Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Conditions For Success III (Part 30)

Begin our class tonight with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, as we come into your presence tonight, we again ask that you would humble our hearts, that you would convict us of our sins, that you'd make us truly repentant, that you might grant to us the gift of faith in Jesus Christ, and that you might make us faithful to the Savior. We do thank you for your word as a precious gift that has been given to us. We pray that we would treat it properly, that we would mine its depths, that we would take to heart what it teaches us, that we might more faithfully and truly represent you. We pray, Father, that you might help us by your word to become more persuasive and winsome in our defending the Christian faith in our Savior Jesus Christ. We do pray that you would help us to understand the way in which you wish for us to say a word in defense of the word that you have given. We do pray that you would give us insight so that our method as well as our intentions and our ends, would be pleasing to you. And we ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. In this last unit in our apologetics class, I have been looking at the conditions of apologetical success. Tonight we come to chapters 22 and 23 in the apologetic syllabus. Chapter 22 is entitled not Being Beguiled as Was Eve. If we're going to be successful apologist, then we need to make sure that our method does not commit the same error as did that of Eve in the Garden of Eden. That's kind of the point of this chapter. I'm going to go through it in detail in just a second, but before I do that, obviously what I'm considering. Successful apologetics is not necessarily what many other apologists consider successful apologetics anyway. The measure of success is not whether you get your opponent to cry uncle. The measure of success is not whether you win at intellectual chess with someone. The measure of success is whether you do the job God's called you to do in the way God calls you to do it. And it is very important, not simply that we try to get people to affirm and profess the truth as it's found in Jesus Christ, but that our way of pursuing that end is faithful to God. And that's why the title of this chapter hopefully will stick with you. If you wish to be a successful defender of the faith, you need to make sure that you don't fall into the error of Eve. And I'll try to give you a little tidbit to Think about here for a minute before we actually get to Eve, pose a hypothetical question to you that one of my students in seminary once used. So it's not my illustration. I thought it was rather cute, though, and I've held onto it. He asked this question. He said, what if Eve had reasoned in the following way? Satan says, well, the serpent says I should go ahead and eat this fruit. However, I've already had my allotted number of calories for today, and I'm getting a little plump around the middle. And so I'm not going to eat that fruit because that really wouldn't give me what I want, a nice svelte figure. Would that have been pleasing to God? Think about that for a few moments as we begin tonight's lesson. I begin chapter 22 by looking at First Corinthians, chapter 1, and I claim that the world demands signs and philosophical proofs about God and the Gospel, which will cater to the world's own assumptions and will cater to the world's presumed autonomy in the realm of the theory of knowledge. Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 1. We'll look at verses 22 and 23, First Corinthians 1, 22, 23 for indeed, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified to Jews, a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness And notice. Paul's concern here, obviously, is for the conclusion, the truth of the gospel, that people reach the right conclusions about Christ, about God and about His Word. However, he's also concerned what's it saying in verse 22 that Jews are seeking for signs and Greeks are seeking after what they call wisdom. And Paul is concerned that they are wrong to do that. Paul is concerned because with that mentality, with that outlook, they necessarily see the preaching of Christ as a stumbling block in foolishness. That isn't what we want. We want signs, we want wisdom. We want things that cater to our demand for proof. The Christian is to reason with the unbeliever. You've heard me for months now say that we are to use our intellectual ability. We are to reason with unbelievers. But we must remember that such reasoning does not require that we abandon our own presuppositions to play the part of a neutral observer who can adjudicate all hypotheses in the religious domain or purported claims about revelation from whatever gods there may be. To reason with unbelievers does not mean we're committed to reasoning the way they reason. First Corinthians 2:1, Paul says, and when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. My manner of arguing with you and persuading you was not by Greek wisdom. I didn't do that. Instead, he says in verses 2 to 5 that his proclamation was rooted in the word of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and power that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Paul says we shouldn't have faith that rests upon human wisdom. When Greeks say, I want wisdom, I want argumentation, I want something that dazzles me intellectually, I want something that satisfies my autonomy. Paul says, I don't want faith founded on that kind of thing. I don't want to give in to that kind of demand. Saving faith is founded on the Word and the power of God, not on the wisdom of men. Without the word of God, without revelation from God, we have said there can be no theoretical basis for logic or for science or for history or argumentation or human dignity. One's thought can have no meaningful content. One's thought can have no dependable use. One's thinking can have no objective referent. One's thought can have no certainty apart from thinking God's thought thoughts after him based on his own revelation. Apologetical success, I say, hinges on that realization. Now notice, if you work with that realization, two things happen. First, you can be bold and challenging unbelieving presuppositions. You don't have to say, well, there's a little bit going for what you have to say and a little bit for me. But very probably I'm right. You can be bold in challenging the unbeliever. Where is the wise? