1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word, as we begin our summer sermon series on Defending the Christian Faith, is taken from 1 Peter 3:15, it’s entitled “Prepared to Make a Defense,” dear brothers and sister sin Christ.
2. When one little girl misbehaved, her mother told her, “Go to your room and stay there until you’re sorry enough to come out.” A few minutes later, the bedroom door opened with a creak. There stood the little girl in the doorway. “Now then,” the mom asked, “are you sorry enough to come out?” The girl said, “I’m sorry enough that I want to keep the door open.”
3. When you hear about an apology, maybe the first thing that comes to mind is: saying you’re sorry. So, when you hear the word apology linked with Christianity you could think we’ll be talking about saying you’re sorry for being Christian. But, that isn’t what these sermons are about. We’re using the word apology in another sense: defense. Christian apologetics is defense of the faith. The apostle Peter wrote, “In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense [apologia] to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet 3:15). This sermon series will help us all to: be prepared to make a defense.
4. What is it to be conversant in the faith? It means you can talk about something freely with someone else. Being conversant in the faith amounts to more than knowing your Bible, your catechism, or your hymnal. It also involves an ability to converse with others about Christ. When we have such talks with others, objections will arise. If we don’t give an answer, as St Peter encourages us to do, how long do you suppose a conversation about Christ will last? To bring the Good News to our neighbors, it helps if we are prepared to defend it.
5. We defend the faith, by answering objections. Think of the disaster workers first on the scene after hurricanes or tornados. Some of them clear debris off roads for emergency vehicles. In the same way, Christian apologetics moves to the side various objections that people bring up so that the life-giving Gospel can have right of way. For example, someone who does not think Jesus ever lived will reject the Gospel out of hand. A Christian apologist should be prepared with an answer for that objection. At times, the best defense can be made with a good offense. Christian apologetics challenges the false assumptions of an ungodly world. For instance, these days it’s often thought that the only real knowledge is the sort of knowledge that can be demonstrated scientifically. But, this idea that real knowledge has to come from science doesn’t emerge from any scientific experiment. We can point that out. Attacking a non-Christian worldview is an important aspect of Christian apologetics.
6. When you wash your hands, you have to be against dirt. If you allow some dirt as acceptable, you will probably not get your hands clean. Ways of thinking that oppose the Gospel turn out to be dangerous. In no way does it serve our neighbors if we say, “Whatever.” There’s a defense to be made before our neighbors charged by the kind of attitude held by the psalmist who was overwhelmed by God and his Word. This psalmist said to the Lord not only, “How sweet are your words to my taste,” but also, “I hate every false way” (Ps 119:103, 104).
7. Defending the faith is also a way of loving the Lord. Loving God, we need to be careful in defending the faith. For we are not God. Our apologetic efforts dare never set ourselves up on ground that he alone should occupy. However well-meaning we might be with our apologetics, we can never argue him or her into saving faith. We can’t do this for others any more than we did it for ourselves. We give a reason for the hope that is in us, but we did not place the hope there. Only God can do that.
8. Toward the end of Job, God, in effect, said: “So I’m not quite up to snuff with what you want?” Well, that was too bad. God remained God, and Job was not God. So also, our apologetic efforts do not love God if they end up trying to cram him into some box of our making. Nor are we loving God if our apologetics come off as a sophisticated version of an altar call. If we’re not careful, we might make this impression: “All right, now I have given you reason A, which stands against objection B, and fits into slot C, then becomes the basis for the big D—your decision for Christ!” No, salvation always comes by God’s grace. He gets all the glory. “By grace you have been saved through faith,” the Bible says. “It is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8). In fact, God even gives the faith. “For it has been granted to you that . . . you should . . . believe in him” (Phil 1:29). After all, “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).
9. Preparing to defend the faith is not only something that should be done, it also can be done. We Christians can do it by God’s grace. We continue to be sinners. All too easily, we forget about making a defense of the faith. Truth be told, silently we might wish that no one ever asks about the hope that is in us. Some way to serve our neighbors or love God! Remember, Jesus said: “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mk 8:38).
10. The only hope for sinners lies outside of ourselves, including our efforts to defend the faith. So, today’s message isn’t: “You haven’t been defending the faith as you should, but do what you can from now on and hope for the best.” Only in Christ the Savior does anyone have a hope that stands firm and solid, because it rests entirely on what God has done: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3). Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, once for all. But he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, with ongoing effects. This is the Gospel by which we are saved. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19). That’s the way a repentant heart talks, one that has put on “for a helmet the hope of salvation” through Christ (1 Thess 5:8).
11. With such hope, we can prepare to defend the faith. And don’t lose the focus on Christ as you actually enter into apologetics. One famous apologist reported that no point of Christian teaching used to appear so unreal to him as one that he had just defended. So, he kept reminding himself that the only hope for any of us lies outside of ourselves and our efforts, including our efforts to defend the faith. Defenders of the faith need the Gospel every bit as much as the people to whom they make the defense. As you daily return to your Baptism in repentance and faith, be assured that “the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Pet 5:10).
12. In this spirit, we Christians can be prepared to defend the faith. We know our neighbors’ greatest need maybe better than they do. Christian apologist John Warwick Montgomery has for years recommended giving people the Good News and then engaging in apologetics only as needed thereafter. Nothing can be more basic than Christ’s life and death in place of our whole world of sinners and his living to tell the tale for you. This forms the heart of the saving Gospel. If a person voices objections, then you can make a defense. But, don’t bring up possible objections that had not occurred to the person in the first place.
13. Find out what is really bothering people. Sometimes what seem to be apologetics problems turn out to be quite different. Such problems can be moral. A veteran campus pastor remembers college students who announced that they no longer believed in God. Interestingly, this used to occur about a month after these students had moved in with their boyfriends or girlfriends at school! The problem here was essentially moral. But this isn’t always the case. People sometimes have genuine intellectual problems with the Christian faith, and you can be prepared to make a defense.
14. In any case, you can’t assume you know what objections people bring unless you listen to them and learn from them. This can entail informing yourself about their unchristian assumptions and worldviews so you can converse with them intelligently. Then you can defend the faith, as Peter wrote in the text, “with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet 3:15). Literally, that last word is “fear,” which reminds us not merely to be respectful before other people but still more to make our defense in a wise way before the Lord. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps 111:10). Learning about the positions other people take becomes a spiritual sacrifice. To do it, you spend time thinking about probably unfamiliar things, not for you to embrace them but rather to take every thought captive to Christ (see 2 Cor 10:5). “Therefore,” Peter wrote, “preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:13).
15. This brings up a final suggestion, quite in line with the gentleness and hopefulness mentioned by Peter: be patient. In the end, apologetics should serve to present a person with Christ and his forgiveness for poor, undeserving sinners. So, while your every thought should remain captive to Christ, recall that, when you deal with people, you are trying to clear the way for the Gospel. It’s not necessary that every single particle of debris be removed. After people believe the Good News, the Holy Spirit works in their hearts to take their every thought captive to Christ.
16. Remember, from the beginning of this sermon, the little girl standing in the doorway of her bedroom? She said she was sorry enough to want her door kept open. I suppose she would have been willing to offer a halfhearted apology, in the sense of being sorry. But we’re not sorry about the Christian faith. Our apology is a defense of the faith. Be prepared to make a defense. Do so, with full confidence in Christ. By all means, keep the door open—to people all around you. Someone will want to know about the reason for the hope that is in you, and you will be prepared. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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