Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 5

Links Mentioned on the 8/03/16 Show

The following is a rundown of today's podcast, annotated with links that were either mentioned on the show or inspired by it:

Commentary: How to Disagree in a Biblical Way (0:00)

Hume Lake Christian Camps
A Reformation the Church Doesn't Need ��� Part 1, Part 2
Drifting towards Darwin by Greg Koukl (Greg's article against theistic evolution)
Commentary: Textual Clues about the Extent of the Flood (Audio) by Greg Koukl (second hour commentary, third-hour commentary, and the last question)
Have Grace for Fellow Christians on the Age of the Earth by Amy Hall
One Tough Customer by Greg Koukl (on how to respond to a steamroller)

Questions:

��� Announcements:

Upcoming events with STR speakers 

1. How do I correct the ideas of the Hebrew Roots movement? (0:28)

How Does the Old Testament Law Apply to Christians Today?
Think of the Mosaic Covenant Like a State Law
The Law and the Christian
The Law of Moses and the Law of Christ
40 Questions about Christians and Biblical Law  
A series of posts by Justin Taylor on the above book
What Is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert
Is Christmas Pagan? by Greg Koukl
The history of Christmas and its symbols
Parenting by Paul Tripp

2. Coping with many problems (0:46)

What Easter Says to Those Who Are Suffering by Amy Hall ��� ���With the cross and resurrection at its core, Christianity need never deny the reality of evil and suffering because Jesus has proven Himself to be greater than all of it. He didn���t just overcome it, He overcame through it. The cross was the very means by which He secured joy: ���[F]or the joy set before Him [He] endured the cross, despising the shame��� (Hebrews 12:2). In this same way, all evil will be swallowed up.... Sometimes we���re tempted to think evil is stronger than God, but when we understand that every attempt evil makes to harm us is working for our good, we���ll see that all of evil���s weapons have been removed from it; there is nothing left it can use against us.���
Christians, You Will Suffer by Amy Hall
Don't Trust God to Protect You from Pain by Amy Hall (quoting Kevin DeYoung) ��� ���Trust, therefore, does not mean hoping for the absence of pain but believing in the purpose of pain.���
Prayer Begins with Hope in God by Amy Hall
If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil by Randy Alcorn
1 Peter 4:12���5:11

Listen to today's show or download any archived show for free. (Find links from past shows here.)

To take part in the Twitter conversation during the live show (Tuesdays 4:00���6:00 p.m. PT), follow @STRtweets and use the hashtag #STRtalk.

The Authority of the Scriptures

As the church continues to face cultural challenges from outside the church, we must strengthen our views of God���s Word within the church. Our culture is increasingly and brazenly running counter to the wisdom of the Word, and one of the church���s tasks is to help our people stand confidently and courageously in the face of such confrontations. Yes, make no mistake, we are in a war as the Apostle says in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.

However, simple appeals to the authority of Scripture or mere assertions the Bible is God���s Word are inadequate for the church in this day and age. We must help our people, and especially our young people, understand WHY the Bible is authoritative. Thus, apologetic arguments for the reliability of the biblical text, the historicity of its claims, and its divine origins are vital. But some leaders in the church think such an approach is not the best way forward for the church. Instead they suggest we focus on the role of Scripture in our communities and ground its authority in its ability to accomplish Kingdom work.

However, these activities are neither necessary nor sufficient to ground Scripture���s authority. Do the positive actions of the church confer authority on Scripture? No more than the positive actions of Hindus confer authority on the Bhagavad Gita or positive actions of Muslims confer authority on the Qur���an. Furthermore, if the efforts of the Christian church were wholly impotent in the renewal of men and the world, would the authority of Scripture be diminished? Absolutely not. In fact, this is an important theme in the Old Testament narrative. Israel���s history is fraught with accounts of the nation turning its back on God���s Word, yet the Word of the Lord remains. And this is precisely the prophet���s claim: ���The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever��� (Isaiah 40:8).