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? It's all or nothing. It's light and darkness. It's truth and error. And that's a bold challenge. But not only do we get a bold challenge out of that approach, we also remain loyal to Christ's lordship. We can challenge unbelievers that way. And the challenge does not compromise loyalty to the superiority of Christ as the authority in the realm of knowledge. We want to tell the unbeliever that he fights against the gospel only at the cost of ruining his own intellectual efforts that if he wants to be a scientist or historian or philosopher, a logician or debater or an artist, whatever it is, that he cannot accomplish what he wants in this world by fighting against the gospel. In Galatians 2. 5, you notice Paul makes remarks about not giving in to his opponents, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the Gospel might remain with you. Now, granted, he's dealing here with theological heretics, as it were, but the point is, the opponents of the Gospel, he says, we didn't give in not so much for an hour. As I recall, I think the Greek there is not even an hour. So we haven't given in even for a moment to them. I say that because we'll see in chapter 23 of the syllabus in just a few moments. There are some people who say, when it comes to theology, we must presuppose the superior authority of God's Word and never challenge it. But in apologetics, then you can suspend your commitment to God's Word and look for independent proofs. It's as though you have an upward movement in apologetics to the place where we finally say, oh, yeah, the Bible is the word of God. I've proven that according to my own strictures, my own standards and methods. And now from this point, I go down the other way and say, okay, I never can challenge God's Word. That has to have the final authority. It's kind of like my reasoning has final authority until I see that Jesus is who he said he was. And then from that point on, Jesus has final authority. But Paul says that he did not give in to his opponents for even a moment. He didn't say, well, I didn't make common cause with them to please them, okay, I'll suspend the truth of the Gospel long enough to get to this particular point. And then after that, of course, we have to not for a moment. The life of the believer is uniformly characterized by submission to the lordship of Christ in the realm of knowledge, so that every thought is brought captive to the obedience of Christ. Now, in the second column, on the first page of chapter 22, I suggest that the account of man's fall into sin as we find it in Genesis 3, would teach us as much that we should not suspend our commitment to God's Word and to its final authority, even when we're defending God's Word. What do we find in Genesis 3? God has put man and his wife in the garden. He's given them a command Prohibition not to eat of a particular fruit, eat of a particular tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Eve, and I believe Adam was with her at the time. Some of you have heard my speculation on that point. Nevertheless, the serpent comes along and addresses Eve and wants to know why Eve doesn't eat of this particular tree. And what is Satan's strategy through the serpent? It's first to cast doubt upon the word of God. Has God said, oh, come on, God wouldn't tell you not to eat of this tree. Look how good it is now, come on, God doesn't. God wouldn't say that sort of thing. And then he kind of ups the ante in this discussion with Eve. He says, oh, well, God doesn't want you to be like him. He's jealous of his own prerogatives. Which is interesting, because that's true. He is. God doesn't want man to become like God in the sense that the prerogatives and authority of God are stolen by man. The knowledge of good and evil depends upon the word of God, not upon the experience of man. And so God says, don't eat of this truth. Satan says, you want to be like God? Want to be godly? You want to become an equal with God? Go ahead and eat now. At this point, Eve should have said, get behind me, Satan. Hit the road. God, the Creator, has never done anything that would make me doubt him. There is no basis upon which I could doubt his word. If I doubted his word, all my reason would become meaningless. And so I won't even entertain your hypothesis. But Eve made a fatal mistake. What Eve did is she said, well, God says this, if I eat, I'll die. Satan says this, if I eat, I'll not only live, but I'll really, you know, have good things happen to me. So I've really got here two hypotheses, and I'll have to judge between them. And you'll have people tell you repeatedly in apologetics, you have to accept that you cannot just begin with the truth of Christianity. Christianity is just one hypothesis among many. You can't beg the question. Eve could. God expected her to. She didn't, though. She listened to the suggestions of Satan and she ended up suspending her thinking, excuse me, suspending her commitment to God's word in order to exalt her thinking as the primary authority to exalt her thinking over God's word. Now, let me come back to my question. Satan says, eve, here's this good tree here. Certainly God doesn't want to deprive you of any good thing. Go ahead and eat this tree from the street. And Eve goes through this reasoning process. She goes, well, I'm going to have to decide for myself. Obviously, God says one thing, Serpent says another. I'll have to be the judge. Now, I think she blew it right there when she made herself the judge. She should have said, God has said, that settles it. There's no reasoning about this, just a question of obedience and submission. But now she starts reasoning about it and she says, well, I think I've had too many calories today. Nah, Satan, I'm not going to eat that because I don't want to get fat. And so the end of the story on the Bahnsen revised edition. The end of the story. The end of the story is Eve doesn't eat the forbidden fruit and the human race lives happily ever after. Right? No one was willing to say, that's okay, but the outcome was good. She didn't eat. What's the point here? Her motive for not eating, was it ungodly? Shouldn't Eve want to have a nice figure for her husband? What's that? That's right. She decided for her own self and for her own purposes. Well, as long as what God says goes along with what I want nice figure, then I won't eat. You see, arriving at the proper end is not the only thing that counts here. She was to not eat the fruit for the right reason. And the right reason is not, oh, I can find good reason for God to tell me this, and I can find reasons that please me and my own thinking and desires. The right reason was God's the final authority. You shut up, you dumb snake. She should have just said, who are you? God made you. You have no right to talk back to God. And I'm not going to join you in doing that. I'm not even going to think about doing that. And so it's not enough that you get people to come to the right conclusion. God also expects that we come to the right conclusions for the right reason. And now if the unbeliever says, well, I'll believe the Bible, I'll come to faith. If God just satisfies the following demands from me