Dr Greg Bahnsen - Peter's Apologetic: Reasoned Defense (1 Peter 3:15) (Part 2)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. And we're going to be taking as our text first Peter 3:15. But I'd like to read for you beginning at the seventh verse through verse 17. Hear now God's word, Ye husbands in like manner dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor unto the woman, as under the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life, to the end that your prayers be not hindered. Finally, be ye all like minded, compassionate, loving as brethren, tenderhearted, humble minded, not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but contrawise blessing for hereunto were ye called that ye should inherit a blessing. For he that would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and its lips, that they speak no guile and let him turn away from evil and do good, let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears unto their supplication, but the face of the Lord is upon them that do evil. And who is he that will harm you? If ye be zealous of that which is good, but even if he should suffer for righteousness sake, blessed are ye, and fear not their fear. Neither be troubled, but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord, being ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you. Yet with meekness and fear, having a good conscience that wherein ye are spoken against, they may be put to shame, who revile your good manner of life in Christ. For it is better if the will of God should so will that that ye suffer for well doing than for evil doing. And thus far the reading of God's word. They say, when it comes to taking a stand on matters of public policy or controversial social issues, that the man who tries to stand in the middle of the road to take a middle of the road position is in the worst position of all. Because the man who stands in the middle of the road gets hit by trucks going both ways. That is to say, somebody who tries to please everyone ends up displeasing everyone. And so it's better that a person be on one side of the road or on the other side of the road, but don't try to take a mediating position. Well, this morning I'd like to tell you something about Christian apologetics that sounds similar to that. I do want to say you cannot take an in between position in your attitude toward others when you're defending the Christian faith. But the answer is not to stand on one side of the road or the other, but strangely enough, to stand on both sides of the road. Humble boldness is our topic this morning. And if you think about the title of the message, you might be a little bit perplexed, because it would seem at first sight that humility and boldness are the very opposites of one another. That the person who is bold and courageous goes out there to meet the foe, as our hymn said, is the person who's not going to be the shy or the retiring or the meek, humble, quiet sort of person that we think of when we hear the word humble. The person who is humble and has those retiring qualities. That's not the person who you expect to be Captain Courageous, to be the person who's out there being bold for the Lord. And so what is it we're supposed to do in Christian apologetics as we relate to other people? Is we're defending the Christian faith as we are taking a stand for our holy religion? Are we supposed to stand up and say, yes, you must understand we are right, the others are wrong, and we have a defense for our faith. And those who do not follow this are in principle utterly ignorant. I mean, should we be that bold? Or should we rather be more polite and reverent and respectful toward others, considerate of where they are coming from, and what should it be? And the answer is both, and we're going to talk about that today. By the way, I think Peter understood the natural tendency within all of us as human beings to go to one extreme or the other. Because, you know, he says here in verse 15 of First Peter 3, sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord, being ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you. And now listen to this in my translation. Yet with meekness and fear. That's really not strong enough. In fact, I've checked a few other translations, and I wouldn't be surprised that some of you will have no connective at all here. That is where I have yet with meekness and fear. You might not have anything. Some translations read something like this to give a reasoned defense of the hope that is in you. With meekness and fear. I mean, it's just kind of smoothly read right over. But the interesting thing is that in Greek, the word that is placed there is the strongest adversative word in the Greek language, it's Allah. For those of you who have studied it, it's very strong. It's not even death, a real natural thing that can even be translated. And Allah is always has the adversity of force of but. And so Peter really sticks this in there strongly. He says, give a reason defense to any man who asks you, but with meekness, fear. And the reason, I think Peter feels the need to insert that with just that strong adversity of a force is because he knows that if he doesn't say that, we may think that the Lord somehow has given us a divine mandate from heaven to just roll right over people. You know, we go out there with the boldness of the Lord and the truth of the Lord behind us, and we can just walk on people, insult them, tear them down, leave them broken in shambles behind us and say, aha, another victory for the kingdom of God. Peter says, no, but you do this with meekness and with fear. So this is what I want to consider this morning, humble boldness. We're going to look at both sides of that