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The Revelation of God Through Us: Apologetics with a Touch, Part 1

Let My People Think / Ravi Zacharias
The Truth Network Radio
May 9, 2020 1:00 am

The Revelation of God Through Us: Apologetics with a Touch, Part 1

Let My People Think / Ravi Zacharias

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May 9, 2020 1:00 am

How should we defend the Christian faith in a culture marked by skepticism? This can be done, when correctly paired with acts of love and mercy. On this week's Let My People Think, Ravi Zacharias is bringing us a message of encouragement on how to make a difference in today's world.

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Thank you for downloading from Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Support for this podcast comes from your generous gifts and donations. You can find out more about Ravi Zacharias and the team at www.rzim.org We are living in difficult and challenging times and we've all felt the impact of Covid-19 in one way or another, whether that be through the economic challenges and hardship it's brought, through the physical separation from loved ones, to those who are now wrestling with illness.

Our prayers are with you and would like to thank you also for praying for us. In the last few weeks I've been reflecting on a few famous words in Romans 8 where it says, What shall separate us from the love of God? Shall trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

What is amazing to me is the first few words in that sentence, the first two as a matter of fact, refer to the idea of living with constraint or of being hemmed in to be in a narrow place. Two words that seem to sum up so much of the global challenge we see right now. And wherever you are, whether you're with family or whether you're going and facing this challenge alone, please know our prayers and thoughts are with you. We'd also like to thank all of you who have been praying for us because during this time we have seen a fresh openness to the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We've recently launched a series called Take Five, five short minute thoughts of five minutes each once a day during the week to try to bring light into a situation of darkness.

Some of the ASEAN live events which we have done have had audiences in the hundreds of thousands, both in Europe and across North America as well as across the world, as many tune in wondering where they can find solace, comfort, but also the promise of a new life. And we would like to thank all of you who have been standing with us in prayer and in financial support to help us take that message to where it needs to go. We know that so many of us are hurting right now as we deal with the economic challenges, but for those of you who are able, regardless of how big or small your gift may be, please know that we are very grateful and we feel very blessed to have been given the privilege and trust by you to take a message to those who most need to hear it. Thank you for standing with us. . And if indeed we are to be a neighbor to the world and there is a pain in every pew and a heartache in every home and a brokenness on every street, then I do not know of a more privileged opportunity that we as Christians have to express the glory of God. As believers in Christ, our spiritual birthright is to act with compassion toward our family, our community and the world. It's a privilege and a duty we should pursue. After all, apologetics should impact the whole person, not just the spirit.

Hello and welcome to Let My People Think. How do you defend the Christian faith in a culture marked by skepticism? It can be done when paired with credible acts of love and mercy. It's not an easy responsibility, but don't let the disbelief of others prevent you from doing your part.

Stay with us and find encouragement on how to make a difference in today's world, starting right where you live and work. Here's Ravi with part one of his message, The Revelation of God Through Us. What I want to speak to you tonight is just this, that we are intended to be neighbors to our world and to bring Apologia, an answer back with a touch. The statement has been attributed to many. I really don't think Mother Teresa is the one who said it, although it is attributed to her more often than to anybody else. It was somebody more famous than that, I recall, but it had something to do with preach the gospel to everyone you meet and only use words if you have to. That's the idea that sometimes your life and your embodiment speaks much louder than the words you can use.

And if indeed we are to be a neighbor to the world and there is a pain in every pew and a heartache in every home and a brokenness on every street, then I do not know of a more privileged opportunity that we as Christians have than this very situation in which to express the glory of God. Some of you may recall that over the last few years I have delivered a message in which I talk about apologetics in the 21st century. And my outline goes something like this.

It'll just take me two or three minutes to build a backdrop of the outline and then make the deductive imperatives that result from that. The five great changes that I believe took place in the 20th century go something like this. First is the popularization of the death of God and the willingness to live with its ramifications. That second part of the statement is as important, if not more important than the first part of the statement.

Why do I say it? When the popularizers of atheistic thinking, the likes of Nietzsche and in the scientific world the likes of Darwin who would have called it naturalism, when they were propounding their theories, which basically was an explanation of all of reality only in naturalistic terms, the one caution they all had within their own thinking was what does this mean for human life in terms of ethics or the lack thereof? If God is dead, quoting Dostoevsky, then everything goes. Darwin was concerned. Darwin made the comment that if this naturalistic framework is taken and extrapolated into metaphysics, the imperatives of ethics, he said then violence is going to be the order for the future because nature is red in tooth and claw. He was concerned about it. The writers like Aldous Huxley, who were humanists, warned us about it.

