Transcription
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I want to go back to an email that I got several years ago from a United States Marine. Marine mating call, ladies and gentlemen, right there!
This guy wasn't writing me as a tough guy; he was writing me as a distraught father. He said my daughter was the top Christian student in her high school class. She led several youth groups and won several scholarships from Christian organizations to go to college. She could take him to any college she wanted to.
And so, my daughter, this man said, wanted to go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to win the campus for Christ.
And then he said, "Four weeks into her first semester, I got a phone call from her and her words devastated me. She said, ‘Dad, I don't believe in God anymore. Don't believe in God anymore!’"
What? He said, "I got in my car. I drove four hours down to Chapel Hill that weekend. I sat down with her, and I got nowhere with her. What do you mean you don't believe in God anymore? What happened?"
And she said, "Well, you know, we have this atheist professor who teaches the New Testament class and, um, he said we don't even know who wrote the gospels and the Bible has errors in it. So, Dad, I'm an atheist now."
Now, ladies and gentlemen, do you think that this young girl—by the way, that's not her—do you think that this young girl in four weeks investigated all the evidence for and against Christianity and made a rational decision it was false? No, you probably couldn't even do that in four weeks. What happened instead is she had gone off to the college unarmed. She didn't know why Christianity was true, and as soon as she heard what seemed to be reasons it wasn't true, she decided she was just going to walk out on Christianity.
And why wouldn't you? When you go to college, you don't want to do everything your parents said. You don't want to have the perceived moral restraints of Christianity on you. You want to do your own thing. This is one reason why we go to colleges through our ministry and present evidence that Christianity is true.
It's from a book called "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist," and we always set up a microphone for Q&A. Here is a picture from an event we had at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and they love the Bible there about as much as the University of California, Berkeley, does.
And, um, whenever an unbeliever gets up to the microphone and expresses any hostility at all, I'll normally stop and ask the unbeliever a question. I recommend you ask unbelievers this question:
Here's the question: If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?
I've had atheists stand at that microphone in front of hundreds of people and say, "No!"
No, wait! I thought you claimed to be reasonable. I thought you claimed to be rational. How is it reasonable you wouldn't believe something that was true?
Well, it has nothing to do with reason; it's not a problem—it's a heart problem. They don't want it to be true. They don't want there to be a God. Why? Because they want to be God over their own lives. They're not on a truth quest; they're on a happiness quest, and they're just going to believe whatever they think is going to make them happy.
Now, here's the problem: you can make yourself happy over the short term doing a lot of fun but ultimately selfish and sinful things. Yet, over the long term, it's a disaster. Everyone in this room over 40 knows what I'm talking about because many of us have tried it ourselves, right?
If you want contentment, you've got to go straight through truth, and Jesus is the truth. But a lot of people want to try it themselves.
Look, ladies and gentlemen, if you just live for yourself all the time, if you just become a "me monster" and it's all about you all the time, how long are your relationships going to last? Who's going to put up with that?
And if somebody does, you're probably not going to have a very fruitful relationship. No, you live for you all the time; you're ultimately going to wind up divorced, addicted, broken, alone, and probably prematurely dead. You can't just follow your whims or your desires all the time.
And we're going to get into it a little bit today because there are a lot of lies out there that your kids want to believe. In fact, we're going to talk about three lies that your kids want to believe. This is especially appropriate on Father's Day because, as we'll see at the end of this, fathers have a disproportionate amount of influence over what their kids believe and do.
Now, let me preface this by saying I'm not saying that just because you teach your kids the truth about Christianity that they're necessarily going to wind up to be Christians—they still might walk away. But I will say this, though: it's much harder to walk away from something that you know beyond a reasonable doubt is true.
It's easy to walk away from something you've doubted your whole life. And by the way, it's really hard for the heart to rejoice in what the mind doubts. So, you ought to have evidence for what you believe. The Scriptures tell us this, and common sense tells us we ought to have evidence for what we believe.
So what I want to do is give you some evidence. And by the way, these three lies that kids want to believe today—the reason kids want to believe them is because if they believe them, they're going to be in control of their lives. They think so, anyway, and they're going to be really popular if they believe these things.
The first lie that young people want to believe—and probably some older people too—is that "I have my own truth. I can live however way I want because I'm the arbiter of truth. I'm the standard of truth." This really has been the dominant philosophy in our culture. It's called postmodernism or relativism, and it's basically the view that there is no truth; everybody makes up their own truth.
Now, what I'm about to talk about in the next few minutes I think is the most important thinking skill I've ever learned. And to show you what a dimwit I was, I was 33 years old, I already had a master's degree, and I did not know what I'm about to tell you right now. This thinking skill, which is extremely important. And why didn't I know it? Because I never had a course in logic.
How many people in here have ever had a course in logic? Can I see your hands, please?
Oh, you see these people with their hands up? These are the homeschoolers. See them?
We don't teach logic in public school anymore; we should. Instead of teaching kids how to think, we're teaching them what to feel, and that's dangerous. Because if you live your life by feelings without reason, you're going to wind up in a very dark place.
Yes, emotion makes life fun, but logic makes life safe. And what we're going to talk about here is something called the law of non-contradiction. It's a fundamental law of logic. You all intuitively know it, but you may have forgotten you knew it. It goes like this: opposite ideas cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense.
For example, we can't both be at Chino Hills and not at Chino Hills at the same time and in the same sense, right? It's one or the other. God can't both exist and not exist at the same time and in the same sense; it's one or the other.
You with me? What we're going to do is apply this law of logic to some of these statements we hear in our culture today that support relativism and postmodernism, like this one: "There is no truth."
If someone were to say to you, "There is no truth," you should ask that person a question. What should the question be?
Yeah, "Is that true?"
Is it true that there's no truth? Because if it's true that there's no truth, then the claim there is no truth can't be true, but it claims to be true. Did I say that right?
Can everybody see that this is a self-defeating statement?
What's a self-defeating statement? I'm sorry, my voice is failing on me a little bit, ladies and gentlemen, but I'll try and get through this. What's a self-defeating statement?
