How Cola is made

This week my brother tweeted about the “Missing Link” that scientist have found and it got me thinking about one of the more interesting gospel tracts that I’ve seen. I think it still holds up well.
Found at www.livingwaters.com

The theory of evolution of the Coca Cola can.
Billions of years ago, a big bang produced a large rock. As the rock cooled, sweet brown liquid formed on its surface. As time passed, aluminum formed itself into a can, a lid, and a tab. Millions of years later, red and white paint fell from the sky, and formed itself into the words “Coca Cola 12 fluid ounces.”

Of course, my theory is an insult to your intellect, because you know that if the Coca Cola can is made, there must be a maker. If it is designed, there must be a designer. The alternative, that it happened by chance or accident, is to move into an intellectual free zone.

Sorry is a Sorry Word

Don’t memorize arguments, understand your faith and competing worldviews.

The better you understand where a person is coming from the better you will be able to communicate your faith to them. Because I am trying to give tips on defending the Christian faith my assumption is that you will be in a position where a person from another faith/worldview is in a give and take discussion with you. That isn't always the case, but it is a lot.

Part of defending your faith is knowing why the Christian faith is superior to any other worldview. If you truly believe that Christ reigns supreme over all other treasures you should be able to find where his gospel is better (yes it's ok to say something is truly better) than any belief you encounter.

Obviously I don't have nearly enough knowledge to talk about every worldview out there in detail but I can give some biblical help:

According to the Bible all mankind irrationally gives their worship to idols. Whether it's Animism, Hinduism, or plain old Atheism, worship that is not directed to the one true God of the universe is idolatry. Romans 1:18-32 gives us an overview of how this looks.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:22-23)

In our day and age this is seen in an inconsistency in morality (how does an Atheist know what is truly right?) only accepting religions that make you feel good about yourself (ask Hollywood for the best options), or simply find the religion that turns you into a deity (learn to ride a bike first). In Isaiah's day the criticism was that the same wood that was thrown into the fire to warm the house was also used to make an idol to which a person could bow down (Isa 44:15).

Am I suggesting you find the best way to tease a person about their personal beliefs, no. However, you should learn about other worldviews and understand where they fall short in comparison to the beautiful salvation that comes from Jesus Christ.

More to come...

Grace and Peace,
Stephen

Galatians 6:14

All Apologies

Don’t memorize arguments, understand your faith and competing worldviews.

The better you understand your faith the more effective you will be in defending it.
It is clear that the Bible teaches us to grow in our understanding of the Christian faith (see Hebrews 6:1, 1 Corinthians 3:1-4). But this is also important when defending the faith. If you only know your faith at the simplest level you will be able to evangelize but you will not be able to defend it against attacks from ungodly worldviews.

This point has immediate application to my own life. Recently I struck up a conversation about evolution with an old friend because of a Facebook status he had posted. That turned into a deeper discussion on the Christian faith in which I found myself defending core Christian doctrines (and even the authority of the bible itself). To make things more interesting this friend is very intelligent and has raised several objections to Christianity that are logical at face value.

It is only because I have personally taken the time to answer my own questions about the authority of Scripture, the sovereignty of God, and even the necessity of the atonement of Christ that I have been able to provide answers to my friend’s objections. If I only knew now what I knew about my faith when I graduated high school I wouldn’t have been able to answer his questions in a biblical way. More importantly, because I have been able to get into such a deep discussion on the matter I have had several opportunities to take the discussion back to the most important thing, the gospel.

My intention in this post has not been to show off the fact that I have engaged in this evangelistic opportunity. I confess that I do not evangelize nearly as often as I should (seriously). Rather, it is intended to show you the practical importance of understanding your faith. I want to encourage you to raise questions to yourself about the Bible. For example, how does the momentary suffering of one man atone for the sin of millions upon millions who would otherwise pay for their own sin for eternity? If God is all knowing, all powerful, and good why does He permit horrible suffering (for example, Haiti)? I’m sure you can think of many more. Then spend some time researching in Scripture or asking your pastor these things. This will edify you in your walk with Christ and strengthen your ability to defend your faith while spreading the good news of Christ.

Grace and Peace,
Stephen

Things to Learn from Brit Hume

I do want to get back to the series on apologetics eventually but please allow me to go on a different topic for yet another week. It is rare for a respected person in the media to speak as boldly as Brit Hume in the above clips. Yes there are examples such as Tim Tebow and Stephen Baldwin but often times they simply become new faces of the Christian sub-culture. I don’t want to take anything away from these men, especially Tebow for whom I have much respect despite him being an SEC rival of my beloved Hogs. However, they are both known more because of what they do as an expression of coming from a Christian sub-culture (conservative politics, John 3:16 eye black, the term “God bless”, etc…) whereas Brit Hume addressed a man’s need for a savior and expressed his belief that Christianity is the only religion with a genuine offer of that savior.

