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Mar 12, 2017

Questions (Part 2)

Passage: Mark 10:17

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Search and Rescue

Category: Evangelism

Keywords: answers, evangelism, lost people, questions, secular objections, divine conversations

Summary:

This message looks at how Jesus answered and asked questions to help people see where they really were spiritually. It also dives into some specific questions secular people have about our faith and what we can do to keep the conversations going with them.

Detail:

Questions, Questions, Questions!

(Part 2)

March 12, 2017

RECAP:  Last week, Jeff & Charlie took us to the story in John 4 of the Samaritan woman at the well with Jesus. 

  • Did anyone get to share with someone else any of the “old wells” you used to go to searching for satisfaction in life and the satisfying “water of life” you’ve found in Jesus?
  • Anyone recognize a “divine encounter” (life’s “well”) with someone this week? (Ken on Tues. with a local employee.)

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Two weeks ago we saw what it meant to have conversation “full of grace” and “seasoned with salt”, i.e. truth.  That comes from…

Col. 4:6-- Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Without BOTH grace and truth, we won’t know how to answer people.  But even the word “salt” has the idea of making our conversation with people outside of Christ tasteful, something that makes them “thirsty” for the true water of life Jesus said he was in John 4. 

            Remember a couple of weeks ago I had you turn to your neighbor and use one of the SPIRITUAL OPPORTUNITY QUESTIONS I had on the screen?  These are questions that we can ask someone we’re sharing just a few minutes or hours of life with (on the bus, plane, waiting at the DMV, working out at the athletic club, etc.). 

To help you remember one, I want to ask you to do the same thing today. Try one of these right NOW with someone sitting next to you:

  • So, do you have any kind of spiritual belief?
  • What’s been your personal experience when it comes to faith and God?
  • What conclusions have you come to about Jesus Christ and your relationship with Him?

 [Turn to someone near you and ask them 1 of those questions.  Then listen and probe a little.  60 seconds!]

A few suggestions for dealing with people who have questions:

  1. Learn to listen by asking questions. Ask questions that help you learn where they are coming from both emotionally and intellectually.  Ask clarifying questions of their questions/objections.  Remember, the goal is not to win an argument but to win a relationship for Christ.  People don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.
  2. It may be more important to find out WHY people have the objections they do than answering the objections. Bad experiences in the past with “Christians”?  “The church”?  Disappointment with God?  Personal sin and lifestyles they don’t want to give up? 
  3. Don’t be afraid to say, “That’s a good point,” or “I don’t have an answer for that right now. Would you be willing to let me do some research on that and continue this conversation at a future date?”
  4. Keep your comments short (1-2 minutes, not 10-15). Less is more when it comes to salt!

Just what are those questions you and I are afraid our non-Christian or spiritually disillusioned friends will ask?  What objections are we afraid they will throw our way to get us to stop talking about God?

 I’ve found that most of them boil down to just a handful of similar questions.  It’s not like we need to study for an exam in Anatomy & Physiology that has a thousand strange-sounding bones, muscles and tissue names we need to memorize.  The answers are not that hard to find or learn.  Maybe the problem lies with not enough Christians eager to learn those answers??? 

So today we’re going to be working at fulfilling the Great Commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength….”  It may seem a bit heavy on the intellect side.  But if we are to also “love our neighbor as ourselves,” then we must train our brains to have answers that engage their minds as well.  Otherwise Satan can keep them in darkness by simply filling their minds with lies through unanswered and unchallenged questions.  But when we engage people’s questions and challenge them with truth, we are leading them to loving God with their minds as well.  As 2 Corinthians 10:5 says, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Go to Mark 10 for a look at how Jesus handled one man who came to him with a question. 

17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Seems like a pretty straightforward question, no?  The man seems like a real God-seeker, no?  He’s not even afraid to go public with his spiritual search.  This seems like a question about facts, truth, information, right?  “Just give me the list and I’ll do it!” 