A self-defeating statement is a statement that violates the law of non-contradiction. A self-defeating statement would be to say something like, "I can't speak a word in English." If I were to say, "I can't speak a word in English," what would you say?
Hey, you just used English to say it! Or it'd be like saying, "My parents had no kids that lived," or "My brother is an only child," or "Everything I say is a lie." Some of you will get that tomorrow, or "All generalizations are false." Some of you will never get that one.
All right, these are known as self-defeating statements. And here's the thinking skill to identify self-defeating statements: you turn the claim on itself. You turn the claim on itself. So you ask the question, if somebody says, "There is no truth," you ask the question, "Is that true?"
Okay, now, you can amaze your friends with this. Why? Because you're not being unkind; you're simply asking questions. You're not saying, "Hey, you bonehead, that's self-defeating." What you're saying is a question. They say there's no truth, you say, "Is that true?"
And then they're going to be shocked; they're going to be stunned because they're going to realize that what they just said is like saying, "I can't speak a word in English."
Now, this is said in different ways in our culture. Sometimes it's said this way: "All truth is relative." If somebody says, "All truth is relative," if you turn the claim on itself, what question are you going to ask back?
You guys are sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher right now. Come on! If somebody says, "All truth is relative," it's always a question you're going to ask: "Is that a relative truth?"
No, that's an absolute truth! Can everyone see that's an absolute truth? Claiming all truth is relative defeats itself.
Now, in our culture, it's more often said this way: "There isn't the truth; only my truth." You know, you have your truth, I have my truth, you live your truth, I'll live my truth, we'll all get along. I mean, this sounds so right, doesn't it? It sounds like we all ought to believe this. It sounds so Oprah, doesn't it?
There's just one problem with it: it's logically self-defeating. Because if somebody says, "There isn't the truth; only my truth," you simply ask them, "Is that just your truth or the truth?"
In other words, is the statement on top just your truth? If it is, why should I believe it? You know, it's just your opinion, so why should I believe it? But if you're saying the statement on top is the truth, can everyone see the first half of that statement says there aren't any truths?
Can everyone see this? This is the truth statement claiming there are no such thing as true statements. This defeats itself.
Now, I know it's very unpopular to say this, but I have to say it anyway: There's no such thing as "your truth." There's no such thing as "my truth." There's just the truth.
I mean, if you want to say you have your own truth, you might as well say, "Well, thank you." Five people go, "Yeah, that's right. Hey, that's just true for you over there."
I mean, if you want to say you have your own truth, you might as well say, "I have my own math."
I mean, imagine if, say, Pastor Shadrach said, "Hey, Frank, can you hang around here tomorrow at Chino Hills? We've got a lot of work to do in the courtyard if you can help us out." Uh, yeah, look, I'll pay you $10 an hour; you just tell me how many hours you worked at the end of the day, I'll pay you.
Now, actually, Pastor Shadrach would never do this; he doesn't pay that much. But let's suppose I hung out for, like, 15 hours. I worked dawn to dusk tomorrow and I'm done. And he goes, "Okay, let's see: 15 hours times $10 an hour—you owe me $150,000."
He's going to say, "What? $150,000? No, I owe you $150!" And I go, "Oh, no, you don't understand; I have my own math."
He's going to say, "You're crazy! There's not my math or your math. There's not my truth or your truth; there's just math!"
Now, I know some of your parents are going, "Oh, you don't see the kind of math my kid brings home; that ain't my math!"
No, I'm not talking about that, all right? Look, there's one answer to a math problem—not your answer or my answer—and there's one truth—not my truth or your truth. And if you want to say you have your own truth, you're actually uttering a self-defeating statement because you're claiming **that** is the truth.
You with me?
Now, sometimes it's said this way: "It's true for you but not for me." "Well, Christianity may be true for you, but Buddhism is true for me." What do you say to that?
This is also self-defeating; it's just a little bit more subtle. If somebody says, "It's true for you but not for me," you need to ask, "Hey, is that true for everybody?"
Is "it's true for you but not for me" true for everybody? Because if it's true for you but not for me, then "true for you but not for me" can't be true because it's true for everybody.
Did I say that right? I know that can give you intellectual constipation if you think about it long enough, but that's because it's self-defeating; it violates the law of non-contradiction. It's doing exactly what it says can't be done.
Actually, there's a more fun way of dealing with this. If somebody says, "It's true for you but not for me," say, "Sure! Try that the next time you get pulled over."
Let's say you're going down Highway 5, you're going 100 miles an hour, and a cop sees you, pulls you over, walks up to the car, knocks on the window. You put the glass down; he says, "You were going 100."
It's easy to get out of a ticket; you simply say, "Ha! That's true for you but not for me!" and you speed away. You can't give your ticket if it's not true for you.
No! If it's true, you're going 100; that's true for all people at all times in all places when referring to you at that time.
It's just true! By the way, if it's true Jesus rose from the dead, that's true for all people at all times and all places, whether you believe it or not.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, if he didn't rise from the dead, that's true as well, even if you believe it. Truth doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you believe; facts don't care about your feelings.
I mean, do you have to believe in gravity to stay on the ground? Do people who don't believe in gravity float away?
Hey, look, there's another one: "Hey, if you believe, you'll come back." No! That's not the way it works. There's not gravity true for you but not for me; if it's true, it's true. It's true for everybody.
Now, actually, this is probably a bigger one you hear in our culture: "You ought not judge." "Jesus said don’t judge!" "Why are you judging? You hypocrites!"
All right, first of all, let's leave Jesus aside for just a second. What's the problem logically with the claim? Somebody says, "You ought not judge." You're going to say, "Isn't that a judgment?" Or you might want to say, "If we're not to judge, then why are you judging me for judging?"
But wait a minute, didn't Jesus say, "Don't judge?" Nope, never said it!
Sure he did, Frank! He said it in Matthew 7:1, the Sermon on the Mount! This is his most well-known sermon. All right, I know it's going to sound odd for just a minute, but stick with me: there are no verses in the Bible.
There are no verses in the Bible! I mean, when Matthew was writing his biography, which we now call a gospel, do you think he said, "Here's chapter 7, verse 1?"
