Video Transcript: Living Proof

Why is it that so many, even from within the church would leave the church? Well, those who commissioned the study were an apologetics ministry, as I said, and so part of their explanation was, it's not enough apologetics. One finding of the study is that Sunday school attendance makes it less likely that kids will remain in church. Now, this isn't necessarily true of all Sunday schools, I suppose. 

But overall, Sunday school attendance actually made it less likely that kids would remain in the church. And so it was thought that perhaps one of the problems was that Sunday School tended to treat history as cute stories instead of actual events. And that divine truth becomes entertaining to keep the kids engaged, but in the process, sends a signal that this is not real history to be believed that this is not a real awesome God to be adored, but something a little more on the line of Sesame Street. And so when kids outgrow Sesame Street, they outgrow God. And it might work better and help if there were better, more solid biblical instruction that takes Bible and its history seriously, that takes God as a great and awesome God and stronger apologetics and explanations, defending the truth of the Scriptures and setting it forth might help a lot. That was the conclusion of the authors of this study. 

Now, I think that there's a lot of truth in that. I also think it's not the whole truth. The fact that I think there's a lot of truth in it is one reason why I teach apologetics. I think apologetics can be helpful. And I certainly believe that the teaching of the Bible's history as history and of God as real, and not just as a character on Sesame Street is very, very important. But it's not just a matter of not enough apologetics or clear enough teaching that would account for so many young people leaving the church, spiritual life, life in Christ is caught, not just taught. And so there may be problems in how its taught True enough, and those must be addressed. But we also have to ask, why is it not being caught? Why are people missing out on the reality of the life of Jesus Christ, even when they're growing up in congregations? Are young people abandoned in Christian community because they have not been seeing or tasting the Christ life there? 

The fact of matter is apologetics can seem kind of like just kind of an academic argument. If you're already experiencing and tasting the Christ life and knowing the reality of Jesus Christ firsthand. Or the dropouts from church lacking a living encounter with God and a delight in public worship and loving communion in the body of Christ. Do they see people loving one another? Do they sense a spirit of awe when the people are worshiping God together? And obviously, have they encountered God if they haven't encountered God, you really shouldn't expect them to stick with Church throughout their lives. Young church goers need also to interact daily with the Lord themselves in their own time with the Lord and be live in for him and they need to be tasting dynamic community. 

So we'd be fooling ourselves if we said all people need to do is have good teachings and good answers to tough questions. And then all will be well. You need a daily interaction with God a daily walk with God, and you need to be part of a dynamic community of God's people. People in order to follow Christ need Living Proof, as well as teaching they need the proof of the lives of people around them, and the proof of the life of Christ within them. 

Now, one of the questions that some people have that you can learn in an apologetics course to address is why follow Christ when so many churchgoers are hypocrites. And let's just think about that one for A moment and in relation to this matter of living proof. Oftentimes when people say this, oh, there's so many hypocrites in church, I'm not going to go there somebody hypocrites, I'm not going to be a Christian.

 Well, often this is either just a very, very shallow excuse as a way of brushing you off and saying, Don't talk to me about Christ, or it reflects a really, really deep wound and something that happened to them at the hands of a really nasty hypocrite, Christian, supposedly, or at least a churchgoer who did terrible things to them, or set a horrible example in front of them. And so we need to find out whether they're making just a shallow excuse or a deep wound, we can deal with it by asking, Well, were you ever hurt deeply by a church? Or were you ever hurt deeply by a churchgoer? who's close to you? And if that's the case, you need to deal with them in compassion, and love? And then you need to maybe give them a few of apologetic explanations. You don't judge Jesus by His worst followers. You have to listen to Jesus himself and focus on Jesus, not on those who claim to know Jesus, but have not been following him. 

