Communicating the Reasonableness of
Our Faith
Various Scriptures
August 10, 2003
Introduction
When I was putting together this message, I had a hard time coming up with a title. I suppose I could have found one that was a little more concise, but I think this one communicates what I hope to accomplish today.
One of the biggest needs of the Christian church right now is for people who can communicate with our culture in a way that demonstrates to those outside Christ that our faith is a reasonable one.
Jesus did not call us to be blind followers. In fact, He told us to count the cost of following Him. He said to think it through.
The apostle Paul was a master at communicating truth in a way that would tell people that this was worth investigating.
And the Bible gives us some insight into how we can show the world that being a Christian and following Christ is not just a good thing, but it’s the most important thing.
In impacting the world with the reasonableness of our faith, we need to take some action. And the first action I want to encourage you to take is to…
1. Learn to love God with all your mind.
LK 10:27 (Jesus said), " `Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’… "
It’s easy to imagine loving God with all our heart and soul, because these can be felt emotionally. When we love someone, we generally have some emotional attachment involved.
But to love God with all our strength and all our mind, now that can be another matter. I’m not going to discuss loving God with all our strength, today, but do yourself a favor today and think through that a bit, okay.
Jesus is very clear here that we are to love Him with all our minds. Just how do we do that?
Well, I have some suggestions:
First and foremost, get familiar with the Bible itself. Do more than pick it up to bring to church. Read more than the little snippets in your devotional booklet.
Read it for yourself. Study it. Tear it apart and see how it all fits together. It’s a wonderful thing.
But get into it. Meditate on what it has to say. And by meditate, I mean chew it over, think it through, ask questions, and get to know how it applies to you.
Second, read. Read anything you can get your hand on that will give you a better grasp on the Word of God.
Also, read other stuff. Read things that will expand your mind on things.
Read things that will help you better understand a current interest. Read things that are outside your general interest.
I recently took a class on philosophy through our denomination. I hate philosophy. That class was very hard for me.
But you know what? I gained some tools. First, it stretched me, trying to make heads or tails of some of that stuff. Second, it helped me understand where a lot of people are coming from in life and in their view of God and the Bible.
This gives me help when I discuss spiritual things with them.
And it lets them know that I am not just a blind follower without a brain.
God gave you a brain. We are expected to use it! Learn to think!
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal they lay down for the night, and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”
Watson replied, “I see millions and millions of stars.”
Holmes asked, “What does that tell you?”
Watson pondered for a minute. “Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is omnipotent and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.
“What does it tell you?”
Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke. “Watson, you meathead. Someone has stolen our tent.”
Contributed by: Ted Sutherland (SermonCentral.com)
We have an excellent Christian bookstore in this town that can help you with helping you love the Lord with all your mind.
Read the newspaper and watch the news, and learn to look through the lens of Scripture when you do.
Listen to people who disagree with you so you can see where they’re coming from and you can show them truth in a way they can understand it.
Ask the tough questions of yourself and others.
My point here folks is that in order for us to love God with all our mind, we have to use it. Does that make sense?
Take some time this week to explore how you can better love God with all your mind.
The second action to help us impact our society with the reasonableness of our faith is to…
2. Learn to formulate your views based on Scripture.
This is so important. Everything the Christian has to offer comes from Scripture. Everything we know about Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and teachings comes from Scripture.
And how we view things should be based on Scripture.
It should not be based on current popular Christian opinion, nor even on denominational statements, as great as many of them are. It should be based on the Word of God.
You see, there’s a real danger out there. Our society is constantly telling us things that go against the Bible. And the scary part is, many Christians are being sucked into buying all that stuff.
How many Christians have you seen who let their lives revolve around materialism? What about those who let their eyes linger on someone of the opposite sex, because the world tells us it’s okay to “look, but don’t touch?”
What about those whose work takes them away from their family constantly? This is a hard one for me, personally.
Just the other day I was at my office at 9:00 in the evening, and my wife called to tell me our favorite show was on.
It took all I had to turn off my computer and go home to be with my wife for a while.
You see, at times I buy into the lie that who I am is tied up in how I perform at work. Society tells us that. Society wants us to believe that our family is not as important as our income or social status.
The Bible talks about the world’s viewpoint.
COL 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
Let me tell you that we all have philosophies in life, whether or not we think we do. Hopefully they are Biblical, but often they’re not.
How about some of these? Live and let live. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Everyone does it. Nobody will ever know.
It’s socially acceptable, so it must be okay. I’m just doing what everyone else does.
God just wants me to be happy, so if that means leaving my spouse for someone else, that’s okay. You’d be surprised how often that comes up in Christian circles today. And it’s false.
How do we escape those false philosophies?
Scripture. Scripture is the filter for what we allow to influence us. If someone tells you something that is not in line with the Bible, then it needs to be discarded.
But you’ll never be able to separate the wheat from the chaff if you don’t know the Bible’s position on things.
I think that many, if not most Christians are unaware how relevant Scripture really is. And I’ll guarantee that the world sure doesn’t know, and part of that is because Christians have not been intentional about forming and articulating Biblical positions.
Scripture is extremely relevant to current situations. People in the Bible lost loved ones. People in the Bible feared for their lives, for their security, and for their significance. People in the Bible had troubled relationships.
We face the same issues today they had in the Bible.
They had crooked politicians. They had corrupt governments. They had liars, cheats, adulterers and others who practiced immorality. There was war and senseless killing.
They had witchcraft, the occult, and other cults.
And the Bible addresses all these things. Why? Because human nature has not and will not be changed until Jesus reigns.
The world’s ideas on how to cope with broken relationships, death, government, the economy, crime, etc. are not based on Scripture. They’re based on a humanistic view of life that says there is nothing outside of ourselves, so we have to look to ourselves for the answers.