No! When were the chap and verse divisions put in? About 500 years ago to help us navigate the text, which is important, right? It'd be really hard to find your way around this big series of books or this big series of books we put under one binding if you didn't have numbers.
I mean, imagine if you didn't have numbers in your Bible and Pastor Jack didn't have numbers in his, and one Sunday morning he just got up with this big book and he opened it and looked at you and he went, "Let's go about two-thirds of the way in and see if we can find the same spot." Right? Like you couldn't do that!
You need numbers to try and find your way around. The problem is we tend to think if it's got a number in front of it, we can take it out and make it say whatever we want! We can't!
We need to read around the passage to see what's going on. Did Jesus just say, "Judge not?" And he stopped right there?
No! He said, "Judge not, lest you be judged by the same standard you judge others; you'd be judged by that standard. So before you try and take the speck out of your brother's eye, you hypocrite"—notice that's a judgment, "you hypocrite"—"take the log out of your own eye first, then you'll be better able to help your brother."
Then he goes on to talk about "don’t cast your pearls before swine," which requires another series of judgments. Is Jesus telling us not to judge here?
No! He's telling us to take the speck out of our brother's eye. That involves making a judgment. He's simply saying, "Get that problem out of your life first so you can better help your brother."
So this is not a command not to judge; it's actually a command on how to judge: Don't judge hypocritically! If you've got that problem, fix it, then go help your brother.
It would be completely ridiculous to say, "Don't make judgments." Number one, it's a judgment itself. Number two, you'd be dead already if you didn't make judgments.
You made 100 judgments this morning just getting over here, and now you're going, "This was a bad judgment; this guy's crazy. Where's Pastor Jack?" Everybody makes judgments.
Atheists make judgments! They judge there's no God; they judge Jesus didn't rise from the dead; they judge the Bible's not telling you the truth; they judge there's no objective meaning or purpose to life.
When you die, you're just going to become worm food; it's over. Your life's meaningless; it's hopeless. Have a nice day! These are all judgments.
The question isn't whether or not you can make judgments; the question is: Are your judgments true?
Now, we have to make judgments, but we have to make judgments without being judgmental. And quite often, Christians are accused of being judgmental. In fact, what is the biggest objection you get if you're a Christian?
What do people say about Christians in general? "You're a hypocrite!"
Now, when somebody calls you a hypocrite, you know what I think you ought to say? At least two things: Number one, "You're right!"
So what follows from that? "I don't live up to my standards; do you live up to yours?" You realize that nobody lives up to their standards. Nobody is completely consistent all the time. We're all fallen.
The second thing you can say: "Do you realize you've just given evidence for God?" Why? Why is hypocrisy wrong? If there is no God, why is anything wrong?
If there is no God, nothing's wrong. If there's no God, there's no standard beyond ourselves that we're obligated to obey. You can't say anything's right or wrong; it's just your opinion.
So if you think there's something wrong with hypocrisy, you've just given evidence for God.
A number of years ago, I had a couple of debates with Christopher Hitchens, who was a brilliant British atheist who sounded more brilliant than he was because he had a British accent.
You can see these debates on our YouTube channel. He went on and on about how much evil religious people have done, to which I said to him, "You know, you're right, Christopher; we have done a lot of evil."
But you're proving our worldview! We admit we've done evil; that's why we need a Savior! And I don't live up to the pure words of Christ either. I'm a hypocrite!
When people say, "I can't go to church because there's too many hypocrites down there," I always say, "Come on down, pal; we've got room for one more!"
The church is a hospital for sinners; it's not a country club for saints. In fact, when people say, "I can't go to church because there's too many hypocrites down there," they'd be like saying, "I can't go to the gym because there's too many out-of-shape people down there."
It's one of the reasons you're going to the gym; it's one of the reasons you're coming to church.
Now, as Gus said during the worship, a lot of times people have trouble imagining a heavenly father because their earthly father was a hypocrite, or their earthly father's been a jerk. I get it; we're all fallen. None of us are perfect.
But I want to ask you a question: If you've had somebody in your life who claims to be a Christian and that has turned you off because of what they did or how they conducted themselves, here's the question: When somebody plays Beethoven poorly, who do you blame?
Who do you blame? You don't blame Beethoven! When somebody plays Jesus poorly, who do you blame? You don't blame Jesus!
Amen?
Look, just because I'm not true and beautiful doesn't mean Jesus isn't true and beautiful. Just because your dad wasn't true and beautiful doesn't mean Jesus isn't true and beautiful.
Newsflash: Christianity is not Christian; Christianity is Jesus!
Keep your eyes on Jesus, especially this Father's Day.
Let’s sum up this section this way: Can everybody see that this statement right here shoots itself?
Anybody see that?
All right, of course there's truth out there, ladies and gentlemen! By the way, it makes no sense to send your kid to a college where some postmodern relativistic professor is going to teach him or her the truth that there is no truth.
Why would you ever do that? Don't send your kids to that kind of college! Send them to a good college, or don't send them to college at all!
You might say, "Well, Frank, you've been to college; you have a doctorate and all that." Yeah, but the current state of American academia—I mean, when you have people rooting on the new Nazi party on campus, where does that come from? It comes right from the pit of Hell. And if they are going there, you better prepare them.
The second lie your kids want to believe is that love means approval. Why? If love means approval, they can approve of everybody regardless of what they want to do; they don’t have to stand for truth at all. It could be all about just acceptance.
But that's not love, ladies and gentlemen. In fact, a number of years ago here at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, I did a sermon on, "Does love require approval?" I'm just going to summarize it—you can see the entire thing on the Calvary Chapel Chino Hills website.
But let me ask you a question this way: How many parents do we have in the room here?
All right, how many former children do we have in the room here?
Okay, good! That's all of us, then! All right, question: If your parents approved of everything you wanted to do when you were 13 years old, would they have been loving?
No! Of course not! Love doesn't mean approval. Love doesn't mean enabling people to do evil. Love means you're standing in the way of evil!
If you don't approve of everything some kid wants to do, you're not loving; you're unloving! You're an enabler!
