Jesus Loves Atheists - Part B

I'm concerned that a large majority of Christians don't actually know what they believe. They're not precise enough about what they believe or why they believe what they believe. John MacArthur wrote, any Christian who cannot present a biblically clear explanation of their faith will be insecure when strongly challenged by unbelievers. In some cases, that insecurity can undermine their own assurance of salvation.

The world's attacks can overwhelm them. Do you know what you believe? The Apostle Peter told believers, Always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Today on Connect with Skip High Tech, Skip shares how you can be ready for both the positive and negative responses of sharing the Gospel with others. But before we begin, here's a great resource that will give you fresh insight about God's extraordinary love. The Bible makes it clear that Jesus loves the devout and the doubters, priests and prostitutes, the diseased and the depressed. Jesus just loves people, all people, no matter what's their past or their present. Sadly, sometimes it's the people who need love the most who feel the most rejected, even by the church.

But if Jesus loves all people, shouldn't we? We want to help you grasp God's relentless love for people by sending you the complete four-booklet Jesus Loves People collection by Skip Heitzig. These booklets look to scripture to demonstrate Jesus' love for people from every walk of life. Get all four Jesus Loves People titles, including Jesus Loves the Broken and Jesus Loves Attics when you give a gift of $25 or more today to help expand this Bible teaching outreach.

To give, call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in John chapter 18 today as we get into the teaching with Skip Heitzig. Make ready there the Passover. They went, they had the Passover. Afterwards, Jesus said, Arise, let us be going, and led them to the Kidron Valley where he was arrested. And now this, and signifying by what death he would die, the Romans get involved. No wonder Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, not like a shaking leaf, not like the cowardly lion before the Wizard of Oz, but with poise, with confidence, with assurance.

He was in absolute and total control of the situation. Now you need the same kind of confidence whenever you are face to face with an atheist or an agnostic, because such conversations can seem to you very intimidating. I know some of you have told me. You need to be confident, confident that God has allowed you this opportunity, this conversation, this interaction, and confident that God is in control. When you feel intimidated by an unbeliever, you need to recognize three things. Recognize your inadequacy, recognize God's sovereignty, and recognize their necessity. They need this.

They need this. A.W. Tozer wrote, were every man on earth to become an atheist, it would not affect God in any way. He is what he is in himself without regard to any other. To believe in him adds nothing to his perfections. To doubt him takes nothing away. So, first quality to exhibit, be confident.

Second, be engaging. Atheists don't have the plague. You don't have to run away or avoid them. Here is a cynical man, a cynical secularist, who doesn't believe in the Jewish God, who is standing before the Son of God. And Jesus engages him a bit.

Notice verse 33. Pilate entered the Praetorium again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus answered him, are you speaking for yourself about this?

Or did others tell you this concerning me? Now think of the question that Pilate asked Jesus, are you the king of the Jews? In other words, do you plead guilty or non-guilty to this charge of insurrection?

It's a perfectly standard question. Pilate is simply trying to determine the threat level of the prisoner. Are you a threat to Roman rule? Are you claiming to be a king that would be in contradistinction to Caesar, who is the king of the empire?

It's a simple straightforward question. But then Jesus engages him and he asks a question. Are you asking this because you think I'm a political threat?

Or are you asking this because you're just parroting what you have heard others say about me? It actually reminds me of what it says in Isaiah chapter 1 verse 18. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Let's sit down, let's talk this over, let's reason this out. Let's think it through.

Though your sins are as scarlet, I'll make them as white as snow. To engage an unbeliever means you listen to them. When they ask you a question, you listen. You respond. You talk back in a nice way. You listen again.

You engage them. Now, some atheists are very intelligent. And they have thought through their position. And they have come to their conclusion.

And honestly, I admire anybody who thinks through their position, and has thought critically, and has come to a settled position based upon critical thought. However, other atheists want to be seen as intelligent. And for them, in their minds, to be seen as intelligent, for that to happen, they think that they must tell people, they're atheists. Because people will look at them and go, ah, you're so enlightened. You have shed the skin of superstitious religions of the past.

You're a free thinker. So they sort of take pride and they want to be thought as intellectual. And so they say, well, I'm an atheist. And then there's another category.

And that category is called another category. There are some people who have chosen atheism as a moral convenience. It's simple, really. If you can dismiss God, you can do anything you want. There's no ultimate accountability. There's no moral judge.

There's no absolute. So you can live any way you want. There is no morality. So just get rid of God.

So people will conveniently, for moral reasons, proclaim to be atheist. But here's the hitch. You don't know which is which. That's why you engage them. That's why you ask them. And when you have a conversation with them, talk with them.

Don't talk at them. The other night I was downtown with my wife. We were walking down the street and there's a huge line of people waiting to get into a concert. Across the street were a few people who had set up a megaphone and I think they thought they were witnessing to them. And they were broadcasting from one side of the street really loudly on the other side of the street things like, you're going to hell. You need God. And one even said, you need to hug the Bible.

I don't know what that's all about. But I was looking at the side of the street where the concert crowd was and just seeing their response. Not one of them was on their knees in repentance.

