Keeping Watch and Counting the Cost

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You can find out more about Ravi Zacharias and the team at www.rzim.org Thank you for the encouragement of the team. Because of your faithful giving and because of the call that's been put on the team, the gospel of Jesus Christ has been carried to the utter moat regions of this earth. It has been our privilege and our joy to see lives transformed and people receive new life and new hope because of the ministry and the partnership that we have with you. Despite all of the challenges of lockdown, it has been remarkable to see how many other doors have opened. In some instances, the digital audiences we're reaching are up to 10 times larger than the original venues could have accommodated had we actually been there in person. What's more, putting the ministry onto a digital platform has also meant we've been able to do things that we couldn't have imagined of even just a few months ago. A short while ago, I had the privilege of while sitting at a desk in Atlanta, of first speaking at a church in the United Kingdom, then speaking at a church in Malaysia, and then speaking to a Bible study group hosted by the President's office in the Philippines.

There isn't a plane fast enough that could have got you from one location to another to speak three times in three different parts of the world, which are so culturally diverse and separate from each other. But that is just one instance in which we have seen God give us a new opportunity and a new possibility because of the new doors that he has opened. Thank you for standing with us and thank you for your support. Now, in our society, if we lay claim to the sanctity of marriage, or the sanctity of sexuality, or the sanctity of our belief, or the sanctity of life, you could be throwing oil into a flame and somebody could step in front of a microphone and basically cut you down to the knees. There is a cost to living by your Christian beliefs if you choose to voice them in public. And for those who actively spread the gospel, there are dangers around every corner.

Hello and welcome to Let My People Think. Several years ago, RZIM's founder, the late Ravi Zacharias, addressed some of his most ardent supporters on the state of this ministry. While Ravi is no longer with us on this earth, the ministry of RZIM is growing rapidly and now has more than 90 itinerants around the world proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. But with that growth has come increased challenges and outright attacks. That's why Ravi titled his message, Keeping Watch and Counting the Cost.

Here's Ravi as he begins part one of this message. We're talking about keeping watch, keeping alert, keeping an eye on what's going on, coming alongside, encouraging, praying. Because not only do we have to keep watch, but sometimes the strain of keeping watch needs somebody really to prop you up for a little while. When the fatigue comes in, all the exhaustion, emotional, intellectual, physical, familial, all kinds of trials on the road. I've oftentimes been tens of thousands of miles away when my family has had some great need. And I remember when I first started 30 years ago, actually before that, 42 years ago in ministry, I would go from church to church to church, go five weeks in a stretch, pack my bags in the car, finish on a Sunday morning, drive two to 300 miles, be in another church Sunday night, speak 12 times, pack things and again keep driving.

It was either Greyhound or train or cars. You never know where you were going to sleep, who you were going to be sharing the room with and so on. And at that time, I still recall many churches would tell me when I arrived there that they would allow me to make one phone call home a week. And oftentimes somebody else would be in the room while I'm making a call to my wife. Those were the early days when we started. Days in which you would lie in bed and start driving the next day and say, have I really made the right choice?

Can I do this for a protracted period of time? But people came around you, people sustained you, people helped you and you kept on keeping watch. And what I want to talk about tonight is a character that I've been looking at a great deal over the last period of time. And the reason I've been looking at this character a great deal is because he was really not a person in ministry. He was a civil engineer. And what I would like to do is talk a little bit about how he kept watch and how he organized a mission to rebuild the walls of his beloved city. Malcolm Muggeridge in the 1970s when he left the chaplaincy at Edinburgh. You know, he was a late comer to Christ.

If you've never read anything by Muggeridge, I encourage you to pick up some of his books. I don't know of anyone who used the language so beautifully and so precisely and the phrases he would use would open up vistas of imagination and conviction. But he left the University of Edinburgh and spoke at St. Giles, the famous church, over a moral issue and a moral decision that had been made by the administrators. And he wrote about it later and alerted society as to where we were headed if the educational institutions lost their way. And he said this in his farewell address, the whole address is powerful. Imagine before on a prestigious student body, you as the chaplain are submitting your resignation and then the audience is hearing words like this. So dear Edinburgh students, this may well be the last time I address you.

And this is what I want to say. And I don't really care whether it means anything to you or not. And whether you think there is anything in it or not.