In fact, in the passage that everybody reads at their wedding but nobody obeys—1 Corinthians 13—here's what Paul says about love: Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing; love rejoices in the truth. Love always protects; love always perseveres.
You don't protect people when you're approving of the evil they're doing; you're doing the opposite! Knock it off!
In fact, Jesus, who went to the cross for us, gave us one new command. You know what the one new command is? Here it is:
He says, "A new commandment I give you: Love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another."
How did he love us? He sacrificed himself for us. So what is love for us? It means sacrifice!
It doesn't mean approval. Do you know when we fail to say what we know to be true because we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, we're not really loving people; we're enabling them to do evil.
A lot of times, we won't tell them the truth because we don't want them mad at us. And you know why we do that? Because we want to take the easy way; we will sacrifice them for our benefit rather than sacrificing ourselves for their benefit.
That's what love is: to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others. So you need to tell people what the truth is in as tactful a way as possible.
Here's one way you could do it: You might say to somebody you love, who, say, is wanting to approve of, say, aberrant sexual practices—they're all over now—you might say to them, "Hey, if I was about to go down a road you knew that would hurt me and hurt others, and would be against God's will, would you love me enough to tell me?"
What's the other person going to say? "Well, of course!"
Great! "Can I do the same for you right now?"
Love does not mean approval. Thomas Sowell is now 94 years old and says everything—well, put it this way: he said, "When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear."
How often do we tell people what they want to hear? Oh, we don't want to risk the relationship.
Well, what kind of relationship do you have anyway if you can't tell them the truth? What are you risking?
And by the way, Jesus wasn't always nice. Jesus told people the truth!
In fact, if you think Jesus was a nice guy who never said a bad word about anyone, you have not read John chapter 2, John chapter 8, or Matthew chapter 23.
What happens in John chapter 2? Jesus makes a whip, and he goes and he jacks people up in the temple!
Oh, sweet and gentle Jesus did this? Yes!
Then, Jesus in Mark chapter 8—I'm sorry, in John chapter 8—goes after the Pharisees. And who are the Pharisees? They're the religious and political leaders of Israel. Some of them were on the Sanhedrin—that's the Jewish ruling council to whom Rome delegated day-to-day law-making authority. They were the politicians!
And Jesus went after these people. Are you telling me Jesus got involved in politics? Yes!
And he wasn't so nice doing it. In fact, in John chapter 8, as he goes after these politicians, what does he say to them? He's right in the middle of an argument when he says, "Your father is the devil!"
"Jesus, you can't say that! That's not very Christlike!"
Excuse me! I am Christ!
Can you imagine? You have an argument with somebody and you stop right in the middle, and you go, "Your father is the devil!"
Never try that with a sibling, by the way!
And then in Matthew 23, Jesus really goes after these politicians. What do you—"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees! You hypocrites! You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! Oh, you look great on the outside; you're whitewashed tombs, but on the inside you're full of dead men's bones! You go a mile to make a convert, and then once you make them a convert, you make them twice as much a son of hell as you are. How will you avoid being condemned to hell?"
What sweet and gentle Jesus said this?
Jesus was not Barney: "Can't we all get along, boys and girls?"
No! I came to bring a sword; it's going to divide mother and daughter, father and son.
How often do you hear those passages talked about? But most of you in this room know those passages are true. Why? Because you're divided in your own family over Jesus. Guess what? You ought to be!
You ought to be following Jesus and not the world. Jesus did not come to bring unity—not with the world. He came to bring unity in the church but not the world.
So, Jesus was tough, and he didn't approve of everything quite obviously. In fact, if love required approval, then Jesus was unloving. If love required approval, then you couldn't love your children.
Now, you love them when they're little, but when they come teenagers—yeah, you love them—but you always feel like you love them, right?
You probably never thought of abandonment, but you've thought of murder several times!
If love required approval, you couldn't love your spouse; you couldn't love your enemies!
How do you love your enemies if love requires approval? In fact, God couldn't love you if love required approval!
Love does not require approval. In fact, let me change one word in this, and it still stands: If love required feelings, then Jesus was unloving! You couldn't love your children; you couldn't love your spouse; you couldn't love your enemies!
God couldn't love you!
You don't always feel good about people you love, right? This is even true in marriage, as you know.
C.S. Lewis, in the book "Mere Christianity," his chapter on marriage is fabulous, where he talks about that feelings are not what sustains a marriage. Feelings may be the spark that started the relationship, but it's not the engine that keeps it going.
In fact, when you go to a marriage altar, you don't vow to feel a certain way for the next 50 years. You can't vow feelings!
You might as well say, "I'll never vow to be hungry, or angry, or tired again." You can't vow those feelings!
All you can vow is action, and love means you're seeking what's best for the other person.
And by the way, you don't need a vow when you have the feelings! When you're all giddy, when you first meet somebody, you're all infatuated with them. All you can think is the other person; you can't do anything else! Your heart's beating like a hummingbird!
Right? You don't need a vow; you already want to be with them.
You need a vow when you wake up after 20 years and you go, "You again! Why did it have to be you again?"
Look, you put two broken people in one relationship; there's going to be trouble. This is why Rodney Dangerfield famously said, "My wife and I were happy for 20 years, and then we met!"
Love is not a feeling; it's a decision to seek what's best for the other person for better or worse.
One guy agrees, everybody else wants out as soon as it gets tough.
The third lie your kids want to believe is that the Bible is a fairy tale. Why? Because if the Bible's a fairy tale, then again they're the moral arbiter of their lives. They don't have to bow to God; they get to do their own thing.
Of course, what they forget is the supreme advantage of the Bible being true, and that is you're going to know the God of the universe—the God who created you—and you're going to be in a state of bliss with him and your loved ones who have also accepted the invitation.
Why wouldn't you want that to be true? But a lot of people don't.
What I want to do is spend a little bit of time on why we know Jesus rose from the dead. Why? Because if Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true. This is what we point out in the "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist" book. I don't have time to go through all the argumentation here today, but let me just say this: A lot of people can't believe in a resurrection because they've never seen one.