The Bible, on the other hand, gives us hope, and it gives us real answers to almost all of our life circumstances.
Can you articulate a Biblical position on sexuality outside of marriage? Can you give the Biblical position on drunkenness? What about business ethics? Relationships?
Try writing down your positions supported by Scriptures that aren’t ripped out of their contexts. This will help you formulate views that can stand up to worldly philosophies based human traditions rather than on Christ.
And a side benefit is that you may find that you hold a position that is not supportable by Scripture. Are you willing to find that out? That takes guts.
After you have taken the time to really set down a Biblical position, you can move on to the third action to take in impacting our society with the reasonableness of our faith, and that is to…
3. Learn to communicate your views in a thoughtful manner.
Two things I want to stress here: communicate, and thoughtful.
Before I get into these in a little more depth, let’s look together at 2 Timothy 2:24-26.
24 And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25 Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.
First let’s look at the communicating part of things.
One of the things I have found myself doing lately, especially since moving to Aberdeen, is defending a Biblical viewpoint on certain issues, and generally in the newspaper, or in letters to legislators, radio stations, or whatever.
And one of the challenges in doing that is communicating my points in a way that everyone reading will understand.
And so I have to make a point of using language that is normal, every day usage, not filled with a bunch of religious jargon.
When I quote Scripture, I use a modern translation. I don’t use words like “justification,” “redemption,” or “sanctification,” because those words are hard enough for us to understand, much less someone who is not familiar with Scripture or Biblical doctrine.
Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman gives an example of how we let religious talk get in the way of communicating to people.
He says we generally go up to a guy and say, “Hey, have you been saved?”
“What?”
“Have you been born again?”
“What?”
“You know, washed in the blood?”
“What?”
“I’m trying to tell you the Good News!”
“What’s that?”
“You’re going to hell!”
“So what’s the bad news?”
Saved, born again, good news, all those are in the Bible. But we need to communicate them to people in a way they can understand.
When you have the opportunity to tell people about Christ, or about what the Bible says about something, do it in a way that anyone can understand. That’s what communication is all about. It’s not just talking, it’s about comprehending what’s being said.
The passage here in 2 Timothy talks about being able to teach. That takes work, folks.
Let’s move on and talk about being thoughtful in our communication. Look back at this passage.
24 And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25 Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth,
Few things make me cringe as much or as quickly as a knee-jerk reaction by Christians to whatever issue surfaces at the moment.
I’ll see letters to the editor in the paper written by well-meaning people who truly love Jesus, but the tone communicated is not love, or a desire to see people won to Christ, but a harsh judgmentalism that communicates that the person is more concerned with winning the argument than with winning the person.
There are others who write well-thought letters who advance the cause in a way that communicates love and concern for those they disagree with.
Remember what I said about thinking earlier? If you feel you should respond to something, then think before you do it.
A quick reaction is dangerous in many cases. There are times when a fast response is required. But more often than not, a quick reaction is the wrong one.
You may have noticed that I used two different words just now. I used the word “reaction” and the word “response.” To me, there is a huge difference.
A reaction is generally that first thing that comes to our mind, and it’s generally emotional in nature.
Usually a quick reaction is the wrong one. James tells us to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. That’s so we will take the time to think about our response.
A response is thought out. It looks to the objections that might be raised by our response and looks to answer them at the outset.
In being thoughtful in our responses, we need to consider not just the logical arguments, but we need to be thoughtful as it relates to concern for the person or persons we are dealing with.
This means speaking the truth in love.
Take for instance the area of homosexuality. This is a big one to me, because someone I love is involved in that lifestyle, and I have lost 2 friends to AIDS.
I think most of us here would agree that the Bible is quite clear on the immorality of it. But how do we communicate that? By screaming at them? By calling curses on them from God? By setting up anti-gay websites that say God hates them?
No! Jim Cymbala, in his book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, says that if we would spend more time weeping over homosexuals instead of railing against them, we would make more progress. (p. 33-34) And it would go along way to helping us formulate responses that communicate in a thoughtful manner.
That’s not to say that we don’t confront when necessary, but it has to be in an attitude that conveys God’s desire to heal the brokenness and forgive.
You know, sometimes Christians are so busy telling people they’re going to hell, they forget to tell them that God made a way out!
When communicating a Biblical position, we need to make sure that we communicate the facts and that God is looking to save them from whatever it is they are in.
A caution: choose your battles carefully.
No one has time to respond to everything. Find those things you are passionate about, and become articulate about them.
2 Timothy 2:23
23 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.
I think this is saying that if we are not qualified to respond to a concern with a Biblical position that can be clearly laid out, then we should stay away.
To me, one of these is evolution. I believe that God created the earth in six days. But any evolutionary scientist can put me in a corner about it in a heartbeat.
I’m not qualified to discuss the issue in a way that would help an evolutionary scientist understand.
So rather than argue, I would gather materials written by people who are qualified to discuss it.
Underlying this is the thought that we should not go out looking to pick a fight.
That’s why I caution about finding something you can be passionate about. Then when that area comes to discussion, you can have something intelligent to say about it.
Conclusion
Well, there it is. I think we need to be people who can love the Lord our God with all our minds, and who can formulate and communicate Biblical positions with clarity and love.
I hope that there is someone here today who is being spoken to by God to be more intentional about these things.
I hope that God will use what’s been said here today to prompt someone to become an articulate defender of the faith, communicating the hope and truth of Scripture in a way that impacts our society.
And in doing so, may you know the joy of seeing someone understand, not only because you have been clear, but because the Holy Spirit was able to use that in the life of the person you are communicating with.
And may God’s kingdom be advanced, and His glory be made known more and more in our area.
Let’s pray.