I want you to believe that this row I have had with your elected officers has nothing to do with any puritanical attitudes on my part. I have no belief in abstinence for abstinence's own sake, no wish under any circumstances to check any fulfilment of your life and your being. But I have to say to you this, that whatever life is or is not about, it is not to be expressed in terms of drugs to perfection and casual sexual relations. However else we may venture into the unknown, it is not, I assure you, on the plastic wings of Playboy magazine or psychedelic fancies. However we are going to go into the future, it's not going to be on the wings of Playboy magazine or psychedelic fancies.

All of the allurements of the Playboy lifestyle coming away empty handed. Psychedelic fancies. Wasn't it odd that in one of the elections some time ago in San Francisco, they were wanting to put marijuana on the ballot for yes and remove plastic bags as a no.

We don't want plastic bags to wrap our foods, but let's introduce marijuana as something you can go and buy anywhere. And you pause and say to yourself, how did we get to such issues of thought? I'm not saying therefore we don't have to worry about the environment, that's not what I'm saying at all. Why do we not worry about the environment? What goes on inside of us?

Because we then become the progenitors of destroying both the environment and the moral fiber in which we are intended to live. Nehemiah was an engineer. His brother comes to him and he's in the palace of the king. And his brother comes and talks to him, I think he was an actual brother because later on in the book he refers to him again, he's not just talking in generic terms. And he looks at his brother and says, how's the city doing? How's Jerusalem doing? And he says, you're going to be sorry you asked, its walls are ruined, its gates are burned, everything is in destruction.

Nehemiah, we are an embarrassment, the city is gone. Four months after this happened, you begin to see the conversation and the king looks at Nehemiah and he says, I've been looking at you all this time and you've been looking so upset, what's bothering you? He says, you know what, I'm here in your palace, I'm enjoying all of this, but the city I really love is in ruins.

Its gates are burned, the walls are destroyed, how can I be at peace while I am here knowing the city I truly love is in such disgrace? The king says, what are you asking me for? And he says, so I prayed to the God of heaven and I said to the king, let me go, I can build a wall, I want to build a wall. If you will let me go, I will give you an appointed time, I promise you I will come back, but I want to build this wall and protect my beloved city all over again. He says, how long do you want? Nehemiah gave him the time. He said, I'll let you go. Nehemiah says, one more thing, give me the letter so that I have all that I need to go and have safe passage and build this wall and return.

Well, story continues and here's what happens. So we rebuilt the wall till we reached half the height for the people who worked with all their heart. But when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the men of Ashdod heard the repairs to Jerusalem's walls had gone ahead and that the gaps were closed, they were very angry. They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and stir up trouble against it. But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat.

Meanwhile, the people in Judah said, the strength of the labor is giving out, there is so much rubble, we cannot rebuild the wall. Our enemies said before they know it or see us, we'll be right there among them, we'll kill them and put an end to their work. Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, wherever you turn, they will attack us. Therefore, I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall and the exposed places, posting them by families with their swords, spears and bows. After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles and the officials and the rest of the people, don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome, fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes. Pretty direct language and I want to bring to you the three challenges Nehemiah faced and the three responses, I'll lengthen some of the thoughts and shrink the others in proportion with time. The first is they scorned him. They looked at him and said, what kind of a wall are you really going to build?

If a fox jumps over it, it's going to fall down. Do you realize how much scorn you will face in your life if you hold to the truths of God's word and you become a defender of it in the public arena? You know, I've been in this 42 years.

I got in the ministry in 1972 and then for some time as a professor and later on RZM was founded 30 years ago. In 42 years, last year was the first time when I went to one of our prestigious Ivy League schools that I had to have a bodyguard with me. A 300 some pounder African-American man who had to walk me in and as I was walking there, I didn't know whether to cry or what. Kids holding up placards with my name on it and talks, you know, supposedly that I'd given, which I hadn't. They were quoting things and attributing statements I'd never made. They wrote articles claiming stuff had been said, which had never been said academically. So flawed police people keeping watch as guests are coming in.

Of course, it built a bigger audience and we were packed to the hilt. But the sadness of it, that you are going into a place to talk about moral absolutes and our generation now is so lost that they audaciously can stand and block your way. Insinuating things, attacking you and mocking what it is.

They handed out sheets to people coming in. Take note of when he says something like this and put a checkmark, they were playing bingo while I was speaking. And you know, I stood up and I said to them, I just want to tell you something. I'm not here to change your mind on anything. I'm not here to change your mind on anything.

I don't have the capacity to do it. I'm only here because I believe in somebody who can change your mind. You give me a fair hearing, I'll give you a fair shake of the questions.