I am grateful for what Mr. Hume did and for what appears to be fruit in his life. I only hope that he doesn’t become the next evangelical celebrity. I hope he isn’t asked to speak on the topic of boldness at Liberty, go on TBC, or have a daily segment on K-Love. I hope we don’t try to turn him into an expert in theology or apologetics. Most of all, I hope production hasn’t already started on a line of “Brit Hume is my homeboy” T-shirts.

The fact is that this is that Brit Hume is a man who can serve Christians as an example. He is an example of a man who gave up a good career so he could have more time pursuing his faith. In addition to his desire to spend more time with family, he wanted to spend more time in God’s word. Furthermore, he is applying the things he has learned to his new job as an analyst. I hope he realizes that his expertise in politics gives him a rare opportunity to bring Christ to the lost.

So instead of making Brit Hume into one more evangelical celebrity, let’s follow his example. Personally, I am convicted of my own desire to study Scripture. Would I leave such a well paying, respectable career to pursue my faith? Would I then give up the rest of the world’s respect for me to proclaim that Christ is the only savior of the world? I hope so, but I am grateful to Mr. Hume for making me think about it.

Grace and Peace,
Stephen

Too Late to Apologize?

apol•o•get•ic \ə-pä-lə-ˈje-tik\ adj: offered in defense or vindication〈the apologetic writings of the early Christians〉

"...in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect..." (1 Peter 3:15)

I am not an apologist nor do I want to pretend to be. However, I have had a few opportunities to answer questions and give a defense for the gospel in my evangelistic efforts. Because I have had some experience and have learned a lot from that (as well as from studying the subject) I want to offer you some tips in a new series of posts. I will probably interrupt the series some weeks for other kinds of posts but in an attempt to offer as much help as I can I think it will be good not to limit myself by trying to fit everything into a single post.

Presuppositions exist, don't ignore them.

This is one of the foundational truths of the brand of apologetics known as Presuppositionalism. It isn't important at this level to go into a textbook style summary of what that means. What you should remember is that you cannot prove the existence of the God of the Bible without acknowledging that you are assuming the truth of His Scripture.

This is one of the great problems I have with many respectable men in the field of apologetics. They make great arguments based on real evidence for the existence of God but in order to avoid the charge of assuming the truth of the Bible they have to say things like "the great preponderance of the evidence points to the likelihood of the existence of a god." Which may be convincing enough to bring some people to faith in "a god" but the assumption behind that kind of argument is that we just need to convince people to become theists and hopefully they will throw themselves into the Christian camp as well.

Instead, I suggest that you simply acknowledge that you are entering the debate with a heart and mind that has been changed by God and, therefore, you assume His existence from the beginning.

You also must remember that because all of mankind has been radically affected by the Fall they are doing the same thing. In Romans Paul says, "no one seeks after God" (Romans 3:11) and in Ephesians 2 man is further described as "following the Prince of the power of the air" and described as "the sons of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:2).

So biblically speaking you are entering the "debate" with a bias for the God of the Bible and they enter it with a bias against Him. Ignoring that doesn't make the debate go smoother, but it can lead to arguments that are meant to be for God's existence but end up blasphemous.

More to come...

Grace and Peace,
Stephen

The Purpose and Centrality of the Local Church Part 6

This is the final part of a series on the centrality of the local church in God's redemptive purposes in the world. It has not been attempt to bring us back to a Rome-like view of the church or salvation but, rather, an attempt to do away with our Western individualism and help you to get a vision of and passion for the local assembly that God has given you. I hope it has been helpful.

The centrality of the church can be seen in that the responsibility for missions is given to the church.

This point is very relevant for me because I have seen first-hand both the lack of passion for missions in the local church and the lack of passion for the church in missions organizations. That is all besides the fact that most churches misapply their mission, turning church services into productions that are meant to draw in lost people with everything but the biblical gospel.

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Matthew 28:18-20

This is the probably the main text that comes to most Christian minds when thinking about missions. Often called "the great commission" this text makes it clear that the gospel was meant to be effectively preached in all nations.

There is, however, much debate over what Jesus intended to be the eternal result of his words. Was this only a commission for the original disciples to fulfill? Does this obligate every person to serve a term of some length as a missionary?