Coming more recently into the middle part of the last century, thinkers like Malcolm Muggeridge and all kept reminding us that violence could become absolute in the light of humanistic thinking. Now, therefore, I say to you that least to their benefit, naturalistic thinkers were concerned about what it would mean for daily living. Now, as we begin the next century, may I suggest to you that the likes of Dawkins and the others and their writings have this cavalier attitude towards it.

This is the way it is. Dawkins's idea, for example, that we are all there's no such thing as good or evil. We're just dancing to our DNA. He said that addressing the British Humanist Association in his Voltaire lectures.

And this is what you hear, Peter Singer from Princeton, you know, if a baby is not human in the terms that we like to define it, and when it's even one year old, wipe it off, eliminate it. So the ramifications are now being made acceptable by current thinkers. The second thing that changed, I think in the 20th century, was the disorienting hits of religious pluralism that destabilized Western culture. The year was 1893 when the famed Indian philosopher Swami Vivekananda walked into the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago and took the microphone, even though he was not an invited speaker, and basically lashed out at the Christian faith and attacked British imperialism and joined it to the Christian worldview that Christianity has won its followers by putting their foot on the necks of people and on and on and on. And the world responded to Vivekananda, America opened its universities, and the change began to take place. And now with the Deepak Chopras and all who are the popularizers of Eastern mysticism and Eastern philosophy, what's really happened is Western culture no longer has a point of reference for the very ethical norms that framed it.

So the hits that were taken came from religious pluralism, but it destabilized the West. Number three was the power to inform through the visual. The eye gate became the principal means of communicating truth.

And when you think of that notion that the eye begins to circumscribe or begins to bind the parameters for you, and you see everything in a picture, then you forget that there are other pieces of information that need to be brought in to complete the picture. But modern media is very comfortable just with showing pictures and not really giving you the context to the text that is being presented. Number fourth is the lost center for cultural molding. There was no one point of reference for culture. It started to come from the arts, once upon a time it had been the church, then it became the academy, now the arts, now the media, and various sources, music and on and on. With this sort of fragmentation of authorities, there is no single source of unifying culture. And the last one is the shifting power to a younger world, where over 60% of the world now is under 24.

All of these facts are very critical to understand. And especially when you think of the two-thirds world that we call, the comparison between the city of Chicago and Mexico City is like this. The average age in the city of Chicago, I think some time ago they said, was either in the high 20s or even up to 30 or so. Mexico City is 14 and a half and falling, the median age.

Over 50% of the world's youth live, I think, within a two to three hour flight of Singapore. And the median age is dropping consistently. We must understand this, and I'll come to terms with why this is so. Because, for one reason alone, a generation ago, when a person would start supporting another person's ministry, my parents' generation, for example, they would start supporting that ministry principally on the basis of the message that was being proclaimed. The younger generation will support a ministry principally on the life and the lifestyle that they see being lived out. And they are very, very critical of lives that are not in keeping with the propositional truth that is being dispersed. So that the generation today in their 20s that I talk to, they are highly suspect, very suspicious of ministries that they are observing.

And they will probe with the right kind of discomforting questions to find out who you are. So if you take these five changes, the imperatives I drew with three of them, number one, we are going to need an apologetics that is not merely heard but also seen, not merely argued but also felt, and an apologetics that rescues not only the ends, which is to reach them for Christ, but the means, the methods by which we reach them. Do you understand what I'm saying? It is an apologetic that's not merely heard but also seen, not merely argued but also felt, that is going to rescue not only the ends but also the means. When you think of the criticisms that apologetics has faced, it is very, very defining for us as a ministry to constantly step back and reassess our own calling and our own methods. Because apologetics has been principally criticized for four reasons. Number one, it diminishes biblical authority. Number two, it dries up spontaneity. Number three, it denies the role of the Holy Spirit.

