A Verbal Defense of the Gospel
By Michael Klikas
08 October
2006
Adult Education Hour
1 Peter 3:15
Today I hope to finish our study on apologetics in 1 Peter chapter three so that we can move on to Acts chapter twenty two. So let’s have a quick recap and then get right back into our study.
As we began last week we started out by looking at the words reason and hope. We said that hope had the meaning of expecting something which is quite different from the hope that the world has. We also said that the word reason in the Greek is the same word for ëïãïò.
We have hope because of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not an obscure hope but one that is trustworthy and sure. The world can give no reason for hope that has a pure and solid foundation. Because we have the best reason in the world to have hope, the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to tell others of the true hope that they can have or defend why we have that hope. We said this as one of points last week. If we fail to point people to the reason they need to repent and fail to point people to the reason that they too can have hope, then we have done nothing more then point them to a false gospel that offers no hope.
We also said that this hope gives you confidence in the Lord. No matter what you are going through, you know that everything will work out to God’s glory. We must then point people to the reason we have hope. Then we talked about the two ways in which we must present the truth from the scripture to give others hope. The ways we mentioned were in meekness and in fear. However, we fail to present the truth in meekness and in fear for several reasons. We then went into detail for the three reasons we are about to list again. So we do not take too much time we will only list them and not cover them again.
The first reason that we do not present the gospel in meekness and in fear is because “Too many times we want to prove the other person wrong and direct them to the truth of the gospel by stuffing it down their throat. “
The second reason that we do not present the gospel in meekness and fear is because of frustration. We said this about the contrast of frustration and meekness and fear. “The more the frustration grows the less meek and fearful you become.”
Then the third reason that we do not present the gospel in meekness and fear is because of pride. We then said this regarding pride and the presentation of the gospel and apologetics. “We do not defend the truth to please the Lord but to ‘Prove that we are better’ or to ‘SHOW OFF’ what we know about the Bible.”
Then we finally looked at the word meekness and found that it means, “mildness of disposition, gentleness of spirit, meekness.” Now lets pickup where we left off. We just covered meekness so let’s move on to the word fear.
The second word that we need to look at is fear.
Fear:
öïâïò Strongs No: 5401
Transliterated: phobos; Pronounced: fob'-os
1. fear, dread, terror
a. that which strikes terror
There are a few things that I want us to get out of this. First of all there should be a reverential fear before God. We have been given the great task of defending the truth and presenting the gospel and therefore we should be fearful if we present the gospel or defend the truth in any other way then how the Lord wants us to. We should fear the Lord in such a way as to that we never want to sin against him and that we should give the truth to everyone we can. It should be like a phobia of misrepresenting the truth. If you haven’t already guessed, this word phobos is where we get the word phobia from. What do phobias do to people? Some people like me will not go up on rooftops because of a fear of falling off. Some people have a fear of open spaces, and because of that they will not leave their homes. Others have just the opposite and have a fear of closed spaces so places like crawl spaces and elevators are off limits to them. These fears are real to the people who have these phobias and they dare not violate that fear.
Why is it that we do not have this same fear with the word of God? We throw verses out there so many times without ever considering the context in which the Holy Spirit preserved that particular verse or passage. Sometimes we throw those verses out there to try and be an encouragement to others and sometimes we throw those verses out to try and prove our point. We have nothing to prove, God has already proved it, if you will and we do not need to reinvent the wheel. What we need to do is the use the word of God the way God intended it to be used and then let the Holy Spirit do his work in the hearts of men and women. And we should have such a fear of using the word of God the wrong way that it grips us worse then any of the phobias that we mentioned or didn’t mention in the same way it could grip those people who have them.