And we'll have a healthy dialogue and tried my best to disarm them. But the scorn, look at the scorn Richard Dawkins has poured on John Lennox. Dawkins has one doctrine, Lennox has three.

They don't even need to have facts on their side anymore. But you're scorned, you're ridiculed. Why? Can I give you four reasons for this? Number one, because we claim exclusivity.

That there is a single way to salvation provided in God's Son in Jesus Christ. Now, why don't they argue against the law of gravity? This is too narrow, you know. Why don't they attack quantum theory?

Too narrow all this stuff. Why don't they attack any other law? Why is it they attack you as being too narrow when you defend the truth? When truth, by definition, is exclusive. When you affirm something, you're implying that the opposite of it is untrue. The moment a person challenges the law of non-contradiction, they actually prove it. Because if you say, no, what you're saying is not true about the law of non-contradiction, you're proving it, you may as well try and draw a one-ended stick.

You can't deny the law of non-contradiction. But when you claim exclusivity, they will mock you, they will scorn you. I remember studying under the famed Carl Henry, and he was alerting us to all that was coming down the pike on this, and he wrote some powerful words on what was going to happen in our culture. I was a young man when I heard Francis Schaeffer and Everett Koop speaking in one of the auditoriums in Toronto. And I went to listen to them, and some of the things Schaeffer was talking about that he could foresee coming, I thought, no way, I can't believe that'll ever happen in the West. It has happened.

It has happened. Today we glory in our shame, and we've turned any absolute proclaimer to be somebody who doesn't belong in society. Not only do they mock us for claiming exclusivity, they mock us because we see the unseen. We are people of faith.

Lennox is so right. Faith is a starting point for all disciplines. But it's not credulity. I don't go into a plane and walk into the cockpit and demand to see the license of the pilots. I assume there are things in place to keep this in check.

You didn't just come here, look at a chair, and start examining all of the seating and all of the footage and all to see whether it is, maybe once in a while it'd be wise to do so. But you put checks and balances in place, and you have the strength of trust. God has put enough into this world to make faith in him a most reasonable thing.

He's left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone. So we are mocked because we claim exclusivity. We are mocked because we claim to see the unseen. We are mocked because we challenge the sovereignty of man and defend the sovereignty of God. We challenge the sovereignty of man and defend the sovereignty of God. I want to expand upon this because I get more questions on this subject than any other, even in private.

And I was asked that even this morning while I was walking through the corridors. See, when Moses stands before Pharaoh and challenges his sovereignty, Moses is bringing a completely different belief system against Pharaoh. And Pharaoh just thought he was omnipotent. He was all in authority.

There was no way his authority was going to be challenged or questioned. Now, in our society, if we lay claim to the sanctity of marriage or the sanctity of sexuality or the sanctity of our belief or the sanctity of life, you could be throwing oil into a flame and somebody could step in front of a microphone and basically cut you down at the knees. You could be talking on the edge of the earth and the person will plant a completely different question before you. Our team listens to these things very, very carefully. We do challenge the sovereignty of people. But here's what I want you to listen to me very carefully now. Because in our ZIM, I want you to follow me so that I am not misquoted out here. There are some questions through which we navigate so that we can win the foundation and not get trapped in the infrastructure. We don't want to merely win a battle and lose the war in the process.

Please listen very carefully because I'm asked this so often. The whole issue today of sexuality and the issue of gay marriage and all come, it's a volatile question, volatile issue. I have known of one place that was ready to award a doctoral degree to me and the faculty recommended that. And a chancellor stepped in and said, no, because of his views on this subject. Imagine that. So the faculty countered and challenged, said, can you show us any statement anywhere that is made which you are taking to task?

He couldn't find it. And the doctorate proceeded, it's a very prestigious university. And so I went to receive it and as a recipient, I also had to speak.

The chancellor was sitting right under my nose there. And he came to me afterwards, first one up, and he looked at me, grabbed my hand and he said, thank you. That was one inspiring talk and I'm glad you're here with us.

The chaplain at one of our military academies came to me, I won't even say where it was, gave me a hug and said, thank you for silencing the naysayers. Here's what I want to say to you. We are challenging the sovereignty issue of man. How do we challenge it? So the question comes up on gay marriage and so on.

And what does RZM say about it? How do we deal with it? We mocked if we believe in the sanctity of life and so on.

Scorned for exclusivity and so on. Here's what I want to say to you because I've said it so many times and I was asked again today if I would please explain it, so let me do this for you. We come up with this kind of a response and here's what I say. I say you are raising a question that is publicly unanswerable where you destroy the intent of the conversation and forget the content of the question.