Without going into a long exegetical study of the passage I will tell you my own conclusions. Just by knowing the rest of the New Testament we can know that this commission is meant to drive Christians during the entire church-age; that is, until Jesus comes back. The grammar of the commission tells us that the emphasis is not on "go" but on "make disciples." Therefore, every Christian is called to be a part of the fulfillment of this commission, but not every Christian is called to go on a "missions term." However, this commission clearly has global aspirations. Therefore, global missions is necessary to obey Jesus' commission.

So what we should really be asking is how Jesus intended this commission to be fulfilled and how the early church obeyed him. So let's see what we can learn from the book of Acts about these two things.

1. How did Jesus intend for this to be done?

In Acts 1 Jesus tells the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon them and then gives a statement similar to the great commission cited above (Acts 1:8). He wasn't urgent for the disciples to start on a missionary journey as soon as he ascended. Instead, it seems that Jesus wanted the church to officially be started. He wanted things to go in their proper order and the Holy Spirit to empower their evangelism, which would happen in an incredible way in Acts 2.

2. How did the apostles work to fulfill the great commission?

The reason I use the "apostles" rather than "the church" in the title for this point is simply to avoid circular reasoning. The fact is 1st century Christian missions was church-centered to the core. The best example I can give for this is Acts 13-14 where we see how Paul and Barnabas went about their missionary journey.

In Acts 13:1-3 we see Paul (Saul) and Barnabas being set apart as missionaries in the context of the local church at Antioch. The congregation fasted and prayed about it and then layed hands on them and sent them.

The rest of Acts 13 and into 14 describes the missionary journey. To summarize, the fruit of the journey was church plants (Acts 14:21-25). They made many disciples of Christ and encouraged them, appointing elders for the new local churches.

After all this what did they do? Return to Antioch to let their sending church share in the joy of their labors (Acts 14:26-27). They then did something that we don't see much nowadays with missionaries, "And they stayed there a long time with the disciples." (Acts 14:28).

So we see three things: (1) the local church sent the missionaries, (2) the missionaries planted local churches, and (3) the missionaries returned to the local church to report and commit themselves to their own congregation once again.

We could look at a lot more but I think this gets the point across. Love your church, love the gospel, and love the lost enough to preach the gospel to them. I don't think para-church organizations are the God-ordained means for this task, they are only helpful inasmuch as they seek to work alongside God's church. Sending a para-church orginization to fulfill the great commission without the church is like sending the Boy Scouts to war...they may be entheusiastic about it but they lack the power and authority to win.

Grace, Peace, and much love,
Stephen

Creation and the Gospel

This past weekend I was supposed to preach at a local juvenile detention center. Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances involving a fire alarm and multiple Sham Wow's our group wasn't able to go inside and talk to the young men and women. However, my preparation left an impression on me that I would like to share with you.

Every time I get the opportunity to preach the gospel I feel the weight of a new truth that I should try to press on the lost person. This time was no different. For the greater part of this year I have been thinking about the importance of God's role as Creator and how that should play a big role in my presentation of the gospel. It flies in the face of the secular worldview to tell a person that they must do anything in order to please someone they have never seen.

My intention last Friday was to go to one of my favorite passages- especially lately- Colossians 1:15-17, 19-20:

[The Son] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together...For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

It is one thing to tell a person that they were created by intelligent design, therefore they should believe in a god, and while they're at it they might as well go for Christianity. It is quite another thing to tell that person that Jesus Christ created them with a purpose for himself. It doesn't matter if you think you are a great person or the lowest of the low, if the rulers and authorities (demons) were created for Christ, you are no worse than they.

This is what is so offensive to a Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins. This is the truth they want to suppress. If they were created with a purpose, rather than haphazardly, they have no rights over their own life, whatever they do that is not for Christ is rebellion against him and fully deserving of the appropriate response for cosmic treason.

But this passage doesn't stop there! It doesn't only tell us that we were created for Christ, allowing us to realize how far short we have fallen, it also tells us how this is accomplished despite our rebellion. Verse 20 tells us that Christ reconciled all things through his death on the cross. This is how rebellious sinners become the adopted children of God. This is where all things find their purpose, including those who are infinitely and eternally evil, never to find repentance. They find their purpose in being shamed by the cross (Colossians 2:14-15).

This is a wonderful passage for reflecting on the gospel and sharing it to those who don't know Christ. I encourage you to give it a read today and thank Christ for creating, redeeming, and ultimitely restoring you. If you don't yet believe in him I plead with you to trust in the only Savior of the world.

