"Cultural Apologetics & The Gospel" Acts 17:16-34
- Youth & Outreach Director, Hunter Newton, preached this message on April 30, 2023.
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Audio Transcript
You start making your way in your bibles to Acts 17, 16, 34. As you’re doing that, though, just picture with me. And this might be a bit of a stretch, but picture you walk into a crowded downtown poignant restaurant, and some of you are like, I didn’t know one that point at could be crowded or that there was a downtown.
But you picture you walk into a downtown crowded point at restaurant. And there’s the usual things. It’s Friday night fish fry, and you see a Brett Favre jersey, and maybe you see a Rondane plaque that’s signed from his Heisman days. And if you just look in the corner, you see an old poster that’s signed by a Tom Gillis coach team. And then you look around and you’re like, this is pretty normal.
The fish is great, but the fries are even better. But maybe you notice something is a little bit off or different. People are spending a little bit extra time talking about Brett Favre or spending a little bit extra time looking at the Rondaine plaque. And it seems like it’s like worshipful kind of sort of weird sort of deal. And so you have that one scene and then maybe you’re on vacation the next week and you go to a church that you’ve never been to before.
The donuts are pretty good, music’s pretty decent, but the sermon mentions absolutely nothing about Jesus. And so you’d at least feel somewhat inclined to say something to somebody, or at least I hope you would. These are the two very different scenes that Paul would have been interacting with in the city of Athens in ancient Greece. This is what would have been going on. You would have had on one hand, as we’ll see, people in the synagogue who had all the right knowledge about God, but they missed the biggest point.
They missed Jesus. And then you had people in the was called the Aeropagus, or some translations will say Mars Hill. And they would have been totally missing the point. They would have been nowhere near close. And we’ll talk about how in the world do we minister to people in both sorts of settings, both sorts of contexts?
So that’s where we’re going here in just a second. Like I said, we’ll be looking at Paul’s time in Athens. We’re just taking a brief break from our series through Ephesians, and we’re looking at how to minister to each culture and speaking to real needs. And so you’ll notice those goofy words. You’ll notice that it says cultural apologetics.
And the Gospel is a title I’LL be honest with you, friends. A lot of times the hardest part of writing a sermon is the title, and I kind of hate this one, and there’s nobody to blame but me, but I couldn’t figure out something else better. So we’ll define it. We’ll define it together in just a moment. But let’s go ahead and read the text here together.
Acts 17, 16:34 God’s word for us this morning says, While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed when he saw the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in a synagogue with the Jews and with those who worship God, as well as in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also debated with him. Some said, what is this ignorant show off trying to say? Others replied, he seems to be a preacher of foreign deities.
Because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. They took him and brought him to the Areopagus. And like I said, some translations will say, to the Mars hill and said, may we learn about this new teaching you are presenting, because what you say sounds strange to us. We want to learn what these things mean now. All the Athenians and the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new.
He continues on in verse 22 Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said, people of Athens, I see that you are extremely religious in every respect, for as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed to an unknown God. Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it. He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by hands, neither is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since He Himself gives everything, life and breath in all things from one man. He made every nationality live over the whole earth, and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.
He did this so they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he’s not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring. Since we are God’s offspring, then we shouldn’t think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination. Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent because he has set A day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him. But others said, we’d like to hear from you again about this. So Paul left their presence. However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysius, the Aropagites, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. So it’s just helpful.
We’ve been in the book of Ephesians. It’s just helpful to set the context, the scene we’re flying into today. And so one thing to note is that the author, the writer of this book is Luke, and he’s also the same writer as the book Luke, Luke’s Gospel. And so you’ll notice here that he pays attention to every single detail, maybe in ways that are a little bit more pointed than we see elsewhere in God’s Word. But he cares about, he wants us to notice every single little thing.
And you also notice too, that this is. This is what Athens, the great ancient city of Athens, would have been one of the founding cities of what we know as modern democracy. These people were highly educated. These people. It would have been totally acceptable to be a philosopher as a profession and friends.
And just an encouragement to us too. Like, this is not just some sort of out there people. According to the most recent census statistics, Lodi is really not all that different. We’re obviously not in Greece, but 81% of people in this area have some sort of post high school education, and that’s nearly 18. That’s 18 to 20% higher than the rest of the country.