            Here’s something it is helpful to remember when listening to people’s questions:  is this a question primarily about understanding information or about embracing Christ?  As we’ll see here, most questions are attempts to avoid embracing God.  But they may sound like they are asking for information/ understanding.  That is the case here with this fellow.  So Jesus asks a question and gives information at the same time.  He targets both the head and the heart.

18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 

Without getting lost in the weeds, what has Jesus picked up out of this man’s question?  He’s latched on to his one word “good.”  “Good teacher?”, Jesus is saying.  “Let’s talk about that adjective “good” you’re using.  Do you know what that word is saying?” 

Plenty of people today are fine calling Jesus a “good teacher” and leaving him there.  You don’t have to make a decision about a “good teacher”…but you do about God!  This is precisely what Jesus is going after with His question and follow-up statement: “No one is good except God alone.” He’s inviting this man to consider the reality that Jesus really IS God.  If he is as “good” as he says  he is, then either he is God in human flesh or he is a liar (in which case he wouldn’t be good, right?)  So he’s pointing this man to who He really is. 

APP:  That’s always a great thing to keep pointing people to—Jesus.  How can we bring people’s questions back to Jesus? Let’s try to keep that in mind as we look at our questions in just a moment. 

Next I think Jesus is trying to help him see that in his heart he already knows the answer.  “Just be perfect!  That’s how you get eternal life.”  He doesn’t say it that way. 

19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’[d]”

He reminds the man that he knows God’s commandments. And he even gets him to admit that he thinks he’s done pretty well by those standards. 

20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

APP:  This is probably the most common misconception of all ages when it comes to spiritual beliefs:  “I think I’m good enough for God…good enough to merit heaven… good enough for God to have to accept me.  I’m good enough!”  

            Isn’t this what most people say when you ask them, “So, God forbid, but if you died tonight, and stood before God at heaven’s gate and He asked, “Why should I let you into heaven forever with me,” what would you say?”  They invariably answer, “I’ve lived a pretty good life.  I’ve tried hard.  I’ve been sincere and honest about it.” 

            This is exactly what this rich man was saying in his own words and culture.  And Jesus needed to SHOW him he really was a sinner.  He didn’t just tell him.  He brought it home to the feeling level. 

This man needed to feel that he really wasn’t as good as he thought he was.  All those commandments Jesus listed were just fleshing out of the great commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength…and love your neighbor as yourself.”  He could fool himself about loving God, just as long as he didn’t have to look at how he was not loving his neighbor as himself. 

            So Mark tells us, “21 Jesus looked at him and loved him.”  Notice, because of love and in love for this man, Jesus loved him with this simple statement:  “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Jesus went after his real god, not his declared God. 

22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

God never commanded us to love wealth.  In fact, he warns against it.  But this man was more in love with his wealth than he was with either God or people.  Jesus just had the wisdom and sensitivity to the Spirit to see this man’s heart and know that he was really in love with his wealth.  So he confronted that false god in his life and brought him back to the reality that he, too, was a sinner needing the Savior…the one right in front of him. 

[Instructive that Jesus was willing to let him walk away rather than soft-sell or dumb-down the Gospel.] 

So…let’s talk about the questions or objections most people have to belief IN Jesus Christ/God?  We’re going to tackle some you mentioned a couple of weeks ago. 

NOTE:  these overheads and notes will be available on our web site.

Let’s start with some simple statements people make intended to shut down conversation.  There are also simple statements you can use to keep the door open to truth.  So here’s what we’re going to do.  I’ll put up the statement non-believers make.  You come up with either one good questions in response OR one good statement in reply. 

For example…

  1. I’m not religious. (As if this should end of conversation!)
    1. Questions to ask:
      1. Why is that?
      2. What do you mean by religious?
  • Would you still consider yourself a spiritual person? (Keeps the conversation going.)
  1. Comments to give:
    1. I’m not religious either. But I sure enjoy knowing God personally.

