On Monday I searched the Sovereign Grace Ministries audio library for the word “apologetics”
and found this excellent message called Conversational Apologetics by Michael
Ramsden (connected with Ravi Zacharias) given at Covenant Life Church in MD. I’ve
heard it before, but don’t know how long ago it’s been. It’s excellent (the
British accent is always a plus!), and I took notes. Most of this is direct transcription.
Listen to the 2 part audio here.
“They say I’ve got to learn, but there’s no one here to
teach me. If they don’t understand, then how can they reach me? I guess they
can’t. I guess they won’t. I guess they front, that’s how I know my life is out
of luck.”
-British rap artist
1 Peter 3:15-16:
“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 with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience”
The setting for the command to give an apologetic is, “how
are you living your life?” Live your life as you should do. And the assumption
is this, because your life is being lived a way which is different, people will
ask you questions. So if people aren’t asking you questions, you have to ask
yourself the question “how am I living my life?” In 2 Cor 3 it says we are
living letters known and read by everybody. How does your life read? What does
it say? Is it being lived in the way it should be?
“But in your heart set apart Christ as Lord.” The Greek word
“heart” refers to the seat of your intellectual and emotional life. And it’s
saying, “you’re about to enter into a spiritual battle. Giving an apologetic,
giving an answer to those who don’t know why you believe what you believe, that’s
entering into a spiritual battle. And before you do that, you’re told to make
sure that Christ’s lordship is settled in your life. And the word “heart” is
the seat over your emotional and your intellectual life. Over your thoughts and
over your feelings. Over everything that you are, He is to be Lord. In James it
talks about the double minded mind. It says the “double minded man is unstable
in all that he does. It says he’s like a wave blown and tossed about by the
winds. Whichever way the wind is blowing he gets carried with it. When the wind
of opinion changes, he goes the other way. He’s unstable in everything he’s
done. Even in prayer he’s ineffective. To be double minded doesn’t mean to be
two faced. It’s not like pretending to be one thing to someone and pretending
to be another thing to someone else. It means to be caught in two opinions. It
means you don’t know what the truth is, which is why you’re always being
carried about by whatever strange new teaching comes along. If you are to
engage in this battle, you have to know what we believe, what is the truth, so
that then you may be rooted in Christ. And then ready for the spiritual battle.
“And always be prepared” - the word “prepared” means in this
text to get physically fit. In other words, Peter is giving us a command here,
through the Holy Spirit, which he knows is going to be hard work. Getting fit
is much harder (than getting a degree and then forgetting what you learned in
college), because once you get fit you have to stay fit….this is not easy. If
you came here tonight for just a quick fix in apologetics, then you’re going to
be disappointed.
“Always be ready to give an answer”- “answer” and “defense”
are not the best words. Giving an apologetic is not simply giving answers to
other people’s questions. It’s also about asking questions of other people’s
answers or even asking questions of the questions themselves [I like doing
this! I find it much easier to slow things down to understand one another and
make us think than to plough ahead with assumptions and miscommunications that
could have been avoided by asking questions].
Things that asking questions does:
1 - Exposes the assumptions that exist within our culture.
Matt 22
Jesus asks questions because it forces people to think. Giving
the right answer to the wrong question is always wrong.
2 - Exposes faulty
logic. Mark 12:18
3 – Defines words
4 – Exposes motives. People have reasons for believing what
they believe. They have motives for them.
5 – Exposes contradictions. When someone tells you there is
no such thing at truth, they are asking you not to believe them. So don’t. The
culture we live in is so confused, that sometimes we have to ask questions just
to bring clarity.
“How” is not “why”. If someone asks you why you are a
Christian, don’t answer with how you became one. “Why” is not asking for a
process; it’s asking for a reason.
Apologetics is not a philosophy driven discipline. It’s a
Scriptural driven discipline. It’s driven by Scripture because it’s about
Christ. So it informs everything we say and the direction in which everything
flows. Apologetics and evangelism go hand in hand.
“but do this with gentleness and respect and keeping a clear
conscience” – why do we give an apologetic? Because we love God and also because
we love people. We treat them with gentleness. People are not an argument to be
won. “Keeping a clear conscience,” in other words you don’t lie. When you don’t
know, you say “I don’t know.”
Faith – putting your weight and trust in something because
it is true. So how does faith grow? Well, the more sure you are as to God’s
reality, that he is there, and the more convinced you are as to his truth (in
other words his integrity, that you can trust him) the stronger your faith. Faith
is the response to God’ s truth and reality.
Faith is not a mental psychological condition where you
psych yourself up into believing something that isn’t there, or convince
yourself that you should trust God even though you think that you shouldn’t. Real
faith is knowing who God is and trusting truth and his reality. That’s
ultimately what it’s about.
God loves people. When we are talking with someone and
raising this question, there are two things that we are trying to do. One, we
are trying to assure them as to God’s moral character: he is true, he is just,
he is fair. No one brings a moral complaint against God on the day of judgment.
And two, God is doing things that we don’t
even know about.