Such attempts to ground the authority of Scripture in its functions fail to deal with the ontological status of Scripture itself. What something is is separate and distinct from what it does. Certainly God���s authority is displayed in His kingdom work through the church, but the functions of the church do not constitute that authority. Here is the central question we must ask: What is the status of Scripture as God���s Word? As Christians, we cannot ignore the rich reservoir of biblical passages that speak of the Bible itself. The self-testimony of Scripture and Jesus��� view of Scripture shed clear light on the source of the Bible���s authority. Our understanding of Scripture can certainly be aided by the narratival character of Scripture and discussions on how it forms the body of Christ, but we cannot avoid the discussion of the authority of Scripture grounded in the nature of Scripture.

How to Handle Opposing Theological Influences on Your Children

Brett helps you know what to do when friends or relatives with differing viewpoints seek to influence your children in negative ways.

 

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Greg is hosting the podcast live Tuesday 4-6 p.m. PT.  

Ask your question. Share a piece of your mind. Call with your question or comment at (855) 243-9975, outside the U.S. (562) 424-8229. The broadcast is live Tuesday 4-6 p.m. P.T. ��� commentary and your calls. Streaming live online.

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The program is two hours now, and one hour podcast episodes are posted on Wednesday and Friday.

Do You Desire God above All Else? (A Thought Experiment)

Gary Habermas offers a thought experiment to help us examine our motives concerning what we���re asking God for in prayer:

[In his book Heaven: The Heart���s Deepest Longing,] Peter Kreeft proposes a thought experiment in order to assist believers in determining [their] motives. What would we say if God offered us whatever we most wanted in life? What would we take if, whatever it was, it was ours for the asking? Would it be wealth? Power? Honor? How about peace of mind? But while you are thinking it over, God goes on to explain that there is only one thing you may not choose. You will never see His face.

What would our response be to this declaration? Would you be secretly satisfied to take one of the many other treasures, or would you be emotionally crushed by the last condition? Where do your true desires lie? Do you desire God and His Kingdom above all else? Such an experiment might help to provide an answer to the question of our secret desires and our ultimate motivation.

James 4:3 says, ���You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.��� This isn���t to say that when we don���t receive a particular thing we���ve asked for, the explanation is always wrong motives (see 2 Corinthians 12:7���9 for an example of where this was not the case), but it does serve as a good reminder about prayer.

Here���s a question to consider as you pray: Are your prayers oriented toward God and His Kingdom? Is that thing you���re praying for a means by which you may know, love, and serve God Himself, or is God merely the means you���re using to get that thing?

By considering this question, you may find you���re praying for something you shouldn���t be asking for. But there���s another possible���and far more exciting���outcome: you might simply increase your awareness of how the good things of this world exist for the glory of God.

For example, maybe you���ve been praying for a spouse without having thought through how marriage is a picture of the union of Christ with His church, how when a husband loves his wife ���just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,��� when he ���loves his own wife even as himself,��� and when the wife ���respects her husband,��� together their relationship shows their neighbors who Christ is.

Or perhaps you���re praying about your need for a car, and as you consider the above question, you think of the many ways you will use that car to serve your neighbor and care for your family, ���that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.���

If we always considered our prayer requests this way, I think it would transform not only what we ask for, but also how we see everything we���re given.

Yes, Christians Are Hypocrites���If by ���Hypocrite��� You Mean ���Sinner���

Andy Bannister explains that, contrary to Christopher Hitchens���s claim, religion isn���t what poisons everything. The problem is much deeper, more pervasive, and far more personal.

The problem is us. We poison everything. And, as it happens, that is precisely why we need Jesus. Far from contradicting Christianity, the existence of sin in the world (even in the church) confirms this central truth of Christianity. ���For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God��� (Romans 3:23), and ���if we say that we have no sin, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us��� (1 John 1:10).

At root, the objection that ���Christians are hypocrites��� comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity. It is widely believed (sadly, even by some who claim to be Christians) that Christianity is mainly about becoming a good person, and that being a good person is the way to heaven. This belief only glorifies the churchgoer, not God, for such a person is his only savior. It also inevitably leads to disillusionment and cynicism because it is false. No one is sinless, and anyone who expects otherwise of Christians will be let down sooner or later.

