Jesus most of our first century followers never owned a Bible, never read a Bible. They couldn't have read the Bible if there was a Bible because most of them couldn't read and there was no Bible to read. Why is it that you are so quickly and perhaps have been persuaded so easily to walk away from faith because of a book that didn't exist? If the foundation of your faith is an absolutely true book, Good luck with that.
In attempting to save people's faith, he's shaving away everything he doesn't think he can save. And he is stripping down Christianity in a way that is very unhealthy. This is a video I've been thinking about making for like five years.
And today I'm going to set aside some time and go ahead and do it. Andy Stanley is a very influential pastor. He is on speaking tours. He gathers other pastors around him to be like the coach, like the pastor's coach and teach them how to be a pastor.
Not to mention like 23,000 or more people weekly hearing him in attendance to North Point Church, his church, as well as its satellite churches. There's one particular message that he has taught. This was, it actually kind of flew more under the radar than I would have expected.
This was like six years ago. And it was part of a series called Aftermath. In the same series, he got a lot of attention for the third part in the series where he talked about unhitching from the Old Testament.
Peter, James. Paul elected to unhitch the Christian faith from their Jewish scriptures. And my friends, we must as well. But the groundwork for that very questionable teaching, which I will be addressing in a video, which I'll link below, the groundwork for that teaching comes from this teaching we're going to address today.
And this is about the Bible. What does Andy Stanley teach his congregants about the Bible? There's been some confusion over this, understandably, because I think some people don't understand how to process the things that he's saying. We're going to do that today. We're going to listen to Andy Stanley's sermon, process and understand what he's teaching people about scripture, and try to ask if it's something that we should agree with or not.
It's definitely a teaching that will strike a lot of people as odd. I'm going to offer some pushback to Andy Stanley for the sake of individuals, everybody watching, right? This is not something Andy Stanley privately believes.
This is what he's pumping out to. tens of thousands of congregant members, as well as to the world, as well as at pastors'retreats and conferences and things where he's training others. Here we go. The Aftermath sermon from Andy Stanley.
Let's see what he says. I'm really, really, really excited about these next three weeks. The name of the series is Aftermath.
And before we jump into the content, I just want to say one thing. If you gave up on Christianity because of something in the Bible or something about the Bible, something that was actually in the Bible. or something you heard or read about the Bible, you may have given up on Christianity unnecessarily.
In fact, if you're somebody who's saying, you know what, I'm still in because my wife makes me come to church, or my girlfriend makes me come to church, or my boyfriend drags me to church, but honestly, I'm kinda leaning for the door, I've got my, I'm about to put my hand on the handle to say, hey, I'm outta here. And it's because of something in the Bible or something about the Bible, something you've heard, somebody told you, something you read, I want you to know that you don't have to leave. And so, He's very glad they're there.
He kind of is a little repetitive here in this part, but you get the idea. Hey, if you've been doubting the Bible, you heard what he said, right? Now, you might think the reason why he says you don't have to leave is going to be because he'll defend the Bible. Oh, don't worry. You can believe the Bible.
The Bible is believable. It is trustworthy. It is God's word.
That is not Andy Stanley's message. No. But if he's not going to affirm the truth of scripture, but he still will tell people, don't worry, you don't have to leave. If you don't believe the Bible, why will that be? Because it's because Andy's going to be preaching a version of Christianity that doesn't require or necessitate belief in scripture.
At least that's my impression of it. We're going to listen to his actual teaching. There's a whole bunch of stuff in this.
Andy's a really great speaker. He's a fantastic leader in that sense. He really is.
He's got a lot of skills there. That's not an insult. That's a compliment. But he's using those skills here. to say things in ways that I think a lot of people don't realize what they're hearing.
So let's just, you know, pull the cover off and expose exactly what is the teaching going on here. What is Andy Stanley saying about the Bible? He wants to say, you don't need to believe the Bible.
Just set it aside. Stop struggling over that issue and be part of this thing anyways. He then will try to tie that to the early church and to the apostles and to Jesus. Let's dig in and get the details.
Something to keep in mind as we begin the series, Jesus'most devout followers, Jesus'most devout first century followers never owned a Bible, never read a Bible. They couldn't have read the Bible if there was a Bible because most of them couldn't read and there was no Bible to read. Think about these words for a second. You might be like, well, in a sense, he's right, Mike. Jesus'followers didn't have a Bible because like Revelation wasn't written when Jesus was walking the earth or his first followers.
Let's say whoever Paul preached to and John and Peter and James and those guys, whoever they preached to that just got saved, those people didn't have a Bible because Hebrews wasn't written yet, right? That was one of the, one of a later, a later book in the New Testament. And you're right. They didn't have a revelation. They didn't have a Hebrews.
That doesn't mean they didn't have a Bible. That's where it's not true. That phrase, they didn't have a Bible, is simply factually wrong.
The people who were walking in the wilderness with Moses, he was writing the scriptures down and he hands them Genesis and he hands them later Exodus, you know, Numbers, Deuteronomy, especially towards the end, right? As Joshua kind of probably finished off some of that. You've got the giving of the Bible to the people of Israel.
They don't have a full Bible yet, but they certainly have scriptures and those scriptures are supposed to guide them. So even when they had just the five books of Moses, they have a Bible. It's just not a complete Bible. Later on, as they add the prophets, as they get the historical writings and stuff, they have a larger Bible, but they certainly have a Bible.
And you actually see this in scripture. We have records of Josiah cleaning out the temple and they find the book of the law and they read it and they have been neglecting it for a long time. And it causes this great revival. I mean, this revival would not have happened without a Bible.
And you might be like, but wait, Mike, no, no, that's the scriptures, not the Bible. That's what the Bible calls the scriptures. They're the same thing, right? When we say the Bible, we're saying the book, the ultimate book.
When you say the scriptures, you're saying the writings as in the ultimate writings or what God has given us in the text. That's the idea. So yes, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, even while they were still writing those books, they still had a Bible. It was the entire Old Testament, the same one that I have right now.
And then they had, of course, the experiences with Jesus. As they wrote these things, they became disseminated to the church. To say that they had no Bible is wrong. That's a simplistic, childish way to put things.
And this is something I've seen in Andy Stanley over and over and over again. It's almost as though he's had bad experiences with sort of simple-minded church people. Now, I'm not saying church people are simple-minded, right?
They're simple-minded worldly people. There are thoughtful, intelligent, worldly people. There are simple-minded church people. There are thoughtful, intelligent church people. It sounds to me like Andy always couches his criticisms as though they're coming at simple-minded church people who are sort of like, haven't really thought deeply about these things, but they do feel passionate about them.
But he rarely interacts with any sort of robust view from somebody who might actually be critiquing him or disagreeing with him, like I'm going to do in this video. So let's keep that in mind. Now, notice what he's going to tell us next is when the Bible came into existence.
And see, after what I've shared so far, if you think he's saying something true. Yet these men and women turned the world upside down. They're the reason that we're here today worshiping Jesus. And they never held a Bible because there was no tabibliya, the Bible, until the fourth century.
So what happened? Okay, so if you're like me, all those red flags go off when you hear this. And it's not because I'm a mindless religious drone.
It's because I care about truth and I certainly care very much about the Bible. Let's talk about it. Did, claim number one, did the apostles turn the world upside down without a Bible? Because it didn't exist at the time.
Do you know that when Jesus himself walks into the synagogue in Luke chapter four, I believe, and he opens the scroll, he's reading what? The Bible. He's reading Isaiah. He's reading the scriptures, the writings, the inspired word.
And he reads it, and there he says, this is being fulfilled in your hearing. And so he uses scripture to validate his own person. That is, he's not doing his ministry or proving his ministry or preaching his ministry apart from the scriptures.
He quotes the Old Testament. He appeals to the Old Testament all the time. The early apostles, when they went from church to church, or excuse me, synagogue to synagogue in the book of Acts, we see Paul, we see Apollos, we see Peter. They debate with Jews in the synagogue about the Bible.
That is, they open the scrolls and they go, it says right here, the Messiah will do this. That's what Jesus did. So the Bible very much was the reason for them to believe in Jesus. Now, the resurrection of Jesus was as well. There were like two prongs to the apologetic outreach of the book of Acts.
Read it for yourself. There is maybe three prongs. There's the Bible, right?
Fulfilled prophecy, the statements that God has sent before, and that was usually more focused on a Jewish audience because they were people who were more exposed to the Bible. They would use the Bible more. Then there was the resurrection of Jesus, and they would talk about the resurrection and eyewitnesses of Jesus. That was another prong in their outreach.
It wasn't one or the other. It was both. And then there was the miracles and the things that God was doing in the early church that just like said so loudly, this is an act of God.
And that's something God still uses today. All three of those. And he wants to get rid of one of those.
He wants to remove one. And he wants to act like the apostles didn't have that one, right? They didn't have a complete Bible. I agree. But they absolutely had a Bible.
And you know what? They also had the teachings of Jesus, the work of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ, the teachings of the apostles. And they had that in their presence in the first century. And it became enshrined in the text of scripture.
So we could still have it too. So they had much of the content of the New Testament, even when it had not yet been fully written. But he instead, now let's go to claim number two from Andy.
That, and it's weird because you can say a big claim like this and then just move on and people are like, okay, I guess so. But to respond to it and unpack it takes time. And so it's going to take some time.
He says the Bible didn't come to existence, come about, didn't, wasn't around. Nobody had one until the fourth century. As if you have textless churches who are just living out with messages. They tell each other things they heard about Jesus, but there's no Bibles that they've got. And then.
In the 4th century, people gather together some documents and they go, here's your Bible now. Now, it could be he's talking about the Council of Nicaea or perhaps a different council. At any rate, 4th century councils did not give us our Bible.
That's like historically not true. I would think Andy knows this. He's obviously a very intelligent man.
And at least in some senses, he's well-read because he'll sometimes quote and you're like, hey, okay, you know what you're talking about on that. Yeah. I don't know why he thinks the Bible came about in the 4th century. That's like a common myth. that's it's an internet myth right they think the council of nicaea you know emperor constantine of rome gathered the church together and was like let's figure out which bibles we want to keep and they and they arbitrarily chucked some and they kept other ones and it was of course you know in the internet memes it's always a bunch of old white guys right so forget the african bishops and stuff it's just a bunch of old white guys and um and this of course is not historically true it was really more of like a trickle thing here's what happened in the first century we have the the four gospels as well as the writings of paul the letters of paul very very early on these are being bound together gathered together copied and handed from church to church to church first century you're getting these things passed around as time goes by that collection gets bigger and you have more and more churches where you could go to and you could see the letters of john and you could see the letters of peter and you could see other stuff as well but The, uh, some stuff there was more debates on.
They had discussions about revelation and it's, and in a sense, it's understandable. Revelation is like a wild book. People were like, this is wild.
Um, are we sure it came from John? Can we confirm? I'm glad that they cared about these things. Hebrews, they had discussions about Hebrews.
