back to indexEV Training Class #3
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So number one, what are the two words that define the starting point of God and our understanding of Him? 00:00:10.000 |
We'll hit that a lot more in the portion on Jesus. 00:00:21.000 |
And number three, the holy God requires perfect obedience to His law. 00:00:26.000 |
And then true or false, the law of God is revealed in the conscience. 00:00:32.000 |
What is general revelation? You could have something like creation, conscience. 00:00:37.000 |
Are there any other more easy words to throw out there? 00:00:44.000 |
And then number six, what is specific revelation? 00:00:53.000 |
A little bit incomplete, but that'll still do. 00:01:12.000 |
You know, some of my old students used to ask, 00:01:19.000 |
or would say, God set this to be in the first one. 00:01:27.000 |
Number seven, in handling objections, what is the most important thing to remember? 00:01:34.000 |
It was actually the first portion of the homework. 00:01:50.000 |
The brave fill in the blank for whoever keeps the whole law. 00:01:57.000 |
If he stumbles on one point, he has become guilty of it. 00:02:00.000 |
If you can memorize that in the thing, just take it, switch it, and then. 00:03:05.000 |
OK, so to get into class three, let's jump into it 00:03:10.000 |
so that we have enough time for the content and Q&A. 00:03:14.000 |
I do wish we had more time where we can talk to each other more 00:03:19.000 |
We just don't have the amount of time that I'd like to be able to do that. 00:03:52.000 |
But let me ask you, Sean, how long have you been at Berean? 00:04:10.000 |
OK, like the homework page or the lesson page? 00:04:20.000 |
I have to-- I threw this together real quick last time, 00:04:22.000 |
and I didn't really have a good amount of time to edit this. 00:04:25.000 |
So again, if you can make notes-- if you shoot me messages, 00:04:29.000 |
that'd be very helpful so that during the week I can make fixes. 00:04:33.000 |
There's a lot where-- there are times where I'll just start typing, 00:04:35.000 |
and I wouldn't even edit after I typed because I was just kind of low on time. 00:04:43.000 |
I caught some where I just stopped halfway in the middle of a sentence 00:04:53.000 |
Any other questions before we move into this lesson? 00:05:20.000 |
Section B when it says that man's problems, every incident of sickness, 00:05:30.000 |
I was confused about every incident of sickness is a result of sin 00:05:39.000 |
because I was thinking about John 9 when he's like-- 00:05:44.000 |
it's not because this man had his parents' name, 00:05:55.000 |
So more specifically, that's not talking about like, oh, I have cancer because I sinned. 00:06:00.000 |
It's talking about the general understanding of the fallenness of mankind. 00:06:09.000 |
It's all doomed and put together because of man's sin. 00:06:12.000 |
But sin is the origin, and now every incident of anything that's not according to what you would deem good 00:06:43.000 |
And we understand by the stuff we see in the courtroom of God that that was not because of his doing. 00:06:54.000 |
And God's testing and the enemy's working sometimes do come into alignment because of the whole sovereignty of God. 00:07:03.000 |
So yeah, the correlation isn't direct, but it's obvious. 00:07:13.000 |
Those religion sheets, remember, those were-- I asked college staff, and one of them was actually done by a college student as well. 00:07:21.000 |
So you're going to hear the different voices and their religions, their religion sheets. 00:07:45.000 |
It kind of reminds you of like-- even scripture. 00:07:47.000 |
Like yesterday, Elder James came and gave a canon of scripture seminar for our college students. 00:07:52.000 |
And I was remembering like, man, that's really cool that in the words of scripture, we see-- like the epistles, for example, the different personalities coming out. 00:08:01.000 |
Like it's funny to me when I read Paul versus when I read something from John. 00:08:06.000 |
It sounds so different, and you can almost like feel their personality coming out. 00:08:10.000 |
It reminds me of the end when-- like even with someone like Peter. 00:08:16.000 |
Peter looking at Jesus saying, well, what about John, though? 00:08:19.000 |
You know, like what are you going to do with him? 00:08:21.000 |
Like you see-- you sense and realize like, oh, like in scripture, you can see how God uses people in individual personalities and ways. 00:08:29.000 |
And so the text that we have, as we talk about authority of scripture and handling objections, that being the primary thing, really feel the confidence of knowing why we believe this. 00:08:44.000 |
So maybe once we get it uploaded, I'll send that link to everybody. 00:08:48.000 |
If you weren't at that family retreat and you weren't able to hear the canon of scripture seminar, maybe you can kind of take a listen to that on your own. 00:08:55.000 |
Because it's very helpful to be able to go out there and feel the confidence, like knowing, man, but there's reasoning behind why I believe in scripture. 00:09:05.000 |
So, okay, let me pray for us, and then let's go into this. 00:09:11.000 |
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this class. 00:09:13.000 |
We pray first for BAM as they're on their last session now. 00:09:17.000 |
And as they've been talking about all these issues that are very specific to them. 00:09:23.000 |
Lord, would you allow them to be teachable and humble, to be ready to listen and to hear and to obey and heed and not just say that they understand, but God, that understanding would flow into lifestyle. 00:09:36.000 |
That they would come back, that they would share with us what they learned. 00:09:39.000 |
Father, that they'd be faithful to you and to their call as believers. 00:09:44.000 |
We pray for those that are at that retreat that aren't believers, that you would allow them to see you, maybe clearly for the first time, and that they would turn from their rebellious ways and to place their faith in the risen Christ. 00:09:57.000 |
I pray for today's class, that as we go into this material on humanity, as we talk about depravity and sin and brokenness, Lord, that we would not be going out to this world to evangelize with this idea of what we need to teach others. 00:10:11.000 |
But Father, we would remember even what it says in Ephesians 2, "We were once this." 00:10:16.000 |
We were once fallen, we were once in darkness. 00:10:19.000 |
Father, we don't preach this apart from ourselves. 00:10:25.000 |
Lord, you have transferred us from the domain of darkness into the domain of light. 00:10:29.000 |