Christians, we openly recognize our sinfulness, so when someone accuses the church of housing sinners, that���s an opportunity to explain that our sin is the very reason why we go to church. We���re Christians because we know we sin. A Christian���s sin doesn���t contradict Christianity; it confirms it. It���s only more proof that we all need Jesus to take our sin and give us His righteousness. You can turn this objection on its head by explaining that Christianity is all about Jesus��� work for us, not about our work to become good enough to eliminate our need for Him.

God saved us ���to the praise of the glory of His grace,��� not the praise of our own righteousness, so don���t hide your sin. Be open about your failures and need for forgiveness, because that is how people will see and glorify Jesus��� grace.

Challenge Response: I Don't Like the Idea of People Telling Me What to Do

Here's my response to this week's challenge:

 

The Third Mission to the West

So what do we do now as Christians in a post-Christian culture? Os Guinness has some thoughts about our ���third mission to the West��� in his book Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times:

The first mission to the West centered on the conversion of the Roman Empire. This mission is well known, the extraordinary story of how those whom the Romans saw as a bunch of provincial misfits grew and grew until their faith replaced the faith of mighty Rome itself. (The Emperor Julian after his failure to turn back the clock: ���You have conquered, Galilean!���)

But when the Western Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, so also did much of the church in the West, so the second mission to the West centered on the conversion of the barbarian kingdoms. This took place against the backdrop of the Dark Ages and the tribal conditions and conflicts from the fifth to the tenth centuries. Less well known than the story of the conversion of Rome, this story was every bit as heroic. It included the celebrated ���gentling��� of the European people, as the cross of Jesus became what the poet Heinrich Heine called the ���taming talisman��� that subdued the ���berserker rage��� of barbarians such as the Celts, the Goths, the Visigoths, the Franks and the Vikings.

The second mission also includes the stories of Skellig Michael and communities like it. Skellig Michael was the rocky pyramid in the storm-tossed Atlantic, eight miles off the western coast of Ireland. For six centuries, part of the church clung to its faith by the skin of its teeth at a place that for them was the end of the world and at a moment they believed was the end of time. The second mission certainly includes the story of ���how the Irish saved civilization,��� the brief, bright hour captured by Thomas Cahill���s book of the same title when St. Columbanus and other missionaries from the Emerald Isle fanned out down and across Europe, a missionary journey that can still be traced today by the trail of Celtic crosses as far down as St. Gallen in Switzerland and Bobbio in northern Italy.

What those of us who are European Christians must acknowledge humbly is that when the Chinese and other peoples in the world had reached a high level of civilization, we were still barbarians and we might still be barbarians apart from the gospel. It took the gospel of Jesus Christ to tame our barbarian violence and unite our warring continent. For the intrepid missionaries who sailed forth from Ireland in flimsy coracles, or who journeyed up from Rome under the second St. Augustine, brought both the gospel and its fruits. Along with the gospel, they brought the Scriptures, then literacy, then education, and all the gifts of the gospel that later on were to lay the foundations from which Christendom was built.

Never forget the power of the Gospel. Jesus is in the business of changing human beings into people who love and follow Him. People who love and follow Him, when there are enough of them faithfully doing so, can���t help but affect the shape of the whole culture. In this way, God has transformed the cultures of greater and more wretched nations than ours. When He has chosen to. But whether or not He chooses to do so in our day, we���re called to follow Him. This, Guinness says, we must do faithfully and completely:

The deepest question concerns the Lord himself: Is it really conceivable that God will revive the Western church a third time, after it has gone cold twice? Another question concerns our response: What are we to do as we wait for God���s answer to that first titanic question? In other words, our deepest questions at this moment echo the very question God asked of the prophet Ezekiel as he surveyed a valley full of the sun-bleached bones of a defeated and slaughtered army, ���Can these bones live?���

And like Ezekiel, our answer can only be, ���O Lord, you know.���

The answer to the second question is the clearer. Acknowledging the essential part that only God can play should never lead to quietism or passivity. We may contribute little to our own renewal except the needs that make our renewal necessary, but to return to Christ in repentance is to shoulder our full responsibilities as disciples���including our commitment to engage to the fullest extent our callings in the world, and our dedication to re-evangelize the advanced modern world. For whether the times are bright or dark, whether we can see God in action in front of us or he seems absent and long delayed, and whether our cultural standing is once again admired or disdainfully cold-shouldered, we have our trust in him to be true to, our tasks to perform and our callings to which we must prove faithful.