Look at 2 Corinthians 5:9 – 11
2 Corinthians 5:9 Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.
2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
2 Corinthians 5:11 Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.
Besides having a phobia type of fear when it comes to using the word of God for our own benefit or in the wrong context, I think we also need to let the word of God strike fear onto the heart of the unbeliever because of the imminent judgment that is coming. As we have learned from the evangelism training that we have received, we cannot present a false gospel that says all these wonderful things will be yours if you give your life to Christ. The lost person needs to see that they should fear the impending judgment, just as the Christian needs to see that even though they are saved, there are consequences for their sin and for not serving the Lord in a way that pleases him. You do not have to use anything apart from the word of God to strike fear into the heart of the unbeliever. But if you do not present the terror of the Lord then you have violated scripture.
Hebrews 10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Nothing that you can say, no description you can give is going to strike fear in to the heart of the unbeliever like the word of God can. We can try and paint pictures for those who are lost but in truth the best pictures painted are those that we have in the Scriptures. If you want to paint a picture of hell for the unbeliever then take them places in the Bible like Luke 16:19 – 31. There are other places in the Bible that we go to but that is just one example.
So the questions we have ask ourselves is do we fear the wrath of God enough to warn others or is it no big deal to us because we are saved and we not have to face hell ourselves. Does pride fill your lips when you witness and defend the truth or are you genuinely concerned for the spiritual well being of others? Then do you trust the Lord to do the saving or do you think that you have to some how convince them that they need to be saved? As we look at this verse we have to ask these questions or else we will defend the truth in a way that does not please God. If we are not meek and fearful then when we present the truth from the word of God either in an apologetic way or in giving the gospel what we are saying is that we do not fear the Lord. Our speech will be full of pride and we will try to convince someone that they need to be saved so we can put another notch on our gun slinging belt. Don’t get me wrong, there is no greater joy then being used of the Lord and seeing someone confess their sins and ask the Lord for forgiveness. That, however, should not be our motivation. Our motivation should be to bring glory to the Lord. So as we move into our next verse think about how you present the truth to others, and do you fear the wrath of God enough to tell others?
So we have discussed the how and the why when it comes to defending the truth in meekness and in fear. Now let's look at the result of putting verse fifteen into practice. The results are found in verse sixteen.
1 Peter 3:16 Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.
So we present the truth to others as a verbal defense with meekness and fear. The result of that, regardless of whether the person who is lost gets saved or not: the person who believes something that is not true or no longer exists believes it or not, is that we have presented the truth and our conscience will not convict us for doing right. What is important is that we have done the right thing before the Lord and will not be held accountable for what happens to that person. If you give the gospel and the lost person rejects it, then so be it. If the person who believes in speaking tongues continues in that now false belief, then so be it. All we can do is verbally defend the truth with the truth and leave the rest up to the Holy Spirit.
Notice the word conscience in this verse.
óõíåéäçóéò Strongs No: 4893
Transliterated: suneidesis; Pronounced: soon-i'-day-sis
1. the consciousness of anything
2. the soul as distinguishing between what is morally good and bad, prompting to do the former and shun the latter, commending one, condemning the other
Listen to this definition again. The soul as distinguishing between what is morally good and bad, prompting to do the former and shun the latter, commending the one, condemning the other. So when we give a verbal defense of the truth, we are distinguishing between what is morally good and bad. Our conscience, regardless of what happens to that person will not condemn us. If we did all that we could do then our conscience is clean and will be clear. That does not mean that we will not grieve for that person or stop praying for them. All it means is that we did right in the sight of the Lord and have nothing to fear as long as we did everything we could and used the word of God properly. The person who then rejects the truth that is presented to them has ultimately condemned themselves.
Turn over to Ezekiel 33:1 – 9.
Ezekiel 33:1 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Ezekiel 33:2 Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman:
Ezekiel 33:3 If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;
Ezekiel 33:4 Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.
Ezekiel 33:5 He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.
Ezekiel 33:6 But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.
Ezekiel 33:7 So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.
Ezekiel 33:8 When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.
Ezekiel 33:9 Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.