God, you rescued us where we had no ability to rescue ourselves. 00:10:36.000 |
There was only you looking down upon sinful and depraved man. 00:10:42.000 |
And so God, help us to take this and look at it in the lens of not just some kind of theology that we might study very sterilely, but God, that this would cause in us a deep gratitude. 00:10:55.000 |
That when we go to people, they would not be judged by us, but God, that they would see and they would understand through the living testimony that walks in front of them, through us, who you are and what you've done. 00:11:19.000 |
Sorry, this is because I didn't put this in the announcement, this will be an optional cost. 00:11:25.000 |
So if you'd like to kind of contribute to the church for like the cost of the prints and stuff like that, it's going to be $5. 00:11:32.000 |
And you could Venmo it directly to me and I could Venmo it to the church or the better thing would be just to Venmo it directly to the church. 00:11:39.000 |
Okay, so that's the only time I'm going to say this. 00:11:42.000 |
I'll tell the Bammers too, but please do that if you'd like to. 00:11:57.000 |
Okay, just to review, our mission is God's purpose, our passion is God's glory, our heart is love and obedience, our evangelism is God-centered, our confidence is God's sovereignty. 00:12:13.000 |
Those are the five things we learned in lesson one. 00:12:18.000 |
Remember, our mission is like, we can look at each one and say these are good thoughts, but you actually kind of need to have it memorized in your heart, right? 00:12:28.000 |
So when you're going out, you have to ask yourself, you can't be out there coaching yourself and saying, man, why am I doing this again? 00:12:37.000 |
It needs to be instilled inside of you that this is God's purpose, that this is how we're wired. 00:12:42.000 |
Almost the way, I was watching this big heavyweight boxing match the other day, and they're boxing, and you realize all the training that they do isn't to go out into the ring and to think, oh, a punch is coming at me, I need to dodge. 00:12:58.000 |
The training is there so that when you're out there, it's instilled in you, it's reactive. 00:13:03.000 |
And so constantly, like every moment, this thing is still coursing through you that I'm on a mission here, and that mission isn't for me to assuage some kind of Christian guilt or to go out into, in the middle of it, you forget, and you're like debating this person, you're just trying to beat them in an argument or something. 00:13:21.000 |
No, you're saying like, what is God's purpose here? 00:13:23.000 |
And constantly, this is your anchoring thought. 00:13:28.000 |
Our heart, there is a difference in each of these words, but in our heart, it's done out of love and obedience. 00:13:38.000 |
And our evangelism is God-centered, remember, not man-centered. 00:13:42.000 |
I hope you were able to look through that list. 00:13:44.000 |
And our confidence, then, at the end, after all of that, our great confidence is that God is sovereign over all things, and that we are called, then, to be faithful in preaching God's message. 00:13:54.000 |
So, that's when we kind of went into, last week, on God being the center point of everything, that God is creator, God is holy. 00:14:03.000 |
There is so much more we should have gone into. 00:14:06.000 |
We could have had like five lessons just on the holiness of God, and it would have been very, very, I would say even necessary for us to insert into evangelism training. 00:14:16.000 |
So necessary, because we can't just be like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, God is holy, but we need to really believe that. 00:14:23.000 |
That this can't be something you're told to do, but it needs to be something that is yours. 00:14:30.000 |
So there's difference between something being truthful and something being your truth. 00:14:35.000 |
We can nod and say, like, God is holy, God is creator, but when it's your truth, you're wired that way. 00:14:41.000 |
So when you're going out, you don't find yourself, without realizing it, really swayed by a man-centered worldview. 00:14:53.000 |
And so it does come down to your own personal walk. 00:14:55.000 |
All of this stuff is very important to your view of God before we go out and preach it. 00:15:04.000 |
So, let's go ahead and, in the introduction, this is just a short little exercise. 00:15:12.000 |
You don't need to do complete sentences or anything. 00:15:15.000 |
How does the modern, normal, quasi-agnostic, post-Christian American view himself? 00:15:21.000 |
And how does the modern, down-the-street American Catholic view himself? 00:15:55.000 |
Okay, if you haven't, move on to the next one. 00:16:15.000 |
As you finish up here, the reason for this exercise is because this is very important for you to do as you evangelize. 00:16:34.000 |
You can't be coming with just totally in your worldview, 00:16:41.000 |
even though we're trying to bring them into a biblical worldview, 00:16:44.000 |
to be able to walk to where they're at and draw them in is very important. 00:16:48.000 |
Because if you're there and you treat every person as unbeliever, 00:16:56.000 |
while that's spiritually true, they're wired very differently. 00:16:59.000 |
And so even on Mars Hill, when you see what the Apostle Paul does with a very Greek-centered society, 00:17:06.000 |
he goes and he understands where they're coming from. 00:17:09.000 |
And so when you come to some person, as we go evangelize in a couple weeks, 00:17:15.000 |
is that this Saturday? Or is that on two Saturdays? 00:17:19.000 |
But when we're out there, we have to be able to kind of think like, 00:17:23.000 |
"Oh, what are they thinking? Why are they speaking in the way they're speaking? 00:17:27.000 |
Why are they getting defensive when I said that? 00:17:32.000 |
Even that kind of stuff will be based upon where they're coming from. 00:17:36.000 |
So if you're not sharp into understanding who they are, 00:17:41.000 |
then what's going to happen is they're going to be like, "Oh, yeah. I agree with that." 00:17:46.000 |
And then you realize a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses will do something like that. 00:17:50.000 |
But if you see, "Oh, they're a Jehovah's Witness and they're agreeing with you," 00:17:53.000 |
you're like, "No, no, no. You're nodding your head, but I don't think you understand what I'm saying." 00:17:59.000 |
So we have to see and understand where they're coming from. 00:18:03.000 |
So moving into biblical anthropology, created in God's image. 00:18:10.000 |
God-centered ED shows who man is from God's perspective. 00:18:14.000 |
That's why we started last week with who God is. 00:18:17.000 |