We cover all this in the book, but the resurrection is not the greatest miracle in the Bible. The greatest miracle in the Bible is the first verse: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." If that verse is true, every other verse—including verses about a resurrection—are at least possible.
You know the interesting thing, ladies and gentlemen? The interesting thing is that even atheists are admitting the evidence for the first verse. They're saying there was a beginning to the universe!
Well, ladies and gentlemen, if space, time, and matter had a beginning out of nothing, what could have caused that? It seems to me only a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful personal intelligent cause could have caused space, matter, and time to come into existence out of nothing.
That sounds a lot like God! Look, if Genesis 1:1 is true, a resurrection like the resurrection of Jesus is possible.
The only question we have now is: What evidence do we have that it really did occur? And in the book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist," we have a chapter called "The Top 10 Reasons We Know the New Testament Writers Are Telling the Truth." We don't have time for ten; I just want to give you two.
The first reason that I think we know beyond a reasonable doubt as they told the truth is that there's embarrassing stories in there that they never would have invented. You say, "What is this about?"
Look, historians know that if there's something embarrassing to the author or authors in the text, it's probably true. Why? Because you're not going to invent details that embarrass you! You're not going to invent details that make you look bad. You might invent things that make you look good, right? But not bad!
In fact, let me ask you guys a question: How many people in here have ever lied to make yourself look good?
Look, if you don't have your hand up right now, you're lying to make yourself look good, and it's not working!
How many people in here have ever lied to make yourself look bad? You don't do that! You might lie to make yourself look good, but you won't lie to embarrass yourself!
Well, the New Testament writers have filled the New Testament with embarrassing stories and details they never would have invented. That's why we call this the "dove factor."
They're not making this up! Let me just give you a few of them: Peter, their leader, is called Satan by Jesus. Do you think he invented this? You think Peter or Mark, who wrote this down, at one point said to Peter, "Hey, Pete, I'm going to make this a real interesting story. I'm going to have the Lord call you Satan. What do you think Peter would have said?"
"Have him call you Satan! This doesn't look good! I'm the leader here!"
And then Peter says, "Lord, I'll never deny you." What does he wind up doing? He denies him three times.
And then at the crucifixion, all the disciples—maybe with the exception of one—they all run away! This is like a Monty Python movie!
Run away!
And who are the brave ones? The women! That's right! That's right, ladies! On Father's Day, I am woman; hear me roar! You didn't run away like you pants men did!
Now, who wrote the New Testament documents down? Men!
Now, what man is going to invent that he was hiding for fear of the Jews while the women went down and discovered the empty tomb? Would any man in here invent that?
No! If I was making it up, I'd make myself look good, wouldn't you?
I mean, I'd write down, "Let's see: we marched right down there and overpowered that Elite Roman guard."
Yeah, that sounds pretty good!
Huh?
John said, "Get out!"
Peter roundhouse kicked him!
Thomas said, "We'll be back!"
No doubt some of you may get that tomorrow!
And then on Sunday morning, we marched right down to the tomb, and we saw Jesus, who congratulated us on our great faith.
And then we went and comforted the trembling women.
I would never say it was "Mr. Pants" while the women went down and discovered the empty tomb!
And, oh, by the way, why would you never say the women were the first witnesses in that culture?
I mean, forget about the fact it was embarrassing to men; it was. But independent of that, why would you never say the women were the first witnesses?
Yes, because a woman's testimony in court of law was not considered on par with that of a man!
So you'd only have the men be the first witnesses! And all four gospels say the women were the first witnesses, which is telling us what? They were!
In fact, one of the women was a formerly demon-possessed woman. Gee, what an incredible witness you got there, huh?
No, they're not making this up. They would never invent this.
I had a lady come up to me once, and she said, "Frank, I know why Jesus appeared to the women first."
I said, "Why?"
And she said, "Because he wanted to get the story out!"
I said, "That is an excellent point! I had not thought of that!"
'Cause ladies, when your man comes home from work, does he say much?
There could have been a nuclear explosion down at the plant. He's not going to tell you!
You'll see it on the news before you hear it from him! You'll be watching the news going, "Hey, H, what? Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you! Yeah, the nuke blew up! I've been hot for three days. What's for dinner?"
He's not going to tell you!
I was at the University of Cincinnati this past November, and some guy came up to me after the presentation. He said, "You think that's bad? I know of a friend of mine who was on a plane, just he and a pilot, a private plane, and the pilot died. And this guy didn't know how to fly the plane, so just like in the movies, the tower talked him down."
Well, that guy went home that night, and his wife said, "How was your day, dear?"
And he said, "Same old, same old."
I can't even believe this passage is in the Bible!
But in Matthew 28, when Jesus takes his disciples on the hill in Galilee to give them the Great Commission—this is the climax of The Gospel of Matthew, you know the part where he says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations."
He doesn't say, "Make believers"; he says, "Make disciples!"
Right?
Anyway, as he's giving them the Great Commission, it says of the disciples—this is Matthew 28:17—it says, "Believed, but some doubted."
What? He's standing resurrected right in front of them! They're doubting! How embarrassing is that?
I mean, they're standing there going, "You see that guy over there?"
"Yeah, that guy over there is Jesus!"
"Oh, no, it can't be Jesus! He was just killed not long ago!"
"No, I'm telling you it's him!"
"Look, they killed him!"
"I'm telling you it's him! Do you know what the Romans did to him? They put nails in him all over the place; they put a spear in his side; blood and water came out; they punctured his heart; they whipped him! If the Romans didn't kill them, the Roman soldiers themselves could have been killed for not properly executing!"
"I'm telling you, Jesus is dead!"
"It's him!"
"It can't be!"
It is!
How do you know? The women told me!
They're not making this up!
There's even potentially embarrassing details about Jesus in Mark 3. It says that Jesus's own family wanted to seize him and take him home because they thought he was out of his mind!
They thought he was nuts! That's embarrassing!
His own brothers don't believe in him! That's embarrassing too!
We learn later, however, that James, the half-brother of Jesus who wrote that little book in the New Testament called James—man, you guys are sharp this morning! Jack's taught you well!