So this is itself a fairly well educated area. And so when preachers talk about two types of preaching, there’s preaching to people who just understand and believe the Bible already, and they would call that Acts nine kind of preaching. Because Paul just goes up and shows up in synagogue and says, hey, this is who Jesus is. Like, he is the Messiah. So there’s Acts 9 preaching and there’s Acts 17 learning how to speak into a culture, into a context, in a way that people maybe don’t get it as readily or as available or just need a little bit more backstory.
There just has to be some more convincing. I’ll be honest, this passage has meant a lot to me over the past couple of years because as I’ve kind of hinted at, Lodi, and especially a lot of the students, is really an Acts 17 preaching sort of mentality. People Even in the church, understand and believe God’s word, but also want that intellectual component and well, and so the settings are not all that different. And we’ll look at those more as we go on today. We’ve got one big point and I’ll define it in just a moment.
But the cultural apologetics and the gospel is our. Is our. I’ll just give you a cheat sheet. Anytime I’m preaching, the main point is just the title. And so that’s extra.
Why I don’t like this one because what are you, like you’re gonna tell your neighbor, what did you learn about today? Cultural apologetics in the gospel. Great. Let me give you seven, seven pages of seminary notes to understand that. But cultural apologetics in the Gospel.
Two supporting points. Seeing the culture, showing how the truth speaks to the culture. Seeing the culture. Understand, you could say understanding the culture and showing how the truth speaks to the culture. So let’s just look at verse 16 through 23 and let me.
If you’re a note taker, I invite you just to write this down because I’m guessing it doesn’t come up around the dinner table too often. Cultural apologetics, when I say that, I’m saying that is the learning how to study, defend and share the Gospel in a certain culture or context. Cultural apologetics is learning how to study, defend and share the gospel in relation to a certain culture or context. I think a lot of times when we hear the word apologetics, we immediately think of what’s known as classical apologetics. So like the science, the facts, the data, like the hard evidence for proving the existence of God.
And that is absolutely necessary. But I’ll just be the first to tell you that for a lot of what we’re going to see in generations to come, that is not actually what they’re all that concerned about. And some people, they do need that. Like one of my best friends from high school, that’s what he struggles with. Is, is the head knowledge?
Like, how can I wrap my head around it? But cultural apologetics can include classical apologetics, but it’s not. Not all classical apologetics is cultural apologetics, but all cultural. All apologetics. All cultural apologetics is like a wide breadth in the same way that like, not all facial tissues are Kleenex, but all Kleenex are facial tissues.
So, okay, is this making sense? Helpful? Okay, so Gantt’s word is pointing us to this. Ideas of like, different cultures, context for different people. For instance, in America, we’re really a justice driven people.
Like, we want things right and wrong, black and white. And that’s why we gravitate to a lot of the New Testament epistles. Like, I’ll be honest, sometimes reading through the Old Testament is a little bit hard for me. I’m like, what am I supposed to get out of this? Just somebody tell me what to do.
Somebody tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. And so we like that a lot of times in America, we’re really justice driven. We’re right and wrong driven. But other parts of the world, particularly like Central Asia, parts of Africa and the Middle east, it’s a shame driven. And so you and I, a lot of times in America are going to feel really drawn to the illustration of God in the courtroom.
Jesus paying for the wrath, paying for God’s wrath for us. But to somebody in a part of the world that’s focused on shame being removed. You hear stories of accounts like Hannah in First Samuel, and it says her shame was removed, and people just start weeping. And so it’s knowing how and where and seeing what drives people, what focuses people, what. What makes their heart beat a little bit faster when they hear these sorts of things.
So we focus on the forgiveness aspect here in America a lot. But in parts, maybe like Saudi Arabia, they might be prone to caring about Christ’s removal of shame, of feeling like they did wrong. Paul does an excellent job here in 16 through 23. He does an excellent job of seeing and noticing the difference to the Jews in the synagogue. He’s saying, this is the Messiah, this is who it is.
Because they would have had a framework for who that is. Like the Messiah is a word they knew, and Messiah is one that they were longing for. You read throughout the Old Testament, there’s nothing that’s. There’s nothing in there that leaves any sort of doubt that that’s who they needed, that’s what they were longing for. They would have understood that.