because, as I told you, the answer is not to become so meek and retiring and shy that we don't have a strong defense of the faith that we're holding out for. And so, first of all, let's look this morning at the need for boldness. You know, it's really not surprising at all that the biblical attitude and the reformed principle that we must presuppose the word of God and the authority of Jesus Christ in all of our thinking if we're going to understand the world and understand ourselves and know how to live, it's not surprising that that principle of the need to presuppose and to take as authoritative the word of God, to make it foundational for all of our knowledge, will strike people to whom you talk as absolutistic will strike them as all the worst dogmatic. Well, I'll tell you, there's fewer things that will gain the scorn of people in our society today more than being dogmatic. Wow. The only thing worse than being dogmatic, as far as I'm concerned, is those people who are so dogmatically against being. Being dogmatic. But in our society, that is something. I mean, you don't take a hard stand, you don't take a bold stand. You don't say, yes, we're right and all the others are wrong. We have a political debate that's going to be on television tonight. Can you imagine what the general response of the people in this country would be if a political candidate tried to say that no, there's Always got to be this shy and retiring deference for the other side, and while we're doing our best and so forth and so on. But they may take a strong position. But what about somebody who stood up and went even further and said, if I were elected to office, I take a Christian stand on every issue I possibly could? Because that's the only stand that's really intellectually respectable and only one that's morally acceptable. And all of the religions of the world are wrong. And people who don't understand that yet are facing hellfire. And so all I can say to those who disagree is you need to repent and get your mind turned around. Whoa. I don't think in this particular election year you could expect that you're going to win the election if you took that position. But you see, that's what the Bible teaches us, isn't it? It teaches us to be dogmatic. Now, I hope you understand, words sound differently to different people. I mean, they are taken differently by different people. Dogmatism is not so much a demeanor. Dogmatism isn't the man who has the heavy eyebrowed expression or the grit teeth or the square jaw, or the man who is just overpowering in the way he looks or speaks. Dogmatism is saying, here's the truth. You step this way and you're off it. You step that way, you're off it. This is the truth, and we can't vary from it to the right or to the left. That's dogmatism. Dogmatism is the position that there's a right and a wrong, and we know what it is. Now, you may say that very sweetly, you may say that very arrogantly, but it's not demeanor that makes you dogmatic, it's conviction that makes you dogmatic. And I think we need to be convicted people. In fact, if you're not a person that has that kind of conviction, my suggestion is you're not going to be a very good defender of the Christian faith. And although I don't literally mean this because I think it would be wrong to take that position from my own experience, I could almost say if you don't have that conviction, I'd almost rather you didn't try to defend the Christian faith because you end up making it harder for me. Because eventually those people that you won't evangelize correctly end up talking to me and I've got to unlearn for them or uneducate them from all those things that you kind of put in there that were wavering. I Don't mean me personally, but everybody else who was trying to take that hard and dogmatic line. So let's understand, when we defend the Christian faith, we've got to be bold about it. We have to take the position that God is right and those who differ from him are wrong. And we don't have any options about this. People all around us are going to say, oh come on, be more open minded, be more neutral about this, lay back from it, be a little more tolerant. In fact, there's so much of that perspective in our culture today that it's almost like we. What used to be called the music of the spheres. You know what the music of the spheres is? Music of the spheres was in medieval. It was thought that because of the particular configuration, astronomical configuration of our universe, that the spheres as they turned made music. Now why is it we don't hear it? Because it's so constant that it's just like background, almost like elevator, you know, music. You get into an elevator, you don't stop to think. I wonder what that tune is. You know, it's just there. Music of the spheres are just there. And I'm telling you what's just there for us intellectually is this attitude. Nobody can be dogmatic. Oh no, everybody must be tolerant and open minded. That's just common fair and we expect it today. And so it's no wonder at all, to get back to my point, that Reformed thinking, biblical thinking about the truth of the Christian faith is just like stark contrast to it because it's challenging the status quo, it's demanding a reorientation of our thinking in our lives. It's threatening to turn the world upside down. To use biblical language, it appears absolutistic and appears dogmatic because it is absolute and dogmatic. To be absolute is to not admit of qualification or exception. And when we say Christ is God and those who don't approach God through him, those who don't try to be right with the Father through him, will not be saved. We don't admit of any qualification or exception to that sort of thing. All right, so we have