But now with who God is, keeping in mind His holiness, keeping in mind His perfection, 00:18:25.000 |
then the fact is that we are made in God's image. 00:18:30.000 |
You know the first two questions that were... 00:18:38.000 |
How about we'll come back to it if we have time at the end? 00:18:44.000 |
But we can think like American Catholics maybe will think like, 00:18:49.000 |
in the line of, "If I sin, I'll go and I'll get it covered over by the priest, 00:18:54.000 |
by confessions, and Hail Mary's, and doing the..." 00:19:00.000 |
Hopefully we'll have time to come back to it. 00:19:05.000 |
I originally had this to be eight sessions of two hours. 00:19:12.000 |
And I was like, "Oh, I don't think I could do that." 00:19:14.000 |
So I cut it down to six sessions of one hour. 00:19:17.000 |
There's so much more we need to cover, but I don't think anyone would be happy with that. 00:19:23.000 |
So letter A, "The culminating aspect of creation 00:19:27.000 |
was God's creation of man in the image of God. 00:19:30.000 |
The image of God has big implications for apologetics." 00:19:37.000 |
Patty, do you think you could read for us Genesis 126? 00:19:41.000 |
"Then God said, 'Let us make man our image, and bring him to our loved ones, 00:19:45.000 |
and let them move over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, 00:19:49.000 |
and over the camel, and over all the earth, and over every living thing that lives on the earth.'" 00:19:55.000 |
Okay. And then Andy, can you read the next one? 00:19:59.000 |
"Genesis 127, God created man in his own image, and the image of God he created in his own image." 00:20:08.000 |
"Genesis 96, "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, 00:20:15.000 |
So the first two there are showing us that we are made in man image, 00:20:20.000 |
but the third one there is going to be showing the implication of that. 00:20:29.000 |
Even as Christians we can say, "Oh, it's wrong to do all these things without understanding." 00:20:38.000 |
There are a lot of times where you talk about something like pornography. 00:20:43.000 |
And you get to this issue of like, "Why is lusting wrong?" 00:20:46.000 |
And there are a lot of young men who will go into it and be like, 00:20:51.000 |
I just know it's wrong because the Bible says it's wrong." 00:20:53.000 |
There's something kind of good, and simple, and childlike in that, 00:20:58.000 |
and just like, "God said it's wrong, and so we should believe it." 00:21:00.000 |
But the implications do flow out of who God is, and it's there for us. 00:21:06.000 |
So when we see an unbelieving person, even for us, our world view needs to be just that. 00:21:12.000 |
This person, this man, this woman was made in the image of God. 00:21:16.000 |
And so when we see them talking, when we hear what they're saying, 00:21:20.000 |
we should be able to see that big gap, that big divide of who they were made to be and where they are. 00:21:27.000 |
So you can see even that thinking, what that's going to start to stir in your heart. 00:21:34.000 |
We need to have this God-centered image of people. 00:21:45.000 |
Creation in the image of God is the basis for human uniqueness and dignity. 00:21:50.000 |
No other created being is said to be created in the image and likeness of God. 00:21:54.000 |
Thus, humans have a special place of dignity and responsibility 00:21:58.000 |
that is not shared by other created beings on the earth. 00:22:05.000 |
I hope this kind of prickles your feathers a little bit or whatever that thing is, 00:22:12.000 |
because today's day and age is big on the self-esteem culture, 00:22:20.000 |
But it feels very empty. It feels like there's no heaviness or weight behind it. 00:22:24.000 |
So as Christians, we actually should be like, "Man, we absolutely agree with you, 00:22:33.000 |
You're saying the right thing with everything else under it being wrong." 00:22:38.000 |
For us, we should be the first ones to lead the charge on human dignity. 00:22:44.000 |
That's why the Christians, during the time of Scripture, 00:22:47.000 |
but even today, in times of disaster, when there's need, 00:22:51.000 |
Christians ought to be the first ones to stand up and go and to help. 00:22:57.000 |
Because we have a more theocentric worldview. 00:23:01.000 |
We have a higher view of people than any unbeliever has on people. 00:23:08.000 |
The man-centered worldview on human dignity is very powerful. 00:23:33.000 |
But she's on this thing, and then she puts up a selfie. 00:23:40.000 |
And then you see all these girls underneath it putting up little flame emojis, 00:23:46.000 |
going like, "Yeah, you go, girl," and they're hot and stuff like that. 00:23:51.000 |
I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. This is so disturbing." 00:23:55.000 |
And so the man-centered worldview on human dignity right now is off the charts. 00:24:01.000 |
It's so heavy because it's not us just trying to do what's right in my own eyes, 00:24:05.000 |
but collectively as humanity, we're elevating ourselves, kind of Babel-like. 00:24:13.000 |
But the God-centered worldview of human dignity ought to be even more powerful than that. 00:24:19.000 |
So instill these things inside of yourself as you go to evangelize. 00:24:34.000 |
In James 3:9, it says, "With it we bless our Lord and Father, 00:24:37.000 |
and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God." 00:24:41.000 |
So there are great implications to being created in God's image. 00:24:50.000 |
So we're not going to sit on this one for too long, 00:24:58.000 |
So as you're talking to people and you're trying to first see, okay, number one, 00:25:07.000 |
You know now that they come from an Islamic background, 00:25:16.000 |
and so you kind of have some of their tenets. 00:25:19.000 |
And as you're talking, you're realizing, oh, but they're a nominal Muslim. 00:25:27.000 |
and we're anchoring ourselves now on a God-centered gospel. 00:25:31.000 |
And so no matter what we're talking about, no matter what they're saying, 00:25:34.000 |
we're thinking constantly like God being the anchor to all of this. 00:25:42.000 |
Now as we're talking to them, we have something in common here, right? 00:25:47.000 |
We can get to the God thing, but even here, we have something in common, 00:25:50.000 |
that we have this idea of the inherent and intrinsic sinfulness of mankind, 00:26:00.000 |
the questions that we ask is trying to draw them to the biblical worldview, 00:26:09.000 |
remember by a general revelation, it's written on their hearts. 00:26:12.000 |
You're trying to draw them into our understanding of humanity, 00:26:19.000 |