That James, the half-brother of Jesus, actually dies as a martyr, as the pastor of the church in Jerusalem in 62 A.D., about 29 or so years after the alleged crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
Now, why would he suddenly believe that Jesus is the Messiah, his brother, when before the resurrection he didn't? It said his own brothers didn't believe in him!
Well, you know who tells us that James was martyred? Not—it's not in the Bible! It's Josephus, the Jewish historian, who lived from about 37 A.D. to about 100 A.D., and Hegesippus, a writer who lived later—they tell us that James dies as a martyr.
Why? Well, according to the earliest evidence for the resurrection anywhere, it's actually in a creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.
A creed is an early statement that the followers memorized, and Paul just put it in writing in 55 A.D. to the church at Corinth. But it talks about who Jesus appeared to, and one of the people he appeared to was James.
So before the resurrection, James didn't believe his brother was God. After the resurrection, he did! You know, before he said, "Yo, bro, you ain't God!"
After the resurrection, "Yo, bro, you're God!"
Now, how many people in here have a brother?
All right, how many people have a brother who thinks he's God?
Yeah, you don't believe in him either, right? Neither did James until he saw the resurrected Jesus!
Then, Jesus is called a drunkard; he's called a madman; he's called demon-possessed. You think they invented this?
He has his feet wiped with the hair of a prostitute, which easily could have been seen as a sexual advance. And oh, by the way, then there are two prostitutes in Jesus's bloodline—the Messiah's bloodline!
Who are they? Rahab and Tamar.
Now, do you think that Matthew at one point said to himself, "You know what? I think I really need to spice up the Messiah's bloodline a little bit; let me put a couple of prostitutes in here."
Let's see, Rahab—no!
In fact, there's a lot of shady people in the Messiah's bloodline. Judah—where we get the term Jew from—not a good guy!
Judah's the guy that sold his brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt, and he slept with Tamar, his daughter-in-law, who was playing a prostitute, and this guy's in the bloodline of the Messiah.
David's in the bloodline. David—a man after God's own heart—yeah, but he's a liar, adulterer, and a murderer. Gee, I guess there's hope for the rest of us then, huh?
Huh?
Bathsheba is in the bloodline! In fact, when Matthew gets to her in the genealogy, he doesn't mention her name, but he still identifies her!
What does he say? "Uriah's wife."
Ooh!
He's telling the truth!
Who is Uriah? Husband of Bathsheba, whom David had killed so he could cover up the crime!
Matthew's telling the truth, but it's a slam!
You don't find this kind of embarrassing documentation in other histories. You'd never find this kind of in a pharaoh's genealogy. A pharaoh would chop the head off his history guy if he were to say such things!
In fact, you know, Dennis Prager, a conservative Jewish radio host who believes in the Old Testament, says one of the reasons I believe the Old Testament is true is because nobody would invent such an embarrassing history about themselves, and I agree with Dennis on that.
But I would say to Dennis: If embarrassing testimony and embarrassing stories are evidence for the Old Testament, why aren't they also evidence for the New? They wouldn't have invented this!
There's more in the book on this, but we got to move on to our last piece of evidence that the New Testament writers are telling the truth, and this is called "excruciating deaths."
And it's important to know that the people who wrote this stuff down, all of them, with the exception of Luke—all of them were Bible, Old Testament-believing Jews who thought they were God's chosen people. They already were part of what they believed was the true religion.
Luke is the only Gentile; everyone else is a Jew. Why would they say that a man claimed to be God and rose from the dead? Claiming to be God was blasphemy; raising from the dead, they didn't expect until the end of time. Why would they say this happened if it really didn't?
Why would they invent this? In fact, it's really important to recognize the apostles' beliefs and practices before and after the resurrection. Before the resurrection, they believed in animal sacrifice. They'd been slaying lambs to Yahweh for hundreds of years.
But they give all that up! They go, "We don't need to slay these lambs anymore because these lambs are just symbols of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Here he is!"
Christ's sacrifice fulfills that sacrificial system that they've been engaged in for hundreds of years. Before, they believed in a binding law of Moses; afterwards, they say, "No, Christ's life has fulfilled a binding law of Moses."
Before, they believed in strict monotheism; afterwards, they're believing in a Trinity—three persons in one divine essence.
Yes, you can get the Trinity in the Old Testament, but it's much more pronounced in the New. Before, they believed in the Sabbath; in fact, they thought they could be stoned for not obeying the Sabbath.
Afterwards, they're worshipping on Sunday because that's the day he rose! And Paul even says, "Don't let anyone tell you you have to obey any Sabbath or festival day!"
Before, they believed in a conquering Messiah; afterwards, a sacrificial Messiah.
Now, as you well know, going to church here at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, we recognize that Jesus, when he comes back again, will be conquering, but they didn't anticipate the sacrificial coming initially.
Before, they believed in circumcision; afterwards, they believed in baptism and communion. Amen?
Now, ladies and gentlemen, let me ask you one other thing: does anybody really believe that somebody would invent a religion where this was their entry fee—circumcision?
"You want me to join your club?"
"Yeah, what do I have to do?"
What? Nobody's inventing this!
Now, what would have caused these people to abandon everything on the left and adopt everything on the right virtually overnight and then go die for this?
The only thing I can think of is what psychologists call an "impact event."
What's an impact event? An impact event is an event that occurs in your life that is so dramatic that it can turn your perspective around 180 degrees just like that. Some impact events are so dramatic that, despite the fact you might not remember what you had for breakfast this morning, you'll remember an impact event that happened 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago if you're that old.
In fact, there's probably only a few of you here in this room that can remember this or can raise your hand for this, but I'm going to ask it anyway: If you can remember where you were and what you were doing on November 22, 1963, hold your hand up and hold it up high!
Ladies and gentlemen, you see these people with their hands up? These people are very old!
November 22, 1963 is my earliest memory; I was two years old and two days.
Yes!
Yes, I’m 62 years old now. I know. I don't look a day over 61. In fact, when I turned 50, my wife was very encouraging, and she said, "Honey, you're going to live to be 100."
I said, "How do you know?"
She said, "Because you look half dead already!"
