The Bible tells us that it's not natural to believe in Jesus. That may sound like a surprising claim from scripture, but Alistair Begg explores that idea today on Truth for Life. He's teaching from the opening verses in Luke chapter 2. We know that Luke was a physician, and may I say it kindly, we know what physicians are like, at least the good ones. They do these case studies when you go and see them.
They ask you all kinds of questions, don't they? Because what they're actually going to do is finally put within the framework of all of that investigation their analysis of the presenting facts, and then their deduction on the strength of those facts, and then their diagnosis on the basis of that which they have gleaned. Luke brings that kind of mentality to his writing of this gospel.
That's what he's really doing. And when you look at this and we won't unpack it, you will see that he says that he has compiled this narrative—he says, I have compiled this narrative not on the basis of my ability to witness it with my own eyes, but on the basis of my ability to interview those who were eyewitnesses of these things. And what he discovered was that those who had become the preachers of this good news discovered that when they told the good news, people were changed by it. And Luke determined that if he took that same good news and he wrote it down, then when people read what was written down about what had been preached back then, then other lives would be changed by it too.
And that is exactly what happens. That's why many of you are able to testify to the impact that the Bible has made in your life. How strange is this, that this ancient book is a book that not only do we see to understand, but a book that so clearly understands us? You see, Luke is not providing a philosophy or an idea or a theory or even a religion. He is providing, he says, an honest account of actual events.
An honest account of actual events. There is nothing in the gospel of Luke—indeed, there is nothing in the gospels at all of our contemporary fascination with vagueness and with simply possibilities. Luke is not concerned. He says, The reason I'm writing this stuff down for you, Theophilus, and all the other Theophiluses and people like him, is in order that you might know with certainty the things that you've been taught.
You're not satisfied with anything less than that. You see, a Christian believer is certain about certain things. For a Christian believer to say that they are certain about certain things does not mean that they're certain about everything. It doesn't mean that they know everything about everything. It doesn't mean that they have settled every question that exists in the universe. It just means that they are certain about certain things. And the certain things about which Luke wants Theophilus to be certain concern the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of this character Jesus of Nazareth.
And all of this was taking place in real time. In other words, he is addressing history. History. Now, there is a growing skepticism in our day—it's well advanced—about the knowability of just about anything, not least of all history. Therefore, we are not to be surprised when the Christian story and the conviction that the New Testament unfolds of a historical basis for Christianity is forcibly challenged. And it is. It's not possible to exist, at least in Western culture at this point in history, without realizing that routinely, whether it is in contemporary magazines or in contemporary fiction, there is a sort of underlying nudge-nudge wink-wink in relationship to the notion of Christianity as being, you know, we don't mind if you people want to get into that stuff. I can see that it helps you a little bit, or you seem to feel a little better about your mother-in-law, or it gives you a crutch to lean on, or whatever else it is. But please don't come to us suggesting that you are dealing in the realm of verifiable data.
Right? Now, this doesn't come from academic historians. If you read academic history—and I don't read a lot of it, but I read enough of it to be able to say what I'm saying to you now—and that is that academic historians give far more credence to the New Testament documents than most of us would ever believe. They do not make the same deductions from those documents as a Christian might make, but even secular historians are prepared to say, Yes, we recognize this. They're not calling in question the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. They understand that.
They know that the data is verifiable in relationship to that. No, the bigger challenge comes from popular fiction writers, and most notably in the last decade from the pen of Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code. I've lost track of how many people are prepared to turn a page in the Da Vinci Code and have Dan Brown of all people explain to them the significance of the New Testament documents and why the whole thing is a crock. Those same people are unprepared to turn the page in the Bible largely and allow the Bible to affirm certain things. I wonder, have you thought this out? The opposition comes from those who claim to be on the side of reason.
We are reasonable people, and our reason is incompatible with your faith. That's what they say. And we're right up to the minute on this.
I find it wonderful when, on a Saturday afternoon, and I'm working away and preparing this stuff, when I can sort of turn to the side and pull up a thought that I have without knowing that the thought is verified by what I'm about to discover. What do you mean? Well, look at this.
Look at this slide. That's Times Square today. New York Times Square.
The New Yorkers are in the face of what we might refer to as a billboard war. Do you see how clever it is? Here's Santa Claus, an imaginary figure. Stick with Santa and stay merry. Here is Jesus of Nazareth, a mythological figure.
You don't want to hang around with somebody like that. There it is. Now, I am saddened in part, but I'm delighted on another basis. I wish I lived in New York today.
It'd be impossible to be in Times Square without going, Hey, what do you think of that? I bring on the conversation. I'd like to have it. Let's talk about it. It's not unique. I then went to search and see what else there is.
On the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel, there is another one. There it is. Look at these people. They're so good. My people are so good. There it is.
I was going to describe it to you, but they produced it from the first service to the second service. You know it's a myth. This season, celebrate reason. Well, I said, Good.