Well, you also have to ask this question, in all honesty with somebody, especially those who are you using it as a shallow excuse? Are you so perfectly pure and honest, if you're not what makes you too good to associate with the flawed people in church, you're lucky, they're hypocrites in church, they might have room for one more you. And if you had discovered a perfect church and then joined it, your very presence would spoil it. So for those who are using it as a shallow excuse, there are some pretty plain straightforward answers that they need to be challenged with. And for those who have been deeply hurt, they need to be touched by the love of Christ. 

But let me just comment again. Sometimes I was tempted to just say, Oh, that's so lame to say that you're not going to follow Christ. Because some church chores churchgoers are hypocrites. Well, it is lame from an intellectual point of view in some respects. But at another level, if Christianity is real, we shouldn't just need lots of explanations and fancy talk about it and defending it. We ought to be able to, in a sense, experience firsthand, its reality. Now, let me just be very straight here. It is harder for me to believe that God is real, when church gatherings seem dull. And when church people seem not to be full of Christ's life, and the spirits fruit, I can be a pastor, I can have my head full of apologetic arguments and proofs and evidences for the faith. And yet when I see very little of the reality of God and God's life and people around me, it drags down the strength of my faith in my sense of God's reality. Want to know something that drags my sense of God's reality down even more? My own failings? It is especially hard for me to believe God is real when my personal walk with the Lord seems dull. 

When I have fallen into sin, when my own life has little evidence of Christ's life, and of the spirits fruit, I can't just kind of work myself up into stronger faith and more excitement about the things of God when I've been living like a hypocrite. So at one level, yeah, it's just kind of phony baloney to say it places Christ's reality and doubt when are so many hypocrites, but where the rubber hits the road. When I'm surrounded by people who aren't really walking with the Lord, it drags me down. And when Worst of all, I'm not walking with the Lord. Then my mind starts getting confused. Jesus wants said Men love darkness instead of light because their deeds are evil. Someone else has said, the Bible will either keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible. 

Think about that. The Bible leader keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible. And it just gets very, very hard to rejoice in the Lord or to listen to God's word when you're choosing another path. And it gets very hard to take Jesus seriously when the people of God are not walking with the Lord. So we need to take this matter of Living Proof very, very seriously.

Here's the basic question can other people see and taste gospel truth in you, they should be able to see it in you. You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others says Jesus so that they may see your good works and give glory to your fathers and who is in heaven. You're the salt of the earth, says Jesus they should be able to taste gospel truth in you. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders making the best use of the time. 

Let your speech always be gracious season with salt so that you may know how you're to answer each person. So it's important to know how to answer but you need to be gracious and Reason with salt as you give those answers can other people see and taste gospel truth in you. In the century after the New Testament was written a person, either named Mathates or else is simply a disciple of God because my face is what disciple means, wrote a letter to a person named Mathates, who was inquiring about the faith. And one of his big apologetic arguments was simply how transformed and how different. The Christians were from other people. 

They live in their own countries, but as people whose true home is elsewhere, they have babies, but they don't destroy fetuses. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They love all men and are persecuted by all. They are reviled and blessed, they are insulted and repay the insult with honor. 

They do good, yet they are punished as evildoers. When punished, they rejoice, yet those who hate them are unable to give any reason for their hatred. Do not wonder that a man may become an imitator of God he can, if he is willing, he who carries the burden of his neighbor, he who uses whatever advantage he has over someone to help that person, he who takes what God gives him and distributes it to people in need, becomes a God to those who receive His benefits. He is an imitator of God, then you will see while you are still on Earth, that God in the heavens rules over the universe. 

Notice what he's doing. He's not just giving proofs and evidences, he says, you will see while you're still on earth, when God is doing all of this through somebody when people are imitators of God, that is one of the most powerful, apologetic arguments for the Christian faith is when Christians strike people as being godlike. Jesus himself says, By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Love is living proof that someone is a disciple of Jesus Christ, living proof that Jesus and his father are the God of love. That's why I like the title of voting bathrooms book, the ever loving truth. It's a book about truth, but it's the ever loving truth that God whoever loves but also God's people who are to ever be loving one another, and ever to be loving those to whom we bring the truth. 