Anyway, November 22, 1963, I'm a toddler; I'm standing in our home in Wanaque, New Jersey, and my mother is sitting on an ottoman in front of a black-and-white TV weeping uncontrollably.
"Mommy, what's the matter? What's the matter?"
"They killed the president! They killed the president!"
President Kennedy assassinated that day! I can still see my mother right now in my mind sitting on that ottoman when she was 26 years old.
She's 86 right now, but I can see her when she was 26. I never saw my mom cry like that; that's my earliest memory. It was an impact event!
I don't remember anything before that and very little after that. Where were you when the second plane hit the tower?
I was at my home in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I had the TV on behind me. I had seen that the first tower had been hit; I didn't know by what, and I was talking to a pastor on the north side of Charlotte, and we were talking about what the topic would be if I came to his church.
And I said, "Do you have the TV on?"
He said, "Yeah."
And so we're talking, and suddenly, screams into the phone. He goes, "The second tower just got hit!"
I turned around, looked at the TV—the second tower is on fire! I said, "Was it a Cessna?"
He goes, "No, no, no; it was like a big plane! It was a United plane! It flew right in there and exploded!"
I said, "You saw that?"
He goes, "It was just on live TV!"
I said, "Look, let me call you back!"
I hung up the phone. For some reason, that morning I had CNN on—The Communist News Network—and I'm not making this up, but the commentator on CNN said this: "One has to think there's some sort of navigational error here."
Navigational error? You dimwit! This is the clearest day in the history of the Big Apple! What do you think, the pilots can't see where they're going? You think Stevie Wonder's flying these planes?
I mean, come on! This is terrorism!
I called that pastor the next day and said, "We're going to come to your church and talk about Islam because that's what this is related to."
Now, 9/11 was over 22 years ago, but if I were to ask you where you were, if you're old enough, you're going to go, "Yeah, I remember something about that day."
But if I were to ask you where you were 22 days ago, most of you are going to go, "I don't know; let me look at my iPhone. What was I doing that day?"
Why can't you remember something from 22 years ago but not 22 days ago?
No impact event 22 days ago; impact event 22 years ago!
Ladies and gentlemen, do you think a resurrection would have been an impact event?
Do you think if Jesus really did walk out of that tomb and then do miracles over 40 days with them that they would have remembered that? Would they have any trouble remembering that?
That's the only way I can think of why they would have abandoned everything on the left and adopted everything on the right virtually overnight.
How did they go from scared, scattered, skeptical disciples to the most effective, peaceful Evangelical missionary force in the history of the world?
Because an impact event occurred!
In fact, what did the New Testament writers have to gain by making up a new religion? What did they get?
Well, they got kicked out of the synagogue. Then they got beaten, tortured, and killed. Last time I checked, that was not a list of perks!
"We're going to start a new religion?"
"We are? Yeah, what's it going to get us?"
"First, get kicked out of the synagogue. Then we get beaten, tortured, and killed!"
Well sign me up! What a great idea!
Why haven't we thought of this earlier?
No! In fact, they had every motive to say the resurrection did not happen, not every motive to say it did.
Now, I get a question a lot. Sometimes people will say, "Well, are there any non-Christian writers that talk about Jesus and the apostles?"
Yeah, there are. They’re all in chapter 9 of "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist."
But you know that question often has an illicit assumption underneath it.
What's the illicit assumption?
The illicit assumption is, "You know, you really can't trust the New Testament writers because you see, these people were biased. You can only trust the non-Christian sources to figure out what really happened."
Now, if you think about that for more than ten seconds, you realize how stupid that assumption is.
What did these people have to gain by saying it was true?
They had everything to lose by saying it was true!
They're not inventing this!
In fact, some of you may know my friend J. Warner Wallace, the cold case homicide detective, who's been here at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills speaking with me and also speaking individually. He doesn't live far from here.
Jim is a cold case homicide detective that's been on Dateline more than any other homicide detective because he solves murders decades old.
He also has a website called Cold Case Christianity.com where he takes his detective skills and applies them to the greatest homicide of all time. So it’s well worth checking him out.
Anyway, Jim says whenever he finds a body that he knows has been murdered, he says, "I don't need to track down a thousand different possible motivations for that guy being dead."
He says that guy was murdered for one or more of these three reasons.
There was either a sex issue, a money issue, or a power issue.
Sex, money, or power are the three great motivators that can drive people to murder! By the way, those are the same three motivators that can drive any of us to sin!
Why? Because sex, money, and power are good things; in fact, they're so good, we'll often take shortcuts to get them.
And so Jim says, "If you're going to say that the New Testament writers invented this whole story, you got to find one or more of those three motivators to make this plausible."
All right, let's take a look at the three motivators! Ladies and gentlemen, did the New Testament writers suddenly get real popular with the ladies for saying Jesus had resurrected from the dead?
No! They didn't get sex!
Did they get money?
No! They weren't 21st-century Prosperity Gospel preachers!
Did they get power?
No! They got the opposite; they got persecuted! Paul had power when he was persecuting the church. As soon as he becomes a Christian, he's the one persecuted!
They didn't get sex; they didn't get money; they didn't get power.
There's no motivation to make this up!
And then why would they go die for their own lie? You might say, "Wait a minute, Frank. Time out! If you're going to say that Christianity is true because of martyrdom, don't you have to say that Islam is true as well?"
No! Why? Because there's a lot of differences between the Muslim martyrs of today and the New Testament martyrs of New Testament times, but let me just give you one difference for our purposes here.
The Muslim martyrs of today haven't witnessed anything that tells them that Islam is true—they just have faith!
The New Testament writers, on the other hand, witnessed Jesus risen from the dead! They saw Jesus! They touched Jesus! They ate with Jesus! They verified with their own senses that Jesus had risen from the dead!
Many people will die for a lie they think is the truth; no one will die for a lie they know is a lie.
And the New Testament writers were in a position to know whether it was a lie or not, and they went to their deaths anyway! You can't get better evidence than that unless you were there yourself!
Now, the last thing I'm going to say on this is going to sound like heresy for those of you who believe, as I do, that the Bible is the inherent word of God.