But to the people in the city center, he preaches the gospel in ways they can understand. He was speaking their language, right? We see evidence he’s like debating the Epicureans and the Stoics. He’s engaging them in terms that make sense to them, but also he’s not pulling back on the essentials of the faith. He’s speaking the Gospel to people in a way they can understand, but he’s also saying absolutely what needs to be said.
He’s speaking things of first importance. I imagine when he’s sharing the gospel, it says he’s talking about Jesus. And the resurrection doesn’t get Much better news than that, I’d imagine. He would have said words like First Corinthians 15:20 through 22, where we read. But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. When they were asking his thoughts, he explained, more people wanted to know more, and they were genuinely curious. And I think this still applies, too. People love to talk about themselves and what’s more core to ourselves than what we believe about who God is, people wanted to know more.
People are, like I said, pretty usually open to having at least the start of a conversation. Friends, if I started showing you things that you thought might be true but you had never known to ask about, wouldn’t you be a little curious? If I was able to share with you things that were true about you without even knowing you, other than your culture, you’d probably care a little bit or, like, be a little bit inclined to listen. If someone promised to meet a need that you had only ever known, that we had only ever known in our hearts, we probably would at least test the water to see if what they were saying was true. That’s what’s going on in the text here.
This is what cultural apologetics is. It is knowing the culture that we live in and speaking the real needs in a language that makes sense. If we want to know the culture, we must learn, we must spend time in it, learn how to walk the walk and talk the talk. And this applies, of course, to people who grew up in America, but also to missionaries across cultures or across cultural boundaries and differences. And it’s really amplified there.
I mean, God is sovereign. He’s going to save and he’s going to do what he’s going to do. But at the same time, if you have a missionary that refuses to, like, learn what the natives care about or speak the language or maybe even in some instances dress like they do, it’s probably going to hinder their gospel effectiveness. But the same is true for us living in Lodi in Wisconsin. If we don’t know what people care about, if we don’t know what gets them excited, if we don’t understand and want to wrestle with what they need, they’re going to be less inclined to listen.
And this can apply to different, just geographic regions, also different language barriers, ethnic, ethnic sort of ideas and sort of what gets people their driving force, their driving Ideas and even generations too. There’s massive generation differences when we learn how to share in different contexts.
Let me be the first to tell you too that this next generation, Gen Z1 even there’s, there’s Gen I that comes after them. Gen Z does not have a basic assumption of who God is. And if you’re like, who’s Gen Z? Gen Z is basically your 25 year olds through sixth graders right now. The kids who come in to middle school youth group who if they haven’t been through Sunday school or Awana, they have probably next to no idea who God is.
I’m not saying this to scare you, but this is just reality. BARNA is a Christian research organization and they said this is the first truly post Christian generation. These kids, when they hear the word Trinity, they’re puzzled, which most of us are too when we try to understand the Trinity. But they hear the word sin, totally foreign or even just. We’ve been in First Peter all spring semester and some of them, it still just takes five to 10 minutes to figure out where that is in their Bible.
I’m not saying this to rag on them, I’m just saying it is. We need to start asking and looking for answers to these kids questions. This is a new generation that has no understanding. This is just a really practical group of people that are coming up. This is the next generation of the church.
These are questions we need to seek to ask and answer both here at Lake Wisconsin and in the church at large. We can’t afford to not. We can’t afford to not answer and to seek and to see the culture. But we don’t just see a culture, we don’t just study it, we don’t just learn about it. We need to show the truths of the gospel to the culture too.
In verses 24 through 30, Paul just comes out proclaiming truth. He’s sharing the essentials of the gospel. He just comes out swinging. He comes out excited to share. He’s listened, he’s done his homework.
He spent time with people in the setting. He knows what they need to hear, what they need to hear, how they need to hear it. And one of those things right away is he starts with creation. If you look at First Corinthians 15 and elsewhere in Paul’s writings and in the New Testament, the gospel is usually Jesus came, he lived, he died and he rose again. He’s coming back and that’s good news.
That is the gospel. But you’ll notice here that he starts at creation because he’s done his Homework. And he’s been with these people who don’t understand or don’t have the right view of creation. So in Greek mythology, if you’re familiar with it at all, the creator lowercase God would have been Phanes or Phanes, however you want to say it. And that is who these people would have had in mind when they hear about, oh yeah, we know the Creator.