Who wrote it? Is it really apostolic in its nature? And of course the church said, look, we really feel that the Holy Spirit has given us this text.
We really believe that this is part of our Bible. So there was. For some churches, you might go to one church and maybe they had Hebrews and another church didn't yet.
But to say that they had no Bible because maybe one church didn't have Hebrews yet or Revelation yet in that location is misleading to the point of childishness. Childishness. That's the word I'm trying to use.
All right, so let's listen on and just see where else we go. What did they believe? What did they know that we don't know? Why is it that you are so quickly and perhaps have been persuaded so easily to walk away from faith because of a book that didn't exist? Again, it did exist.
So if you were to say, Andy, I don't believe Genesis. And he goes, don't worry, Genesis didn't exist. Like, obviously he doesn't even believe that. He'd have to change his terminology here.
He's making a really bold, extreme statement that I don't think he would, if you pushed on him, he would immediately change his statement. He'd have to be like, well, Genesis existed. I'm saying it wasn't enshrined as scripture. You can't even say that because it was absolutely, Jesus himself refers to Genesis and appeals to it as the word of God.
He refers to the Old Testament as scripture in general. And he says the scripture cannot be broken. He talks about the law, the prophets and the writings.
This is a lot I'm giving you. I know. But these three distinctions, law, prophets, and writings, this is what the Jews would use as a way of saying basically what we mean when we say the Bible of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. Jesus affirms these things and that they're scripture.
So it's not true that you can say, let's just sweep that concern away because that thing didn't exist in the time of Jesus or his apostles or the early church. It's not true. You need to find a better apologetic than ignore the Bible. 22 years ago, a group of us got together and started this church that eventually became these churches.
And the thing that drove us is that we wanted to be known for resisting things that make the church unnecessarily resistible. And so 22 years ago, we embraced new styles of worship, new styles of teaching, new styles of communication, new styles of children's ministry, different kind of architecture. We decided if there's anything that's unnecessarily in the way of people coming to faith or understanding faith or even exploring faith, we want to get rid of it. We want to make the setting more appealing. We want to make it easier for people to listen.
We want to make the church make it. Irresistible. Got it.
This is to say it's good for us to at least understand Andy's heart here. And the goal and agenda that's there, at least part of it, I think a lot of us can very much agree with. I want evangelism.
You know, when someone comes to you and they say, I'm struggling with the age of the earth in Genesis, I personally would rather say, look, this is an in-house discussion Christians have. There are old earth Christians. There are young earth Christians.
There are a variety of views here. It's complicated. It's understandably challenging.
And for that reason, I would say, can we not make this an obstacle for you? And we can focus on Jesus and his death and resurrection because you could maybe say this. If Jesus is legit, I'll accept Genesis and maybe not fully understand it yet. That would be a better position to try to not discount the scripture, set it aside, but simply say, my understanding is not complete on this yet, but I do know that Jesus lives. I do know that Christ is prophesied in scripture.
I understand wanting to remove this obstacle because it's very challenging to try to talk to people. or even know for yourself sometimes, plenty of times, questions about this historic event when you have no idea how to really study history. Most people don't.
This scientific idea and interpreting this Hebrew phrase, these things are challenging. And I understand the idea of don't make an unnecessary obstacle for people in making them come to hard conclusions on these issues when they haven't even known Christ yet. I actually agree with that much, but that's, of course, not what Andy's saying. What Andy's done is he said, look, anything that is an obstacle starts to become an enemy to him.
Anything that people say, this is keeping me from Christ starts to become something to get rid of in his own church. That's how it seems. And so this has nowadays has gotten even further. In more recent years, Andy's church is being much more embracing of LGBTQ ideology. Do you catch that?
Ideology. Now, I didn't say fully embracing. I said more embracing.
He seems to be trying to hold his conservatives and his. his liberal theological views together and at the same time which is it's going to come to a head eventually it's going to be a disaster neither side will be happy i think is what's going to happen to the church but maybe i'm wrong that's just what it looks like to me um but there's definitely more affirmation going on and he talks about uh people there's people doing things and involved you guys could look this stuff up the lgbt stuff that's going on um related to the church look it up with a sober mind and careful so you understand what it really is and what it's not but also that you can't be talked out of thinking clearly about it either, to be honest, by Pastor Andy Stanley. I think that some of that's going on here. But I understand the apologetic concern and agree with it.
Deep apologetic concern for people who are abandoning faith in God, abandoning church, abandoning Christ. Because of challenging issues. I want to have less issues to deal with, but I don't get to pick and choose what Christianity is. I have inherited this thing from Christ.
It's his. I am a steward. I am not crafting a new version of Christianity to suit the people of my time. Jesus himself sometimes would offer teachings and words that would drive people away.
And if the apostles could have crafted their own version of Christianity that would have kept that from happening, they may have been tempted to do so, but they knew better than to do that. It's a little bit less detached from the real world. And so we work very hard to do that. And some of you have been with us on this journey all along the way.
And then about nine or 10 years ago, about 10 years ago, actually, I saw something that I felt like we should start resisting in order to remain irresistible, in order to keep the doors wide. open and to, you know, make the first steps on the ladder, keep the low rungs on the ladder visible and easy for people. I noticed something that I thought we needed to address. And it had nothing to do with how we did church.
It had everything to do with how we talk about the Bible and specifically along with that, what we point to as the foundation of faith. Okay. So what's the foundation of our faith? And he's going to say, you know, is it the Bible? Is the Bible the foundation of your faith?
And can we change the way we talk about the Bible so that it won't? be seen as the foundation for our faith. I think this is going to boil down to, and we'll get there soon enough, he'll say it in his own words, is don't say I believe X because the Bible says so.
That's something that's going to be challenging for a lot of believers. Maybe comforting for some people who find themselves, maybe very much they don't like this, but having a lot of challenging Internal debates about whether they actually believe the Bible or not I'll put my video evidence for the Bible series below as well as Jesus in the Old Testament I think it shows the interconnectedness of Scripture in a way that should really strengthen your faith and help you with this But yeah, I'm gonna let him talk some more and then we'll get into like in what sense is the Bible the foundation of? Our faith and what sense is it not at least some of my thoughts on this.
I think the issue is kind of complicated Yeah, we'll get into it faith, which for most Christians, unfortunately, is the Bible. Unfortunately, he's like, it's unfortunate that for most Christians, the foundation of their faith is the Bible. Andy sees this as a major problem in the church he's trying to fix.
Years ago, because of something I saw that I'll describe in just a minute, I changed the way I talked about the Bible in my messages and my sermons. And I didn't change what I believe. And I didn't get up and announce it. I didn't get up and say, from now on, I'm not going to say this. I'm not going to say that.
I'm going to begin using this terminology. I just made the change. I didn't tell anybody. And year after year after year I've been doing this, in fact, I don't think anybody's really noticed, but I think it's helped me remove some of the obstacles to faith for people who are outside the faith looking in and those who have left and perhaps would like to try to get back in.
I think that it's helped us as a group of churches become a little more irresistible, maybe. I don't know. Let's see what he says.
But the idea here is something I want us to really drill down. Andy has made a change in his teaching that he didn't let his church know about. This change was meant to remove the Bible as a foundation for what people believe. For years, he's been doing it, and he hasn't told his church. Is that a concern for you?
Like, as a pastor, I understand some pastors do this. Some pastors become Calvinists, and they don't just tell their churches that they're Calvinists. They slowly work the teaching in, and nobody knows that they're doing it.
This feels a bit dishonest. It feels more than a little bit dishonest. This feels manipulative, to be honest.
And I get that you might go, yeah, but that's how I can bring the church alongside my beliefs. But treating people like adults is telling them what's going on. And I think that's the same should be done for other churches as well. If you've changed your theology as a pastor and you're trying to slowly sneak that theology into your church, I think that there's an integrity move of simply pulling aside leaders and letting them know we have a difference on this. I'm not just trying to preserve my job and preserve myself and then get everybody on my team so that by the time They realize what I've done.
I have enough people supporting me that you can't stop me. This doesn't seem Like a like an integrous move to me But Andy does this is he tries to change the and he's talked about this before and one of his pastor things He was like his coaching things where he's telling all the pastors how to be he He talks about changing the theology of your church in a stealthy fashion so that you don't lose the conservative people and you can still appeal to the more liberal ones. I say all that to let you know, in his own words, it seems that he has been doing this for years and I don't think it's a healthy practice.
I don't have any secret theology. All my teaching is out there in the open. And I tell you guys, here's something I think I believe that many of you do not believe with. Let me make my case for it and see how you respond. I think that that's a more respectful way to approach people.
And As a pastor, you are called to teach with authority. Okay, I'm teaching a little different online, but as a pastor, you're called to teach with authority the truths of God's word. But if you disagree with the elders, the other elders in your church, with the people who have supported you and asked you to minister to them, you should be open about that. That doesn't seem like it should be a secret.
A little bit less resistible. So now I want to talk about it. The reason I want to talk about it is because I would like Christians everywhere and I would like communicators everywhere and pastors and teachers everywhere to at least consider what we've done as a group of churches as we continue to try to make it easier and easier and easier for people to embrace faith.
So he says what we've done. But earlier, just a moment ago, he was like, I did this. This is what I did. I did it like I didn't tell people what I was doing.
I just did it. And now I want you all to copy me. I don't. This is weird.
But. Keep in mind, Andy, and this is one reason why I did this video, Andy is not just teaching his people. That would be enough of a reason to do it there because there's so many people being affected, but he's promoting it online and he's also telling pastors everywhere to copy his pattern. Andy is trying to create a new idea of what church looks like that caters very much to his concerns for apologetics and outreach, and he wants everyone to copy him.
So we should evaluate it. We're smart to evaluate it. We should be thinking about these things. What is it that I saw that caused me to be a little bit concerned? What is it that I saw that caused me to change my approach to how I talk about the Bible and specifically the foundation of faith?
And here's what I saw. I think it was in 2009, maybe 2010. I saw a YouTube video of one of the new atheists, and that may not be a phrase that's familiar. familiar to you there are four men that wrote several books a whole bunch of books actually before kind of outstanding books right after 9 11 and all four of these gentlemen um came out saying hey the problem isn't Islam the problem is religion that religion is what's wrong the root of all the root of most evil is actually religion and uh yeah that's so we they were nicknamed the four horsemen of the apocalypse and I was obviously following these guys myself I've made videos on some other content in the past uh Daniel Dennett who kind of faded he was maybe the smallest you know reach of them Um, Sam Harris still active today, uh, Christopher Hitchens, who passed away sadly of cancer and Richard Dawkins, um, who seems to be now regretting the stuff that they did in the past because they have paved the way for, uh, for Islam in saying it's not Islam. It's all religion.