So again, remember it's not like we're going from two places trying to come to truth together. 00:26:26.000 |
and we're trying to bring people into the light. 00:26:34.000 |
Number one, why does a person have more value than a tree? 00:26:39.000 |
I've used this one, and I've gotten a lot of interesting answers. 00:26:45.000 |
A lot of people just sit there, and they get stumped by this one. 00:26:49.000 |
It's really, you know, like it seems so obvious, 00:26:53.000 |
because it's inscribed on our hearts, in general revelation. 00:27:00.000 |
Would we spend all this money to save a single monkey versus a single person? 00:27:07.000 |
Very, very interesting how they would answer this one. 00:27:09.000 |
Number two, why is human life so valuable that we have lifeguards at the beach? 00:27:22.000 |
Number three, why would we go at such lengths and spend extreme amounts of money for surgery? 00:27:42.000 |
"The image of God is common ground between believers and unbelievers. 00:27:46.000 |
And the modern day is the true common good that the Christian evangelist can use in his dealings with the nonbeliever. 00:27:52.000 |
While he suppresses this truth, the unbeliever has made him the image of God, 00:27:56.000 |
and knows instinctively that he is a created being who is responsible to God. 00:28:00.000 |
Knowing this, the apologist can call on the unbeliever to stop his rebellion 00:28:04.000 |
and fully embrace what he already knows but has suppressed." 00:28:20.000 |
Okay, in Roman numeral two, we are marred by sin. 00:28:24.000 |
So created in God's image, now we can talk about sinfulness. 00:28:28.000 |
There is no reason to talk about sin until we realize that we have fallen from some kind of standard. 00:28:34.000 |
If there is no standard, then your idea of what's sinful versus my idea of what's sinful, 00:28:45.000 |
It's the great fall seen in the view of the image of God. 00:28:51.000 |
It is refusing to do what he commands and insisting on doing what he forbids." 00:29:00.000 |
Don't think that this is underneath us as a believer to say like, 00:29:14.000 |
You could talk about like stealing, cheating, adultery, and you can say that's sin, 00:29:20.000 |
but you actually have to get them to the point of this is sin before God. 00:29:24.000 |
If there is no before God, then sin has no marking on it. 00:29:28.000 |
And there are a lot of times where I feel that temptation to just like convince people like, 00:29:37.000 |
Like every person out there, if I were to say like Adolf Hitler was a sinner, 00:29:42.000 |
So it's not hard to get people to admit that like ultimately what happens is you get into like flaws. 00:29:50.000 |
There's a difference between God's absolute standard of perfection 00:29:54.000 |
and any place on the spectrum of imperfection. 00:30:01.000 |
It's not like this thing where it's like a gauge that goes from like imperfect to perfect, you know, 00:30:07.000 |
like as if like there's all these things that if we were to fix this and fix this and fix this, 00:30:13.000 |
is that as soon as one thing is imperfect, the whole thing breaks down. 00:30:17.000 |
As one thing is imperfect, there is no more perfection. 00:30:23.000 |
Everything else underneath it falls under that. 00:30:31.000 |
"A sin is failing to let God be God and placing something or someone in God's rightful place of supremacy." 00:30:48.000 |
June, can you read that next quote first, please? 00:30:51.000 |
"It's not the conviction that you are an all-around flop and failure. 00:30:55.000 |
Rather, you are the one who has offended the Holy God, flouted His authority, defied Him, suppressed Him, 00:31:07.000 |
When Paul says in Romans like, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel. 00:31:19.000 |
I don't think it is necessary for us to jump so far into their world view to try to get them to see, 00:31:27.000 |
like break down all these obstacles that are there in their world view. 00:31:30.000 |
And then finally, like once all the obstacles are done, now let me tell you what God says. 00:31:48.000 |
We are going to try to be understanding human nature and seeing where they come from and back. 00:31:55.000 |
But don't sway from just simple things like this. 00:31:59.000 |
Like, "Hey, there is God and you have disobeyed Him." 00:32:06.000 |
Like, "You are in open rebellion against your Creator." 00:32:10.000 |
Sometimes we feel weird saying something like that because it feels like they are so far from it. 00:32:28.000 |
"For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 00:32:32.000 |
Against you, you only, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight, 00:32:36.000 |
so that you are justified when you speak, and blameless when you judge." 00:32:40.000 |
This is what is happening with David after the sin with Bathsheba and Uriah and stuff. 00:32:54.000 |
That is why when you think like, "I am sinning against a person." 00:32:59.000 |
Yeah, we can do all we want in asking for the person's forgiveness. 00:33:03.000 |
But ultimately, we are robbers of God's glory. 00:33:10.000 |
Letter B, disobedient, rebellious, and ignorant. 00:33:28.000 |
Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness. 00:33:36.000 |
Sin has the idea of missing the mark, error, ignorance, and the most common is transgression. 00:33:42.000 |
Sin has to do with disobeying and falling short of God's standards. 00:33:45.000 |
Whether it is outright rebellion, rejecting, bending, or twisting, perverting, 00:33:51.000 |
the abomination of sin is the rejection of God's holy command. 00:33:59.000 |
Don't be tempted when they say, "I am depressed." 00:34:03.000 |
You are like, "Oh, they look weak in this place. 00:34:06.000 |
So let's jump there and encourage them saying God will save you from your depression." 00:34:27.000 |
The depression is stemming from something here. 00:34:30.000 |
Ultimately it is that you have created idols, you are in rebellion against God, and amongst many other things. 00:34:36.000 |
Any questions on Roman numeral two, marred by sin? 00:34:52.000 |
See the difference between Roman numeral two and three. 00:34:56.000 |
There is a marring that happens with sin, but now we are... 00:35:00.000 |
Another way to look at this one is you can just say sinner. 00:35:20.000 |
Everything that flows out of us is going to be constantly evil, continuously. 00:35:25.000 |
That is what it says during the time of Noah. 00:35:27.000 |
In the time of judges, it says that everyone did what was right in their own eyes constantly. 00:35:31.000 |
It is like God will send another person to rescue them and bring them back to God. 00:35:37.000 |
There is no way out of this cycle unless someone comes in and intervenes. 00:35:42.000 |