And number four, it distorts priorities. So from diminishing biblical authority to drying up spontaneity, to denying the role of the Holy Spirit and distorting priorities, you can go back to each of these and see how Jesus actually addressed all of them. For example, when he healed the paralytic, the man is lowered through the roof, and of course the paralytic is there for one reason, he wants to be healed. And as he is dropped through the roof, Jesus looks at him and says, Thy sins be forgiven thee. And as soon as he said that, there was a kind of a, oh, you've got to be kidding. That's not what he came here for. And Jesus looked at him and said, I know what you're thinking.

I know exactly what you're thinking. And therefore I want to ask you, which is it easier to say, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee, or arise, take up thy bed and walk? And he looked at the man, healed him, and said, But this is done that you might know that the Son of God has power to forgive sins also. He put the two needs in juxtaposition without distorting them in any way. When he was tempted to turn the stones into bread, he could have, but he didn't. He did it later on. Now he said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And yet he himself at the end of that season of temptation was ministered to by the angels who came and gave him something to eat to restore his own physical strength. Always in balance. Therefore, with that in mind, I want to address this issue of apologetics with a touch so that you will know we are very mindful of the fact that we do not want to distort, diminish, deny in any way.

We want to keep this in balance. In fact, even as I talk to you, my daughter Naomi has just left Delhi and is flying en route now to the city of Chennai in Madras. And Chennai, which used to be called Madras, and is there because tomorrow morning she was invited to come there by these fishermen in this fishing village because RZIM was involved in purchasing 40 fishing boats after the tsunami disaster. And each boat serves about 10 families. And these fishermen are being given brand new boats and brand new nets and these boats are going to be launched tomorrow. And they told her, we are so happy to even tell you we've painted the name of your ministry on the side of the boats, but we want you to come here. And so my little girl along with one or two others are flying in there to see these 40 boats launched to give these 400 families back their livelihood. And it thrills a father's heart and it thrills a Christian's heart to know that that's exactly what we needed to be doing at a time such as that.

So we keep this in balance and just bear that in mind as I go. I want to read for you our Lord's commission, which he referred to in Luke chapter 4, but he quotes it from Isaiah 61. May I read it for you? The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives.

Notice in each one of these descriptions, there could be both a physical and a spiritual reference. In every one of these descriptions, to preach good news to the poor, to the poor in spirit, and to the poor who are deprived of even physical well-being. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.

We are spiritually broken, and there's a physical brokenness that he's talking about. To proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God. To comfort all who moan, provide for those who grieve in Zion. To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

Now I love this verse. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. If I were wanting to give a title to this sermon, I would call it the planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. That's what apologetics with touch is all about. Where you are planting for the Lord to display his splendor. Do you remember in the Gospel of John, the ninth chapter, when a man comes up and somebody says, was he born blind because of his sins or his parents' sins? And Jesus says neither, but that the work of God might be displayed in his life. God takes us into situations where his work is going to be displayed and we plant that effort in order to show the glory of God.

I give to you five definite steps that I think apologetics with a touch must engage in. One is this, our presence in proximity. Now that may almost seem like a redundancy. Our presence in proximity.

Now I don't believe so. We could be present in many ways. In some ways I'm present at that tsunami relief episode tomorrow. In the person of my daughter, in the person of our ministry, in the person of our giving. But I'm not present in proximity. And there are situations in life where we must get close if the people are going to be reached.

Let me give you a couple of illustrations of this and by the time I pull it together, I think you'll see the thread that I'm trying to weave through all of this. My family and I and our team and some of you were there, present in the audience. We went into a little place called Little Drops on the outskirts of Chennai in India. It's a home for the destitute, nearly 300 of them. You see all kinds of pitiful looking bodies out there. Some so disfigured that you don't even know where to begin if you should even ask what went wrong with this body.

How did it get to look like this? And so we go from room to room and the man who runs that place goes on his motorbike and with other people's help and with ambulances picks up the totally destitute and brings them into this place called Little Drops. And as we were walking through there, we are engaged in a project for them right now. As we were walking through there, there were three sisters who asked if they could sing for us. And one of them, in their senior years, all three of them were raised as orphans. And then when they were 12 years old, they were separated and sent into different orphanages. Fifty years later, they were reunited.

And now they were in this place and they were in their veteran years, but a couple of them not very well. Wearing some old, what they would call frocks and didn't fit in any sense at all, but they were very proud of it and the colors. And then one of them said to me, did you ever know Amy Carmichael? I said, no, she was before my time. She said, Amy Carmichael raised us. We were babies held in Amy Carmichael's arms.