No, they don’t. And Paul’s pointing that out here, and he’s showing God, the one true creator God, in stark contrast to who Phanes is, because he knows these people, he’s understood, he’s seen the culture, he’s been around them. And so Phanes is this lowercase g, God who needs human hands, who’s kind of like humans, who needs to be served by humans. Paul’s saying, you don’t understand this. The real creator God not only is infinitely more powerful, he’s infinitely better.
He wants a relationship with his creation. He’s showing them in stark contrast because he knows that people, he can answer the question behind the question. He’s done his homework. He. He knows how to speak the truth in a way that people wouldn’t even know when to ask.
He’s putting our infinitely better, good creator God against this silly myth. Greek mythology. Elsewhere in God’s word we see this affirmed when. When it says God doesn’t need human hands. It says, but will God indeed live on Earth?
Even having the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this temple I have built.
How could that not have made his hearers at least a little curious?
They would have had all this reverence for Phanes and all the other false, false gods of Greek mythology. And then here comes this guy saying there’s not only a creator of everything who doesn’t need anything from us, but he, like, actually likes me and he wants a relationship with me. That would have sounded like almost too good a news to be true to those ancient heroes. This would have been ludicrous. And to use the scientific term, it would have been crazy town thinking.
Paul is answering some questions too. They would have had, like, just natural human questions, like how do we get humans that look different or live in different parts of the world? And he says, well, because God, through it, through Adam, gave, created the world and created mankind, and he has humans in different places. But he also does this. So in, like Romans 1, it says, we would naturally seek God.
He’s showing who God is and he’s showing his missional strategy.
He set up the earth this way. Paul says to show that we need a relationship with him, that we must repent and turn and believe the gospel and trust that Christ did live, die, and rise again for our sin, for those who repent and believe in him. While he was answering the questions behind the questions, he was sharing how certain truths apply to these people. While he was answering these questions, he was being patient, he was listening to more questions, he was answering other questions, he was making illustrations. But also, there’s a tremendous amount of freedom in doing this work too, because it doesn’t depend on us.
We get to do the sharing and the caring, the loving, but God does the saving. First Corinthians 3, 5, 7. We read, what then is Apollos, what is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed, and each has the role the Lord has given. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters anything, but only God who gives the growth. Like I said, this shouldn’t discourage us, but at the same time, like God does the saving, we just get to do and be a part of the work. What a privilege.
If your friend comes up to you and let’s just like assume it’s like a real friend who you want to have more than like a 30 second, how’s it going? Oh, you know, I’m blessed, I’m doing this and, and all that kind of stuff. If you want to have like a real conversation, they ask you, what kind of music do you like? You could just say, like, just simply, you just say, I like country music. I know some of us that makes our skin crawl just to hear those words.
But you also probably know the question behind the original question is, what kind of music do you like and why? And you could answer, well, I really like George Strait because it makes me think of going to my grandpa’s trip when I was 12 years old. Or I really liked Toby Keith because nobody really mixed twangy music with rock and roll like he did. And you can go on and on. You’re like, I love Kenny Chesney.
Your answer then could also be something like, I like country music because it makes me think of the farm that I grew up on and we had a one legged chicken. And every time that song came on the radio, this one particular song makes me think of him, and we called him Hoppy. And if you understand and you know your friend, if you understand and you know your friend, you know the question you’re asking because you spent time with them, you know their wants, you know their Needs you know how, you know how to answer their questions. The same is to be true of the church and understanding people that people both far and people near.
If you know cultural apologetics and the gospel, you can anticipate and respond to the real questions and see the real answer that’s supposed to be given. In a culture that already trusts and has a good and high view of God’s Word, you can dive right into it. If you believe like this is probably be like an Acts 9 kind of culture. Or you think about back to our opening illustration. People who are in the synagogue, like, they already trust and think highly of God’s Word.
And right we should, because God’s word is inerrants. God’s word will not return void unto him. God’s word is brave breathed out by him. Jesus himself is called the Word in John chapter one. And so to somebody who already has a good understanding of the Word, like, it’s probably really good and really easy to start with the Word, right?
And passages like Ephesians 2, 110 or Romans 8, or John 3. And there’s so many places, First Corinthians 15, that highlight the good news of the Gospel. And you can share and to encourage. And this isn’t just even for unsaved people, but for people who do know Christ already. And so somebody who already has that framework, like, that’s a great place to start.