But it's not!
Just stick with me: Christianity is not true because a series of documents we put under one binding say it's true!
In fact, Christianity would be true if the Bible never existed!
You say, "How can that be?"
Ladies and gentlemen, do you realize there were thousands of Christians before a line of the New Testament was ever written?
Why? Because they didn't read about it in a book; they witnessed a resurrected Jesus themselves!
Then they later wrote it down! Now, thankfully, they wrote it down so we could know about it and orient our lives according to it.
But it would have been true if they never wrote it down because Christianity did not start with a book; Christianity started with an event—the resurrection!
In fact, we could put it this way: The New Testament writers did not create the Resurrection; the Resurrection created the New Testament writers!
You wouldn't have these documents written down by Jews in the first century claiming a man claimed to be God and rose from the dead unless a man really did claim to be God and really did rise from the dead!
All right, so the three lies: "I have my own truth"—self-defeating! "Does love mean approval?"—No, it doesn't mean approval! Love means seeking what's best, and that means sometimes you disapprove!
And the Bible is a fairy tale? No! You got to have a lot more faith to be an atheist than you do to be a Christian because the evidence for Christianity is quite strong!
In fact, there's much more evidence in the books.
So fathers, since it is Father's Day, if you want to prevent this "Dad, I don't believe in God anymore," you've got to be really deliberate who's discipling your kids!
If it's not you, I can tell you who is! This is your kid that gets a lot more screen time than they do here at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills and probably more time than you talk to them in a given week!
You've got to have a really strong counterbalance to this!
In fact, if your kid's 16 or below, I wouldn't give this—I wouldn't give one of these to a kid! I wouldn't—not today, anyway!
In fact, Jonathan Haidt, who's not even a Christian; he teaches at NYU, has come out with some research recently that says this is a disaster—not only for kids but even for adults!
What? What's our attention span now? Twelve seconds.
I mean, come on! It's a blessing and a curse, of course!
But if this goes unsupervised, there are just so many lies out there that kids are susceptible to believing!
Now, I couldn't believe this research I'm about to show you when I found it, but if it's even close to being true, this is amazing.
A Swiss study from a generation ago figured out that if a father regularly goes to church, the kids will turn out in a certain way.
And if he doesn't, they'll turn out in another way.
Here's what happens: if the father does not regularly go to church, only 2% of kids from such homes will regularly go to church when they become adults.
This is a longitudinal study; that's where they stay with the same group of people throughout time. So, it's a really costly study to do.
But this Swiss study found that only 2 out of 100 kids from homes where the father didn't regularly go to church would regularly go to church as adults.
How about where the father did regularly go to church? About 70% did!
Now, this doesn't mean that they're necessarily Christians, but it's probably a decent indicator that they are!
Even if this is just close to being true: Fathers, you have an outsized impact on whether or not your kids are ultimately going to become and stay Christians.
Don't drop the ball!
Now, if you want to go further in the evidence, we brought some books and DVDs, and I want to point out all the proceeds from the books and the DVDs will go to feed needy children.
Mine!
Okay, just so you know. First of all, before I get to the books and the DVDs, if you follow the QR code, I'm going to send you this entire PowerPoint presentation in a PDF format and about five—no, about ten other presentations as well for free in PDF format.
So just follow the QR code there.
And the book—the books are in the courtyard on the table, "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist"—that's what we've been talking about here.
That goes through the evidence for Christianity from the ground up. There's also a DVD set that comes with that if you want to go further, and you can get workbooks off our website if you want to take kids through it or small groups through it.
That's about seven hours long. There's a new book my son and I wrote called "Hollywood Heroes: How Your Favorite Movies Reveal God." If you want a fun way of getting your kids to be engaged in apologetics and evidence for Christianity through movies, check out that book!
Yeah, there's a lot of garbage that comes out of Hollywood, but you'd be shocked to understand or to learn that the top movie franchises of the past 50 years have all stolen from the greatest story ever told—the story of Jesus!
So if they like characters like Iron Man and Batman and Wonder Woman and even Harry Potter—Harry Potter! Yeah!—they're going to love Jesus!
Because all of those characters are modeled after Jesus!
And then, as Jack's been saying, the book of the month is out in the courtyard and also in the bookstore called "Correct, Not Politically Correct," about same-sex marriage and transgenderism.
By the way, that's not the biblical case; we're not quoting Bible verses in there. That's the natural law, common sense, medical case why both same-sex marriage and transgenderism are not good for individuals or societies.
You can give that book to an unbeliever.
Okay, so how does your kid find his or her identity? You know, kids want to put their identity in everything but their savior, but as Christians, we're not to put our identity in anything but our savior.
Do you know Christianity is the only worldview where you don't achieve your identity; you receive your identity?
Your identity is in what your savior did! If you have to achieve your identity, all the pressure is on you, and there's always someone that can do it better!
But if you just receive your identity, you have it for eternity!
It's not fragile! Like for example, you put your identity, say, in your sexual preference—then that's fragile! What happens when you can no longer sexually perform or you're no longer sexually preferred?
You no longer have an identity!
If you put your identity in your job, what happens when you lose your job? You don't have an identity!
You put your identity in another person; what happens when, God forbid, that person leaves you or dies? You no longer have an identity!
No, those are not stable identities, ladies and gentlemen!
In fact, think about this: Everyone you love will die; everything you build will crumble; everything you say will be forgotten; everything you do will come to nothing!
You and your identity will die and vanish unless the resurrection's true—and it is!
Father, thank you for fathers today! I pray that you'd urge all of us who are fathers or even just guardians of kids that you would give us the desire to pour more of our lives into those young boys and girls because we have an outsized impact on their lives.
Pray you'd motivate us to do that! Thank you that you've given us evidence that you did, in fact, come add humanity over your deity, allowed us—the very creatures that rebelled against you—to torture and kill you so you could not only remain just but justify those of us—all of us—who have fallen short.
Thank you for your great gift to us today. We also ask your healing mercies on Pastor Jack that you would heal him up and bring him back to us this Wednesday night for more in the book of Hebrews.
We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.