As always, faithfulness is all, and the circumstances are beside the point. Our faithfulness must therefore show itself in a waiting that is vigilant, energetic and enterprising. Wherever there are men and women faithful to the Lord, let them trust God and live out their calling to Jesus and their callings in the world wherever those callings take them. That is the call to faithfulness and active transforming engagement that we pray will flower in a new Christian renaissance in our time.

Much of the recent debate about changing the world sounded like a clash between those who say, ���Yes, we can,��� and those who say, ���No, you can���t.��� That at least is an issue that can be resolved. The true answer is one we must both declare and live out: Yes, we can, because God can���and he has in the past, and he is doing so elsewhere in the world, and he is able to do so again even here in the advanced modern world, because God is God, and his is the last word in human affairs.

Let it be clearly understood that our hope in the possibility of renewal is squarely grounded, not in ourselves, not in history and the fact that it has happened before, but in the power of God demonstrated by the truth of the resurrection of Jesus���. The risen Jesus stands as the Lord of life, and the lesser challenge of Christian renewal looks puny in the light of the greater triumph of the resurrection of Jesus.

Guinness���s book can be summed up by this quote, and it���s one we should take to heart:

The time has come to trust God, move out, sharing and demonstrating the good news, following his call and living out our callings in every area of our lives, and then leave the outcome to him.

Make it the first priority of your life to conform your mind, your view of the world, your understanding of your profession, your treatment of others, the workings of your family, your willingness to sacrifice for others, and your love, to Jesus. As Guinness says, ���We are called to define our faith, our lives and all we are and think and do by the standard of Jesus Christ our Lord, the precepts of the good news of the kingdom, and the authority of the Holy Scriptures.��� You cannot skip over this in a misguided attempt to put all your efforts into doing something ���big.��� In the end, this is what makes the difference: one human being at a time being changed by Jesus, living in community with His other followers.

I just finished reading a book about Christopher Hitchens���s friendship with Larry Taunton, and it wasn���t Taunton���s superior argumentation that drew Hitchens to personally discuss Christianity with him; it was the fact that Taunton���s Christian life was lived with conviction, love, and sacrifice���sometimes shockingly so, to Hitchens���that moved him. The beauty of a life conformed to Jesus���His humility, His sacrificial love���demonstrates the plausibility of Christianity in a way that opens people up to hearing intellectual arguments. We dare not skip over conforming our lives to Jesus within a community of fellow Christians in order to focus on learning arguments.

I hope you feel as convicted by this as I do, and that you���ll take some time to consider ways your life could better reflect Christ���s love, humility, and self-sacrifice to the world.

Challenge: I Don���t Like the Idea of People Telling Me What to Do

This week���s challenge comes from ���After 13 Years, I���m Leaving Christianity���:

Now at 26, I don���t go to church anymore. Because I don���t like the idea of people telling me what I should do, and how I should be doing them. I think many millennials feel the same way.

During my time in university, I���ve learned to be my own teacher when it comes to issues close to my heart. It���s about objectivity. This is why I did my own research on the subject of homosexuality. I stop letting one specific group of people dictate how I should view myself, and other gay people. I realise that what it means to be gay is really, my own business. How I want to live my life is my choice, not some other people���s.

I think this is probably a very common sentiment in our culture. There are really two aspects to this challenge: First, there���s the question of why this approach to life is unwise. Second, there���s the matter of how you would communicate that to someone who expressed this opinion. I���d love to hear your thoughts on both.

What is wisdom? How do we find it? How do we evaluate it? Where does it come from? Is there a standard? Is it a good standard? Can we trust it? All of these things and more play in the background of this challenge. Give us your thoughts in the comments below, and come back on Thursday to hear what Alan has to say about it.

[Explore past challenges here and here.]

On a Scale of 0-100, What's the Chance God Exists?

Greg shares why the chances that God exists are extremely high.