It’s probably the easiest work. But to somebody who is like, I don’t really know that I believe in God. I think before we get into two other ones, I think Jesus is a great. Is the greatest apologetic because it’s not really debated if he existed or walked or lived because he like people, even secular historians, like, he’s a real person. Okay, so what do you do with Jesus?
And then you can walk them through that. But to somebody who maybe has like a philosophical argument, Philosophical, hard thing to understand. CS Lewis is a great, great guy to turn to because, like a brilliant quote, one of my favorites from him says, if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. And so as we think about these things, that’s one philosophical approach and we’ll get to some resources in just a second.
But maybe it’s the Apollo or maybe it’s the classical apologetics, the scientific proof for God’s existence, that somebody needs or struggles With, I would point them to the fact that you can’t have an uncaused cause. It’s mathematically impossible and just common sense impossible. You can’t have something, and especially everything come from nothing. When you think about the existence of God, it makes the most intellectual sense. It’s intellectually satisfying and deeply comforting.
And I’ve had to study a lot of this for different friends of mine, different students within our ministries here. But let me encourage you with the words of Ecclesiastes 1:9. It says, what has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. There are no new questions.
There are no new objections to Christianity under the sun. There’s something that’s going through some parts of the Christian church in America, and it’s called, like, the Deconstruction and Leaving the Faith Movement. It’s known by a number of different things. There’s a group of people known as exvangelicals. And one thing that they always say, it’s like, I asked all these questions and the church never wanted to provide answers.
And maybe that was true for some of them. But also, I think that if you’re going through deconstruction and never seeking people who are following Jesus, you’re like, I have these hard questions. How could a loving God do this? How can I have proof for this? How?
Like, if you’re not going to church, people like, I think that’s intellectually really lazy. I think that’s intellectually somewhat arrogant. Because the church has been wrestling and providing answers with these questions since Jesus rose from the grave. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, there’s nothing new under the sun. There’s no new challenges to Christianity under the sun.
It’s just a new generation, a new way of boxing it up and shaping it. Like, if we want to be ministers to these people, we need to walk into the hard conversations. And it’s not easy. Think about some of my best friends who have left the faith because they say, I have a problem with this. And you provide answers.
But we can’t make them believe. But we still, if we care about them, if we care about the Great Commission, we’re going to at least look into these answers.
If nothing else, it’ll sure up our faith. If we care about being faithful to the Great Commission, right? To go make disciples and to teach them everything. We must learn how to share truths in meaningful ways that people will be more inclined to hear, in ways that. Not that you can make the Gospel more meaningful, but in a way that instantly it just strikes a chord and makes their heart beat a little bit faster and a smile starts to smirk on their face.
To a middle school kid who has little to no framework for who God is, their ears are going to perk up when you say that Jesus died rose again so that he could be your best friend if you trust him. And that’s not to say that the best friend part is like the huge part of the gospel, but it’s definitely part of it and it’s not, absolutely not taking away from that part of it. To a generation that’s incredibly anxious and lonely when they hear that there’s a God who brings peace that surpasses understanding and that he’s going to be your best friend if you trust him and not only on top of that, he’s paid for your sin. That sounds like really good news. In the same way that these people in Athens would have been hearing good news of a Creator who not only made them, but loves them and wants relationship for them and he made a way that he took away their sin.
That’s good news that these teenagers can understand. To someone like me who inherently feels guilty, wakes up in default setting failure like I need to hear Christ knew what he was getting into when he paid the price for you. You’re not a mistake.
And we could go on down and on the list and I trust the Holy Spirit to, to guide you and lead you and lead us as we learn how to speak the truths of the gospel to different people in different settings in different contexts. We can go on and on and down and down the list. Just a few more examples, quick. To somebody who’s career driven, career focus. What if you told them that there’s a God who’s all powerful, who’s going to take care of you no matter what your financial status is.
To somebody who’s caught up in works driven shame or guilt. What if you told them that there’s a God who sees you, knows you, understand, regardless of what you’ve done or what you could do? We could go. We could spend probably quite literally hours or even a day going down, down the list. But let me just give you a few great apologetics resources.
They should be listing your bulletin. I think they’re on the screen here now. The Calories center for Cultural Apologetics. It’s relatively new, but it’s relatively awesome. Mahabhara Apologetics.