Now you try it:

  1. I think religion is a crutch. I don’t need it.
    1. Questions to ask:
      1. [Don] Doesn’t everyone have a limp?
      2. So you’d say you are perfect and never need God?
    2. Comments to give:
      1. I’ll be praying God will show you how much you need Him. J
      2. I think it’s worse than a crutch. It’s deceptive! [The difference:  DO (religion) vs. DONE (relationship with Jesus).
  2. I have a hard time believing in a God I can’t see, hear, feel, touch or measure. Put in question form, it may sound like, “What makes you sure there even is a God, especially when you can’t see, hear or touch him?”

    Questions to ask:

    1. But don’t you believe in things you can’t measure scientifically like love, joy, beauty and kindness, good and evil? [Science is ill-equipped to measure the non-material things in the universe. This person must be a pure materialist (philosophically) but probably isn’t one practically or experientially.] 

      Comments to make:

      1. Your own personal experiences with God—Him speaking, guiding, convicting, forgiving you, etc.
      2. Things I can see lead me to believe in a God I can’t see.

      Evidence #1: Everything in science tells us that our universe had a beginning (Big Bang, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity—time, space, matter & energy had a starting point in history…the “singularity event.” 

      The Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that the universe is actually expanding, supporting the conclusion that the universe had a beginning point. 

      If the universe began to exist, it must have a cause.  Nothing begins to exist without a cause that makes it exist. 

      The universe’s cause must be beyond itself…timeless, non-spatial, immaterial, doesn’t consist of physical energy, powerful enough to create the entire universe.  That is precisely what the Bible describes as “God/ Yahweh” and by means the Bible describes (ex-nihilo—“out of nothing”; Genesis 1:1).   So what do you call it?

      Objection:  So who made God?  Answer:  only things that have a beginning need a cause.  God is the uncaused, uncreated, eternal, immaterial Being that caused all else and needs no cause. 

      Evidence #2:  Our universe is fine-tuned with astounding “just-so” precision in ways that make it a place that can support life.  The odds of this happening on its own, by sheer chance, are vanishingly small and thus point powerfully to an intelligent designer…precisely the kind of God the Bible presents.

      ILL: force of gravity—Physicists have calculated that the strength of gravity must fall within very fine parameters: it can’t change by even 1 part in 10 thousand billion billion billion (1031 or roughly a “nonillion”, 1030) relative to the other (4) forces of nature…or conscious life would be impossible anywhere in the universe.  [Mittelberg, The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask, pp 12-13] Just to put that in perspective, scientists have estimated there are 3.72 x 1013 cells in each of us as humans. That is, 37.2 trillion.  You’d have to add 18 more zeros to get to the magnitude of power we’re talking in gravity…and not deviate by 1 off of that!

      ILL:  mass of a neutron—If the neutron were not exactly as it is, about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, then all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and life would not be possible.

      ILL: Explosion of the Big Bang—If it had differed in strength by as little as one part in 1060 , the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself or expanded too swiftly for stars to form.  [Ibid.]

      Evidence #3—Objective moral standards.  Apart from God there can be no objective moral standards. Either our virtually universal objective moral standards emerged out of a physical explosion of matter (the Big Bang) OR they came to us from a divine moral lawgiver.  ILL:  The fact that the U.N. has an International Court of Justice and prosecutes people for war crimes and “crimes against humanity” is based on the belief in “objective moral standards” that are above every culture, race and religion.  (Things always considered wrong as pervasive social practices… like rape, genocide, slavery, murder, etc.) Romans 2:15—God’s law is written on our hearts.

      The odds of this happening on its own, by sheer chance, are vanishingly small.  Why not accept that the biblical God is virtually the kind of god that best explains these objective moral standards?

       

      APP:  On a scale from 1-10, how well would you say you know how to answer these questions?  [Self-rate.] 

      None of us have all the answers. 

      All of us can spend more time to learn more of the answers so we can be more effective ambassadors for King Jesus. 

       

      APP: How about we all start praying, every week, that God would give us at least 1 conversation with someone about Jesus Christ and our hope in Him?