We were in her home in southern India when we became orphans. And then one of them said, can I sing a song for you? And the three sisters sang it for me.

I gave them some of the lines of Amy Carmichael. One of them, you know, from love that asked that I may be sheltered from winds that beat on thee, from failing when I should aspire, from faltering when I should climb higher, from silk and self or captain free, thy servant who would follow thee, from subtle love of softening things like easy choices, weakenings, not thus our spirits fortified, not this we went the crucified, from all that dims thy Calvary, O Lamb of God, deliver me. Give me the love that leads the way, the faith that nothing can dismay, the hope no disappointments tire, the passion that will burn like fire. Let me not sink to be a clod.

Make me thy fuel, flame of God. And these elderly women, the tears come into their eyes. They said, Miss Amy wrote that?

Yes. Can we sing for you one of her songs? They did. And then one of them says to me, you never knew her, did you?

I said, no. Said her eyes were blue. Her eyes were blue. I quoted that and somebody phoned our office and told Mary, does Ravi not know that Amy Carmichael did not have blue eyes? She always prayed that she would have blue eyes. She always had brown eyes. This woman was as certain as her existence that Amy Carmichael's eyes were blue. And she's just telling Margie and me, oh, her eyes were blue.

Her eyes were blue. The point I wanted to make is when you get close enough that they can see your eyeballs, they know you care. Apologetics with a touch is apologetics that gets close. When our Lord walked the earth and those with all kinds of deprived situations felt him walk by or even the touch of his garment or the touch of his hand or the sound of his voice, he got close. The word became flesh and tabernacled among us, full of grace and truth. Oh, in sundry times and in diverse manners, he'd spoken to us through the prophets, but now in the last days had spoken to us through his son. If the evangelical Christian is going to reach this society and this generation, we'll have to be seen in these settings of pain and hurt. Not just sending help.

We will have to be seen. And the more you are seen in that, the more you see yourself and the more you see the real need, and they will never, ever forget you. Like Joseph Damian of Molokai who went and worked amongst the people of leprosy in Molokai. Damian went because his brother had made a commitment to go and his brother died, this Belgian family. And Joseph said he would go and take his brother's place, went to Molokai, served amongst those with leprosy, contracted leprosy himself and died there. And the Belgian government demanded that his body be flown back because he was a hero. And the people of leprosy pled that his body be kept there. Finally they struck middle ground and they said, since he's the son of your soil and you want him back, we'll send him back. But will you please allow us to cut off his right arm and bury it right here because that's the arm that reached out and touched us.

And today in Molokai, Damian's arm is buried in that island and there's a grave marker in there. So it is our presence in proximity. Some of you I look across here, I know what you do. There's one young man sitting here who works with AIDS victims. He'll go and bind their wounds.

And you tell me they're not going to notice that? When you get that close, you must ask God in your lifetime if there's a privilege he will give you to get close to a hurting community and let them see the colour of your eyes. That's apologetics with a touch.

It is our presence in proximity. You can listen to this episode of Let My People Think Again by visiting our website at rzim.org and clicking on the Listen tab. And if you're listening in Canada, that web address is rzim.ca.

You can also purchase this entire message by calling us at 1-800-448-6766 and asking for the title, The Revelation of God Through Us. Stay tuned. Ravi will be right back. And if you enjoy the content from this episode, Ravi will be right back. And if you enjoy the content from this radio programme, you'll love the content on our YouTube channel. Just go to youtube.com and search for the channel Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Hello friends, this is Ravi Zacharias. For nearly half a century now, I have been covering this globe, visiting scores of countries and in the open forums, which are unique particularly to academic settings and more and more even in the business arena. There are three phases to the programme. We present a talk, then we field questions, and after that we talk privately to individuals. And now, especially in cultural history and the chaos with which we are living, people have scores of questions. Good Christian answers make truth claims clear and they answer specific questions whether they be soft or hard. On Just Thinking, we're using the Q&A format, taking people's questions, answering them, and then finding the bridge from the head to the heart. I know this will be an exciting format. You will enjoy it and I pray you'll be inspired and blessed. Thank you for standing with us. I hope you will tune in to the question and answer format on our Just Thinking programme. Let My People Think is a less than supported radio ministry and is furnished by Aussie IM in Atlanta, Georgia.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-03-10 09:43:01 / 2024-03-10 09:52:48 / 10

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