Most of them paid no attention to it at all. Engage them. Talk with them. Talk to them.

Don't speak at them. Actually, 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 15, Peter talks about how to engage unbelievers. He said, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

Be ready to engage. You see, the world is like a living dynamic courtroom. People are always on a daily basis deciding to receive Christ, to inquire about Christ, to move a little closer to that position or to reject him. People in our culture have heard about Jesus. They know about Christianity. They know about those who claim to be Christians. And they're always deciding.

So this is what I've discovered. Atheists have good questions. Make sure that you have good answers for them. Dinesh D'Souza, who wrote a book called What's So Great About Christianity said, it's precisely because the Christian will usually duck and run that the atheists have had it too easy. Their arguments have gone largely unanswered. They have been flogging the carcass of fundamentalism without having to encounter the horse kick of a vigorous traditional Christianity. Listen, we need to engage their minds while praying for their souls.

We need to employ what William Lane Craig calls reasonable faith. Come let us reason together. We're dealing with smart people who have deceived souls.

Yes, even very smart people can be deceived. Now, I know some of you are thinking, I don't really like to engage these people who have these arguments. And the last time I tried that it went south really quick. And you're afraid that you won't have the perfectly articulated answer. Please know that that's okay. Even if your answer isn't perfect, you might be planting a seed. And you might think you did a poor job, but you don't know what that seed will produce in time to come.

Here's an example. I was reading a book of a one time atheist. And he was talking about his journey. He was a very famous, still is, a very famous research scientist. He was a doctor, a research scientist in the DNA. And he said he was an agnostic. And then he became an avowed atheist.

As a doctor, he was treating patients down in the south southern part of the United States. And he said, a lot of my patients were pretty uneducated people. But I noticed that they had a faith in Christ, a peace, a calm, and an assurance, even when I delivered to them the worst possible news, like you're going to die, or you have this lingering disease, and here's the course of it. And just the kind of peace and calmness and how they would turn it and they would share with me the gospel. And he said, honestly, I left those encounters very uneasy about what I believed in. I had gone in so sure about my position, but I left very unsure.

And that planted a seed in him that eventually sprouted. So be confident, be engaging. Here's a third, be respectful. Now, I've been guilty of taking potshots at atheists before, as you have. We need to be respectful. Some Christians get into full combat assault mode when it comes to dealing with unbelievers. Don't attack them. You're not God's guard dog.

You're not a card carrying member of the God squad. Respect them. Don't berate them. Now, do what J.I. Packer tells us to do.

Learn to outthink them, but don't put them down. Look at verse 36. Jesus answered Pilate. He said, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here. Pilate, I'm not a threat to you. I'm not here to fight you. I don't have a bunch of soldiers with me to overthrow your kingdom. I'm not a threat.

I have a different kind of a kingdom. Not to Pilate's secular ears. He's thinking, whatever. He didn't quite pick up on this.

It sounded ridiculous. Now, we know what Jesus meant by this. We understand that his kingdom right now is a spiritual kingdom.

He's not here to take over land and subjugate people. One day he will set up his kingdom on the earth. I believe that. We believe that. But right now his kingdom is internal.

It's an inside job. It's a spiritual kingdom, as he calls men and women to himself. But he was there to announce to Pilate he's not there to fight him. He's not to threaten him.

He's not a threat to them. No wonder Pilate, at the end of this encounter, will step out and announce to the people, I find no fault in him at all, and sought to release Jesus. You see, you can win the argument and lose the soul.

Then you've lost it all. I know some Christians that sort of take pride in the fact, oh, I shut him down. He just walked away.

Really? You're proud of that? He walked away? Yeah, but I won that argument.

Yeah, but he walked away. Be respectful. I just quoted to you 1 Peter chapter 3.

I didn't quote it all to you, and I must now at this point. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do it with gentleness and respect.

That's the qualifier. Do it with gentleness and respect. Paul in Ephesians 4 said, speaking the truth in love. I've had many a conversation over the years with atheists, some very long and very detailed. I've reasoned with them, and I've always tried to be kind and fair and respectful. I remember one particular guy. He was a Brit, and he had very colorful language in our conversation, and he just thought it was grand for him to mock me in every one of our conversations.

Mock how stupid I was in my primitive belief system and try to shoot holes in it. But then he called me one time, and he said, I've given my life to Christ. I paused.

I honestly did not believe it. I said, is this Tony? He said, yeah, man, it is Tony. He's Brit. Did I mention that?

And he said, I want to thank you because you always treated me with respect. In all the conversations that we had, you didn't seek to put me down. We need to be winsome if we want to win some, right? It's all about winning souls. If we want to win some, let's be winsome in order to do it. So be confident, be engaging, be respectful.

Fourth quality, be clear. Be clear, verse 37. Pilate therefore said to him, are you a king then? Jesus answered, you say rightly that I am a king for this cause I was born and for this cause I have come into the world that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.

Here's my voice. Notice how clear and unambiguous Jesus is. You're absolutely right, Pilate.

I am a king. And then to further the clarity, notice how clear Jesus is about his own nature. Again, these are verses a lot of us just sort of Skip over because, oh, it's just sort of written in Bible talk.