intellectually, and then we say, oh, good, now we know what to do. We'll go out and we'll get those demands satisfied and this person will become a Christian, won't that be great? My answer is, if you understand the story about Eve and her dietary considerations, no, that wouldn't be great. In fact, we might have Reason apart from the fact that God graciously uses even bad methods sometimes to achieve his gracious ends, God is not pleased with that approach at all. Second Corinthians 11:3. Paul says, but I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, that your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Paul says, I'm worried, I'm afraid that you're being misled from the simplicity of devotion to Christ, what in the history of theology is often called the simplicity of faith. Now by the simplicity of faith we in a sense include the idea that the Christian faith is so simple that even a child would, with the simple mentality of a child, can understand, affirm it and be saved. But the simplicity of faith is more than just that even children can understand. The simplicity of faith is that there's not a lot of subtlety and human authority and intellectual craftiness in this. It's simply a matter of recognizing Christ the Savior and bowing to his word. And Paul says, I'm afraid that you're moving away from that simplicity, devotion to Christ, and you're doing so in the way that the serpent deceived Eve. What God requires of us as Christians is undivided devotion. Another way to put that would be single minded, single hearted adherence to Christ. The Bible wants us not to have one mind that serves our own reason and authority and then another mind that serves Christ. Once the first mind has been satisfied, we are to be double minded in our devotion, double minded in our view of authority, our outlook on thinking and doing things. And in the book of James we see a couple of references to the double minded man. First of all, in James 1:18, James here says a double minded man is unstable in all his ways. The man who follows two ultimate authorities or two methods of reasoning is an unstable man. And then in James 4, 8, he says that double mindedness is something that's filthy in the sight of God. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. You double minded, purify your hearts. It's a strong word that indicates that it's, it's dirty, it's filthy in the eyes of God. We tend in the Western world to think of intellectual mistakes as something that's just clean. And in this abstract area of thought, but you see, intellectual sins are just as dirty as sexual sins, just as dirty as gossip, just as dirty as murder. And so it's not surprising that James would say purify your hearts, you double minded. It is impure and unstable for a man to think in two different ways. Single minded, single hearted devotion to Jesus Christ is called for. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 11:3, I'm afraid that you are being misled as Eve was deceived by the serpent and we've already talked about how she was deceived by the serpent. Eve was led to think that she could suspend devotion to God's word and make her decision for herself. So I conclude this part of the discussion by saying that I think Genesis 3 shows the need for a presuppositional method in defending the faith. The very reason we have to defend the faith is because people are sinners and the origin of sin historically is shown us in the narrative of Genesis 3. And so why would we recapitulate man's fall into sin as a way of leading people out of sin into the saving mercy of Jesus Christ? That makes sense. Why go back to the garden to repeat the mistake? To undo the mistake. Fighting fire with fire I guess now you know already if you've made any effort to defend the faith in this fashion that I've been teaching you that you're going to be subject to ridicule. Those who say, well, you have to presuppose what God has said in his word, or you'll not be able to reason at all are going to be made fun of. We don't always show the eloquence and the cunning and the rhetoric and the oratory of people who have the more sophisticated academic mind. However, it seems to me that if we reason in the way which the unbeliever wants us to reason, whether we realize it or not, we'll never get around to defending the truth because that's the the one thing the unbeliever doesn't want. And so by attacking your method of reasoning, the unbeliever is saying, I don't want to give you anything that's going to lead me down a road I don't want to go. And so the only reasoning, all type of reasoning I'll call good, clean reasoning is reasoning that I know is not going to lead where I don't want to be. And you need to get used to pointing that out to people that they are really committed in advance to their unbelief. And that's why they take the stand on the method of reasoning that they do. They don't want certain conclusions to be reached. It's kind of like they don't want us to go to a certain train station and catch a certain train, because they know that takes us down the track to a destination we don't want to get to. In 1 Corinthians 2, 6, 16, Paul tells us that we speak a wisdom which is discerned only when the Spirit frees men's minds from bondage. First Corinthians 2, beginning at the sixth verse. Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature. Wisdom, however, not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world who are passing away. But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age have understood, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Think about that. The wisdom we use, you see, if it already was understood by the world, Christ wouldn't have been crucified. But just as it is written, things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him, for to us God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the Spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God. Which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words, at least by this translation. But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man, for who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him. But we have the mind of Christ. See, there's really two mindsets here. The mind of Christ, and then that which is of the natural man that cannot receive the things of the Spirit, until the Spirit opens his heart and frees him from bondage. Which things we also speak, verse 13 not in words taught by human wisdom. One last note, Second Corinthians 11, where Paul warns against being deceived by the subtlety of Satan, as Eve was, Paul says in verse six, but even if I am unskilled in speech, another reference to what he's talking about in First Corinthians. Even if I'm not eloquent, sophisticated in the academic sense that you would like, even if I'm unskilled in speech, yet I am not so in knowledge. So