Grace and Peace,
Stephen

"...any good-hearted goal, without the desire to give people eternal joy in God, is condemnation with a kind face." John Piper

For the month of october i have been reading through John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life. When i read the above quote i was basically slapped in the face. This is so blunt, so honest...and so true. This can range from the good intention of building a relationship with people, that you work with for example, so that you can tell them about Christ but never actually do because you don't want to be met with criticism or come off as "judgemental" or you just don't really know what to say (which i personally am guilty of). All the way to well meaning organizations that feed, clothe, and shelter impoverished families all the way around the globe.

I remember working with a girl for a while at a restaurant and we had built a pretty good relationship. One night a table was keeping her there pretty late. I could hear the conversation and turns out the lady at the table was telling her about jesus. i remember being annoyed with this woman because to me she was being inconsiderate by holding this waitress up and she had never met my friend before in her life, therefore butting into business that wasn't her right to know. When i told my fiance, now my husband, later on that night i could not stop crying over his response. He said in that moment, this woman loved my coworker more than i had, because she shared the gospel with her...something i had never done in all my time of knowing her. And he was right.


If we truly loved people and thirsted for souls to be won to Christ, we aren't glorifying God by being silent. So love people by telling them about Christ.

Grace and Peace.

Wisdom, Folly, and Truth

If you have ever attempted to give testimony of the gospel to a lost person you have probably heard something like the following response, “Well, that may be true for you but I have my own beliefs and they are true for me.” This kind of response comes from a post-modern worldview; which tells us that any non-testable truth claim is subjective and, therefore, cannot be applied to every person universally.

In some ways this way of thinking is a good thing. Every time we see or experience the rotten fruit of Islamic fundamentalism we should be glad that America allows the freedom to adhere to any truth as long as it doesn’t break certain moral laws. The belief in relative truth has its own way of encouraging some humility in the public square where ideas are shared.

On the other hand, this view of truth mostly comes straight out of secularism which says that God does not exist (or at least we cannot know that He exists) and man is the authority for judging truth and falsity. It is a view that comes straight out of Romans 1:21 by which man suppresses the truth about God by claiming ignorance on the most important matters.

What I want to do here is spend a little time looking at one example in Scripture of the interplay between subjective and objective truth. Perhaps I do have my own truth and you have yours but what I want us to see is the truth that really matters. I also want us to see how we might apply that truth to our evangelistic ministry.

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor. 1:18 ESV)

Notice how Paul addresses things throughout this chapter and especially in this particular verse. There are wise people and there are fools. The strange thing about these two types of people is that they are exactly the opposite of what one would expect to read. The bad guys with whom Paul completely disagrees are called wise. The good guys who have given up everything to follow Christ are called fools. Why is that?

The reason is because Paul is looking at these two kinds of people from the perspective of the lost. They are wise in their own eyes and have, according to Romans 1:22, become fools. So subjectively Paul is able to say that the message of the cross is folly in the eyes of the one group.

On the other side we have the fools. Why are they fools? From the standpoint of the lost it is because they have given up their lives in service to this mysterious God of the low and despised. From another perspective we can say that they are fools because that is what they are apart from Christ who chose them in order to shame the wise (see 1 Corinthians 1:27). To these foolish people the message of the cross is the power of God to save them.

So here we have two groups with opposing truth claims. They are completely at odds and there appears to be no way of reconciling their worldviews. However, we can consider that someone is writing this story. There is one who is telling us about these two groups and how they think. In the same breath by which Paul tells us what the wise man says and what the foolish man says he tells us what is really happening to them…objectively! The truth is that the wise man is in reality the perishing man and the fool is the one being saved.

Unfortunately in our day we will do almost anything to convince the wise man of the truth of the gospel by using his own “wisdom.” Some appeal to scientific evidence while others try philosophical arguments. Others just do whatever they can to get you in the doors of a church so they can show you how much better Jesus is for your emotional well-being. But verse 17 says “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”

The power of the cross is its ability to save. If we try to take the form of a fellow truth-suppressor we will only convert them to a slightly different form of rebellion against God. We might have more theistic heathens but in the end there won’t be anymore knees bowing to Jesus (unless God is so kind as to convert them despite an unbiblical presentation of the gospel).

My encouragement to you is to remember as you do apologetics and try to reach out to people that you don’t try to do it in a cunning persuasive way. Show people you care about them, show them that the Bible answers the questions they have (even the deep ones), but in the end let them accept or reject the truth of the cross. It isn’t up to you to convert souls, it is up to you to speak the truth of the gospel. The rest is up to God.

Grace and Peace,
Stephen