Before we get to the intervening portion next week when we get to Jesus, this is so important. 00:35:46.000 |
Do you understand now that before holy God who has created you, you have rebelled against him. 00:35:58.000 |
When you think of what does it mean that I have trespassed against him, 00:36:03.000 |
it is that you have actually gone into the zone where God says don't. 00:36:14.000 |
By sinful depravity, we mean that man in his natural state is completely polluted by sin affecting his disposition. 00:36:21.000 |
In such a way that it in itself is incapable of change. 00:36:25.000 |
In extent, human depravity involves the whole individual and in scope it involves the whole human race. 00:36:34.000 |
Remember not to remove yourself from this sentence or this thought. 00:36:47.000 |
In this definition of sinfulness, this was us. 00:36:53.000 |
We can't have them thinking that we are going out and saying we are something we are not. 00:37:01.000 |
There is a reason why people point to the church and point out hypocrisy. 00:37:05.000 |
A lot of it is because of the terror, because of the goats that are amongst us. 00:37:09.000 |
A lot of it too is because of our very own testimony. 00:37:12.000 |
We go out and we will say things but we have to stick strong to saying both sides of it. 00:37:25.000 |
Then you can't go the opposite direction and say yeah, I go and I sin all the time still. 00:37:33.000 |
The idea of this is to get this like we are attacking down the next nail here. 00:37:42.000 |
It has completely pervaded my world view that this is the reason why I am daily grateful to the Lord. 00:37:49.000 |
I feel like I have nothing to offer even today except Christ's righteousness on my behalf. 00:37:55.000 |
When we go out, we go out as ambassadors of that. 00:37:59.000 |
We don't go out in the place of God using God's word to judge as God would and God only can. 00:38:05.000 |
We are going out as ambassadors and it looks very different. 00:38:09.000 |
We are saying we are recipients of the same message that we are giving to you right now. 00:38:16.000 |
Isaiah 64.6, we will keep going down the line here. 00:38:20.000 |
For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment, 00:38:27.000 |
and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind take us away. 00:38:34.000 |
For whoever keeps the whole lot and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. 00:38:40.000 |
Alright, and then let's go back to Elissa, Romans. 00:38:42.000 |
For all have sinned and fallen short of the Lord's plan. 00:38:47.000 |
In Ptsd 7.20, there is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins. 00:38:53.000 |
Isaiah 53.6, we all like sheep have gone astray, and each of us has turned to his own way. 00:38:59.000 |
Oh man, each of those, for me, each of those verses really hammers into my heart. 00:39:06.000 |
Reminding me of who God is and who I was before him. 00:39:12.000 |
And so, when we take this message to unbelievers about us being sinners, this is what we are saying. 00:39:22.000 |
This is why we understand the people that we are talking to. 00:39:27.000 |
It is hard for us to get frustrated because that is who we were. We get it. 00:39:34.000 |
Unless God intervened into my life and did a miracle, there was nothing that would have changed my heart in this. 00:39:40.000 |
There was nothing that could have drawn me to know God. 00:39:43.000 |
And so, your evangelism begins to shift and change as you go and teach about sinning. 00:39:48.000 |
As you teach people and try to draw people into understanding that you are a sinner. 00:39:54.000 |
You are not trying to get them and be like, "Ha ha, so now you see, right? You are a sinner. You admitted it, right?" 00:40:08.000 |
We are not presenting to them a Christian thought. 00:40:14.000 |
There is God and everything else is under fallenness. 00:40:24.000 |
You are not thinking, "I have to make it come out." 00:40:29.000 |
When you are looking at them, you do not look at them with frustration and anger. 00:40:33.000 |
You look at them with deep tenderness and compassion. 00:40:37.000 |
There is nothing they can do. What are they going to do? 00:40:40.000 |
That is all they know. They are in rebellion against Him. 00:40:43.000 |
You are convincing them of what you see right now. 00:40:51.000 |
I am trying to convince you of what I see because this is the truth. 00:40:59.000 |
You could think you won by getting them to admit, "I am a sinner." 00:41:11.000 |
I have to do something with these slides because I do not even follow it. 00:41:24.000 |
These are all passages I am listing out here for you to arm yourself with. 00:41:31.000 |
Number three. Mind is blinded. 2 Corinthians 4.3-4. 00:41:36.000 |
Number four. Mind and conscience is defiled. Titus 1.15. 00:41:42.000 |
Number five. Your conscience is seared. 1 Timothy 4.1-3. 00:41:47.000 |
Romans 3.10. We all know this one. Does not seek after God. 00:41:58.000 |
the people that we come across that are unbelievers, this is who they are. 00:42:07.000 |
Unless God opens the blinds, unless He opens the curtains for the light to shine through, 00:42:16.000 |
We are praying that God will use us to be able to present this gospel truth. 00:42:20.000 |
Of God's holiness, God being creator, that you are a sinner. 00:42:27.000 |
Because then you cannot step into that area where you think, 00:42:31.000 |
"Well, I could convince them with my eloquent words and my sharp speech 00:42:35.000 |
to somehow, with wisdom and some philosophy, convince them of like, 00:42:41.000 |
'This is so obvious that your worldview is wrong.'" 00:42:45.000 |
Because you could win that battle and still remain unbudging. 00:42:52.000 |
You could prove to them like, "Dude, Joseph Smith is so easy. This is so easy." 00:43:07.000 |
You could convince them of that, but maybe that is not the battle. 00:43:10.000 |
Maybe it is not the battle to try to get them to that. 00:43:17.000 |
It is not to say that you jump right into the sin thing or whatever, 00:43:20.000 |
but you are locked in so much into a biblical worldview 00:43:24.000 |
that God can use the Spirit to pierce into places you would have otherwise not seen 00:43:32.000 |
because you are so steadfast in trying to put out your own agenda 00:43:36.000 |
because you think it is a God-centered agenda. 00:43:43.000 |
Okay, where are we here? Oh, useful questions. Okay, we are almost done. 00:43:49.000 |
Remember, different people, different questions. 00:43:52.000 |
These are not questions you will hit on everybody. 00:43:55.000 |
These are just examples of questions that might be helpful 00:44:00.000 |
Number one, do you think mankind is inherently naturally evil or good? 00:44:16.000 |
