answer them with love.

So the name of our seminar today is Reasons for Hope.

Yesterday we had an introduction talking about the relationship between faith and reason.

And today we're getting into faith and science.

And then as we go throughout the week, we'll continue to talk about faith and history, faith and suffering.

And then on Friday, we'll talk about faith and questions.

Yesterday if you were here we talked about the name for the Sermon on Reasons for Hope comes from this mandate from Peter.

He tells us that 1 of the ways we honor Christ as Lord is by always being prepared to give a defense, give a reason, give an apologia to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

It's for us coming together right now and thinking about these things and as you continue to in your time you're fulfilling this command of Scripture to prepare yourself to be able to give a defense when answered someone asked you about the reason for the hope that's in you.

But we also talked yesterday about how when Peter tells us this He also gives us some counsel on what our approach is to be.

So he continues in 1 Peter 3, verses 15 and 16, tell us that when we do this, we should do it with gentleness, with respect, with a good conscience, and exhibiting good behavior.

And we spent quite a bit of time yesterday talking about why it's so important that this is our approach when we engage with these questions.

We want to respect other people because that's the only way to have a productive conversation, productive dialogue, right?

If you're just trying to overpower them or trying to strongman them, they won't be really receptive.

The need for gentleness in our tone and our approach, the need to be living out what we're talking about, good behavior and the importance of that.

And so good conscience, we wanna make sure we're using only the strongest and the best arguments, we're not being dishonest in any way.

And so that was yesterday, we discussed that quite a bit.

We looked at this quote from Ministry of Healing that said, the strongest argument for the gospel isn't any intellectual argument that we might give, these are good, but the strongest 1 is a loving and lovable Christian.

And so ultimately we're going to be living that out.

As we live that out though, we do want to be prepared to answer specific questions that come up.

And so what I want us to do today is focus on science, and I want to begin by introducing some of this tension you've probably felt between faith and science.

So here are a couple of memes, some internet memes that, that exhibit this.

It says, science is different to all the other systems of thought, because you don't need faith in it.

And somehow science is better than faith.

Here's another meme that kind of exhibits the tension.

It says, religion gave us the dark ages, science gave us the space age.

And here's a pretty cool photo of the Earth from the Moon, trying to make the point look like a science got us to the Moon, not religion.

If you have questions about the nature of the universe, the religious approach is you pray for it, and the assumption is, you know, You don't get any answer.

But in science, you can go out and you can build the 17-mile long, $55 billion machine, the particle accelerator at CERN, and we can investigate.

And so it's trying to draw a contrast between investigation and critical thought from just praying and not getting a response.

Without science, progress would be impossible.

Without religion, progress would be unstoppable.

And so it's saying that science is the source of progress and religion is constantly holding it back.

Have any of you ever felt this tension at all?

Or has anyone heard anyone characterize this tension in a similar way?

Or what are some of the ways that you've heard it characterized?

Okay, Particularly on the topic of creation.

Have you ever heard of a tension between faith and science?

Or someone expressed the 2 odds with each other?

The idea that- the modern idea that science has replaced our need for God.

So science has replaced our need for God.

That before when there was something like lightning, you were like, God did it, but now we know better.

And since we know better, we can explain scientifically what happened.

So we don't need to appeal to God or gods.

We don't need the idea of Zeus, anything like that.

I've heard people say that science or that religion is a crutch.

Like, it's a nice way to make you feel good emotionally, but there's nothing true behind it.

Probably seen in some form either, you know, online or talking with friends, this tension.

What I want to do is suggest that if we look historically and we look at just the, the intellectual foundations of science, that's a very different story.

Instead of there being an inheritance or conflict, Christianity provides actually a rich basis for science.

And so what I'm going to do- oh, here's 1 more, 1 more meme.

Here they define science as science is God's way of telling you he does not exist.

All of these expressions of science kind of have this idea behind it, that science is a superior type of knowledge, or maybe the only kind of legitimate knowledge.

So the logician Bertrand Russell expressed this idea well.

20th century he wrote, whatever knowledge is attainable must be attainable by scientific methods.

And what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

So Russell was arguing that the only kind of true knowledge is the knowledge from science and everything else, especially religion or faith or all these other kinds where we think of as knowledge isn't really true knowledge.

What's your reaction to Russell's statement?

So Russell himself is claiming to know something, and Russell's claiming to know that the only type of knowledge we can have is scientific knowledge.

So Russell says, okay, let me tell you something, we can only have scientific knowledge.

But then your response to Russell should be, well, how do you know that?

So he's making an extra scientific claim.

He's saying the only kind of true knowledge there is a scientific knowledge, But this is a philosophical claim, not a scientific claim.

So if he really believed the only kind of true knowledge there was was scientific knowledge, well, he wouldn't be able to believe it, because it undermines itself.

I want to know if he can scientifically demonstrate that he likes his pipe.

That's a fantastic picture of him smoking a pipe.

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age - Part 3

Father God, thank you for the opportunity that we have to know you, that you have made available through scripture, through history, even through pagan historians who recorded things that they didn't even know would be used by Christians to make a case for Christianity.