the outer trappings may not be impressive, worldly things that this age wants. What does this age want? Jews want signs. Greeks want wisdom. All right, I don't offer that kind of thing. But I'm not rude when it comes to knowledge. That is, I'm not untrained or somehow dull when it comes to that. I do have knowledge, even though I do not give in to the patterns of thought and the reasoning of unbelievers. Okay, so one of the conditions of apologetical success I suggest in tonight's reading is that we not make the mistake that Adam and Eve did at the beginning of human history by thinking that God's word is only a hypothesis, and that we, on the basis of reasoning that is satisfactory to us, can then endorse and after that follow. Now, I'm going to make this a little more biting. I'm going to suggest in chapter three that we ought not to lie to unbelievers in order to get them to believe the truth. A common theme of chapters 22 and 23 is that it's not just the end that we should be concerned with the end that unbelievers profess the truth of the Bible, but we ought to be concerned with the means to the end as well. We don't want to be deceived as Eve was, reason in that way, and be drawn aside from the single hearted devotion to Jesus Christ. The second way in which I can say that is we shouldn't lie to unbelievers to get them to affirm the truth. And at the beginning of this chapter I repeat what I've already told you tonight. I have the impression that some men as theologians want to admit what Scripture says about the nature of fallen man and the utmost and necessary authority of God's revelation in any field of knowledge. As theologians they want to say that, but as apologists, as defenders of the faith, they want to act in oblivion or in temporary suppression of those truths. And I consider that a kind of duplicate which is really dishonoring to the Christian calling. We've seen passages many times now in this course which indicate that saving faith cannot be grounded in human wisdom, cannot arise from secular, unbelieving presuppositions. Recognition of Christ as the wisdom of God does not stem from presuppositions that denied that Christ is the wisdom of God, or ignore Christ is the wisdom of God, or undermine the fact that he is the wisdom of God. First Corinthians 2:10. We just got done reading. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. The recognition of Christ as the wisdom of God comes from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, who alone can enable us to gain a knowledge of the things of God. We have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God. Now only the Spirit of God knows those things. Verse 11 says. And for that reason the Christian it won't do any good to rely upon philosophy or history or science that itself does not submit to the Holy Spirit, because it's only the Holy Spirit that can give a knowledge of God and open up the heart of man to receive that. Obviously then, if we follow other presuppositions, we are going to be incapacitated in discerning the truth about God. The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, catering to his natural desire for proofs and his ultimate authority is never going to lead him to submit to the truth of God. Only the enlightenment of the Spirit can do that. And obviously we should realize we can't improve upon the mind of Christ which has been given to us by the Spirit. And so I say apologetics against success is precluded by dependence upon or catering to unauthoritative human foolishness which is unalterably inclined to crucify the Lord of glory rather than bowing before his sovereign demands. Where does the wisdom of this world lead? It leads to the crucifixion of Christ. And the cross of Christ is a stumbling block to the wisdom of this world. We need to make clear to the people that we're witnessing to that if they continue in intellectual sin, they will never come to saving belief. Intellectual sin? Remember I talked a few moments ago about double mindedness being filthy in the eyes of God. One's heart needs to be cleansed from double mindedness. Psalm 111:10 says a good understanding have all they that do his commandments. Understanding, you see, is rooted in a lifestyle of obedience to God. And when we refuse to understand and to think God's thoughts after him, that's intellectual sin. It's intellectual filthiness and intellectual foolishness. And I argue that the apologist cannot attempt to persuade the unbeliever by using the unbeliever style of thought, then I can't use the same filthiness, the same arrogance, the same autonomy that the unbeliever does if I wish to lead him out of those things. Let's look at 1 John 2:3:3 to 5. And by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. The one who says, I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar. And the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word in him, the love of God has been truly perfected. By this we know that we are in Him. One can know God only if he keeps God's commandments. One of the commandments that apologists repeatedly overlook is the commandment found in Deuteronomy 6:16. To know God, we must keep his commandments. And here's one of the commandments that must be kept. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Massa. God says, you want to obey me? Don't put me on trial. Don't think that I have to satisfy you. Understand that I'm the Lord, you're the subject. Now, do you remember where this is quoted in the New Testament? You shall not put the Lord your God to the test in the temptation of Jesus. The temptation of Jesus, which is the New Testament counterpart to the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden. And Jesus says, when Satan comes and says, well, jump off the pinnacle of the temple here. Because God said in His Word, he'll protect you unless you dash your foot against the stone, he'll send his angels to protect you. And Jesus said, you're not to test God. God doesn't expect to have to pass a test that you devise to prove His Word. It's wrong to do that. So the very thing that Eve did not do, would not do and fell into sin because she didn't. Jesus insists on I will not put God's word to the test. So you can quote the Bible to me, but I'm not going to say, okay, now I've got to empirically prove that. I better jump off to see if God really does send his angels to save them. God is not to be subject to human testing. That doesn't mean that God never condescends to give us evidence. He does. But God, I don't know many cases that can be cited, if any, where someone arrogantly demands God. You show me the following and then I'll believe you. And God says, oh, okay, I'll do it your way. That doesn't happen when people came to Jesus and demanded a sign of him. Have you ever noticed this? At that point, Jesus wouldn't give it. Jesus gave all kinds of signs. But when they came and demanded them, Jesus said, the only sign I'll give you is the sign of Jonah in the belly of a fish. Jesus said, I'll give you the sign finally, after you crucify me, I'll rise from the dead. But you see, he wouldn't walk on water to please people. He wouldn't heal someone just to say, okay, I'll prove my point to you. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Now, with these things being taught in the Bible, what I'm getting at in this chapter is how can the apologist suggest to the unbeliever, it's all right to do that. Go ahead, put God to the test. Demand of him. Historical evidence, demand of Him. Scientific proof, demand this, demand that. And when God has finally satisfied that and you've given Him His A plus in the course, then of course I expect you're going to submit to him and become his loyal follower. Well, I mean, it's so obvious, isn't it, after a while. Why should someone follow a God who submits to his authority? I mean, why should I, if I'm the one who puts the test on God? Why shouldn't I expect, after he passes, to say, you know, keep following the things I want you to do, God, and you'll do just fine? We've got things all inverted and turned around. Now, what bothers me is that when I say that to believers, they all nod their heads, they all smile. You all get the point. But when it comes to defending the faith, we say, oh, we can suggest it's all right to unbelievers. We can give in to their demands. We can reason like they do. I want to suggest the only reason that you should only reason, you should reason in the way that an unbeliever does is to show him how unreasonable it is. Answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceits. I'll reason the way that you reason just to show that on that basis you couldn't reason at all. When it comes to showing the truth of Christ Christianity, I can't reason in an immoral fashion. I can't use a double standard as to what my ultimate authority is. And what I'm getting at is when I tell the unbeliever, I'm going to reason the way you want to reason to show you that God does exist and the Bible is true, I'm lying to him. And when I say but it's got a good purpose because after all he might become a Christian, he might actually give in. If I show him these things, then I think that fits very well into what Paul says in Romans 3, 7, 8. If the truth of God abounded by my lie unto his glory, why am I still judged a sinner? Paul says, if I lie and God's truth abounds because of it, then why am I judged? He goes, and not rather as we are blasphemed. And some allege that we say let us do evil in order that good may come, the damnation of whom is just. God does not allow us to do evil. That good may come and it is evil. It's a reproach to the name of Christ and an insult to his authority to suggest that the unbeliever can put test on God, that's perfectly alright. God is just waiting to prove himself to you. And so I think apologists are prohibited from using a non presuppositional method. I know I'm not winning any friends in the evangelical community by putting it this way. I'm not saying you've got all these opposite approaches to apologetics. Presuppositionalism is one of them and I really think it's the most preferable. I'm saying we're prohibited from using the others to the degree that those others have things of value. They've got to be integrated into the overall context of the presuppositional approach. Otherwise we are suggesting a lie to the unbeliever. Yes, you may be autonomous for a little bit longer. Autonomous just long enough to give up your autonomous and follow Jesus Christ. I think that would be to operate with the satanic lie that God only has a hypothesis and he's just waiting for you to prove it. Eve, it would be to lie in order to defend the truth. The faithful witness to Christ does not behave as an unbeliever. Denying the lordship of Christ, suspending obedience to him, pretending we are autonomous temporarily. The faithful witness to Christ doesn't behave as an unbeliever in order to make him a believer. Have I said it enough ways to get it across? You can't buy the ammunition of your opponent and expect to beat him. And I know that people allegorize biblical stories horrendously, especially the one that I'm going to now allegorize. And don't you dare interpret the Bible this way. But just remember the little ditty people give you. David did not go out to fight Saul. Excuse me, Goliath, in Saul's armor. He didn't use the same kind of battle. David said, I know the method to use here. I don't need this armor. And you don't need the weapons of warfare of the autonomous unbeliever. You don't believe me? The Goliaths of this world can be brought down with little stones if you just remember the foundational questions that I taught you. You don't need the sophisticated vocabulary. You don't need the PhD. You just need the questions that they can't answer and they can't answer. The Bible tells us that evil men cannot speak good things. The Bible tells us in Psalm 12:4 that the unbeliever thinks that he's the Lord over the use of his lips. He thinks he can be the one who decides what he says and how he will say it. But in Romans 3:19 we read it's the word of God that stops every mouth and leaves men speechless. Remember Job, at the end of the story of Job, puts his hand over his mouth. He says, I spoke too soon. That's what we want to do with unbelievers. Get them to put their hand over their mouth and say, uh oh, I shouldn't have been talking. Better watch what I say here. I'm not the Lord over the use of my lips. What do I think? There's someone else who's Lord. Let's turn to one more passage. First Timothy 6:3:5. First Timothy 6 beginning at the third verse. If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness. He is conceited and understands nothing, but has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. Look at verse 20 O Timothy. Guard that which has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed, and thus gone astray from the faith. Listen to worldly wisdom what the world falsely calls knowledge, and you'll go astray from the faith. Be led into vain chatter. And my own experience, my own life sadly, but also in what I've seen in others who are reputed to be apologists, is that there's a whole lot of vain chatter when we don't Submit humbly to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ in our method of reasoning. It's not enough just to come to the right conclusion. You've got to come to it in the right way. Are there any questions tonight? Yes. The passage in First Corinthians 2, the of wisdom, of sh. The rulers of the sage and understood. If they understood it, they would not have crucified the world authority. I always thought that meant something like they didn't know that he would achieve salvation through that.