I'm up for that. This season, celebrate reason. Now let's turn to the New Testament documents and ask the question, Is it reasonable? Is there sufficient evidence for us to conclude that the presentation that is provided for us by the Gospel writers affirms the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth? Let's just first of all determine whether there was a Jesus of Nazareth. Where's the evidence? Well, it points to the fact there was. Tacitus, the Roman historian in AD 115, who had no interest in supporting the claims of Jesus Christ, was absolutely convinced that Jesus was not mythological.
Josephus in AD 95, as a Jew, affirmed the fact of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus as proclaimed by his followers, who got together and worshiped on the first day of the week, declaring him to be God. So those early historians were in no doubt concerning these things. The subtlety of this is the suggestion that somehow or another, if you're a thinking person, if you're a reasonable person, then you will want to remove yourself from all the unreasonability of reading those Gospel narratives.
And if our young people—just in passing—if our youngsters are not convinced of these things before they go off into the wide world of academic study, then they will come back worse off than they left. If they are not prepared—not by marshaling quick answers and knee-jerk responses to challenges, but unless they are prepared by thinking out for themselves the very rationality of that which is affirmed in terms of the New Testament data—then they will very quickly be at sea. No, it's just a wonderful time, isn't it?
I mean, it's a great time for us to have opportunity like this. I'm not wringing my hands, and I hope you aren't too, if you're a follower of Jesus. Because the Bible actually tells us, 1 Corinthians 2, that it's not natural to believe in Jesus. The Bible makes it perfectly clear that evidence does not compel faith. If evidence compelled faith, then all that we would need would be evidence.
It doesn't. The New Testament makes clear that ultimately there is no intellectual road to God. Because by nature, the natural man— this is quoting Paul now in 1 Corinthians 2—the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they're folly to him. So let's be fair. This sounds ridiculous to me. That's what my friend would say.
It sounds foolish. He's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Well, then, how will he discern them?
How will we discern the presence of God? Anthony Flew, who was the great, great, most significant United Kingdom atheist of the second half of the twentieth century—far more so than Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins popularized it, but Flew was the man. Flew, before he died in his eighties, did not embrace Christianity, but he at least embraced the notion of deism. He said that although he had lived his entire life his entire academic life as an atheist, he had been compelled by the discoveries in the Genome Project to realize that the intricacies that were brought together in the discoveries of microscience were so compelling that he could no longer go to his grave without acknowledging that there was an intelligence that produced these realities. That was his conviction.
Dawkins' reaction to that would be Flew went crazy just before he died. It's not the same as saying that he embraced the New Testament documents, but at least he said there was sufficient there for him to compel belief. And another like him in the twentieth century was C. S. Lewis, who decides there is no God, who lives as if there is no God, and then one day he is surprised by joy. He then becomes an arch-defender of these Christian convictions—the historicity of the gospel and so on. And when he came up against those who produced material like this—you know, be merry, reject the myth—he wrote in Christian reflections as follows, I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, and myths all my life. I know what they are like.
I know none of them are like this. Legends, myths, vision literature does not begin, in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. No, it says, Lewis, you're not gonna be able to get off just as easy as that. Joseph Ratzinger, the German theologian who became Pope Benedict XVI, writes in his book Jesus of Nazareth, It is of the very essence of biblical faith to be about real historical events. It does not tell stories symbolizing suprahistorical truths but is based on history—history that took place here on this earth. Well, did it or didn't it? Truth or fiction?
Consider the material. The New Testament does not call us into the realm of blind faith. It doesn't call us to take a leap into the dark. It invites us to take a step into the light. Let me finish in this way.
I've been helped, and you will be too, by reading the work of John Dixon, who's been with us here from Australia on a couple of occasions. He's an able historian as well as a very effective pastor and teacher. In one of his books, he reminds us, as his readers, of Aristotle's observations concerning the way in which a man or a woman comes to believe something. And although many years have elapsed since Aristotle was around, still these observations have some validity. This is what Aristotle said. There are three ways or three dimensions that stand out. First of all, the logos, or the intellectual journey to belief, which involves common sense, it involves consideration of facts, it involves sifting the evidence, and so on.
But not simply the logos. Secondly, pathos, which is not the intellectual, but it is the emotional and the personal response, the way in which, at a visceral level, somebody presents something to us and it rings a bell with us, it stirs us, it answers a longing in our hearts, or it pushes us in a certain direction. And then thirdly, along with the logos and the pathos, the ethos—this time not the intellectual or the personal and emotional, but rather the social. In other words, recognizing that each of us comes out of a framework, out of a sense of connectedness to other people.
And that when a man or a woman comes to believe in Jesus, said Aristotle, these things are interplaying with one another. If you think about that, sometimes when we have baptism, you listen to somebody tell how they came to follow Jesus. And they might say, somebody gave me a book, and I read it. I was the intellectual. Or that I was over at somebody's house, and we were playing music, and they said, you know, that that song by that person actually addresses that question, and something happened, and it just registered with me, and I couldn't get rid of it. That was pathos.