They tore down religion in their own spheres, which was Christianity. They specifically targeted a hundred percent Christianity, as much as they might say all religion, they targeted Christianity. All of them did. And then, um, maybe, Hitchens talked about Islam some but they targeted Christianity a lot more and Most of them wouldn't even talk about Islam and now they're regretting it because of the disasters that are taking place Especially in England these guys look most of more British Sorry half of more British and that's where they had a lot of their biggest impact was in England at any rate He sees this stuff and he has apologetic concerns and worries related to the impact that these atheists these popular atheists are having And nowadays not too many people follow the the new atheists.
There's plenty of individuals, but it's not really a movement so much anymore a lot of them look kind of cringe in in hindsight and it's kind of like when you were wearing these clothes that were trendy when you were a kid and then you get older and Anybody who's still wearing them they look cringe to you. That's how new atheism looks to a lot of people nowadays They go. Oh that look kind of cool like ten years ago, but now it's like it's kind of cringe It was always cringe, it's just that they've started to realize it and the the glamour of it wore off and now they look and they go, oh yeah, you guys are just kind of like mean.
That's not, you're not really thinking carefully about these things, although plenty of people thought they were. And these books sold millions and millions of copies. They became, you know, standard lecturers all over in academia, especially on college campuses. And so I'm watching a YouTube video of one of these new atheists basically dismantle traditional Christianity, dismantle the Old Testament, you know, undermine everything that's basically would be considered a major tenet of Christianity.
And although it sounds like he thinks he was the guy was successful, that's how it sounds. I'm watching this guy dismantle. He says religion. OK, but then he's specific.
The Old Testament. and things people think are major tenets of Christianity. And it seems like Andy saw this and thought, what if they weren't major tenets of Christianity? Then I'm bulletproof because what's happened is everything you're shooting at, I'm not wearing anymore. That's not my Christianity.
So he seems to think they were successful in dismantling the Old Testament. I wonder how much Andy believes in the Old Testament. He believes that it's incorrect or wrong or immoral or bad in some sense. He says he believes the Bible. Maybe he'll say it's all good.
But the way he talks sometimes, I wonder how much of a new atheist there is inside of his own mind. At any rate, I don't think they were successful. And maybe that's a big difference between my ministry and his is I don't think these guys were successful.
I think they successfully convinced plenty of people, but that they were not successful in reality. When they talk about genocide, it's like, oh, you're using the wrong words to describe things. And you say the Bible supports slavery. And you're like, well, no, it doesn't. And.
Is it a complicated interaction with slavery? Yes, because it was a challenging issue that was pervasive in the culture at the time. But to be like, well, slavery is all slavery, the same slavery.
No, it doesn't. No, there's nothing. There's all it's only black and white issue here.
Completely clear cut and Bible supports it. End of story. That is to ignore so much of what the scripture says and teaches and the ideals and the principles in scripture, the specific verses in the Bible that talk about how to handle the topic.
That I don't think you've dismantled the Bible. I think you've just fought a straw man. And that's what new atheists did all the time.
They fought straw men. So I don't know why Andy Stanley says they actually dismantled. The message wasn't new.
I mean, people have been doing this forever. Although the message wasn't new, but combined with the events following 9-11, combined with the sort of anti-Christian and specifically anti-religious sentiment that was growing in our country, and then combined with the internet, it struck me that the Achilles heel of our modern version of faith was about to be exploited in a way that threatened the faith of the next generation. Now there's been a-Let's pause on that thought for a second. There's an Achilles heel, the Bible?
And now that Achilles heel is not an Achilles heel of our actual faith, but of our modern version of faith. So from Andy's perspective, the thing that he's talking about is a tradition of man. It's a modernized thing.
This whole, the original apostles, remember he said, didn't even have a Bible. The fourth century, this thing was popped into existence out of thin air. And everybody was like, wait, there's things that we're supposed to read. And then later on, we made this really important.
And it's as though there was no Genesis that they could have discussed. in jesus's time or that he would have affirmed that it was true interesting the way he talks about it atheists around forever there's been smart people writing you know intelligent books and asking really good questions about the bible for a long long time but these things came together and in my mind it was like the perfect storm it was the perfect storm because for a long time for a long time our modern version of christianity has had an achilles heel but it hasn't been exploited because for the most part people had respect for the bible and even if you didn't have respect for the bible nobody was really talking about it in disrespectful ways but that so the bible is the achilles heel And he's like, hey, you know, people didn't want to talk bad about it. This might feel that this is true to like current day Americans.
It might feel that that's the case. But if you go. outside of America, or if you go outside of like rural America, the Bible has been disrespected for a very long time.
Look at the 1700 German theologians, um, the Frederick Schliermacher, like the father of modern theology, talk about modern theology. Here's the guy, these guys were very modern guys who were very much undercutting the Bible and saying it's full of myths and things that aren't true. This is nothing new at all.
Maybe it is to Andy Stanley who grew up in Charles Stanley's church and then started engaging in like More a more diverse in like I live in California, right? Like the first people to try to talk me out of my faith were family members the the the when I went to college It was it was me debating with professors about whether or not there could be a God or whatever biblical view It was that I might have held this. This is not new to me I didn't grow up in the people are too polite to talk bad about the Bible environment So that's not real really relevant for me And I don't know For you, it might be relevant. Globally, it's not.
Okay, globally, it's not, or at least as far as Western English-speaking culture goes, this is not the case. It's changed. So consequently, what has been true for a long time has been about to be exposed. And my real concern, to be honest, isn't those of you who are sitting in churches all over our city and all over our country or all over the world. You know, you're in.
You know, you're pretty good. You're pretty solid. If you're past 40 and you've maintained your Christianity or past 30 and you've maintained your faith, you know, you're probably in for good.
My biggest concern is this group right here. Okay, so he's getting, he only is really, when he's talking about making a church that is accepting to everybody, he only wants to really make it accepting for a specific group of people. There's people who are disillusioned about the Bible. They're the ones that he wants to, you know, focus his church on and the whole, and not only that, the way everybody does church should be focused upon this group. Because you've got those, those old people who already believe and they've believed forever.
They've, they've weathered some storms. You don't need to do anything for them. They're easy.
They're not going anywhere. Let's focus on bringing in these people. Like changing the way we do church so that they don't feel that the Bible is so important.
Because we send them out into the world with a Sunday school faith that is not going to stand up against the onslaught that is becoming more and more prevalent in our country. And the good news is... Well, that's true. Christians who have a childlike understanding, childlike faith is good, childish understanding is bad, right? If you have a childish understanding of scripture, you will be easily swayed by the new atheists.
If you haven't read and wrestled through what scripture says about slavery... When the new atheist makes up a bunch of stuff about the Bible and slavery, quotes a few select verses out of context, you're going to be destroyed because you haven't really worked through it thoughtfully and intelligently as an adult. You only have this sort of simplistic, childish understanding. That's 100% true.
There is a good answer to this. Because the Achilles heel, the Achilles heel, that again hasn't been exploited, I don't think, until now, is a misapplication of a very important Reformation concept. Now we're not going to get lost in Reformation history, but I just want to make one real quick comment.
And the concept that's been distorted is the idea of Sola Scriptura. Real quick little history. In the 16th century there was a Reformation. Curious how he's going to describe Sola Scriptura.
Lots of people don't understand this thing, Sola Scriptura. They think like... I can't read this book on how to fix my car because I've sola scriptura, only the scripture, only the Bible.
And that's not what it means. Let's see how Andy describes it. And then maybe I'll just agree. And the Reformation leaders basically rescued, the Reformers rescued Christianity from a tradition-driven, word-of-the-church version of Christianity.
And they said, no, the Pope isn't the final authority, tradition isn't the final authority, Scripture is the final authority, Scripture alone. Scripture will be the final authority for the church, and some great things happened as a result. That's accurate. So it's not Scripture alone is the only authority in the church. Scripture is the final authority.
It's the only infallible authority. that that's a word he's avoiding i think here is the word infallible but that was the idea that there's a an authority that will not fail um so vatican two i'm sorry vatican one declared we're talking like after the way after the reformation um 1800s vatican one declared that the pope is also infallible whenever he speaks from the chair of peter and does these special things then he can speak infallibly too so he can be right on par with scripture um you And there's other, it gets complicated. There's a lot of other stuff there too, but to a Protestant or to someone like myself, and I believe to the apostles and to the new Testament. Um, and I have a video on sola scriptura.
I'll link below. If you want more on that, the Bible is the only infallible authority that's there. Um, if the apostles had been with us in our presence, we could have appealed to them as well, Jesus, but they're not with us and they have left us the scripture.
Over time, the idea of sola scriptura, which is scripture alone is the authority, has been taken to mean that the scripture, or in our case, we would say the Bible, is actually the foundation of our faith. There is a difference between something that is seen as an authority for you to live by and something that is considered the foundation of your faith or your faith system. and authority did it just get demoted sola scriptura is not the bible's and authority catholics believe that everybody believes every everybody who's ever called themselves christian or at least who could at least remotely claim the name would say the bible's and authority so he seems to have said something less okay the bible being our our soul a infallible a final authority like you're you're the The way this is written, even in Galatians, Paul's like, even if actually, even if I came, even if me, the apostle showed up, but if I preach something different than the message you already received, I'm accursed and you're not to believe me. You're to weigh everything else that comes after this in light of the message that you have there.
And now where do we have it in our new Testament? And so it's actually, it is pretty solidly at the core of Christianity. When you say it's the foundation, what does he mean by foundation?
Does he mean the reason you believe? There's for some I'll tell you about this in a minute Let's see if it fits better with the later part of what he's saying But this is Christians can have the Bible at their foundation on some Christians at the beginning of their belief and others have it after The beginning of their belief, but every Christian should have it at the core of their beliefs But over time, these two ideas have merged. It's nobody's fault.
It's just the way the world is. It's just the way that church leaders began talking about the Bible. And so many of you, I'm in this group, we were raised to believe that the foundation of our faith is the Bible. That as the Bible goes, so goes our faith.
Okay, so that's what he means. He means that if you were to show there's something wrong with the Bible, then you should legitimately stop being a Christian. And here I want to have like a nuanced or thoughtful perspective.
and say um if christianity is true the bible is true that is a lot that logically follows that a lot it logically follows that if if christianity is true the bible is true jesus affirmed it look at jesus's attitude towards scripture which did exist in jesus's time the the and the way they talk about scripture in the new testament is is a truth that is true about all scripture it's a truth about the category of writings called scripture and as more books are added It's true of those writings too, because it's like, this is the nature of what scripture is. It's breathed out by God. It's written, um, as people are moved by the Holy spirit.
It's, it's reliable. It is, um, for the equipping of the saints and all this other stuff. So you've, you've got like second Timothy three 16 and stuff like that.
Um, the, the thing is. Some people will come to a passage in the Old Testament, a passage in the Bible, and they go, I don't understand that, or I don't even think that that's accurate. I don't think that's right.
I don't think that's true. And there are some Christians who love the Lord who will come across a passage like that. And then maybe they're thinking, if I find one verse in the Bible, any spot in the Bible where I go, I don't believe that, now I have a justification for abandoning all of Christianity. And that would seem foolish for a different reason, I think, than Andy is going to say. He's going to say, because you don't need to have the Bible at the foundation, so don't worry about it.