a very bold message as Christians. I think it's to the shame of many Christian scholars, many who defend the faith, many who are attempting to be Christian philosophers, that they've neglected this particular point of our Christian world and life view. They don't have a Christian mind on this particular point and they have really bowed to the demands of the world for a more humble approach than to think that we're right and everybody else is wrong. What we need to do, it seems to me, is to be better students of the Book of Proverbs when it comes to this, this sort of thing. Because the Book of Proverbs abounds in illusions and insights about wisdom, instruction, foolishness, understanding, truth and all these sorts of matters. And I think Proverbs can aid us in understanding properly how we can take a bold position in the face of the world's challenge and still please the Lord in terms of our attitude and outlook. Are we really being arrogant? Are we guilty of intellectual pride if we're being Christians and taking this position? You see, the Christian position demands we submit everything to Jesus Christ, or otherwise we're going to be left with foolishness and ignorance. The Christian position teaches that men who will not begin with the fear of God will not have genuine knowledge. A Christian position is that we have to have unconditional surrender to Jesus Christ and the truth of his word. Boy, that's proud. That's really showing a lot of hubris, a lot of cheek, a lot of gall for us to say those things. How should we respond when people say that to us and they will say it to us? Should we defend a kind of obscurantist arrogance? Should we say we have the right to be like that because we've got the truth and you don't? After all, since you don't have the truth, you're not in a position to criticize us and our attitudes anyway? Or should we say, well, I guess we are getting dangerously close to the vertigo of self aggrandism, we're just kind of taken with ourselves and back off from that? Well, both approaches, it seems to me, are pursued in Christian circles today. And both approaches are wrong. Both do disservice to the Christian faith, to the witness we really need to give to the world. And we find, I think, the right and mediating answer in the Book of Proverbs in particular. Look with me this morning at Proverbs, the 15th chapter, verses 32 and 33, 15, 32, 33. And there we read, he who refuses correction despises his own soul, but he that hearkens to reproof gets understanding. The fear of Jehovah is the instruction of wisdom, and before honor goes humility. There are two thrusts in this passage. We really need to concentrate on both of them. In the first place, the Christian must indeed be bold in his challenge to unbelieving and compromising views of the world. The man who will not heed correction in having his thinking required to submit to Jesus Christ and The lordship of Jesus Christ in the realm of thought. The man who refuses to heed that kind of correction and instruction is really doing damage to his own soul, the proverb says. And so the Christian must be consistent in his witness to that kind of a person to show him that understanding indeed is only possible when the reproof of the gospel challenge will be heeded. To compromise at that point with unbelieving standards, to compromise with unbelieving methods of thought is really to do the gravest disservice to the need of the person to whom you speak. It's to suggest that he's really all right as far as he goes, as Dr. Van Till used to put it when I was studying at Westminster Seminary. It's to suggest to a man who has cancer that he needs only a band aid. You see, the true doctor of souls, the man who's truly concerned with the well being of people is like the dentist who says, I know this is going to hurt, but I must drill a bit deeper until we finally got all of the decay out. The man who will not hear the reproof of the gospel according to the proverb is really despising his own soul and it's not good for him. For the spiritual health of our hearers, we must be bold that only Christ can heal them of their diseases. Only Christ can reconcile them to God. Only Christ can can provide life in the place of their spiritual death. Only Christ can give them truth where there is error. The correction and reproof of Scripture just cannot be watered down. And so we as Christians who are trying to defend the faith just as much as any other area of our Christian life, whether we're defending the faith or just trying to live humbly before our God, we must communicate to those that we're in contact with that repentance and faith are commanded by God. We've got to cast down reasonings in every high thing exalted against the knowledge of God. In defending the faith, we must be firm to proclaim that God is true. So let all men be liars if they differ from him. We must let the unbeliever know that he lives in ignorance. And he must repent of that ignorance. He must show a change of mind. We must show people that they will not understand properly until they change their ways. And so it's a bold message and it must be presented for the well being of our hearer. And yet notice that Proverbs 15 has another thrust too. What we've just looked at tells us that there's More to it than just that. It's not just that the man who despises us reproves his own soul or is despising his own soul. It says here, a fear of Jehovah is the instruction of wisdom. And before honor goes humility. Before honor goes humility. A Christian who presupposes the truth of Scripture in all of his intellectual endeavors must be fully aware that his wisdom is not inherently his own, but rests completely upon what the fear of the Lord. It's the instruction