And others will say, and, you know, I actually had an aunt who, when I used to go over to her house, particularly at the holiday time, she would always want to tell me about the Bible. I guess I had that as part of my ethos. So, when you hear people tell about their conversion to Christianity, you mostly will discover that all of those elements are evolved. When you hear people expressing their opposition to Christianity, you almost inevitably find that they only answer on the level of the logos. They say, this is intellectually untenable. As if somehow or another they don't have a pathos, and they don't have an ethos. As if somehow or another they are the objective ones. They don't have any volitional dimension. They don't have any presuppositions. We're only the ones with presuppositions.
No. That's why Huxley, my favorite atheist, was Aldous Huxley. Now, Huxley said, I had a reason for not wanting to believe in God. I didn't want to believe in God. Because, he said, to disbelieve in God was for me a basis for moral and political freedom. I could do what I want, and I could believe what I want, without reference to any higher power. I love that honesty.
What he's saying is he comes out of an ethos and a pathos whereby he marshals the logos. Well, let me end in this way. How about you? How about you? I don't know. Luke is writing. He says, I want you to be certain about these things.
How certain can you be? The woman at the well sits down, and pretty soon she's on the logos. She's asking questions like, Are you greater than our father Jacob?
It's an intellectual question, isn't it? Then she moves to pathos. Give me this water.
I'm so thirsty, I'd like to have a drink of water that I'd never be thirsty again. And then the ethos. She goes back into the town and says, Hey, folks, come and see somebody who told me everything that I ever did. And the people eventually come and they say, And we believe today not simply because of what the lady told us, but we believe because we have heard for ourselves.
We have examined the evidence as it has been presented to us, and this is our conviction. In most of the attacks on Christianity—and I'm not saying that in a paranoid way—in most of the attacks, there is a sad lack of consideration for the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Dawkins, in The God Delusion, virtually ignores Jesus in his entirety. He doesn't interact with Jesus at all. That's pretty shrewd on his part, because Jesus is his real problem. The real problem is not the Genesis narratives. The real problem is Jesus. Is this Jesus the Jesus that Luke says he is?
That's the question. If he is, we have a conversation. If he isn't, this is a manifest waste of time.
And I'm gone before we ever get to the Christmas concerts. It's as simple as that. That was the logic of Paul. If Christ is not risen, then the whole thing is hogwash. If he is risen, we have a conversation to have. And isn't it interesting—and again, without being paranoid—that the challenges that are represented in Times Square and beyond, they don't involve Judaism, they don't involve Hinduism, they don't involve Islam, they don't involve Buddhism? You think you're gonna see a picture of Muhammad up there?
Why not? Well, if I was the devil—a la Screwtape Letters—incidentally, the devil is really in the news this week as well, isn't he, as a result of Anthony Scalia mentioning the devil in one of his judgments for the Supreme Court? Fantastic. The atheists went nuts because they thought Scalia believes in the devil. He actually does. And he said in the court, he says, haven't you read Screwtape Letters by C.S.
Lewis? So wonderful. Now I've talked myself off the point. But the fact is, if I was the evil one, I'd say, Well, don't worry about opposing the idea that the angel Gabriel gave a direct dictation, an entire dictation of the Qur'an to Muhammad. Don't bother opposing that.
People know that didn't happen. Don't bother opposing the mystical origins of Hinduism. Don't do it. Don't waste your time on Buddhism.
For there was no God in Buddhism. Well, let's go for this Jesus guy. He's our problem. He just won't die. He just won't go away.
He just stands at the intersection of history and calls out to us, I am who I say I am. Take me at my word. Believe in me.
I love you. I came to seek you. I came to save you. Let us pray. O God our Father, look upon us in your mercy. Save us from ourselves. Help us in our search.
Fulfill your purposes in us and through us. For we ask it in your Son's name. Amen. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Just as Luke diligently preserved the details of the birth of Jesus, here at Truth for Life we seek God's guidance to teach the Bible with the same clarity and integrity without adding to or taking away from the clear message of the Gospel. And here is Alistair with the message for us as we come to the end of this year.
Well, thanks Bob. Today on the program as always really we realize the great care that we find in the Bible, particularly here from Luke, in making sure that he presents a full account of the life and ministry of Jesus because the Gospel is a life transforming message. And the program, of course, as you know, is heard by way of your faithful giving.
Not everybody understands that Truth for Life is 100% listener funded. And that's why as we come to the end of the year, I find it easy to say if you've benefited from the teaching this year perhaps you'll reach out to us by showing your support with a year-end donation. The financial support that we receive from you allows us to conclude the year and it's been an amazing year with the resources that we need not only to meet our obligations but also to have a sure footing as we go into 2025. So I'm glad to be able to encourage you in this way and as ever I'm thankful for your partnership. Thank you Alistair and you can make a year-end donation securely online truthforlife.org slash donate or you can call us at 888-588-7884 and any gift you give large or small helps bring the Gospel to people around the world who make Alistair's teaching a key part of their daily time in God's Word. If you'd rather mail your year-end donation to Truth for Life write us at Truth for Life post office box 398000 Cleveland Ohio 44139. Thanks for listening today there are people who attempt to make Christianity more believable by taking out the supernatural elements. Tomorrow we'll find out why a Christianity without miracles is ultimately meaningless. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
