Evangelism: Dealing with Difficulties (Part 3 of 3)

There are people today who say that Christianity has been proven false by science.

Or that it's just a psychological crutch for those who think they need it. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg teaches us how to respond to these challenging perspectives with humility and sensitivity, and he points us to the ultimate goal in evangelism. There's no way in the world that I can give some kind of exhaustive answer to these questions. And so, if there is a measure of frustration on your part, as I move from one question to the next, I have, if you like, that written into what I'm doing. I want that to be there in part, because any good teacher does not answer all the questions but essentially stimulates the desire of the group to go and continue their study of the subject.

And so, I'd like at least to fall within the orb of good teaching as it relates to that, if that is in actual fact an accurate statement, and the teachers perhaps can tell me afterwards. What about the person who says, I can't believe in a God who allows people to suffer? More often than not, if you take time to listen and to watch and it may not come out in one conversation, you will discover that you are dealing with somebody who has been deeply scarred by the events of life. Now, if a person is prepared to confide in you that truth, it's important, then, that we're honest enough to say, You know what?

I don't have an answer for that particular question. And indeed, we could search the whole of the Bible and not find an answer to that particular question. And it may be that it will take years, or it may take till eternity, before ever we find an answer to that question, but in the meantime, the Scripture provides for us some clues as to why God allows suffering as a whole.

Well, says the individual, what are those clues? Then we'll run through with him the biblical doctrine of creation and the fall, of redemption and of restoration or perfection, if you like. Well, says somebody, that makes only limited sense, and I still think of God as distant in the heavens and untouched, as it were, by the problems that we face in our finite nature. Well, then, we must bring them to Calvary. We must share with them the doctrine of the Trinity. We must explain that God sent his Son, Jesus, and that the cry of Jesus from the cross—"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? "—was a cry of reality, and that God had only one Son who was without sin, but he wasn't without suffering. And we may say, and this is all we can say, that as deep as the pain as an individual may feel because of the events of their lives, we can assure them in the authority of God's Word that God is not caught off guard by such an event.

Nor is he unable to address it. But it is futile and vacuous to speculate concerning the origin of evil slash suffering. We need to face the fact of evil suffering, and we need to look at what the Scripture says concerning what it means to embrace the solution.

For it is only at the cross that we see the magnitude of God's love, the magnitude of our sin, and the tremendous possibility for healing and for forgiveness. The fifth question that we put down here, our response, is that science has disproved creation and miracles, and Christianity is now obsolete. I remember this coming again and again as I used to speak, especially at universities in Great Britain, and it was inevitable—it was like clockwork—that somebody would come up and would say, Hey, guess what? Science has disproved the whole thing.

Now, there's a tremendous presumption that is built into that, and we need to be prepared to address it, again with kindness and yet with firmness. And we need to be prepared to say to people, quite categorically, just as straightforward as they are to us, that there is absolutely no scientific proof of the evolution of more complex structures from simpler forms of life as entities. There is no scientific proof.

Okay? Scientists, if they're honest, will admit that. They may prove movement within organisms and changes within certain entities, but there is no scientific proof of that evolutionary hypothesis which Darwin essentially championed in verbalizing. It suited man at that time, having decided there was no God, to come up with another answer to the question, Then how in the world did we get here? Because once, having negated God, we're left with ourselves and therefore in need of a solution. And in the vested interests of a humanity that turns its back on God in rebellion, then it takes hypothesis and presents it as absolute reality. And such proof would be necessary in order to make the hypothesis reality. And the hypothesis is essentially this, that all forms of life have descended in a blind determinism from some original form of matter whose origin remains a mystery.

That's essentially it. We've got something. We don't know what it is. We don't know where it came from. It's just a pile of yuck.

And out of that pile of yuck evolved you. That's science at its best. I'm not caricaturing it.

That is essentially it. I mean, we can define it and dress it up. I mean, we can put it in scientific journals, but that is it. We don't know about this, there was this, but from this there came this. We speak with amazing authority concerning millions and millions and millions of years. Now, the root issue, when you talk to somebody about this, the root issue is about God and his existence.

That's what it's about. It's about whether there actually is a God at all. Because once we postulate the existence of God, then miracles are no problem.

See? Once you remove God, then miracles are a jolly nuisance. So we are going to go back, and we're going to say, okay, this is where the Bible starts.

We're not going to do it arrogantly. We're just going to say, okay, get your brain around this for a minute. Don't tell me that it is intelligence which allows me to walk your path. You need to walk the path of faith. You've got faith to believe that there is no God.

You start with yuck plus your hypothesis. Okay? That's faith. You're in the realm of faith, Mr. Scientist. Admit it.

Okay? I'm in the realm of faith. I start, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I start with a record which is not about the why. It's not about the how. It's not a scientific treatment. The scientists, thankfully, were not there with all the little counters and all the little computer printouts, otherwise Genesis 1 would have read so technically difficult that most of us could never have understood it. But one was there, the one that God wanted to be there, and left the record sufficient for us to believe if we are prepared to bow before God's greatness. Let me remind you of the statement from which we read, It is not logically valid to use science as an argument against miracles. To believe that miracles can't happen is as much an act of faith as to believe that they can happen.