Thank you, Father, for how you have guided in history and how most importantly you revealed yourself to us through Jesus.

Lord, may I be surrendered in my heart today.

May you come through and may each of us listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us so that we would take this information and not be hoarders of it, but that we would put this information to use in practical ways with people that we know in a way that would bear fruit for your kingdom.

Bless us now, may your Holy Spirit be here, Father.

This whole seminar is called Reasons for Hope, the Case for Faith in a Secular Age.

Maybe some of you have heard before of the term apologetics.

Well if you have not, Christian apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia.

Apologia, and as I'm gonna hook up my clicker here, we have our apologetic mandate in Scripture.

You can follow along on the slides or you can open up your Bible if you'd like.

If you were to turn to 1st Peter 3 15, this is sometimes referred to as the apologetics mandate in Scripture.

Try to get my a little clicker working here.

Yes, alright, the apologetics mandate in scripture given to us by the Apostle Peter and he says, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you yet do it and gentleness and respect so according to scripture we are encouraged to always be ready to do what Give an answer for the faith that is in us and yet to do it in such a way that we don't leave the person feeling like they got beaten with a stick, right?

Because it's 1 thing to lovingly share your faith, it's another thing to be like, I got an answer for that and I got an answer for that and I got an answer for that and hopefully you've never accomplished like you've never come across people like that but the idea is to not obviously to not be that type of Christian but the term here to make a defense is the Greek term apologia which literally means to to give an answer not necessarily to apologize So when we talk about Christian apologetics, it's how do we give an answer to a generation of people or to people who are not believers, who are skeptic regarding the truth claims of the Bible, of the existence of God, and so the intention of this seminar, and I'm really happy that the theme is being a witness because I think something that's really cool is this is an incredibly practical way to meet people in the 21st century, which is increasingly skeptical and increasingly secularizing.

And so hopefully what you get today and throughout the week of these seminars, this is something that can be helpful for you.

We also have this counsel though as well.

I don't want to be negligent of the fact, I don't want to oversell a clever argument.

Do you remember what the Apostle Paul said about worldly wisdom?

And the gospel is considered foolishness to the worldly wise.

So I'm not at all trying to oversell this as like, this is it!

You don't need biblical arguments anymore because you can just have all these facts and all of a sudden you've got somebody to be a believer.

That's a bunch of dumb if somebody tries to say that is the case, alright?

So we have this really important counsel from Ellen White, while God has given ample evidence for our faith, he will never remove all excuse for unbelief.

All who look for hooks to hang their doubts upon will find them.

And those who refuse to accept and obey God's Word until every objection has been removed and there is no longer an opportunity for doubt will never come to the light." So you can spend a lot of time saying, well, I'll wait for 1 more thing to really convince me of the truths of the Bible.

So the attempt with Christian apologetics is to train ourselves not to think that we can fact people into surrendering to Jesus.

In fact, there's a handout for you right there.

And if anyone didn't get a handout, there's some up here and we just ran out.

Buddy up with somebody next to you and look over their shoulder and you can share with somebody.

Alright, So the main and important thing here is that we're never gonna argue somebody into the kingdom of God.

But what we can do is we can try to provide good and convincing evidence that could help remove barriers for doubt for some people.

In Adventism, we have a lot of very sweet and surrendered people.

But sometimes, if you're a person who's in your brain, you spend all your time over here, kind of like in maybe like math, science, and rationalities, and you want maybe some more cold hard evidence then oh I just felt sweet in my soul and there's nothing wrong with over here you know the dear sister who I just I just have this tender and sweet connection with Jesus and that's awesome right Jesus says blessed are those who he said to Thomas and John 21 blessed are those who believe without having seen right but at the same time that doesn't mean that we're to totally neglect the brother over here who's saying but how do I know any of this is true how do I know I can rely on it so that's what we're gonna be looking at today Today we are looking at faith and history.

There's so many things we could talk about in history and as every single history teacher knows, and there's at least 1 more in here other than me and that's my dad, I teach history as well, you know that you can never cover everything in history.

So really you kind of just start to pick and choose what you think is the most important and try to give people the tools to know how to study it for themselves.

So rather than make a case for how Christianity has almost single-handedly created Western civilization, which if you want to have a conversation about that, I think I can make that case, Rather than going into that type of stuff or mathematical probabilities for Jesus being the Christ just by computing them from Old Testament prophecies, we are going to look at the questions.

Do we have evidence to believe that it's reliable history?

Do we have evidence to believe that it is written by the people that it says it was written by?

Do we have evidence to believe that it hasn't been changed through the centuries?

And finally, we're going to finish looking at my favorite of them all we're gonna look at evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and we're gonna try to make a cumulative case for the historical reliability of the Bible but first some common objections have you ever seen or heard of the Da Vinci Code really Really famous bestseller that hit the press, I don't know, it was well over 10 years now.

But left behind, there's all sorts of, there's a popular film series and I think even a popular television show that came out by the same author.

Series

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age - Part 2

Transcript

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