We see that the Lord has told Ezekiel that he is to be a watchman and warn the people of the impending judgment coming. Basically without going into to much of this, we have two scenarios involving the judgment of the Lord. First we see that Ezekiel has been given the responsibility to warn the people of God’s judgment. One of two things will happen. Either he will warn the people and those who reject his warning will die in their sin and he will be guiltless before the Lord because he warned them. Secondly we see that if Ezekiel does not warn the people of the impending judgment of God and they are caught in their sins then Ezekiel is responsible for not warning them. He is guilty and cannot have as 1 Peter 3:16 says, a good conscience. There is no difference between Ezekiel and us.
We know that the judgment of God is coming and we know what the results will be for those that caught in their sins. If we warn them of this judgment and they do not repent then we have done all we could. They are responsible for what happens to them. And as we have seen if we do not warn them when we know what is going to happen then their blood is on our hands. However, we should not warn people just because we do not their blood on our hands. “Well, I said what I had to say and that’s it, they are responsible now.” If we truly care for people we will continually warn them as much as we can and do so with a genuine heart begging the Lord to save them. At some point in our Christian life this has to shift from duty to desire. Whether it is seeing the lost saved or that Christian who has believed false doctrine turn to the truth and start serving the Lord in sincerity and in truth, we should never stop warning people.
Now you have to know that people are going to mock you, get mad at you and reject what you say: this is true with both the saved and the unsaved. The charismatic person will reject what you say when you tell them that they are not speaking in tongues but just mumbling something that is for their own edification and not the glory of God. The lost person may listen to you but may also call you a whacko. One thing is true though. If they reject the word of the Lord now, later on they will regret that they ever made that decision to do so. That regret may come in the form of being justly sent to hell or when the believer who believed a false doctrine stands before the Lord and gives an account for their rejection of the truth.
There is one more thing I need to say concerning this area of having a good conscience. We have said that this chapter deals with suffering for righteousness sake. If you are going to suffer and you will to some extent, wouldn’t it be better to suffer fighting all the way then to be sitting on the sidelines and not being involved at all? If you are sitting on the sidelines then you’re not really involved. If you’re not involved then you are not defending the faith as we have been told to do. Patrick Henry said that regretted that he had but one life to give for his country, and he did just that. Though he was killed by the British during the Revolutionary War, he died giving all he had. Why are we not willing to give everything we have for the Lord? I would rather go down fighting having no regrets then sit on the sidelines watching others fight the good fight faith and not get my uniform dirty because I’m doing nothing to help in the battle.
Go back to 1 Peter 3:16 and let's continue to look into this verse as we get close to wrapping apologetics in this chapter.
There are a few things that we need to see here in verse sixteen before we move on to our next area. As we have just seen, we need to have a good conversation no matter what others say about you either to your face or behind your back. Notice what the next part of 1 Peter 3:16 says.
1Pe 3:16 Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.
First of all notice how the Lord worded this verse. Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you. Not that they might speak evil of you but that they will speak evil of you. You are going to have evil things spoken about you regardless. But their hatred is not directed at you but at the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ makes this clear in John 15:18 – 24
John 15:18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
John 15:19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
John 15:20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.
John 15:21 But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me.
John 15:22 If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin.
John 15:23 He that hateth me hateth my Father also.
John 15:24 If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.
People are evil and because of their sin and their unregenerate state they are going to say things to you and about you. While it is true that words can sometimes hurt when they come from someone you care about or love, you have to understand that men love darkness rather then light and they wish to try to cover the light of the gospel with the darkness of their sin. One of the ways that they do that is by attacking the one who is giving the gospel to them. Obviously covering up their sin is an impossible thing to do. As a result of this impossibility People will say things to try to discourage and hurt us. They are trying to get us to come down to their level by getting us to respond they way they want us to respond. “See I knew you were no better then me. Look at how you reacted to me and the things that you said to me!” We must not give into that. Remember we said the Greek word apologia means to give a verbal defense, not to go on a verbal assault.