And I didn't quite catch what you.

Meant by what you said that. Well, because the priorities and values of worldly wisdom are so different from those represented by Christ. And what Paul is saying is if they had understood divine wisdom, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory. I don't think. Here it is. Paul's not so much resting on the idea that, oh, this is the divine way, that God paradoxically, surprisingly mysteriously brought about salvation through the wicked act of men. He brings about salvation for wicked men. That is a biblical truth. But here, what Paul is talking about is that the wisdom of this world is just not conformable to the wisdom of the Christian faith. And if it were, there never would have been the opposition, the antithesis that led to the crucifixion of Christ. That's right. But of course, if they. I mean, Paul's not going on to say, and then Jesus wouldn't have died and we'd still be in our sins and all that. His point here is simply there's an enmity between worldly things and the thinking of Christ and what is encouraged in God's Word. Now we go back to the garden again. God imposed enmity, didn't he? And that enmity is evident in the crucifixion of Christ. And therefore the wisdom of this world cannot be considered the standard for Christian wisdom. Well, I've got a good piece of news for you. Lord willing, next week will be our last lesson in this class. It's been so long since I've ended any series that I've started, just almost too Good to believe. But Lord willing, next Thursday we'll do the last chapter in the syllabus and that'll be it. And then you'll have all the answers. You'll at least hopefully be on the right road. I guess if we're going to do it, we'll have to do it next week. I'll try to remember that. I don't think the class wants it to go on for another month, but I wouldn't be adverse to doing it, you know, some other time. It is also the case that two weeks from tonight, I'll be out of town for 10 days on vacation. And so it's a convenient time for us to conclude that last chapter. But I'll try. Let's take an hour next week on our lesson. I'll try to do a half hour on the lesson and then a half hour on practical. Let's play act and do a little bit of this. Will that be good?