You can just disbelieve the Bible all you want. At least that's my impression. Okay, we'll listen to his words and see what you think.
I think it's a more wise thing for a person to say, look, I have found a thing here that I don't understand, or maybe basically I can't see how it's true. But I do know that categorically the Bible is God's word. I know because I know I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And of course, if Jesus, the risen Lord, gives the affirmation of the inspiration of Scripture, which he does, then I certainly should believe that it's inspired from God. I don't know how to reconcile these things, this small stone of stumbling that I'm finding here in the text versus the overwhelming reasons I have to support and believe in Scripture and Jesus. And so I will wrestle with this. I will sit with this. I will let it be there.
Those who convince you that if you find one issue you can't reconcile in scripture one thing you think oh is that a contradiction and then you should throw out all your christian faith it's not reasonable when you're examining such a large breadth of work scripture to think that you're not going to find anything you can't understand or anything that you can't reconcile it's just so much writing that's there so don't quickly give up your faith because of that just live with the consternation of going i don't really know what i'm going to do with this verse there's been plenty of verses where for a time i said i can't reconcile this i don't understand this and time goes by and then i go Boom, there is a reasonable, rational reconciliation or understanding that I go, I am down with that. I fully get it. I'm down.
There are those, for instance, who would think the Bible says man's day shall be 120 years, says this in Genesis. And then they meet someone who's 123 and they go, the Bible's wrong. I will abandon my faith in Jesus because there's 123 year old, but the Bible says man's days will be 120 years. There's a limit.
Oh man, I guess the Bible is not true. There is no God. Jesus never died for me. You're overreacting.
Maybe you just didn't understand that one little passage and you realize that this idea of how old people can live is. Tertiary in your faith. It's not a primary doctrine by any means catch that here's where I go Yeah, don't stumble over that now later on you come back and you go Hey, it turns out when the Bible said a man's days shall be 120 years It was it was it was talking about how long it was between that moment and the flood when God would flood the world in 120 years he'd flood the world.
He was giving people grace and time to repent and reform and then the flood would come It's not about how old people can get. Oh I just misinterpreted it. And then I almost threw out the whole Bible and my whole Christian faith because I just misinterpreted a passage.
Let me keep that in mind. Next time there's an Old Testament thing I don't really understand that well or think I can't reconcile. That I think would be more wise. Andy's going to go for something more extreme.
All of it's not true, then none of it can be trusted. It's a house of cards. And so you have grown up perhaps not looking over there and not listening to that and don't read that book, a little bit of fear that you might learn something that pulls out the bottom card and your whole faith tower comes tumbling down. Well, you're gonna be fine probably, but I don't think the next generation is unless we help them step back on a more solid foundation as it relates to faith. Because if Genesis isn't true, well, then the Bible isn't true.
If all of it isn't true, then you can't say the Bible's true. And if the Bible's not true, then why would I depend on it? Why would I look to it?
Okay. So again, it comes back to Genesis. I thought he must have had this in the back of his mind. Remember, he said that Jesus didn't have a Bible. The apostles didn't have a Bible.
The early church didn't have a Bible. The Bible didn't exist until the fourth century. And yet he's appealing to Genesis, which we're talking about like as long as anybody's had anything from the Bible, they've had Genesis.
You catch that? This is a misleading way of speaking. It's weird. It makes me sad when people fall for this stuff.
Because I hear, these are the lines I'd hear them repeat from his message. There was no Bible before the fourth century, Mike. Why are you even defending it? The apostles didn't defend it. They didn't even have one.
And they're like, therefore, you don't have to believe Genesis. I'm like, you think they didn't have Genesis? These are weird little mind games.
As a source of faith or really as a source of anything. And the new atheists, these four extraordinarily intelligent men, and they're not evil. I don't think they're bad. They just have a different worldview and they're really good writers.
And two of them are. They are evil. Like that's that's a this is it's a bridge building to say they're not evil.
They're opponents of God. They're preaching against the against the existence of God, against Jesus, against all religion, specifically Christianity, calling it evil, calling it wicked, calling scripture sick and perverted. And. Obviously, that's evil.
Now, God loves people who are evil and wants to redeem them and restore them. But we don't. Anyway, it's just theologically not sound. You know, apart from Christ, I'm evil, too. That's a reality.
But especially someone who's going around just with the express purpose of destroying the faith, the saving faith of Christ in the world. And that's their agenda. And it's like, they're definitely not evil.
The Bible calls them evil workers. That's not. that's but you know but then the bible's not the foundation so extraordinary communicators actually they're all really good communicators i read their books i sam harris i quote sam harris all the time one of my favorite quotes he said on his podcast he said that we should pay attention to the frontiers of our ignorance pay attention to the frontiers of your ignorance i think that's a great statement for all of us but he's an atheist has a different world view so i don't think these are bad or evil people they just see the world differently and and romans 1 says that the the reason for people rejecting god is because they they don't want They choose not to retain the knowledge of God and they suppress in unrighteousness the truth of God.
That's what Romans 1 says. And so I know that that's offensive. This is another one of those things where it's like, yeah, that's a stumbling block. You go to an atheist and you tell them, yeah, you know, they say, you know, it's not like I open the door. Hey, atheist, oh, you're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
You're evil. Did you know that? I don't do that.
But if they were to ask me, especially Mike, why do you, what do you think explains my atheism? And I would give a list of things. I'd be like, well, deception. You've heard arguments that you believe that aren't true, that aren't logically reasonable, but you feel that they are. And also, you're suppressing truth.
You're pushing back the reality of God's existence that's just screaming at you from all of creation in every corner of the world. And internally from conscience as well. And they might be mad at me for this, but it is true.
And I can't change reality. I can try to put my best foot forward and my best evangelical foot forward, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to pander to them and pretend that that it what's happening is different than what's actually happening um, anyway, this is this is how you You get a bigger following in some cases at least um is You can say these things.
Everybody likes you. They're like, I don't agree with him, but I like him. I like that Andy guy.
I know he's nice. He's complimenting his atheists. They're a nice guy. He's right that they're brilliant. They're well-spoken.
They're good writers and good speakers and good debaters. I just don't think that's that important. I think that the fact that they're suppressing the knowledge of God is a bigger issue.
they have attacked persuasively and effectively the credibility and the morality of our Bibles. They've attacked the credibility, you can't believe it, there's all these problems, and the morality. I mean, the message that's sweeping college campuses is it's not just that religion is wrong, religion is bad.
That the God of the Old Testament is a moral monster. And all it takes is a little bit of that, and faith, the house of cards, comes tumbling down. So. That's a legit issue.
That's absolutely legit issue. And I do think the answer to the solutions to it are not so simple as just keep telling people the Bible is true and move on. You would need good answers to these challenges and objections. Someone says the God of the Bible is a moral monster.
You need to respond to that. What about babies that died in the flood? People, the first time they've ever thought of this, it disturbs them emotionally.
And you need to take time and work through it with them and explain to them things like, well, you know, let's take the Christian worldview. And I'll put a video down below. That's just me explaining why babies who die, even in a time of God's judgment like that, are given eternal life.
And so that God is then demonstrating his righteousness. He's then punishing wickedness, but he's also bringing forgiveness and grace to the collateral damage of those who experience those things. And you may think, well, that doesn't make me happy about it, Mike. I said, yeah, but you know what it is? It's a way different picture than that atheist painted, isn't it?
This Christian worldview is different than what they said. And what they attacked was not the reality of Christianity, but their straw man of Christianity. Anyway, we could go on, but there's just one after another misrepresentations of the Christian faith amongst the new atheists. I think we need to fix the misrepresentation, and then we can talk about wrestling with the challenging remaining issues. But we can't just give up on scripture and walk away.
I also think it's fine to say... Let's couch that Genesis discussion. Let's couch that other thing because I want to talk about something more, more central to my faith than that piece of the scripture that that's true. There's some verses that are more central to my faith, but the, but I can still affirm the overall trustworthiness and inspiration of scripture and just struggle with that issue, but realize it's more on the periphery.
And that can be good counsel for people to have. There's a balance that's here. It's not that Andy doesn't have a point.
It's that his solution is too extreme. For the next three weeks, we are going to look at what served as a foundation of faith for the first century church. And we're going to look at their view and how they began to understand the Old Testament as well.
Because I'm convinced, and I hope I can convince you, that we should take our cues about the foundation of faith. We should take our cues about how to approach the Old Testament from the men and the women who were closest to the action, the first century, first followers of Jesus. I deal with the Old Testament stuff specifically in another video I will put a link to in my Hebrews video. going through the book of Hebrews, but I encounter this exact teaching, part three in this series, and Andy Stanley talks about unhitching from the Old Testament, and he gives examples, and he makes a bunch of claims that are demonstrably false.
I will share them down below. There's a reason why so many Christians punch the ceiling when they heard Andy Stanley's message, and he might think that we don't understand his heart for evangelism that's there. I get that.
His solution is just too extreme. It's too much. his information is often incorrect the stuff he's telling people is true we take our cue from them and if we can help the next generation take their cue from them if we can help our kids and our grandkids take their cue from this group you end up with the endurable defensible unassailable version of faith which was the original version so remember he thinks it's the original version because he thinks the apostles didn't have a bible he thinks that the bible didn't exist till the fourth century at least that's what he's saying and so the original version doesn't include any commitment to the scriptures yet there is no version of Christianity in the first century that doesn't include a commitment to the scriptures. The closest thing to it is a later thing, the Marcionites, this guy Marcion, who's a heretic, who says that he wants to get rid of the Old Testament and chop out portions of the New Testament that refer to it and endorse it. And he's considered a heretic early on, and rightly so.
Here we go. We're going to pick up the story where we left off. Jesus was raised from the dead. He ascended to be with the Father. And his disciples are in Jerusalem figuring out what's next.
And the interesting thing is the very first thing, or just about the very first thing that the disciples did after Jesus rose from the dead is they got together and they decided they needed to replace Judas. Luke says, here's how the conversation went. They got together and they said, it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time.
And so they say, we need to find somebody who has been here the whole time, beginning all the way back as far as John's baptism when Jesus first stepped on the pages of history as an adult to the time when Jesus was taken up from him. us in other words we need an eyewitness to this entire adventure we need one who has can become a witness with us of his resurrection they weren't looking for gifted speakers they were looking for someone who had been an eyewitness to a resurrected jesus okay i'll give you guys a spoiler um andy stanley's going to suggest that rather than promoting the bible as here's why you should believe christianity because you believe the bible he wants to promote the resurrection of christ here's what you should believe because of the resurrection and Not bridge that to the Bible. You don't go from belief in Jesus to, therefore, I should believe the Bible is true.
But rather, he just wants to make that like, it's important, it's there, but it's not necessary. Right? So that if you find any problems with it, it won't in any way affect your faith, because your faith actually is not there.