I know that our mom’s group here at Lake Wisconsin has been spending some time in that book and those Resources two books by Tim Keller, Making Sense of God. So that’s helpful for somebody who doesn’t even understand or doesn’t have like a baseline existence or belief in God. And the reason for God is kind of for somebody who comes in knowing and believing that there is a God already. A YouTube channel called Red Pen Apologetics, anything by Dr. Norm Geisler and fun fact, his son in law was former pastor here, Sam Castreva.
The book More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell and speaker and author Sean McDowell. And there’s so many other good resources out there and I’d love to share those with you, but these are, these are ones that I know, trust and believe in and consult often. So as we walk out of here, we’re thinking about what are we taking away? What’s good to know Some practical applications just would be reading 1732 through 34. Like he spent time answering more questions.
Like it’s not just a one off. It’s not just going to a sermon or a seminar at a conference. It’s sitting and being with people. Like, you can be a great apologetic just by the way you love and care for people in a way that Christ would. We can do that.
And we can only feel equipped to do this sort of thing through a reliance on the Holy Spirit. You think about that like we have access to God himself, relying on the Holy Spirit growing in our relationship with God. If we care about this, we are going to care about obedience to Him. We’ll care about sharing the gospel wherever and however. But also we need to be edified.
We need to be growing up in our, in our faith, learning how to speak the truth. But maybe the question you’re on that’s on your mind right now, you’re like, I’ve shared with somebody a million times over, or I’m just so terrified, so scared. How am I going to do this? How will I get them to listen? This is not a new conundrum.
It’s been around probably since Jesus walked out of the grave. And so there’s a guy a helpful. I think a story with this is helpful. The name David Garrick probably doesn’t mean a lot to many of us in the room, but in the 18th century he was like Channing Tatum meets like Julia Roberts meets like all these big named actors and actresses. Like he was the guy.
And there’s like theaters named after him all over the world and one even right down in Chicago. And if you’ve heard the phrase like break a leg, it’s because he literally Broke a leg and kept performing like, he’s the dude. He is him. He eventually started to frustrate some Christian preachers. And they’re like, how?
One of them finally approached him and said, how can you, somebody who deals and make believe, keep people’s hearts, minds and attentions more than I, a preacher of the gospel? And David Garrick, not a Christian, thought about it for a moment and said, I treat make believe as if it were reality, but you treat reality as if it were make believe. And so, brothers and sisters, this, I think, is one of the best means and modes to it. Like, acting like we actually believe it. Speaking about it in terms of not just, like, if you believe this, if you subscribe to us.
No, like, this is reality. Like, people every day are dying not knowing Jesus. People who are in the church need to be comforted. People are losing spouses. People are having all these sorts of things happen.
And they need the comforts, the truths, the real gospel. And one of the greatest means of sharing this and having people understand it is by showing them we actually believe it. It’s not just read your Bible once and get out of having to go or actually believing it’s. It’s actually genuinely taking God’s word to heart. And it should be apparent that this made a difference in our lives.
This is perhaps the greatest apologetic strategy. We need people to be convinced by our words, our hearts, our minds and our actions that we actually believe in the reality of the gospel. If we have the greatest joy on ever, shouldn’t we act like it? I remember I’m driving home from the Ren Collective concert on Thursday with students. I was like, I think one of one of my greatest passions is to show that Christians can have fun, that Christians should be joyful and live a little bit like we have the greatest hope on earth.
But it also means using words. It always means using words. People aren’t just going to get it just because we act different. I’ve never once had somebody say, you act different. I’ve always.
It’s always been sharing the gospel, too.
This is a great apologetic strategy. We need people who can be convinced by our words and our actions that we believe in the reality of the gospel at its very heart. That’s what cultural apologetics and the gospel are all about. Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, you are good to us, and you’re better than we can imagine. You are patient, you are holy, you are loving, you are kind. And we thank you for the ways we get to praise you, know you, and understand you. We thank you that we get for the ways that you call us to. To minister to the culture around us.
God, you are good to us and better than we could have ever dreamt up.
You are what our hearts long for. God, we pray that you’d set our souls ablaze with hope and eagerness to make much of you. God, we thank you. For you, it’s in your beautiful name we pray. Amen.