Miracles are unprecedented events. Whatever the current fashions in philosophy or the revelations of opinion polls may suggest, it is important to affirm that science, based as it is on the observation of precedence, can have nothing to say on the subject. Science can only speak profoundly about events that have been repeated, because they observe the repetition factor and postulate on the basis of the repetition. So they've got a major problem with things that didn't happen twice, like the creation of the universe, like the origin of man, like the arrival of Jesus, like the stilling of the sea. Science needs to learn to hold its tongue before the greatness of Almighty God.

And that is something which our arrogant generation needs to hear. Thank God for scientific insight. Thank God for those who have been given the ability to unravel and to search and to explain and to coordinate.

God in his providence has allowed that it would be so. But there is an end to that. And indeed, there needs to be. There needs to be. The data which is given to us is sufficient for belief.

If we refuse this evidence, no additional evidence will convince anybody. And if you doubt that at all, you'll go home and read Luke chapter 16, verses 28 to 31. Oh yeah, it's the same story from Rich Man and Lazarus.

I hadn't realized that. At the end of that story of the rich man and Lazarus, verse 27 of Luke 16, the cry comes, Then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment.

Okay, do something miraculous, God. Send Lazarus over to the house. And Abram replied, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them. In other words, they've got their Bibles.

What else do they need? They've got their Bibles. Let them listen. No, Father Abram, he said, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. He said to them, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced, even if someone rises from the dead.

That was borne out in the history which followed, and is borne out today. There is sufficient evidence for faith. There is sufficient for unbelief.

And we need to press with kindness those who are wondering about these things. What about the person who says, Oh, baloney, Christianity's just a psychological crutch for folks who can't face life? They say, Well, thank you very much, you know, because you can't respond to that without being one of them. If Christianity's a psychological crutch for wasters, and you've just been professing your faith in Jesus Christ, you've just been categorized by your friend.

And they'll say, Oh, well, you know, I don't really mean you. And so what are we going to say? Well, we'll say, Well, let's just examine the evidence. Let's just take the evidence of the first followers of Jesus Christ and ask whether they looked like a bunch of guys that all came walking out of one pod, you know—all the same kind of background, the same kind of disposition, the same kind of vacuous life, whereby they needed somebody to come in and fix them up.

And let's look at it and see if that's true. Let's take Peter first of all. Do you think he needed a crutch to get through life? Mr. Peter, Mr. Zebedee, and his boys in the fishing business? I bet if we met Peter by the Sea of Galilee, he would have been invincible. I don't know what he looked like.

I bet he was a pretty tough guy. There's no sense in Peter's life at all, even after he becomes a Christian, that somehow he is some kind of psychological cripple that is hanging on by his fingernails to this Jesus. Not for a moment. Matthew, the text collector—no sense of it there at all. No sense of it in relationship, when you go beyond the disciples, for example, to Saul of Tarsus. Saul of Tarsus, the psychological cripple? No! Saul of Tarsus, the sheig of Aaron of his day, the Muammar Gaddafi of his day. Saul of Tarsus, the Saddam Hussein of his day. I'll kill these Christians!

Bring them in here! So don't let anybody jam you in a corner with the notion that Christianity is for wimps, that Christianity is for people who tried everything and just couldn't make it work, like in that song when people need the Lord at the end of broken dreams. He's the open door. Well, it's true, but that's not the issue. How many of us came to Jesus Christ at the end of broken dreams? No, Jesus Christ arrested us, full of dreams, full of schemes. So when we speak to people concerning these things, and they want to encourage us to think in that way, let's just say to them, well, let's look at the evidence in the Bible, and let's think about the people we know. Actually, the issue is the distinction between the subjective and the objective element. And where we get to in answering this question is to say, look, our subjective experience of Jesus is founded upon the objective truth of the resurrection. Therefore, we need to speak to them about the resurrection.

Tell them, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Okay? Well, says another individual, very interesting, but I'm okay. I was baptized as a baby, and I've been pretty regular at church for most of my life, so get out of my face and don't worry me. What are you going to say then?

You're going to say this. Churchianity is not Christianity. Sacraments are signposts pointing us in the right direction, but they're not vehicles that take us to our destination. The Bible says that no one ever became a Christian by having something done to him by somebody else. And we need to allow and help these people to see what the Bible says about sin, because this is the real issue.

This is the real problem. Because the individual who says, I'm okay, I was baptized, and I'm a pretty good guy, and I go regularly to church, has got no concept of sin whatsoever. That's why they've never embraced a Savior. So they need to hear about what the Bible says about sin. We don't have to convict them of sin, that's the Holy Spirit's work, but we can tell them what the Bible says about sin. And what does the Bible say about sin? It says that sin is an attitude that sin is a condition. It says that the natural man dislikes the God of Scripture, dislikes the cross of Jesus Christ. It says that mankind is diseased and is dead. Ephesians 2, 1. And furthermore, it says that the most ethical man in the world is in the same position before God as the drunkard or the wife beater. Ah, there's the rub.