It's not in the Bible. It's just in Jesus, and that doesn't transfer over to Scripture. The early church did both. So there are those who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and that causes them to be Christian. That's entirely fair, entirely appropriate.
And there are those who believe in the Bible, and that causes them to believe in the resurrection. And that is fair, and that is totally appropriate. In fact, that is one of the reasons why people in the New Testament believed.
There are those who believe because they heard the case for the resurrection and the witnesses, good evidence for Christ, they believed, and boom, they became Christians. And then they immediately started trusting the scriptures, which is what we should do. There are others who heard about the prophecies.
And the fulfillment of scripture, the things in the Bible that they believed were already true for other reasons, they then saw Jesus in those pages and then believed in Jesus. It went both ways in scripture. It was not one or the other.
In particular, when it was an audience who had more familiarity with the Old Testament, they would lean more on the scriptures. When they had less familiarity with the Old Testament, they would lean more on the eyewitness accounts of the resurrection. I don't mind leaning one way or the other. When I'm witnessing to someone who's ignorant of scripture, I tend to lean on maybe more the resurrection of Christ or some fulfilled prophecy stuff that's simple that I can explain easily, evidence for God's existence, right? But that doesn't mean I can divorce my Christianity from faith and scripture.
And that I think is what Andy's getting at. So they elect a guy named Matthias and then things shift into high gear. About seven weeks after the resurrection, the city of Jerusalem is once again filled with guests and visitors from all around this part of the world because there was another festival. A huge wind came rushing through the city.
The disciples were all gathered together. Now it's not just the 12, but we're up to over 100 people who are kind of the core group of the Christian faith. And this wind comes and makes all this disturbance in the middle of the city and they are filled with the Spirit of God in some unusual way. And they go out into the city and began proclaiming the message of Jesus.
And Luke tells us this is what happened. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together. So the city is full of people.
A crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazing. They ask, wait a minute, aren't all these people talking to us Galileans?
Wait a minute, you're clearly a Galilean and yet I can understand you and not only that, you're using my dialect. Then how is it that each of us hears this in our native language? So Peter gets up and he preaches the sermon. Here's the thing.
Here's what he says, he says, fellow Jews. Peter stood up, he said, fellow Jews, all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain what's going on to you. Listen carefully to what I have to say. In other words, come on in here a little bit closer. Then I think this next part was funny.
I think the crowd laughed. These people are not drunk as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning. Ah, everybody laughed, you know. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you.
Now here's what you need to understand, this is so important. He's not talking to a group of people who are going like, Jesus, no, he is in the city of Jerusalem and where all the events took place. We're credited to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did among you. In other words, this isn't a group of people who heard about it.
This is a group of people, many of whom were in the crowds and saw some of those things through him as you yourselves know. In other words, Peter's like, okay, I don't have to convince you this stuff happened, right? I mean, all of you here, you were either here or you know somebody who was here and witnessed these things, okay?
This is years later, this is weeks later. He goes on. This man, talking about Jesus, was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, you, put him to death. Because some of you, he would say, were in that crowd that turned on Jesus at the last minute and you had him nailed to a cross.
But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. And then he references one of David's Psalms as if to say, look, us Jewish people, we should have seen this coming. This was predicted long ago.
Our prophets foretold of a time that God would do something unusual. And then he says to this crowd, God has raised this Jesus to life and we, talking about his Christians, The part that he kind of skipped over really quickly here in Acts 2 is where Peter verifies and validates what is the experiences that are happening as true because they're in accordance with the Bible, with the scriptures. Peter is using the scriptures to prove that what has just happened is from God. And that's something I think that Andy Stanley is going to ignore. He just kind of talked vaguely about it.
Peter says in verse 23, it was that Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. And then he says, according to the scriptures, he just gives it. David says, concerning him, and there's this big long quote. Then he's going to quote again from another Psalm.
And then he's going to quote again. Ultimately, he's quoting scripture here to validate and verify that the things that are happening here are from God. We're to use this in a message that's saying that the Bible is not our foundation.
Um, because at least to the Jew, it was certainly right there at the foundation. and disciples, Jesus following friends. And we are witnesses of this. And when the people heard this, when the people heard this, they were so convicted. And they said to Peter and the other apostles, what shall we do?
And Peter replied, repent and be baptized. Repent means change your mind. These weren't people who needed to turn away from sin.
It wasn't that kind of repentance. It was you need to change your mind about who Jesus is and who Jesus was. And once you've changed your mind, you need to publicly identify with Jesus by being baptized. And the text. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna I just want to pause him for a second and show you guys so here's acts chapter 2 There's the whole experience that happens.
They're gathered I'm, just gonna skim through like two you read and then all of a sudden Uh, they're like, hey, they're filled with new wine. So they're drunk and then peter gives a sermon This is where he starts to preach and here he says some things that I don't want us to miss, right? The first thing he does is he goes.
Yeah, you guys think they're drunk But look, this is what's prophesied in joel. You didn't hear this read by andy stanley He skipped this part and there's this whole section. This is all a quote of Joel where Peter's using the Bible, the Old Testament here, to prove that what has happened is in fact from God. Then he goes and he does the part that was read by Andy Stanley, but then he just kind of passed over this, that it was according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God that Jesus was crucified. Indeed, then he goes on and talks about what David, King David said in the definite foreknowledge and plan of God in the Old Testament.
And there's another big quote of scripture. Then He just says, hey guys, this stuff that we just read, I just read to you, that's in fact exactly what has happened. God is fulfilling scripture because he was a prophet.
David said this stuff and he said it ultimately about Jesus. And then he quotes more scripture. We get this here in verses 34 and 35. There's more scripture being quoted.
The Bible is at the foundation of Peter's evangelism to the Jewish people here. That's really important to know. And it's also... contrary to the message I think that Andy's trying to communicate with this passage.
As he reads it, I'm struggling to understand why he's using it, except that they do use the resurrection of Jesus and the fact that they're eyewitnesses as part of their evangelism. But this is coupled with prophecy and fulfillment in Jesus. So there are two prongs to the evangelism of the early church, the resurrection of Jesus and prophecy, scripture, the Bible being something that God has revealed. I get that this can be complicated when you approach people who are ignorant of the Bible, they're unaware of what scripture says, which more and more people today are like this in the Western world. And so I'm going to build a more careful bridge to that.
But I'm not going to pretend that the disciples just set aside the Bible and preach Jesus'resurrection without it. The point being, the very first Christian sermon preached was not about what Jesus taught. The very first sermon, Christian sermon ever preached after the resurrection was about the resurrection of Jesus. Next big event, Peter and John.
Now it's so interesting, okay? It was, well, it was obviously, it was also about what Jesus taught. It was about the nature of the Messiah.
He is the Christ. He was predicted in scripture to die and rise again. Those are things Jesus taught. The disciples didn't even get it. In Mark, he says it over and over again, nobody gets it.
Those are things Jesus taught. It's not just the fact of his resurrection. It's the nature of who he is and the meaning of his resurrection and the response of belief in him so that you can be saved.
That's all theology stuff. That's not just the event. It's the meaning of it as well.
So what was the foundation of Peter's faith? Where did Peter get his hope? My goodness, where did Peter get his boldness? Where did he get his confidence? How is it he's now walking around in the open, whereas before he was afraid and ran for his life?
The foundation of their faith was not something they'd read or had read to them. The foundation of their faith was what they had seen. So here's the question for you.
And here's the question for all of you. Okay, so I think I catch the point here. The foundation of Peter's faith was not the Bible.
It was the resurrection of Jesus. This is an either or. Fallacy here.
He's putting you into a choose one or the other situation where Peter would certainly have affirmed both the belief in the Bible and belief in the resurrection of Jesus and part of what was the preaching that Peter himself used was that the Bible had Prophesied the death and resurrection of the Messiah and that they had misunderstood many of the things in the Bible And in fact, it was it was foretold ahead of time that Jesus would die and rise again so that it's Peter believes that that Jesus rose from the dead and that this is in accord with the scripture. These things are both believed by Peter. It's not either or.
This dilemma that Andy has about helping people to not feel that they have to believe the Bible is not a dilemma that they were facing in the early church. The apostles weren't even thinking about something like that, at least for the most part. There was one group called the Sadducees.
The Sadducees were a group that Jesus encountered who did have less belief in the Bible and less belief in supernatural things. And it's complicated, but they definitely had less belief in the Bible, significantly less. And Jesus affirms, rebukes them for not believing the scriptures and not knowing the scriptures well.
And so Jesus then goes, he's the opposite of Andy here. He's like going back to the Bible. He doesn't just go, don't worry about that.
Don't let, hey, Sadducees, don't let that be an obstacle to you. Instead, he reaffirms the authority and truthfulness of scripture. If you're a Christian, what should be the foundation of your faith?
What should be the epicenter of our confidence? Peter would say, that's easy, the resurrection. Oh yeah? 2 Peter chapter 1. He says both. In verse 16 of 2 Peter chapter 1, Peter says the following.
We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. That's prong number one of the evangelism and foundation here in the New Testament. It's we were eyewitnesses. Now here Andy would agree.
See, they're eyewitnesses. It's not the Bible. It's the eyewitnessing of the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is the thing, not the Bible.
But let's keep reading. for when he received honor and glory from the God, the father, and the voice was born to him by his majestic glory. This is my beloved son.
And then he goes on and he gives an example of what they, one of the things that I witnessed, which was the transfiguration of Jesus. So they, a miracle involving Jesus. Um, but then he says in verse 19, and we have the more prophetic, the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you do well to pay attention to as a lamp shining in dark, a dark place.
This idea of a prophetic word that you should pay attention to that was confirmed in Jesus, that's scripture. So scripture predicts the Messiah. Jesus shows up.
He does the stuff that was predicted. They were eyewitnesses of it. But he sees these as two prongs that when you go down, they're joined together to the same thing. They're like one fork that joined together. And Jesus's resurrection in and of itself, by itself.
doesn't have meaning apart from the teachings of the apostles we have in the New Testament and of course the Old Testament itself, which are the interpretive grid for understanding what it means that Jesus resurrected, right? He rose from the dead. Okay, what do I do with that? The Bible, that tells you what you do with that.
So the Bible becomes a rule, a guiding rule for interpreting and understanding, and it is at the foundation of our faith. It's very important. It's key.
It's super, super important. You can't set it aside because some people say they don't believe it. You instead need to defend it.
Or at least ask them, hold off on that for a moment. Can we at least say this piece of this issue is more important than that piece is for now? And then help them prioritize. I think that can be healthy too. He goes on and says, No prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.
For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. That's where scripture comes from. Peter doesn't divorce his faith in scripture from his faith in the resurrection. They're not two different things and you pick one.
That's Andy Stanley's approach. It's not Peter's. Because now this is, it's taken him a while to get there, so I'll probably just summarize it for you guys. Hey, Peter and John, they are going and sharing the gospel, and there's this guy who gets healed, and it causes a big commotion.