How does God view the Hitlers and the Bin Ladens? 00:44:19.000 |
All of these you can say like, "Why? Why do you believe in what you do?" 00:44:25.000 |
That is an explosive one though, so maybe do not bring that one in. 00:44:29.000 |
Have you ever felt really guilty for something? 00:44:40.000 |
that eventually gets to this idea of human sinfulness. 00:44:53.000 |
The penalty is death and eternal separation from God. 00:44:56.000 |
If you feel like, "Man, they are in a place." 00:45:04.000 |
then the natural conclusion is death, eternal separation. 00:45:15.000 |
Judicial penalty for the nature of a sinner is death, 00:45:18.000 |
if he disobeyed and became a liar in Christ Jesus' eyes. 00:45:23.000 |
Hebrews 9.7, "And it is appointed for them to die once, 00:45:30.000 |
It is that you are going to come across an impartial judge, a good judge. 00:45:37.000 |
And take what you will, it is like it is God, 00:45:44.000 |
and everybody wants an impartial and a fair judge. 00:45:58.000 |
Now, what kind of confidence do you have in your life? 00:46:11.000 |
"But know that the law of his hand is not reserved for that it cannot save. 00:46:15.000 |
Neither is his ear, so double that it cannot hear. 00:46:18.000 |
If you are iniquity, submit its separation between you and your God. 00:46:21.000 |
And your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he does not hear." 00:46:27.000 |
So the difference between judicial and relational penalty. 00:46:30.000 |
Judicial can have the feel of like if you ever fought with somebody, 00:46:33.000 |
and then like the words you are using to fight, 00:46:43.000 |
or the relational penalty there is very real. 00:46:55.000 |
Present both living consequences and eternal consequences. 00:46:59.000 |
There are current immediate consequences in our separation from God. 00:47:06.000 |
Every person ever to walk the earth right now, like it is guilt. 00:47:11.000 |
Everyone has guilt, and nobody can live with guilt. 00:47:16.000 |
That is where some of the religions came out of. 00:47:18.000 |
That is why people are angry against God, because that is a fight against guilt. 00:47:21.000 |
And there is a lot of things, so there is no peace in that. 00:47:24.000 |
You can convince people of hopelessness in this world, 00:47:29.000 |
of the difficulty of living in a fallen world, 00:47:38.000 |
Our highlight is the, you should reveal the eternal consequences. 00:48:02.000 |
There is unrestrained evil there, and unrestrained wrath of God. 00:48:17.000 |
There is obviously a lot more we can talk about here. 00:48:25.000 |
I didn't realize there was another portion here. 00:48:33.000 |
So if you know the story of the moral young man in Luke 18, 18, 00:48:40.000 |
If you can remember back to our study in Philippians, 00:48:43.000 |
he talks about who he used to be and who he is now. 00:48:46.000 |
The Ten Commandments, a lot of people know that. 00:48:48.000 |
Sermon on the Mount, remember Jesus deepens it. 00:48:52.000 |
He says, "You have heard it was said, 'Don't commit adultery,'" 00:48:54.000 |
but he says, "There should be not even a little single thing of lust in you." 00:49:00.000 |
In verse 48 he says, "Therefore you must be perfect, 00:49:11.000 |
So the goal is, "Have conviction of sin which leads to death, 00:49:24.000 |
In death, there is no way for you to save yourself. 00:49:35.000 |
We're starting with God being holy and creator. 00:49:42.000 |
The resulting thing of sin is to get them into a place of utter despair 00:49:46.000 |
so that they're going to naturally cry out for a Savior. 00:49:49.000 |
So if you get them to a point, and it's rare for me, it's rare, 00:49:52.000 |
but there are times where I'm talking to someone on campus 00:50:05.000 |
When you get to a place where the person really sees God, who he is, 00:50:10.000 |
and the despair of sin, then the natural conclusion is not going to be-- 00:50:15.000 |
I get so tired sometimes of trying to convince people that they need God 00:50:21.000 |
But the people that God calls many times are people 00:50:24.000 |
who are just going to be naturally hungry and thirsty. 00:50:28.000 |
They're mourning, and so they're crying out for a Savior. 00:50:34.000 |
As rare as it is, this is where we want people to be. 00:50:38.000 |
Just because you don't see it, don't try to produce your own fruit apart from it. 00:50:44.000 |
They need to really see their sin in light of holy God. 00:50:51.000 |
Romans 3.20, Titus 3.5, you can read that on your own. 00:51:01.000 |
Please, please, please be careful of these things. 00:51:03.000 |
Guilt over failure to meet personal standards 00:51:05.000 |
versus guilt over failing to meet God's standards. 00:51:09.000 |
A lot of people have the worldly sorrow that I've been mean to my mom, 00:51:17.000 |
maybe they're struggling with something at work. 00:51:24.000 |
There's a lot of things that you can get them to feel bad about, 00:51:32.000 |
Then another mistake not to fall into is the danger is that 00:51:37.000 |
everyone's life includes that cause of dissatisfaction or shame. 00:51:40.000 |
Everyone has a bad conscience about something in his or her past, 00:51:44.000 |
matters in which he has fallen short of the standard 00:51:46.000 |
which he set for himself or what was expected of him by others. 00:51:51.000 |
we should be content with evoking thoughts of these things 00:51:53.000 |
and making people feel uncomfortable about them. 00:51:57.000 |
Then depicting Christ as the one who saves us from these elements of ourselves 00:52:01.000 |
without even raising the question of our relationship with God. 00:52:04.000 |
Remember, this sentence is saying what we ought not to do 00:52:07.000 |
to make them uncomfortable about being a flawed individual. 00:52:11.000 |
However, this is the question that needs to be raised, 00:52:14.000 |
whether they understand as the Bible states that their sins are against God and God alone, 00:52:18.000 |
and that sin has disrupted man's relationship with God. 00:52:21.000 |
So Packer says in the book Evangelism and Sovereignty of God, 00:52:25.000 |
"Not till we have learned our need to get right with God 00:52:28.000 |
and our inability to do so by any effort of our own 00:52:31.000 |
can we come to know the Christ who saves from sin." 00:52:36.000 |
A final quote here by Metzger in Tell the Truth. 00:52:44.000 |
Jason, do you think you could just read for us that final one? 00:52:48.000 |
"Perhaps closer to your experience is the evangelistic approach 00:52:52.000 |
of majoring on the conscious felt needs of people, 00:52:55.000 |
loneliness, lack of love, hurt, stress, discouragement, and so on, 00:52:59.000 |