Especially if you're not getting drunk and not beating your wife. Then you may be prone to believe that you are okay. Then we need to tell them, hey, do you know that if you're the most ethical person, without that you have come in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ? You are in as deep a trough of sin as the most profligate individual who ever walked the streets. Well, somebody goes one stage further, and they said, well, what I really meant to say was not just that I'm okay, I was baptized, and I'm pretty regular at church, but what I wanted to say was, I'm a Roman Catholic, and that'll do me fine.

Now, here's a message all on its own, isn't it? But I've been witnessing to a certain individual for months now, and that's the standard answer from this girl. The priest comes to my home, Alistair.

He's a good friend of my mother's. I'm a Roman Catholic. Leave me alone. I said, no, I won't leave you alone, because the issue is not about being a Roman Catholic, the issue is about the truth concerning Jesus. What do you know about Jesus? And the way to address the Roman Catholic, I believe, is this.

First of all, to start real positive. Okay? Say, you know what? If you were brought up as a Roman Catholic, you have many distinct advantages. Because you were catechized, you believe in the virgin birth, you have a measure of understanding about the Bible, you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and therefore in actuality, you and I believe a lot of things that are the same.

That's disarming, and it's also true. I have more in common—get this—I have more in common with a devout Roman Catholic than an agnostic Protestant. Think it out.

Okay? So we're gonna go from there, and then I'm gonna make much of Jesus. I'm gonna open the Bible and tell them about Jesus. Because often they've not got a lot of Jesus. They've got a lot of saints, a lot of Mary, a lot of different things, but maybe not a lot of Jesus.

And the Jesus they've got a lot of is a wee Jesus with a large Mary. So we're gonna make much of Jesus. And then we're gonna open the Scriptures, and we're gonna show the verses that relate to forgiveness of sins and assurance of eternal life. We're gonna present them, as it were, like a beautiful meal set up on the table, the wonder of the reality of forgiveness, to know that my sin is forgiven, to know that heaven is my home, to know that Christ is my Savior, to present the wonder of that to them. To turn, for example, to John chapter 1 and verse 12, that as many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name. And to ask them in all honesty, in light of their background, have you ever come and received Jesus Christ? Not received the sacrament, not being baptized, not had your first communion, but have you ever received Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? For in that lies forgiveness, lies assurance, lies the discovery of faith.

There may even be some here tonight who are exactly in that position. And I want to commend you to a careful study of this book and to a devout consideration of Jesus. Let me conclude with these three statements.

I'll read them so I don't expand on them. A smart answer given without love and humility will do more harm than good. We don't have to answer all people's questions before they can become real Christians. Our goal is to bring them face to face with Jesus—not our church, not our system, not our group, but with our Jesus. And becoming a Christian doesn't automatically solve all the personal problems which the individual may bring to their newfound faith.

I hope and measure this has been helpful this evening, scanty though it is. I thank you for your attention. Let's pray. And now, Father, as we return to our neighbors and our friends, the people that we bump into when we eat, the folks that we travel with on the train, the people who sit around us in our offices and share the hallways of our days, may we live our lives in such a way as to provoke questions. And may we answer questions with humility, with sensitivity, and with the authority of your Word. Send us out in the power of the Holy Spirit, we pray. Take us to our homes in safety.

Take us to our homes in safety. May we honor you in all we say and do. And may the grace and mercy and peace from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Triune God, rest upon and remain with all who believe, tonight and forevermore.

Amen. You're listening to Truth for Life. Alistair Begg is equipping us in sharing our faith. The better we understand the Bible, the easier it becomes to talk to others about the Gospel. That's our passion at Truth for Life, to tell others about Jesus and to help you gain confidence so you can do the same.

That's why we teach the Bible every day with clarity and relevance. Our current series about evangelism on Truth for Life is titled Crossing the Barriers. If you'd like to go back and re-listen to any of the messages from this series, the entire study can be heard online or you can share it with friends for free.

And if you have not yet requested the corresponding study guide, you can still purchase a copy for just three dollars or download the study guide for free. This study on evangelism makes a great topic for your Bible study group to tackle together. You'll find the Crossing the Barriers series and study guide, along with many other helpful resources at truthforlife.org slash evangelism.

Now, as you've been listening to this important series from Alistair, I hope maybe one or two people have come to mind, people with whom you'd like to share the Gospel. Given that Jesus is the good news we aim to share, let me encourage you to have on hand a book we're recommending today called Confronting Jesus. This book can serve two important roles as you share your faith. First, it's a great book for you to read so you can clearly articulate who Jesus is and all that he's accomplished. Second, it's a perfect book to share with someone else and together walk through a profile of Jesus, one chapter or one attribute at a time. You can request your copy with a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate.

You can purchase additional copies in our online store or call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine. Great Gospel opportunities are often met with great opposition and tomorrow we'll learn how the Apostle Paul handled both. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.