They're brought before the leaders, basically the Supreme Court of the Jewish people, and they're standing before Caiaphas, the high priest, and now they can defend themselves. And now he's getting into like, how does Peter defend himself? Is that a model for how we should be doing church today?
Does Peter tie things to the Bible or not? Let's hear what Andy has to say about it. And there's the Supreme Court and all the Congress and they shove you in there and they say, okay, what do you have to say for yourself? Not only that, you're the least educated person in the room.
You can't even read what's written around the halls and written on the walls. Um, so saying that Peter couldn't read is probably, is likely not to be not true. It's likely not true.
I don't know how well he could read, but there's good reasons. I think he could have read. He was a businessman. He was conducting a business. He could have been interacting with, uh, Greek speakers and Hebrews or Aramaic speakers on along the sea of Galilee as well.
He'd been traveling with Jesus for quite a while, uh, for three years. He interacted with different people. And, um, uh, anyway, I don't want to presume too much ignorance on the part of individuals.
The amount of formal education Peter had was minimal, probably, but he had three years with Jesus. That's not nothing. And they pull Peter and John, and Peter speaks up.
He's never been this close to these people. This is unbelievable. Rulers. This is his moment.
Rulers and elders of the people. It's like, wow, look who's here. Rulers and elders of the people.
If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who is lame, you know, Frank, come on up here. Come on up here. Let him see you.
Yeah. If we're being called to an account for an act of kindness shown to this guy and we're being asked about how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel, because you're the representative, so you can help get the word out. It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified. but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you. And when they saw the courage of Peter and John, when they saw, what do you mean see the courage?
Because Peter and John, like Jesus, when he had been arrested, should have been on their knees begging for mercy. When they saw the courage, when they saw these men who, you know, they don't know power, they're from Galilee, they're not even from this region, they're fishermen. When they saw I think he just skipped a really important verse. So they stand before Caiaphas.
They're being asked to give an account for basically disturbing the peace is what they're accusing them of here. They don't really have a good accusation against them. And so they go, yeah, this guy was raised by, by, uh, ultimately by Jesus. And then he skips from verse 10, right? Um, whom God raised from the dead by him.
This man is standing before you. Well, he skips to verse 12. Verse 13, rather, now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John. So what were the two verses that were skipped there? Since we're talking about the relevance of scripture in the preaching of Peter, he says, this is Jesus, the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the chief cornerstone, which is a nonsense phrase, unless you understand, let me show you, that this is coming from the text of scripture.
Where's the footnote for this? Psalm 118. And this stone that was rejected is this famous story that's in Psalm 118 and talked about by the Jews. He's saying Jesus has fulfilled this psalm prophetically.
And then in verse 12, there's salvation in no one else for there's no other name given among men by which we must be saved. He ties this to prophecy. He ties this to scripture.
He doesn't just say, I have a miracle and I was a witness of it. All the courage because everybody in that room knew what happened to their master. Everybody in that room knew what happened to Jesus of Nazareth.
And now they are speaking on behalf of Jesus of Nazareth and they are unafraid. And they realized this is so powerful that they were unschooled, ordinary men. Yeah, he definitely just skipped those two verses that are very relevant to his point about how central was scripture in the preaching of Peter.
Should have been intimidated by power. and their confidence and their courage. It's extraordinary. Why?
Here's why. Because when you lose your fear of death, all fear is gone. And this is a great preaching point.
He's actually had several great preaching points. throughout this. There's just several that are also distortions, I think, not accurate, not true. And so acknowledge this. Yeah.
When you realize that God has overcome death and this really hits your heart and it needs to hit your heart a lot every day as a Christian, it's really empowering in a good way. They had seen him die, and they had breakfast with him on the beach, and they saw him ascend to the Father. What should we fear?
The text says, and these men were astonished, and they took note that these were in fact the men who had been with Jesus. And then they tell these guys, okay, they can't punish him because there's been a miracle, a verifiable miracle, and the guy's there. They can't punish him, so they say, look, don't do this anymore, okay, stop it.
No more teaching and speaking in the name of Jesus. And they reply, as for us, I mean, we realize, like, here are the lawmakers. and you're the law keepers and the law is just right over there on the other side of that wall and you're the guys, okay?
As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we were taught as children. No, we can't help speaking about what we read about that happened not too long ago. Wait, no, don't say that, Andy, because you skipped the two verses where he talked about what they were taught as children and what they read about long ago.
You skipped verse, I think was it 11 or 12, where specifically Peter's like saying, this is fulfillment of what God has said in scripture. You're skipping that. You're skipping that. He did this in Acts 2. He does it in Acts 4. It's very consistent in the preaching of Peter. He goes to the synagogues.
He preaches from the scripture. Jesus preached from the scripture. He talks about fulfilling the word of God all the time. So this is Andy, what Andy wants Peter to say.
It's not what Peter said. We can't help stop speaking about what we've seen and what we've heard. And what they saw and heard was the fulfillment of scripture.
Yes, it was the resurrection of Christ, but that was the fulfillment of scripture. These were not separated things. See, the foundation of our faith is not a story. The foundation of our faith is an event. In fact, obviously the Old Testament is full of stories that are events that these are not, this is just weird rhetoric.
It's not a story. It's an event. I mean, if the Old Testament is not stories, they're events, right?
As well. So I don't see how this is relevant. They called the apostles in and they had them flogged.
And these men would bear these scars forever. Now understand in the first century, second century, all of ancient times, nobody could go on a computer and look up your record. Ah, I see you have a felony. Now they didn't do background. They did a different kind of background check.
Let me see your back. Oh, you've been arrested. Oh, you're a troublemaker. Oh, you've had a run in with the law. They would bear these scars forever.
They were meant to be a symbol of shame. It meant they had a prison record. Their response?
The apostles left rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering. Disgrace, disgrace, not just punishment. This is disgrace for the name. Luke's writing all this down. He says, I gotta speed up the story.
Day after day after day after day in the temple. Okay, could you just go back to Galilee in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is Messiah. It's worth pointing out how they would teach that Jesus is the Messiah. So the Messiah is not some vague term meaning important one, Jesus the important one, Jesus the one who rose. That's not what Messiah means.
Messiah is a term that ties Jesus to the Old Testament and the prophecies and the predictions about the coming one from the Old Testament to the work of God in Israel to Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and all of the Old Testament books. Messiah ties. all that stuff together.
And when they went out around not ceasing to teach and preach that Christ is Jesus or Jesus is the Messiah, they were not just teaching Jesus rose from the dead. They were teaching a whole lot about the Old Testament and its connection to Jesus. That is something that was central to their teaching.
That is something I think Andy Stanley, at least he seems to be paving the way for it to be disregarded. Now, it might be that at the end, he'll just go, oh, I just, I want what you want, Mike. I just want people to set aside these like secondary complaints about the Bible and realize that they could focus on the nature of Jesus first.
That certainly is what the scripture is doing here. They're not entering into all kinds of debates about the nature of the teaching in Genesis and everything else. They're focusing on Jesus and resurrection and death and salvation and faith. And that's good for us to focus on those things.
But they never divorced belief in the Bible from their preaching, that it just was something that was assumed or was sort of there at the core. I'm okay if somebody says, I don't believe the Bible, and I go, well, maybe I'll try to get you to believe in Jesus. But I'm not going to do that in opposition to believing in the Bible.
There's even a tandem nature of believing in Jesus and the Bible together, where you're going to end up believing in both, is the bottom line. If you believe in one, you're going to end up believing in both. Now here's what I don't want you to miss.
These, if you're a Christian, these are our people. Okay. This is why we are here. This is how Christianity survived the first and second in the beginning of the third century.
This is actually all the way to the beginning of the fourth century. This is how the message of Jesus survived. To him, that's the timeline while they had no Bible. That's how Christianity survived without a Bible because of this. It's just, of course, a distortion of reality.
because the first persecution of the Christians was not Rome. The first persecution of Christians was the temple. And the Christianity survived both the temple and the empire.
And there was no book. There was no the Bible. There was.
Well, I want to hear what he says next. There was what? What is he going to say there was? Because he should say that there were scriptures and that there were all these authoritative documents that were held to be true. Then there was the teaching of the apostles that was later enshrined in the scriptures.
And these are the two things that everybody believed in the New Testament times. And is he going to say that? Let's find out.
Because Peter, who he just used as his example, when he says there was no Bible, he goes, Jesus is the Messiah. Like, Messiah, who's that? Well, he knew that all the Jewish people would look right to the Old Testament to recognize who the Messiah was. This is him tying Jesus to the scriptures in a way that requires the Bible.
to understand who jesus is something else there was fearlessness there was boldness and there was courage because god had raised a man from the dead and when god raises a man from the dead you take everything he had to say seriously and when which was what it wasn't didn't jesus affirm that the scriptures were in fact from god that david spoke by the holy spirit i'm quoting jesus here he says david spoke by the holy spirit that That the scripture cannot be broken. I'm quoting Jesus here. The scripture, there is a category called the scripture that with the same word we use for the Bible effectively, right?
We mean the same thing and it cannot be broken. I think Andy's trying to play like a little game here, almost where the skeptic won't know that they're being sort of brought to a place where they're going to believe the Bible in the end. I don't, I don't know what he's doing here. It's confusing because, because there's, there's just too much untruth mixed into what he's saying. You have met that man.
You're fearless. That the first century believers, they weren't even called Christians yet. That would come later.
They embrace what I want you to embrace and what our children must embrace and what our grandchildren must embrace. They embrace. They were, uh, so in Antioch, the first time they were called Christians, probably a derogatory term later, they owned it.
Um, but that, that happened, you know, that was in the first century where they were first called that. But, um, anyway. It's the first century version of faith. They embrace the standalone version.
I don't need a book to prop up my faith. I don't see you do. You do like I don't get to make up the rules for Christianity.
It's possible to believe that the Bible is not inerrant. And still. have a Christian faith.
I don't think it's healthy, right? It's not something I'm going to teach people to search and go after like, hey, everybody start teaching the Bible's errant. But you can believe that the Bible is inspired, that God wrote it, that God gave it to us effectively. Obviously, he didn't write it physically, but he inspired people to write it, that it's from him and that it has authority for the believer and still believe.
But I think it has a few things wrong because God didn't care about that. God didn't care about the number of people leaving in the Exodus. Okay, he just didn't care. I think your belief here is inconsistent, but it will not invalidate your Christian faith. It will not mean you don't believe in Jesus or you don't have a Christian faith.
But you can't have a Christian faith without the Old Testament and without the New Testament, which tell you what Christian faith even is. Christian faith is not just, I believe there's a guy that rose again. There's more to it than that.
It's not believing that somebody rose. It's that he is Jesus, the Messiah, who is prophesied in the Old Testament, who fulfills the sacrifices, who becomes my Passover lamb. This has been the preaching from the beginning.