and molding Jesus into a supplier of their desires. 00:53:02.000 |
Often the deep, simple nature of their selfishness is never addressed. 00:53:06.000 |
All many Christians dilute the gospel into a bandage for surface wounds 00:53:12.000 |
The deeper need of reconciliation with their Maker 00:53:15.000 |
on His terms of unconditional surrender is omitted. 00:53:18.000 |
Legitimate desires to be loved, have health, not be lonely, can become idols." 00:53:26.000 |
So I think we've hammered into that one enough. 00:53:32.000 |
The God-centered worldview, sin is before a holy God because we're created in His image. 00:53:43.000 |
Just about three years ago, I was evangelizing to someone, 00:53:50.000 |
And you know, it's so tempting in that place to be like, 00:53:53.000 |
"But Christ came to love you and save you," and all that kind of stuff. 00:53:57.000 |
But the thought that was in my heart was like, 00:54:00.000 |
"Oh, man, this guy's crying because he is so full of himself right now." 00:54:06.000 |
It was kind of a mean thought to have, but I think very biblical 00:54:10.000 |
because he was breaking down crying because he felt like his life was just a mess. 00:54:15.000 |
And he was just sad because his life was such a mess. 00:54:18.000 |
And his eyes wasn't looking out and crying out for a God, 00:54:21.000 |
but it's because he was just sad over his general condition in life. 00:54:27.000 |
And you can have people who look like humble people, 00:54:31.000 |
and you realize they are in just the grips of arrogance even in those places. 00:54:37.000 |
And so when you nail the second nail down, the first one being who God is, 00:54:42.000 |
second one being humanity, when you're nailing this down, 00:54:45.000 |
remember it's before God, before God, His standard. 00:54:50.000 |
What is it that we're trying to convince this person of? 00:54:53.000 |
That through us, that God is trying to make them see this truth 00:54:58.000 |
and that we're not deviating from His message here. 00:55:05.000 |
Homework. Read Evangelism through work and study. 00:55:09.000 |
And then the end of this Evangelism Discipleship, just a disclaimer, 00:55:13.000 |
this week there's a little bit more reading than any of the other weeks. 00:55:16.000 |
So just a heads up if you need to get a head start on it. 00:55:21.000 |
And then read Buddhism, and then memorize the humanity portion in the verses. 00:55:52.000 |
I think there always is a time where you move on. 00:55:55.000 |
Especially in Old Evangelism, it's what do you hope to accomplish in that short amount of time? 00:56:05.000 |
So in relationships, you can take a long-winded approach. 00:56:09.000 |
And you're not trying to fit all four points of the Gospel into one conversation. 00:56:13.000 |
You can break it down, you can take your time in it, 00:56:16.000 |
and when the time is right, you can pick them up with the Gospel. 00:56:19.000 |
So if they're continuing to disagree, there comes a point where you just back off and say, 00:56:31.000 |
But when you're in a relationship with them, as you have conversations, 00:56:39.000 |
If your mind is dead set on evangelizing about the Gospel, 00:56:43.000 |
everything they say hits you like a tuning fork. 00:56:54.000 |
But non-believers borrow the Christian worldview every day of their lives. 00:57:04.000 |
They're saying something that's biblical, and they just don't realize it. 00:57:08.000 |
We have to be able to sense it and be like, "You can't get away with that." 00:57:13.000 |
When atheists talk about good and evil, you can't let them get away with that. 00:57:18.000 |
They can say, "I kind of thought through it and all that, 00:57:21.000 |
but why don't you have any idea of good and evil? 00:57:27.000 |
So you grasp onto it, and they're going to bring up things. 00:57:30.000 |
They're going to realize that there are some people, 00:57:33.000 |
or as you talk and you get closer, things are going to surface. 00:57:37.000 |
At first, they're going to not say things, but then after a while, 00:57:42.000 |
they're going to come up with a little bit of it. 00:57:44.000 |
You just kind of grasp onto it and dig at it and see what the bigger thing is. 00:58:02.000 |
So with each person, you have to take into consideration your personality and their personality. 00:58:10.000 |
So when this quiet guy gets all, "How do I evangelize now?" 00:58:25.000 |
So you go, and it's not that you have to pound into it, 00:58:29.000 |
but if they say something, you can ask more questions. 00:58:34.000 |
"Oh, I totally agree with what you're saying." 00:58:38.000 |
And as they're talking some more, keep feeding the parts where you agree. 00:58:45.000 |
If they say something you disagree with, you let it go or say, "I disagree." 00:58:49.000 |
So slowly you're building up inner relationship. 00:58:52.000 |
You're not kind of tilling the sword, almost. 00:58:55.000 |
So that you're pulling out the roots of the things that would be not right. 00:59:03.000 |
And you're kind of encouraging the growth of the biblical worldview that they are saying. 00:59:08.000 |
You will get them to a point. I guarantee you. 00:59:13.000 |
Whether they just decide, "I'm just not going to believe you anyway," that happens. 00:59:19.000 |
But it's easy to get them to a point and till them until they're like, "You're kind of an innocent guy." 00:59:32.000 |
No, no. It was actually very clear when you said it. 00:59:36.000 |
A lot of relational things are very like, things will kind of like, you say, 00:59:42.000 |
they'll say something biblical and you're like, "Yeah, I totally agree with that." 00:59:46.000 |
And then they go to a completely different turn. 00:59:53.000 |
A very small percent of people don't believe in God. 01:00:06.000 |
So I've had people who aren't believers just say, "I know everything's going to be okay." 01:00:13.000 |
And you could just be like, "Oh, but why do you believe that?" 01:00:17.000 |
So they just say something in passing and it rings in me. 01:00:27.000 |
Don't be like a rabbit pit bull and like, "Ahh, he said," you know. 01:00:34.000 |
You're constantly, like your desire is for them to know Christ. 01:00:38.000 |
And so even in times where you're not in the evangelism mood, you're still in evangelism mood. 01:00:47.000 |
Because your only hope is, you know, in the pretense of truth, Christ is exalted. 01:00:53.000 |
So everything you see, like, "Christ is exalted, Christ is exalted, Christ is exalted." 01:00:59.000 |
So if we're like not doing that, and then we one day, like, we're like, "Well, I'm taking an evangelism class. 01:01:05.000 |
Our church is going to evangelism. I'm just going to preach the evangelism. 01:01:09.000 |