That would be a good start.

Okay, that'll be a good start.

Talk of the talk where giving the illustration of thieves and she refused the forbidden fruit because of dietary considerations. That would not have been a victory.

Right.

In practical Christianity, where you're applying Christianity to politics in the current age, there's a movement where Christians network into other groups of unbelievers on race, of common cause. Different, more that they achieve political power through networking, even with radical groups that you just have to agree on this one issue for the sake of compromise. Is this Christian politics?

Yeah, I think in many cases it is. But there I would not say that what they've done is compromised something in order to achieve a better end. What they have done is they say, we can agree even with Roman Catholics, when Roman Catholics do the right thing. The Bible, I don't think, forbids us to cooperate with other people. I don't think the Bible, let me put it this way, positively. I don't think the Bible requires us, requires that we cooperate only with those that agree with us entirely. So that if we have some doctrinal difference with someone, we can never do anything with them. Of course, I cannot go along with some error in Romanism in order to achieve some good that Protestantism wants to accomplish. But when Romanists want to say, you know, this is murder and want to testify to that, I say, good, testify to that. That is the truth. When they go on to say and pray to Mary that you'll be forgiven, I say, don't do that. That's not the truth. So I think you can make common cause. And then I do think there are some circumstances where it's just too sticky and out of wisdom we have to decide not to make common cause. But I don't think in and of itself it's wrong to cooperate with people in righteousness. Okay, who's leading on? Tim?

How would that played out had he done that, though?

I don't know. It's the heretical hypothetical, so I don't know how I finish it.

This is why People are normally confronted or judged unless they actually do something. Because when God approaches, he asks, did.

You eat of this tree on the Day of Judgment? Don't you think we'll be judged for our motives? And I just want to out with acts. Yeah, granted.

But it seemed like the tree was there for a reason that they actually didn't think their teeth ends with.