of Jehovah that gives us wisdom. And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Without that reverence, we'd be just as foolish as everybody else. Without God's instruction, we'd be as foolish as everybody else. You see, the proverb makes it very clear that it's God who gives us understanding, God who gives us insight. It's God who instructs in knowledge. And so to take an attitude that we're somehow better than others when we're defending the faith is utterly for pops. For us, we aren't better than others. We're more blessed than others, but we're not better than others. And I hope you can discern the difference between those two. God has been good to us to open our minds. God has been good to break down our hearts. God has been good to give us insight so that we might understand the gospel and have a heart to receive it. God is good to give us eyes to see. God is good to provide his truth that we might learn and to know about him. But none of those things did we do on our own. We didn't change our own spots. Can the leopard change his spots? No. We didn't make ourselves regenerate. We didn't give ourselves new birth. We were utterly passive in this. God is the one who gives us light from above. God is the one who gives us eyes to see. God is the one who provides the truth that we might learn. And so we have nothing to be proud of, do we? We have a lot to thank God for, but we have nothing to be proud of. There's nothing in us. It's not as though, you know, I could talk to somebody and say, well, now I've got a PhD in Philosophy and a couple of master's degrees and all that. And obviously being a lot smarter than the rest of you, I figured out all these things about God. How ridiculous. And hopefully you wouldn't take anything like that attitude yourself, whatever your credentials may be. Academically. We don't go to people and say, look, if you were just as smart as me, you'd become a Christian. That isn't the nature of our witness. That isn't the nature of our boldness. We have to say all of us are fools before God. All of us are ignorant. All of us are lost. And if it weren't for the goodness of God to instruct me and to open my heart, I'd be fighting against it, just like you are. So the Christian who possesses a knowledge of the truth does so because faith has been given to him as a gift from God. Remember that precious passage in Ephesians 2, for by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. You notice that the title of this morning's message is not humble boasting, it's humble boldness. Yes, we must be bold. But that doesn't mean we boast, because it's not of works, lest any man should boast. It's a matter of God's gift of faith. A gift, an unmerited, undeserved, unearned blessing from God. He gives us repentance unto a genuine knowledge of the truth. And it's only because of his work of grace in our lives, only because of spiritual rebirth, only because of his mercy, that we have a new mind to understand these things. And so Paul teaches that the Christian receives the things of the Spirit only because we've been transformed from our natural hostility against God to a glad submission to Him. The believer has, according to Paul in First Corinthians 2:16, the mind of Christ. You know what puts us in a position to be bold? The mind of Christ. Not my own natural abilities, not my own natural proclivities, not my own natural bent. The source of my wisdom, the source of my knowledge, the honor of knowing the truth stems all from the undeserved grace of God. And so what is the most befitting attitude when we take that boldness to the world? Well, it's humility. As strange as it may sound, it's a humble boldness that we must take to the world. If we're less than bold, we're not true to God. If we're less than humble, we're not true to God. They have to go together. I know they look like they're standing on both sides of the street, but any attempt to stand in between both positions, humble boldness is really dishonoring to the Lord. It's humility that's befitting the Christian as he defends The Faith in Philippians, chapter two, where Paul exhorts us to have the mind of Christ. You know how he goes on to characterize Christ. He says, let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, who, what, being in the very form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, made himself of no reputation and took on the form of a servant and died a criminal's death. You have that mind in you, a mind that even were you the very eternal Son of God, having all glory with the Father through all ages past into all ages in the future, though you were the creator of heaven and earth, yet you would be able to come to this world and humble yourself and take a slave's apron on you and wash the feet of your ignorant, sinful disciples. Paul says, have that attitude in you, the attitude that was in Christ Jesus. And that's why the proverb reminds us here, before honor goes humility. It's humility that brings true honor to us because it brings the praise of God. Maybe not into the flashy plaudits of the world, but it does bring us the pleasure of God. And so what I'm suggesting is that Peter understood what the proverbs understood and which we very often don't understand, and that's that when we take the position that we have the mind of Christ and can offer a reasoned answer to any man for the hope that is in us, he can say, but do it with meekness and with fear. Just a couple of words about the significance of Peter's use of these particular adjectives. He says, do it with gentleness. Do it with considerateness, humility, if you will. According to the Bible, that's really what characterizes the attitude of Jesus. Remember Matthew, the 11th chapter, verse 29. Turn me in your Bibles to that. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus characterizes his rule the way he lords it over people. He says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. Boy, we're in favor of that. Let's learn of Jesus and go out there and defend the Lord. Right, he says, for I am meek and lowly in heart. You shall find rest for your souls. What is it that's true about Jesus? He's meek and lowly of heart. It's interesting to me. So often Christian ethics is characterized as the imitation of Christ. To follow Christ, to be like him, do what Jesus would do. Then sadly, that's a very good emphasis. After that emphasis is made, you get really, what is the hobby horse of the person saying? It's. And we get one part of Jesus life or the other. You'll hear, jesus would never take a sword. Jesus would turn the other cheek. You have Jesus, meek and mild, kind of the sissy who gets pushed around by people. Or then you get the other side. You have these people be like Jesus, take those cords and that whip and go in there and clear out the temple area yourself. But which is it? How did Jesus see himself even when he needed to excoriate the Pharisees, as blind guides to the blind? Even when he had to call them a generation of vipers, when he had to say, we shouldn't cast pearls before swine, Even when he had to take the cords and go in there and drive people from the temple? Jesus says, nevertheless, what characterizes his yoke is meekness and lowliness of mind. Paul doesn't Forget that in 2nd Corinthians 10:1, he's really dealing with another subject. He's trying to get through to his hearers about something else. But notice how he entreats them. Now, I, Paul myself entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I, who in your presence am lowly among you, but being absent, am of good courage toward you. Yes, I beseech you. And he goes on. What is it in Christ he appeals to his meekness and his lowliness. This idea of being meek or gentle is another way you can translate the Greek word word. Being considerate is precisely the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Galatians 5:23. You'll know this from your memorizing Scripture. I hope that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness or gentleness, self control, because against such there is no law. It's that kind of meekness and gentleness that shows that we belong to Jesus Christ and are ruled by him, that his Spirit lives in us and is bearing fruit in our lives. In James the third chapter, we learned that gentleness or meekness shows that we have wisdom from above. That's interesting connection I think, because when we're defending the faith, in a sense that's what we're trying to show, that we have wisdom from above. We know what we're talking about. This is the truth of God. Well, here's what James tells us in James 3:13, 17 who is wise and understanding among you, Let him show by his good life his works in meekness or gentleness of wisdom, verse 17. But the wisdom that's from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated and that's to be our reputation. In Philippians 4, verse 5, Paul tells us that's supposed to be made known to all men about us. Let your gentleness be known unto all men. And so Peter says, yes, by all means have the mind of Christ set forth the intellectual challenge of the gospel, but do it with gentleness. Do it with reverence or respect for the person with whom you're speaking. Let that be your reputation. Let that show that you have wisdom from above, that you can be gentle with those who oppose who oppose the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Second Timothy chapter two is Paul's exhortation to Timothy. Along these same lines, he tells Timothy that he must be prepared to deal with foolish questions. He must be, as the servant of God, prepared to handle those questions in a way that gives honor to the lord. In verse 23, Paul says, Foolish and ignorant questions refuse, knowing that they engender strife. And the Lord's servant must not strive, but be gentle toward all apt to teach forbearing in gentleness, correcting them that oppose themselves, if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth. I don't think there's a person in this room certainly would speak for myself, that couldn't go home and spend all afternoon meditating just on that. A servant of the Lord must not fight. That's a way of translating the Greek. They must not strive, but be gentle towards all apt to teach forbearing in gentleness, correcting them that oppose themselves. And so courteous instruction has to be our goal when we're defending the Christian faith. Let me make a few real quick applications before we end then. Humble boldness, courteous instruction is what we're looking for. And so, first of all, let's rid ourselves of our desire to dominate our opponent when we defend the faith. Let's not be hoping we can get him into some kind of intellectual headlock, some embarrassing social position where he said, well, I guess I was wrong and you were right and all that. You know, that desire to see that kind of outcome is not a God glorifying desire. We have to rid ourselves of a desire to dominate our opponents. Secondly, we must remember not to get sidetracked from our major calling, to avoid speculative questions, to avoid vain discussions or things that are off the subject instead of a straightforward presentation of the truth. We're not there to show that we can speculate better than others. We're there to say, well, now, here's the answer if you're looking for it. We must Recognize and live by the fact that we present the pure truth. Because foolish inquiries and those who pursue them cannot be won to Christ unless God grants