Interpreting who Jesus is requires the Bible. Believing in the historical fact of his resurrection is at the core of Christianity and may be in fact be your door in. You came to believe in the resurrection and then you open the door and we're like, and who is this Jesus that I've just believed in?
The Bible comes right in immediately after. I don't need you to explain creation to me to prop up my faith. The whole Noah thing, it's fascinating.
I don't know, but that's not what props up my faith. Okay, I don't know. Meaning maybe he's not sure.
I suspect Andy went through his own sort of crisis of faith, and the solution he's presenting to the church is a solution he found for himself. That's I suspect. Do I know that that's the case?
I could be wrong. But I've been through my own struggles as well, and I sort of can recognize the way people talk about stuff after they've been through it. And I think that's how he's talking about it.
Christianity can stand on its own two nailed scarred resurrection feet. The foundation of your... Okay, yeah. What does the cross mean? We need the Passover.
We need the Day of Atonement. We need Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 is a more thorough interpretation of the meaning of the cross than any passage in the New Testament. Did you know that? We need the Bible. When Jesus talks about himself sacrificing in the book of Mark, he relies on Isaiah to interpret what that means.
When the New Testament appeals to Isaiah to explain and interpret and teach the theology behind the cross, it relies on the scripture, the Old Testament and New being joined together there. So we do need the Bible. Your faith and mine is not a book.
It is an event. That the Bible did not create Christianity. Let's pause for a second again.
The faith, our faith is not based on a book. It's based on an event. Let me find this scripture that I'm thinking of. In Acts chapter 24. uh paul goes to the goes to the governor and he's going to defend himself before felix basically he's in trouble for preaching the gospel and a bunch of other stuff um that he hasn't actually done wrong and he says in as much as i know that you've been for many years a judge of this nation i do the more cheerfully answer myself so he's talking to the big the head dog right like rome has entrusted felix with significant power and now he's going to judge paul and he says you may ascertain that it is no more than 12 days since i went to jerusalem to worship He goes on, he explains the situation, which we haven't gotten into today, so I won't get into it. Look at what he believes.
I confess to you that according to the way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets. Paul's attitude towards the Bible is that when he's believing in Jesus, he is actually, in addition, in tandem, he's believing everything that is written in the scriptures. He believes his whole Bible, which is up at least through, you know, Malachi at that point.
And then there will be more because he's believing in, of course, the preaching of Jesus and the other apostles and things that they say. And so he's going to be believing all of it as it becomes revealed. But here he believes all things which are what?
Written in the law and in the prophets. Law and prophets was another way of summarizing the Old Testament, all of it. This is different than Andy Stanley's stuff. And the thing isn't just that Andy has his own ideas here.
The thing is that Andy is telling you. that those are God's ideas and that those are the apostles'ideas. But it's not.
Peter, Paul, neither of them had the view that Andy's trying to promote here. And this is where we must stand in our new generation, in our generation. This is where we must stand in the misinformation age. This is where we must stand.
And it is not new. It is just perhaps new to you and new to us. But if we were to say, Peter, what's the foundation? Where do you find your hope?
Where do you find your courage? He wouldn't quote a verse from the Old Testament. He wouldn't quote a verse at all. You think that's true?
You think that's true? The apostles, the same guys who said things like believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets, or that Jesus who said he had to fulfill the scriptures, the scriptures must be fulfilled. That's why he had to go to the cross.
Literally why he had to go. So the scripture had to be fulfilled. I understand tact. I understand saying to somebody, um, can I talk about the resurrection for now and get off of this, this like pet project you have on, um, Ezekiel or something else.
I get that. And that can be wisdom to do that. But to divorce belief in scripture from the foundation and core of Christianity, it's not consistent with the apostles that he is appealing to.
You say, are you kidding? God raised his servant Jesus from the dead and he has promised salvation for the whole world. Right.
He knows he's promised salvation to the whole world. Right. But a lot of that's because it's in the old testament it's not just something new jesus himself says this in john 5 like can we make jesus a standalone savior um look at john 5 let me see if i can find the actual verse where jesus says this Yeah, this is a challenging section. I'm going to try to explain it as quickly as I can.
But Jesus in John chapter 5 talks about how he proves who he is. And there's various ways he proves who he is. Earlier in the chapter, he talks about the resurrection. He's like raising from the dead.
And that this is going to be something that is used as evidence for Christ. But it's not the only thing that's evidence for Christ. Jesus goes on and he says this in verse 31, John 5, 31. If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. This is not to say Jesus can't go, I'm the Messiah.
Oh, now it's not true because he said it himself. That's not what it means. He means if I'm alone, if I'm the only witness, then my witness is not true.
There needs to be two or three witnesses. Why? Well, that's an Old Testament principle, isn't it? He goes on.
There is another who bears witness of me, and I know that the witness of which he witnesses of me is true. You have sent to John, and he's born witness to the truth. So John the Baptist bore witness of him. It was important for Jesus to have a prophetic forerunner, this guy John the Baptist, somebody other than just him, because this proves that it's the working of God in reality and not just one person making claims. Yeah, I do not receive the testimony from man.
See, Jesus doesn't need John's witness. I say these things so that you may be saved. He wants you to believe, so he gives you more than one reason. He was the burning and shining lamp, and you were willing for a time to rejoice in his light. Then he gives more witnesses.
He's like, it's not just me claiming. then i have other things greater than john's for the works the father has given to me given me to finish those are a witness as well so his resurrection is one of those things it's a great witness it's even better than john the baptist showing up especially to us moderns john the baptist we weren't we weren't there for john we all heard it all after the fact he doesn't feel like as strong of a piece in the evidence pile as maybe it did to those who knew john's preaching before christ showed up and then jesus shows up they had that prophetic situation that helped them But there's more. And the father himself, he's testified of me.
And the father actually has witnessed of Jesus. Now, how has the father done this? How does the father witness of Jesus?
Well. You might see, well, the resurrection. I mean, the resurrection is like the father's affirmation of the goodness and truthfulness of Christ. There's a truth in that. But that's not what Jesus was saying in John 5. He says, you do not have his word abiding in you because whom you sent him, you do not believe his word.
You didn't believe in Jesus because you weren't really trusting in the scriptures. He goes on. You search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life. And these are they which testify of me.
One of the major witnesses to prove who Jesus was, according to Jesus, is the scriptures. Andy Stanley doesn't say this. Jesus does.
He doesn't say this. Peter does. He doesn't say this. Paul does.
The scriptures. John 5 is a neglected section of the text of scripture, and it's a very long chapter, and Jesus gives like multiple witnesses to prove who he is. The scripture is one of them, a very, very important one, and that is neglected.
by Andy's message. It's more than that. It's denied by Andy Stanley's message.
It's this is this is a wrong teaching. This is not true. I want to take one more pass at helping you understand just how important this is. I would like for you to use your imagination.
This is gonna take a lot of imagination. I want to imagine a conversation between Richard Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion. I've read the book.
Some of you've read it. Some of you've heard of it. Some of you've never heard of it.
And Sam Harris. It's so bad. It was so terribly written.
Like the logic of it. The right. Anyway, I'll link a video down below where I talk a little bit about The God Delusion.
I've read several of his books. I listen to his podcast, you know. I'd like to imagine a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.
Again, not bad guys, not evil guys, just different worldview. But they just think religion's the problem. I'd like to imagine a conversation between those two gentlemen. They hate the idea of God.
They don't want anybody to believe in God. They hate the Bible. They think the resurrection of Jesus is also ridiculous and foolish, and they have heard evidence for it. It's not like this is a trump card for them either. And Peter, I mean, you know, how would that go?
I mean, they would begin by delivering their normal blistering critique of all things Old Testament. They would highlight God's genocidal directives to the ancient Jews to go into a land and destroy everybody and everything in the land. Then they would rail.
persuasively, they're very persuasive, railed persuasively about the dangers of religion, and they would cite all the atrocities carried out in the name of religion throughout the centuries, and especially Christian atrocities. In fact, here's a few quotes maybe they would use in their conversation or their debate. So the tactic as a teacher that Andy's doing now is to cause anxiety in his people.
I'm not saying this like he's being a meanie here, but let's just understand what's happening as a teacher. Create anxiety in them so that they'll feel the problem the way Andy feels it. It's an unsolvable dilemma. It's an...
uh, insurmountable issue to overcome the kind of preaching that you get from the, from the atheists. And so the solution is to just move off of those topics entirely and focus on the resurrection. And he's saying Peter would do that, right? That's what he seems to be getting at here. Let's just understand the flow.
And maybe I'll respond to some of the quotes that are here. With Peter, Richard Dawkins, one of his most famous. The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction.
That's a great line. I mean, I don't believe it, but it's just kind of a great line, isn't it? It's interesting because Richard Dawkins said it was a great line. It's funny. He's quoting Richard Dawkins about Richard Dawkins.
And proud of it. A petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak. A vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic. All right.
Was God an ethnic cleanser? Nope. Cause he wasn't targeting ethnicity. He was removing cultures that were wicked.
Driving them out was the focus. That's the reality of the situation. It wasn't about getting rid of ethnicities.
Is he a control freak? No, that's, that's. a stupid statement to make about God almighty, sovereign God, the fact that he allows us any freedom at all and demonstrates he's not.
And it wouldn't, he wouldn't be a freak if he did control everything. Cause it'd be like me writing a computer program and then you complaining that I'm controlling it. I'm not a control freak. I'm the author.
Um, is he bloodthirsty? Uh, he says he takes no delight in the death of the wicked. Scripture tells us that, right? That's Old Testament. He doesn't rejoice in those things.
He pleads with people. He gives people time to repent and stuff like that. So we don't actually see that. Do we see God jealous?
Yep, he is jealous. But that jealousy is not bad. If my wife cheats on me, I'm jealous.
Why? Because her affection is due me. If I cheat on her, she's jealous.
Why? Because I belong to her, right? We belong to each other.
That jealousy is good. It's a healthy jealousy. God's jealousy is appropriate. Entirely right. He's the creator of all things, and we owe him our allegiance and our love and our obedience.
What else was there? He's unforgiving. He's unforgiving in the Old Testament.
Have you read the Old Testament? You've only read the parts you highlighted at that point, Richard Dawkins. Like, you haven't actually looked at the grace that God gives, the forgiveness.
For Cain, he protects the first murderer. The sins of Abraham, God still is over him and protects him. He gives prophets. Every time a prophet goes threatening judgment, it's God offering a chance for people to repent so that they can be forgiven. Look at the story of Jonah.
Jonah didn't even want the Ninevites to be saved. And God's like, I care about these people. So. Yeah, that's not true.
And he goes on and on and on and on. It's quite fascinating. Sam Harris, it's time, he would say to all of us that who are religious people, of all religions everywhere, it's time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
Now Andy's not going to offer a solution to any of these things, I guarantee you. He wants you to feel that you don't have an okay solution. I admit most people who quote Sam Harris aren't going to listen to my answers, but that's a hard issue that they have.