But look at the Bible talk. For this cause I was born and for this cause I have come into the world. Why didn't he just say the first part and end it?

This is the reason I was born, period. He says for this cause I was born, that's his humanity. And for this cause I have come into the world, that's his divinity.

It implies I have come from another realm into this world. Now, again, we're dealing with Pontius Pilate, so these secular ears, he probably did, oh, whatever. He marginalized it.

He shrugged it off. But here's my point. Just as Jesus was clear, we need to be clear about what we believe and what we expect unbelievers to do. This is one of my great concerns. I'm concerned that a large majority of Christians don't actually know what they believe. They're not precise enough about what they believe or why they believe what they believe. John MacArthur wrote, any Christian who cannot present a biblically clear explanation of their faith will be insecure when strongly challenged by unbelievers. In some cases that insecurity can undermine their own assurance of salvation.

The world's attacks can overwhelm them. Do you know what you believe? It would be very helpful to just spend a little bit of time clarifying. It'll be helpful to you personally, and it will be helpful to your testimony publicly.

And here's the fifth and final quality to exhibit. Be ready. Be ready for the outcome.

It could be negative, it could be positive. Now, let's see what happens. Jesus said, everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. Pilot said to him, what is truth? And when he had said this, he went out. You know, he just said it.

There's a question, left it hanging. It was really a statement. And then he went out again to the Jews and he said, I find no fault in him at all.

Here's what I don't want you to miss. Jesus said, I've come into this world. I've been born to bear witness of the truth. And everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.

That's an implied invitation to Pilot. Pilot, you can know truth. You can do truth.

You can hear what I have to say. This is the love of Jesus. We say, Jesus loves atheists.

This is the love of Jesus shown to Pilot, that even to this hardened, cynical politician, Jesus leaves the door open. Everyone who hears the truth, hears my voice. Everyone who is of the truth, hears my voice.

Everyone who is of the truth will hear my voice. Now, Pilot's response was negative. He said, what is truth?

And he stormed out. But his response has been negative all along, right? Verse 35, he says, am I a Jew? In the original, it's, I'm not a Jew, am I? Remember, he hated Jews. He hated Judaism. He hated his post in Judea. So he's very soured. He's very negative. He's very cynical. He began that way and he ended this conversation the same way.

However, it didn't have to turn out this way. And all I'm saying is give God room to work and be ready for a positive response as well as a negative. I was surprised when I got that phone call from Tony, who said, I believe in Jesus. I got to tell you, I was shocked. I was a bit surprised when after a Wednesday night, a girl who was very skeptical toward Christianity at all, but she did her own research afterwards.

She came up to me sometime later and she said, I am now a firm believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. There may be a negative response, but there may be a positive response. Now let me just close with what Pilot said, because there's a lot of people who feel exactly the same way. What is truth? In other words, if there is truth, nobody can be absolutely sure what that is because truth is on a sliding scale determined by a number of contingent factors, including what most people will say today. Well, how do you feel about the truth? Because how you feel about it will make it true for you or not true for you. Now I just got to tell you, logically, that's absolutely ridiculous. I can't decide what truth is any more than I can decide to have a million dollars in my wallet right now. Or you can decide to be the world's best golfer. You can have a belief about the truth, but you can't decide what truth is. You can't choose it.

Here's what's ironic. This cynic who says, what is truth? Standing right before incarnate truth. The very one who said, I am the way, the truth, the life.

Jesus left that door open. Whoever is of the truth hears my voice. Pilot, what is truth? Would you like to know how pilot died? Truth is we don't exactly know, but do you want to know what became of him?

Because he walks off the pages of scripture. We don't hear anything about him. Secular history tells us that pilot was deposed, recalled back to Rome.

He had one infraction too many, so they recalled him. He felt very shameful, very angry because of that. And though we're not exactly sure how he died, there is a fourth century historian by the name of Eusebius who said this. Finally, he fell into such calamity that he was forced to become his own murderer. And so many scholars believe he actually committed suicide.

What a tragic waste. A man so hopeless, staring hope in the face. Looking at incarnate truth could have been different.

It can be different. So we always want to be open to what God will do and be ready. So we always want to be open to what God will do and be ready. That wraps up Skip Heiseck's message from the series Jesus Loves People. Right now, here's Skip to tell you how your support helps keep these messages coming your way and connects more people to God's truth. I've discovered there's lots of things about God in the Bible that the world just doesn't like.

But it's important to embrace God's full character and to study the full council of his word found in all of scripture. And our goal is to help you immerse yourself in the Bible so that your life and faith can be enriched. But we need your support to keep these messages coming to you and to many others. Here's how you can give a gift today. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give your gift today. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

Again, that's 800-922-1888. Coming up tomorrow, Skip Heiseck shares a beautiful reminder with you about how God's love abounds for all people. Jesus said that prostitutes were among those who listened to the words of John the Baptist and repented. And did you know that Jesus shocked the crowd when he said to the religious leaders, prostitutes and tax collectors are going to get into the kingdom of heaven before you. Connect with Skip Heiseck is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.