The great apologist Francis Schaeffer from a few decades ago said, without true Christians loving one another Christ says the world cannot be expected to listen, even when we give proper answers again, people will know we're Christ's disciples by our love, not just by our good answers. Schaefer goes on to say let us be very careful and need to spend a lifetime studying to give honest answers. For years the Orthodox Evangelical Church has done this very poorly. So it is well to spend time learning to answer the questions of men who are about us. So apologetics and being able to give an answer is very important.

But after we have done our best to communicate to a lost world, still, we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gives is the observable love of true Christians, for true Christians. Love is the final apologetic according to Francis Schaeffer, your manner, the way you deal with people adorns your message, the truth you're trying to bring to them, but in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord, always be ready to make a defense to do your apologetic to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. 

But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ, maybe ashamed of their slander, so you have this pure conscious this upright life, and a gentle and respectful way of dealing with other people and then they'll hear or at least or be more likely to hear the defense that you make. 

CS Lewis was another great apologist from a few decades ago. He wrote in a letter to a woman who was wondering how she could help a person who had hard questions about the faith because of tough times she'd been through and wasn't willing to listen to any good arguments in favor of Christianity. Lewis wrote this, where people can resist and ignore arguments, they may be unable to resist lives. I am afraid, my dear lady, the only hope lie As in you, and in any other Christian friends she has. Sometimes when we're dealing with someone who's not a Christian, we say, Oh, if all I could find the perfect book to hand to them that they could read and learn from CS Lewis is saying, hey, there is no hope in any book for this person. That person's only hope is in the Christians. They know right now, because they're not ready to hear any arguments. They can only be won by lives. 

Lewis also said that real holiness would be irresistible. He says, if even 10% of the world's population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year's end? Now, he may be exaggerating a bit, but he say, Wow, if just 10% of the world's population were truly Christ, like, Wow, what an impact that would have on the entire world in a very, very short time. One of my favorite preachers Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones said the greatest need of the church today is the personal holiness of its ministers, personal holiness, truly walking with God, and having a sense of God in your own life and, and one that others could sense too, this is key.T his is living proof that others need AW Tozer said, when we talk about the holiness of God, we talk about something heavenly, full of awe, mysterious and fear inspiring. Now, this is supreme when it relates to God. 

But it is also marked in men of God and deepens as men become more like God. So God is the only truly fully holy one who is so mysterious and awesome and awe inspiring. But something of that begins to rub off on people of God. Tozer says, It is a sense of awareness of the other world, a mysterious quality and difference that has come to rest upon some men, that is holiness. When a good man with this special quality and mysterious presence is morally right and walking in all the holy ways of God, and carries upon himself without even knowing it, the fragrance of a kingdom that is supreme above the kingdoms of this world.

In the Old Testament priests who were in the tabernacle, and in the presence of all the objects that had had the anointing oil with its special scent upon them what emerged from there with the scent of the temple upon them. And Tozer is saying that those who spend time in the presence of the Holy God have this fragrance of the kingdom, this fragrance of the King about them. 

When Moses came back says Towser from the mountain everyone could tell where he had been. The lightning still played over his countenance, the glory of the presence remained. This strange something which men cannot pin down or identify was there. I lament that this mysterious quality of holy presence has all but forsaken the earth, in our day, goes or says, if we are what we ought to be in Christ and by His Holy Spirit. If the whole sum of our lives beginning with the inner life is becoming more godlike and Christ like I believe something of that divine and mysterious quality and presence will be upon us. 