That's not because they don't have answers. Faith according to scripture is not independent of evidence. And I have a video I'll link down below where I go through scripture after scripture to show that definitionally the concept of faith is not what these skeptics often say it is.
It's belief without evidence. That is not the case. That is absolutely not the case in Scripture over and over and over again So I'll link a video down below where it deals with that for those who want to address Sam Harris's ridiculous claim here richard dawkins to be fair much of the bible is not systematically evil it's just plain weird as you would expect and here it is as you would expect a chaotically cobbled together anthology of just joined a document composed revised translated distorted and then improved by hundreds of anonymous authors editors and copyists unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other spanning nine centuries i mean so he's trying to suggest that we've got this like radically changed documents and stuff like that uh all you would say to someone like richard dawkins is can you Can you explain what you mean by that? Can you offer some support for that? Can you prove that?
It's in the proving of these vague claims that it becomes difficult. And I will link a video down below. Yep, I've been doing this for a long time on three video series on all the supposed changes in our Bible and all this other stuff.
And needless to say, that content will all be there if you want to go deep on that topic for like an hour, over two hours of content I've got on this one issue. You're welcome to check it out. But the bottom line is like, yeah, no, it's not, it's not just, it's just, it's just not those things. Like you're just stringing mean words together, but this is not proof of anything.
The, the cohesion, the connection between the old and new Testament is something that is not only true, it's depended on by the apostles themselves when they appeal to Jesus as the Messiah. This is something they rely on and depend on. You can't just abandon it because a mean atheist said a mean thing and used big words.
and put them together in a really clever snarky way of course the bible's a mess he says i mean look at the background sam harris the fact that my continuous and public rejection of christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate i think your reasons for being a christian are yeah offering arrogance and self-confidence is not uh it's not an argument for anything um keep in mind that all these guys richard dawkins sam harris Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dinah, who he hasn't quoted, they all heard the argument for the resurrection of Christ. They all rejected it and they didn't care. His solution is, are you for just the resurrection of Jesus? Okay, that's going to be his solution, it seems. This is not something that they cared about.
Your plan, Andy, doesn't work on the guys that you're talking about. That's really important for you to recognize because they aren't just pure hearted individuals. They're caught up in the web of Satan. They're deceived by the enemy and they're also suppressing the truth.
So before we hear from Peter, what do you do with that? What does your 19-year-old daughter do with that? Your 21-year-old... Sometimes you don't answer a fool according to their folly.
Sometimes you do. It takes wisdom in the moment to do it. You tackle one issue at a time.
You try to find the most important issue that they brought up and you address it, just that one, hopefully, in a conversation. Or you do a whole video where you unpack each individual topic. There's a number of ways to address it. Sometimes you just walk away.
What does the sun do with that? No wonder people are reaching for the door. No wonder people are walking away.
Not because they've read these books, but because this kind of thinking permeates our culture thanks to the internet. It's all one click away. And my friends, you don't have to believe me. Think about it later. If the foundation of your faith is an absolutely true book, good luck with that against this kind of.
What we're seeing is there's going to be plenty of people who agree with Andy here. That's right. I abandoned my faith because I found a problem in the Bible.
And I think you've made a mistake. I think you should have just said, I have something I can't resolve here, but I have plenty of reasons to believe in Jesus that I'm going to lean on and prophecy and things like that. But that's not what Andy's talking about. He is bringing accusations that say that the Bible is sweepingly bad. It is broad strokes, all a bunch of hokum and lameness.
This is not... I found a problem with the Bible. I abandoned my faith. I had this weak sort of all my faith rests on every single thing I believe. Teach me one thing that's not true and it all falls apart.
That's that brutal kind of faith is not what he's actually addressing here. That's something I'm worried about, of course, that people don't have that view. He's like sort of addressing, like, just make sure you don't believe you don't actually rely on the Bible.
Like you should be able to hear Sam Harris and go, yeah, maybe you're right. But I still believe in Jesus. Is that that seems to be what Andy's getting at. which is not what the apostles preached.
Don't hang that on Jesus. Don't hang it on the apostles. And it may be enough for you because you believe that.
You've always believed that. And you're not going to read this stuff anyway. But good luck with your kids and your grandkids.
But I have some great news. The foundation of our faith is not a cleverly cobbled together group of manuscripts. The foundation of our faith, well, I think this is perhaps how Peter might respond. I can't wait to hear what he thinks Peter thinks the foundation of our faith is, even though he calls it like the more sure word of prophecy and how he's, he's like this confirmation of prophecy and the eyewitness accounts that together compromises the things that he's preaching and the things that he knows to be true.
Instead, he just wants to separate the two. Um, but Andy seems to be echoing back the things that these atheists are saying as if they're actually true. That's the most disturbing thing. If my pastor did that. If I was sitting under Andy, Andy would be doing more to harm my faith than those atheists would because he'd be the guy I'd be looking at to help me answer some of those challenges, even just some of them, even answer something that you brought up, give a response to something instead of just affirming it apparently and calling the Bible haste, uh, chaotically cobbled together.
Is that what he said? Manuscripts that are just cobbled together, meaning there wasn't intentionality on the part of God behind it. That's the implication.
Well, as he would say, I certainly am familiar with my own people's history, and I'm sure that the reason I've never questioned it is how I was raised. But gentlemen, none of that. So these words are in Peter's mouth.
Peter's like, I guess I've never questioned it. Nothing you've stated has anything to do with my decision to follow Jesus. But what about the more sure word of prophecy?
Doesn't it have something to do with his decision to follow Jesus? What about the witness that is in the scriptures that affirms and proves and defines what it means that Jesus is the Messiah? You referenced the inadequacy of my reasoning.
So let me explain my reasoning. I actually only have one. I only have one reason that is.
When my teacher was arrested, I ran. And when asked if I knew him, I lied. And when the Romans crucified him, he died.
And in that moment, I was like the two of you. I had no faith and I did not know what to believe. To use your word, I had no reason to believe because I had no idea what to believe.
Now, when the women burst into the room early that morning to tell us the tomb was empty, I didn't assume a miracle. I'm no fool, have you ever seen a crucifixion? No, well, of course you haven't.
But no one survives crucifixion. I assumed, like all of us did, that somebody had simply taken the body, or perhaps the women had gotten confused. and they went to the wrong place, but I was curious, so I went to see for myself.
And before I knew it, I'll admit it, I was running. And I was hopeful. But guys, as John and I stared into that empty cave, we didn't know what to think. Later, Mary Magdalene found us and said she had seen the master alive, but I wouldn't allow myself to believe it.
You have to understand, I just spent three years of my life chasing a wannabe messiah, a false prophet. I wasn't gonna spend another season chasing ghosts. I was just trying to find my way out.
I had a price on my head. If I wasn't careful, I would end up being a ghost myself. So that night, as was our habit, the boys and me, we found a safe house outside of town, the doors were locked, we were huddled together, whispering about everything that had happened in the day, and that's when he came.
Nobody saw him walk in, and I swear to you, the doors were locked. But there he was, very much alive. Now, fellas, I really can't argue with anything you've said, but I would like to clarify one thing. My... Would Peter really say, because he's putting his, ultimately, this is Andy Stanley speaking here.
Except he hasn't actually personally witnessed Christ, right? But he's speaking and calling it Peter. And he says that Peter would say, I can't argue against anything that was just said. I just gave several responses to some of the things that were said. You call God evil for punishing, but actually God is punishing evil.
You just think that evil is not evil. So you see evil where good is, right? You've reversed good for evil, as Isaiah says people do. Like he doesn't, won't do any of that. Peter's like, I can't argue.
I give up. The defense of scripture, I give up. The response of accusations about religion being evil, I won't be like, say, Michael Jones, inspiring philosophy, who digs into the research and goes, let me show you religion is actually good for culture and society, and I can prove it, and historians will agree with this.
No, instead, I give up. I won't even defend it. Whatever you say that's bad about the Bible, I will just say that's fine.
I affirm it. I'm just going to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. And you can chip away at every other aspect of my faith all you want, because that's going to be such a strong faith.
Really? You shoot a bunch of holes into my faith. It's not stronger after that. It's just not.
A reason for believing isn't something I've heard or read or had read to me. I believe what I believe because of what I saw. I watched him die.
I know exactly where he was buried. But God raised him and I saw him and I saw him more than once. That's the reason. That's the only reason for my hope.
Only reason. Andy Stanley's version of Peter is what he wants the church to be. For the church to say, I will not defend the Bible.
I will not defend any other aspects of my faith. I only have the resurrection of Jesus. Everything else is negotiable. I'm not even going to fight you on it.
If you're snarky, you win. That's it. The only reason we believe is because of what Peter, James, You know, John, what they saw, the resurrection of Jesus, that's the only, only, not a reason, the only reason.
That's not what the New Testament says. It's not what the apostles did, as I've exampled her already. But let me share to you this, 1 Corinthians 15. Paul says, for I delivered to you first of all that which I also received. This is a way of them saying in more of a, it's like a formula, Jewish formula for saying this is like official doctrine, we believe.
And he says that Christ died for our sins. According to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. It's important that at the core of Christianity is according to the scriptures or else you come up with a resurrection of Jesus story and then a whole bunch of empty space where there should be a lot of theology about what that means.
A lot of theology, I guess, is not showing up on your screen. Oh, I'm sorry, guys. There it is. I put it on your screen now. And.
This is right here, according to the scriptures. And then in verse four, again, according to the scriptures, this is important. It is definitely not what Andy Stanley does here. Andy Stanley, he's giving you a fake version of the apostle Peter to be a mouthpiece for what Andy Stanley wants to create in his stripped down, minimalized version of Christianity that only believes in the resurrection. And ladies and gentlemen, that is the reason for your hope as well.
And we will pick the story up there. Right. The resurrection is the reason for my hope.
It's not the only reason for my hope, nor is it the only thing I hope in and have hope related to. Where do you go forward from here? You recognize that Andy Stanley represents a minimal Christianity, that is reducing Christianity down to the resurrection of Jesus with very, very few other commitments.
The other commitments he get, he'll probably get many of them from scripture. He just won't necessarily acknowledge that fully. He wants to do this for evangelical reasons.
He wants to outreach to people. He doesn't want them falling away from Christ. He sees what he sees as a crisis in the world, and he has a solution for that problem. My solution has been different.
I will either prioritize the resurrection of Jesus as maybe the first thing to talk about in the case of someone who has a bunch of tertiary questions and doubts. Or I will go through them one at a time, find the biggest issues and defend them. I'll defend the scripture wherever I can to the best of my ability because it's true and it is part of my Christian faith. I think that that's a better approach. It takes more work, but it results in healthy Christians.
Andy Stanley's church has now been sliding further and further downhill since six years ago when he delivered this message. And I know that I'm just being honest with you guys. If my pastor and my church was teaching this, I would have tried to bring correction within the church. and if i wasn't able to i would absolutely be looking for a new fellowship this is this is bad stuff