And there's some of the points of. Well, I think the tree was there because they weren't supposed to eat of it. And that wasn't possible. It was an object that had objective historical validity to it. But I think you can sin against an objective thing in history in your heart, even if you don't outright do something. I mean, if there was no such thing as a woman, it would be impossible for a man to lust after a woman, right? So there must be women for men to lust after women. But that isn't to say that their lust is not sinful until they actually have relations with someone they're not married to. You know that. I mean, sins of the heart are equally sins. And what I'm suggesting is the story called for Eve to actually eat the fruit as of what she did. However, from what we know of the rest of the Bible, we also could say hypothetically, had she not eaten but had the wrong reason, that would have been sinful in God's eyes, too. In fact, no less a conservative scholar than E.J. young in his commentary on Genesis 3, a little paperback book commentary so suggests that in a sense, sin had been committed before she actually ate. He says now, because of the parameters of the story, we would say she sinned in eating. However, when she made the decision to become the final judge, she had already, as it were, taken that step on the slippery slope that was going to end there. So sin had its beginning before her teeth actually sank into the fruit. What would you have wanted to.

Where they have learned to hide, though they sense the need to hide when they sense God approaching?

Well, I think that's an interesting question. I don't know. Here's my illustration. I don't need to answer that, but I think I would say that they would have felt the need to hide if they would have had wicked thoughts, you know, even if they hadn't eaten the fruit. But if they had said, okay, we won't eat the fruit because it's for our, you know, we want to keep our nice figure and so forth, I think there would have been a sense of shame when God came around. They wouldn't have had the same sense of Wholehearted devotion to him. Nick, I'm sitting thinking about all this as you're talking about. It's kind of interesting. Another question I have is on what do you think? Do you think Eve is betraying how she's feeling when she comes out and she says that God said, you shall either eat thereof or even touch it, or you shall surely die. Or you think God really said that? It's just not recorded in Scripture. No, I'm inclined to perform her. I think Eve showing that she feels God is stingy overstates the commandment. Technically, he hadn't said they couldn't touch her. So the question is, did she sin? Had she already sinned in her heart? Yeah. I think there's a sense in which she had already shown her rebellious, unsubmissive attitude toward God in misstating his command. Now, because the story goes the way it does, we don't have to worry about these hypothesis. What if it had ended there? What if she said, okay, but I'm not going to eat anyway? You know, then of course we'd have a problem with that. I mean, it is actually the eating of the fruit that settles it for us. But I do think it was wrong for Eve to overstate God's commandment to make it more of a stricture than it was. She was putting a fence around the law already the Pharisees were at work in her heart. Yes.

Glenn, another hypothetical thing. You said that God imposed enmity.

Yes.

What exactly does that mean? I mean, if he hadn't exposed the enmity. I mean, is that just. I mean, it seems like something would naturally happen. I mean, the fact that everything happens by God willing.

Why don't you. I'm not trying to put you off here, but you might pick up my tape on Antithesis or the transcription of that lecture as it appeared in volume one, number one of our magazine called Antithesis, where I discussed that. I think in a sense we should resist the idea that enmity is just natural. I think we have to say enmity is there because God has judicially opposed. God says, I'll make it so that you can't get along, that there's going to be opposition between these two. And there's an. Although that seems harsh for God to do that. The interesting thing is that's the underside or the other side in the way of salvation. If God had not posed enmity, then the whole human race would have been not getting along with two different sides. We all would have been on the same side. By imposing enmity he made sure that not every part of the human race would be caught up in satanic rebellion. And the only way to avoid that rebellion, I'm speaking in macro terms now, is for that enmity to be there, we have to be at war with Satan. Yeah, just hostility between the godly and ungodly. And it must be that way. Isn't that one of the reasons James says, purify your hearts, ye double minded? Friendship with the world is what? Enmity with God? I haven't gotten the sanctification and nerve yet to preach a sermon series on that, but it does cross my mind. To what degree, you know, your pastor and all of us, to what degree we have really become jaded. We just get along too well with the world and the world resistance.

The reason I say this, I got started working this new job and for surgery back in the 90s. Now, second week, it's like I can see more. I don't know, I just. It always bothers me find out. I just go, I wish it wasn't like that.

Yeah, you have heaven in your heart. You don't want it to be that way, but realistically it is. And you're right. The second week you've seen more of it, Bird, you'll see more. And the day will come when you come home and say, I'm so disillusioned.

Yeah, I'm not working anymore.

Okay. I really do need to let us take a break so you can have time for prayer. And I've got to run to some, but I like these questions. Next week we'll continue them, okay?