Notice, he says, beginning with the inner life, that time you spend with the Lord, when you're a person of prayer of communion with God, a person of the word, listen to God, a person of worship, a person desiring more and more of God's reality, and holiness. If that characterizes your inner desires, it's going to start radiating from you this mysterious quality. Tozer says I have met a few of God's saints who appeared to have this holy brightness upon them, but they didn't know it because of their humility and gentleness of spirit. I do not hesitate to confess that my fellowship with them has meant more to me than all the teaching I have ever received. I do stand deeply indebted to every Bible teacher I have had through the years, but they did little that instruct my head. 

The brethren I have known who have this strange and mysterious quality and awareness of God's person and presence, instructed my heart instructed my heart because there was a sense of God there and not just God talk.

First, bring your life into line morally, so that God can make it holy. Then bring your spiritual life into line that God may settle upon you with the Holy Ghost with that quality of a wonderful and the mysterious and the divine. Oh that we might yearn for the knowledge in the presence of God in our lives from moment to moment, so that without human cultivation and without toilsome, seeking, there would come upon us this inducement that gives meaning to our witness is a sweet and radiant fragrance. And I suggest that in some of our churches, it may be strongly sensed and felt this friends is what we seek the inducement to the the anointing of God gives a meaning to our witness to our personal witness. 

And then as we pray for that, and God brings it on our churches, it can be strongly sensed, and felt in our churches, that God is among us. And this is not just a matter of accurate teaching, or persuasive evidence and arguments. It is a matter of the very presence of God, and communion with God. And it is this that we need for its own sake, because we need God. And it is this that we need for the sake of our witnessing, because others need to encounter God through his people. 

The medium is the message was a slogan from some time ago about a scholar of communications. It's not just the stuff you say, it is the very medium that you're communicating through. And for the Christian, the medium is the message. 

Part of it is truth, knowing, explaining, making the case for biblical gospel truth, and you need to be a person of the Bible for that, to have the Bible almost oozing from your pores, to be somebody who loves the Bible, but not just to be the Bible Answer Man who can answer anybody's question about any part of the Bible, but to be a person who also has the real goodness of God, where you've become more and more obedient, doing right as God commands and walking in the ways of Jesus Christ, to be a person of love. When you love God, you adore him, and you love others. And people can sense that you love them, that you care about them, and that God is loving them through you. And this mysterious quality of holiness. 

These are all tied together, you can't separate them. Holiness, where you commune with the Holy, holy one, and his fragrance rubs off on you, his light, radiates and shines from you and his Holy otherness is sensed by those who run into you. They may not know what it is, if they're not people of God at all, but they know there's something different. And it's not just because you're weird. It's because you are truly different, and another world has taken hold of you, and another life has come to live within you. In order to be a powerful apologist for the Lord. We need to be living proof, grow in knowledge, study scripture, learn as best you can, how to explain and defend the faith depending on your intellectual powers and your gifts of memory and the explanation. 

You can grow in your ability to be a verbal apologist, grow in goodness, seek to obey God's commands and to bear fruit, not just to honor God, although that is supreme, not just to develop yourself to become more like Christ, that's extremely important, but also, to be powerful in witness. Don't think you can live a wicked life, and yet have good explanations that are going to win lots of people to Christ. grow in love, love as Christ loved you. 

This means when you love that you have more persuasion arguments where you're kind of reaching out to people and willing to engage them in dialogue and less bicker arguments are just griping and firing back and forth trying to show them how stupid they are. You can chant and said something that I liked very much and that I often repeat, says it's a shame to let a good argument turn into a quarrel. 

There is such a thing as a good argument where you're having a real dialogue and trying to persuade somebody but don't let it be a quarrel. Let it be a communication of the love and let your love for others shine upon them. And that is more likely to win them than any pile of proofs you can give them and growing holding us spend time each day with God. Be a person of God. Make sure you know God, stay connected to God. Listen to him, speak to him, commune with Him and then as you emerge from his presence, there will be something about you that others will sense and they want to know what that is. And then you can convey and you can give account of the hope that's in you to anyone who asks. As an old saint said, always preach. Use words when necessary. Be living proof of the reality of Jesus Christ.