them a change of mind. God is the one who takes blindness away and gives sight that being true, what good does it do us to be arrogant and pushy? Present the truth, and if God wishes to use it, he will. And remember when you present the truth that the answer isn't always or the outcome isn't always immediately apparent. You may sow something that is harvested 15 years later by God. You don't know that he won't be pleased for you just presenting it. And the person saying, well, I'm not interested, or I'm not interested today. Don't worry about the outcome. God takes care of the outcome. And remember that personal repentance begins with genuine knowledge of the truth being given to people by God himself. In the end, all of our argumentation may be pleasing to God and may show forth the truth of God, but it's not going to get through to our opponent until God gives the increase. And so instead of being pushy, thinking we're going to push through to a conclusion, let's remember that probably the more we push the person that we're dealing with, the more we push him back into his own corner. And we don't want the person to get back there and keep defending his unbelief and his secular outlook and his humanism, do we? We don't want to keep pushing and pushing. We want to rather draw him out, out of that corner, out into the middle of the ring where we can do something with him. You see, I presented a sermon similar to this many years ago when I was a seminary student to a bunch of Reformed seminary eggheads, intellectuals for the Lord. And they were. I don't mean to take that away from them or even to have you deride that, but I found it very interesting that after I preached on how to defend the faith and had made some remarks about not trying to dominate our opponent or to be arrogant or pushy and that sort of thing, my instructor, who was Jay Adams, wrote on my outline that I'd provided for him, he said, good thoughts. I wish you had stressed this. That's what these guys need to hear. But you can be sure, if that's what those Christian intellectuals need to hear, we do, too. Isn't it true, I think, if we're to be honest with ourselves and before the Lord, that it's precisely in the circles of Reformed theology, which enjoys the greatest blessing of God for A clear understanding of the truth. I don't think there's any doubt about that. But it's just because we have such insight, discernment, what have you on these matters that we tend to get pushy. We tend to forget that we're nothing before God and it's only because of his goodness that we understand what we do. And so you find Reformed churches characterized by doctrine and strife. What I'd like to see is Reformed churches characterized by doctrine, period, well, and the fruit of the Spirit and other things. But let's drop this strife part, this thing that gets us into a mentality where we're always at each other. And you see, since we're always at each other, it shouldn't surprise us that when somebody out there who is weak and beggarly and in need of the gospel is arguing and not showing how weak and beggarly they are, we kind of go after them just the way we go after each other. One more time, friends. Yes. Defend the Christian faith and do it with boldness. Be dogmatic. Don't back off. Say exactly what God says. You follow his word or you don't understand anything. But say that in such a way that you show respect for your opponent and show gentleness in your demeanor so that humble boldness will be the testimony we leave with people. And then may God be pleased to grant repentance to those to whom we speak, that he might receive all the glory, not only for the fact that we know the truth, but through us he's bringing others to know it as well. Let's pray. Father, do grant to us this day a loosening up of a desire to dominate people, to roll over them with the intellectual punch, to show that we're right and others are wrong. Lord, we don't want to show that we are right. We simply want them to give you the praise because you are right and because it's your truth and because you certainly are right and all men are liars should they oppose you. We pray you'd make us bold in this day and age? It's so difficult, Lord, and we've compromised and walk. And we pray your forgiveness. We pray you'd make us people who reflect on these things so that when the next opportunity comes, we won't back off. We will be dogmatic because when it comes to God, we can't fudge. And yet, Lord, we pray as we do this, we will lose ourselves, that we might be full of Christ, that we might show the gentleness of his yoke on our necks, that we might have the fruit of His Spirit evident in our lives and that our reputation might be before all men, that we are gentle, that we are easy to entreat, and Lord, we do pray that you would use all of the messages of this series, including this morning's through the furtherance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, equip us all to be better soldiers of the cross, help us to defend the gospel, to show its intellectual challenge, help us all the more consistently have the mind of Christ, a Christian mind when it comes to any matter, enable us to be prepared for any kind of problem that might come up, any challenge to our faith and give us the spirit of servants as we do that, servants of the Lord Jesus Christ and servants of those whom he wishes to bring into his kingdom through our efforts. For we pray in his precious name. Amen. This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute. Duplication, sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and Ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our bonseninstitute.com where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.