So what happens when you give a verbal defense of the gospel? Well it’s like this scenario. Walk into a dark room and turn on a flash light and what happens? The area where the light is pointed is illuminated. Have you ever seen a flash dark? You have seen a flash light and it illuminates but I guarantee that you have never seen a flash dark that absorbs light when you turn it on so that the room gets completely dark. It doesn’t exist, there is no such thing. Why because no matter what you do you cannot stop the light of the gospel from illuminating the sin of the person that it shines on. You can close your eyes, put on sunglasses, go into another room but the truth of the matter is that you cannot stop light from illuminating. That is what your conversation in Christ does and because the darkness of people’s hearts is exposed by what you say and what you do, they lash out at the Lord Jesus Christ by lashing out at you. But you do not hit them over the head with the flashlight. That is not the intended use of the flashlight.
So as we can see, people both strangers and those close to you will speak evil of you because of the Bible calls them evildoers. Genesis 6:5 says this
Genesis 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
This isn’t just true outside the church but also within the church because there are lost people who are in the church. When I say church I hope you understand what I mean. I do not mean the body of Christ but members of a local assembly who are still lost. Just because someone is a member of this church or any other gospel preaching church doesn’t mean that they are saved. We know first hand that membership doesn’t save someone. We also know that people trust more in a prayer then in the God of the prayer. They trust more in their good works then they do in the Lord. How do we know this, because the Lord himself showed us this in Matthew Chapter seven verses twenty one through twenty three.
Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 7:22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
Matthew 7:23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
So at the onset of our verbal defense we do not know if we will give a verbal defense of the doctrinal truths found in the scriptures to a person who may be saved but believes in truths such as tongues that was and always will be a truth for that time but is no longer used toady, or the defense of the truth and thereby a witnessing opportunity to a lost person who may or may not respond positively to the gospel. But we know one thing and that is the Bible says that in this verse that they will be ashamed of how they responded to the truth.
They will be ashamed either here on earth if the Lord saves them because they now know the truth and they are ashamed for how they first responded to you, or they will be ashamed when they stand before the Lord on judgment day. Too many times we as Christians look forward to them being ashamed on judgment day for how they treated us when we gave them the truth. If that is you, or has been you in the past, you should ashamed yourself because what you are saying is that they deserve hell for the way they treated you. They do not deserve hell because of the way they treated you. They deserve hell because they have sinned against a Holy God. We also deserve hell, but God in his mercy chose us before the foundation of the world and since we weren’t even alive yet, we most certainly could have done nothing to merit heaven. The hardest thing to do as an apologist is to not take things personally and to not think of ourselves as something when we are nothing without Christ.
Galatians 6:3 For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.
Because we are nothing without Christ, we should not take pleasure in judgment coming upon those who are lost. Neither should we glory in proving someone wrong. If your testimony is upright then you do not have to prove anyone wrong. What does the Bible says in verse sixteen that they (the accusers) may be ashamed who falsely accuse you. Let me ask you this question, have you been falsely accused? Is your testimony such that you the accusations are false, or is there some truth in them? If there is some truth in the accusations, how much truth is there? You see we have no hope of answering every man if our testimony is that of hypocrisy and double mindedness. It is not just the pastor and the deacon’s responsibilities to live a holy an upright life before the Lord and his people. It is everyone’s responsibility to do that and as we have seen it is everyone’s responsibility to be an apologist. So as we wrap up this portion let's review a few things.
An apology is a what? An apology is a verbal defense. We should sanctify our hearts or in other words set our heart, our whole heart aside as the throne for God because it is where he rightfully belongs. We need to be ready at all times to answer all men which means we need to be praying and studying the word of God. Then when we answer those that would ask us a reason we need to answer them with meekness and in fear knowing that if it were not for the grace of God we would still be lost in our sins.
Next week we will be moving to Acts chapter twenty two.