Here's what I say to them. There are three kinds of cultures in which we live. One is what you call a theonomous culture. Somebody raised that question the other day, yesterday on natural law.

Theos meaning God, nomos meaning law. There are some cultures and America is one of them that has believed in natural law, that God has so poured in our proclivities and our collective consciousness that we hold some of these truths to be self-evident. That's natural law.

We don't even need to debate it. It is self-evident. What is self-evident? That we are all created equal, endowed by our creator within alienable rights.

That was what the framers found as self-evident. Pantheism would never have said it. Islam would never have said that. And the only world view which would have made it a naturalism wouldn't have said it. The Judeo-Christian world would have been the only one that would have framed a statement like that. So the foundation on which the laws were built was on self-evident truths of the endowment we have by our creator within alienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No other world view would have framed that.

You take it phrase by phrase. Naturalism wouldn't say it. Pantheism wouldn't say it. Islam wouldn't say it. So the monotheistic world views of the Judeo-Christian world view would be the only one. So theonomist, God's law is poured into our heart. But you don't believe that anymore. So I had a student ask me to raise the question on this whole subject and I said to him, so we have a theonomist culture, do you believe we have that now here?

He said no. I said second, there's a heteronomist culture. Heteros meaning different, nomos meaning law. We don't have theonomy, we don't have God's law, so we have a heteronomist, a handful at the top dictated for the masses below. In secular terminology, Marxism was a heteronomist culture. Religion is theopia to the people, the sigh of the oppressed, the only illusory son that revolves around man, so long as man doesn't revolve around himself. That was Marx's statement.

We have to revolve around ourselves. God, religion is theopia to the people. So Marxism, the few at the top control it for the masses below. In religious terms, Islam is a heteronomist culture.

The mullahs, the sheikhs dictated for the masses, the ethos went to eat, how to pray how many times, all this stuff. I say, are we a heteronomist culture? He said no. I said then the third option is autonomous culture.

Heteros meaning self, nomos meaning law. Is that our culture? He said yeah. We each make our own choice. I said now, you said we are not theonomists, we are not heteronomists, so we are autonomous.

I said I have a question for you. Since you believe we have an autonomous culture and the question you have to do, I've asked is on moral values on a particular subject. If I give you my position autonomously, will you allow me to hold that position autonomously or as soon as I take the position, will you switch to heteronomy and dictate what I should believe? You see, it's publicly unanswerable until we are willing to play by the rules that we assume.

It is publicly unanswerable until we are willing to play by the rules that we assume. If the rule is autonomous, let us learn to give the privilege to each other. But this idea of tolerance now is, ah, I want autonomy, you merit heteronomy. I will take my autonomous route.

I will dictate to you what it is that you should believe. So when you challenge the sovereignty of man, you're challenging the things that people want to do, but God has said you daren't dare the lions. So we're scorned because of exclusivity. We're scorned because we see the unseen. We're scorned because we challenge the sovereignty of man. Lastly, we are scorned because we lay claim to higher morality. By that, we are not saying we are more moral.

We're just saying if you take away the ontic referent of God in his presence and the character of God in whom there is no contradiction, morality is up for grabs. And we build our foundations with our feet firmly planted in midair, and so will be our buildings planted in midair. Nehemiah was scorned, don't you dare build this wall.

For reasons they threatened, they would pull it down. We are trying to build a wall in society to protect our families, our children, and we're being scorned. Just like Nehemiah of Old Testament days, Christians today face opposition. As Azzie Aym's founder, the late Ravi Zacharias, pointed out in part one of this message, keeping watch and counting the cost, living a life pleasing to God won't be easy, but it will bring eternal rewards.

Be sure to tune in next week as Ravi gives us some suggestions on handling the attacks that come our way that he gleans from Nehemiah. You can listen to this episode of Let My People Think again by visiting our website at rzam.org and clicking on the Listen tab. And if you're listening in Canada, that web address is rzam.ca. You can also purchase this entire series by calling us at 1-800-448-6766 and asking for the message titled Keeping Watch and Counting the Cost. This radio broadcast and the work being done through RZAM is entirely donor supported. Without your financial contributions, we would not be able to continue to provide thoughtful answers to difficult questions. Thank you for your support and if you'd like to learn more about how you can partner with us, call us at 1-800-448-6766 or visit our website. Let My People Think is a listener supported radio ministry and is furnished by RZAM, Atlanta, Georgia.