I'm just going to preach the gospel to this person." 01:01:11.000 |
Any time that's safe, you're doing a good service. 01:01:15.000 |
Any other questions? Religious stick or anything? 01:01:23.000 |
I've got one of the toughest questions I've ever got where I'm talking about the image of God. 01:01:29.000 |
And someone asked me, "Why does God create us with a sin nature?" 01:01:38.000 |
Especially if we're related to the image of God. 01:01:44.000 |
So I'm like, "Do you have a reason to help for me?" 01:01:48.000 |
First things first, he clearly didn't create us with a sin nature, right? 01:01:56.000 |
We know that. He looked upon everything and said it was good. 01:02:05.000 |
There's a difference between free agency and free will. 01:02:07.000 |
A lot of people use the idea of free will flippantly. 01:02:10.000 |
And they think it's the ability to choose whatever you want, which is not true in life in general. 01:02:15.000 |
I disagree with that too. I was talking about that. 01:02:28.000 |
You can't choose to eat a hamburger that you don't have. 01:02:31.000 |
It gets hard because you have to go to the biblical worldview of Adam and Eve. 01:02:42.000 |
Because they had a different idea of free will than we now have. 01:02:55.000 |
But what I will say, while we can't, that's actually what college ministry on Wednesdays, 01:03:00.000 |
we've been talking about that for the last four weeks. 01:03:04.000 |
But I think for our purposes, don't move far from us. 01:03:19.000 |
It's kind of like, it's a fruitless endeavor. 01:03:23.000 |
The best answer I can give is, I can't explain why God does certain things. 01:03:59.000 |
I'm trying to not to talk because this is on evangelism. 01:04:04.000 |
This is not what's keeping you from believing in God. 01:04:21.000 |
We're not there to be their like, "Oh, they're a spoken Christian." 01:04:35.000 |
I always pull everybody into a biblical discussion. 01:04:38.000 |
They'll talk about something fruity about climate change or about cows. 01:04:41.000 |
And I just pull them into a biblical discussion. 01:05:02.000 |
It's because we believe that that's the truth. 01:05:06.000 |
Unbelievers out there, they'll have instances of truth, little bits of truth. 01:05:11.000 |
And then what happens is the way they live and the way they talk and the way they think 01:05:22.000 |
So they point to these things, but you're like, "That's actually not the problem. 01:05:31.000 |
It's logically inconsistent intellectually on Facebook for you to bring up these things. 01:05:37.000 |
But then everything the way you live actually is living in front of you. 01:05:43.000 |
In terms of like, the fact that you believe in God. 01:05:49.000 |
And you're like, "Why don't I believe in anything else?" 01:05:54.000 |
That there is something consistent to truth here. 01:06:03.000 |
And we're only saying this because it's here. 01:06:06.000 |
The way we answer it, though, is very different than how we're saying it. 01:06:10.000 |
We're not going to say, "You fool! Stop bringing these questions up." 01:06:13.000 |
I'm going to hear it and be like, "Those are really good questions." 01:06:20.000 |
There are some people who just want to like, "I believe." 01:06:35.000 |
When you were dealing with someone who had a broken heart because of the situation they had in life, how do you turn the conversation back to them not to feel sorry about it, but then to feel sorry about how their life went, to come to grips with the fact that they failed to uphold God's true standard? 01:07:02.000 |
You know, it seems hard when you look at it like a vacuum, but when you're talking to individuals, it's actually easy. 01:07:07.000 |
The reason why it's easy is because you're talking to them. 01:07:13.000 |
And what we're not going to do is say, "Hey, that's easy." 01:07:23.000 |
Because a depressed person is depressed for a reason. 01:07:26.000 |
And when you start talking about why they're depressed, which naturally happens in conversation, things come up. 01:07:39.000 |
And in their depression, you see, "Oh, man, you are spitting vitriol out to people about God. 01:07:49.000 |
Or you think, "Man, you are a self-centered person." 01:07:56.000 |
"You are a self-centered, conceited individual." 01:08:09.000 |
There's so much where you kind of go back and you're seeing, "Oh, this is sin. 01:08:21.000 |
Because they're in a place of some kind of openness. 01:08:23.000 |
And so you don't want to be not compassionate to that. 01:08:32.000 |
But you don't want to play that game with what you keep saying. 01:08:44.000 |
So something on the current theme I've noticed when I've been sharing the gospel is we always 01:08:52.000 |
come to a crossroads where they will agree with me on most everything I've said. 01:09:09.000 |
Like, I can never see myself, like, believing that they're God. 01:09:14.000 |
Or they'll just, like, wrap that up with, like, "Oh, like, whatever. 01:09:49.000 |
But you have to get into the place of decision. 01:09:52.000 |
Always, at the end of every evangelistic opportunity, 01:09:59.000 |
Like, make them say something that's decisive. 01:10:02.000 |
And so, it's as simple as, "Hey, you say that, like, that's good for you. 01:10:11.000 |
But, you say, "But, do you agree with me that either I am right or you are wrong?" 01:10:19.000 |
And if I am right that you are wrong, do you agree with that? 01:10:23.000 |
You have to get them through that crossroads. 01:10:34.000 |
Let me refer to us, and then we'll come back next week. 01:10:37.000 |
Hopefully, next week, we might do a little bit of the interactive stuff, evangelizing. 01:10:45.000 |
Thank you, God, that you didn't leave us in our sin. 01:10:48.000 |
Father, help us not to run so quickly to Christ and His love 01:10:52.000 |
without first understanding who we are before you. 01:10:55.000 |
Oh, Father, help us to see the great salvation that has been given to us 01:11:00.000 |
that when we preach this, it wouldn't be removed from us. 01:11:05.000 |
God, help us to not inject in false humility and false compassion and kindness. 01:11:12.000 |
But, God, it's true because we really do understand that we were helpless before you, 01:11:17.000 |
and there was nothing good in you, and that you have saved us from the sin that we're preaching. 01:11:23.000 |
God, that when we talk about this sin, it comes not as some sterile message, 01:11:30.000 |
And so, Lord, I pray that you would help us as we continue, 01:11:35.000 |
that we would nail each nail down with a hammer, 01:11:38.000 |
and that more and more, it wouldn't be just what we think and what we understand, 01:11:42.000 |
but, God, that we believe to the point where it comes to be,