While Christian evidences and apologetics are valuable tools for believers, they are not the primary means of conversion, which is solely the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. Using the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Examples illustrate that even a miraculous sign, like someone rising from the dead, would not convince those who reject the established Word of God. The rich man's eternal torment stemmed not from a lack of evidence, but from a disregard for Moses and the prophets, highlighting that faith comes from hearing the gospel. Therefore, while evidences offer intellectual satisfaction and a deeper appreciation for God's creation, they serve to confirm faith and attract attention, ultimately pointing to the necessity of the gospel message itself for salvation.
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Returning tonight to the Gospel by Luke chapter sixteen. To those who weren't here last Wednesday night, this is the conclusion of the first part of a message on the subject of the limitations of apologetics and Christian evidences in evangelism. We're dealing with the subject of evangelism, apologetics and Christian evidences. And we're using here the story of the rich man and Lazarus. So let us read this passage again, and I'll try to pull the threads together and conclude the area on Christian evidences and move into apologetics.
Now, in verse nineteen we read, there was a certain rich man. which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid at his gate full of sores and desiring to be fed with a crumb which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receiveth thy good things. and likewise Lazarus evil things. But now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you, there is a great golf fix, so that they which would pass from thence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us. That would come from then. And he said, I pray thee, therefore, Father, that thou wouldst send him to my father's house.
For I have five brethren that they may testify unto that he may testify unto them. Let they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They are Moses and the prophet. Let them hear them. And he said, Nay, Father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, if they hear not Moses and the prophet, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Now let us pray together. Our Father, we thank you tonight that we can gather together and open thy precious word and expect thee to graciously minister to our heart.
We thank you that you have committed the gospel unto us. Not only have you saved us by the hearing of the gospel, but you have committed unto us the spreading of the gospel to the entire world. And in each generation we have a whole church to evangelize a whole world. Help us, our Father, that we may so live that we can, that it can be said of us, as was said of David, he served his generation by the will of God. Help us to do the same. And we thank you that we can expectantly come into thy presence and ask and receive, because we ask in the name of thy dear son.
We pray for those special needs in our midst. We think of Brother Sutton, who is normally with us, but he's laid aside. We ask you to graciously undertake in his behalf. We think of Miss Esmer Sutton and ask you to undertake likewise for her. Then there's Jamie Smith, who is able to get around a little, but needs much help in the doing of it. And we just ask you to graciously work in that life as well. We think of Roy's father-in-law and ask you to undertake for him and give him that peace that flows from a heart that he settled, knowing that the blood of Christ has procured the remission of sins for guilty sinners.
Then our Father, we thank you for what you've done on behalf of Bob Montgomery, and we pray for a full recovery, not only for him, but for Mildred Petrie and others who are laid aside and who are having difficulty. It was good to see Jane Faust with us Sunday, able to be with us and enjoy the ministry of the Word of God. to do exceeding abundantly above all that we may ask or think. You have done this many times in many ways under various circumstances. And for this young lady from Malaman's Christian school who is laid aside with a disease that they don't know what it is, we ask you to graciously give comfort and peace and above all else wisdom to the doctors and the others who attend that young lady.
We thank you that we can come and spread our needs before you. And like Nehemiah of old, who came into your presence, he said, O Lord, hear, O Lord, look, O Lord do. And we ask this, not being presumptuous, but we're seeking to ask in accordance with thy will. Then, Father, if there are any in our midst, from one week to another, in our various meetings, who only profess. But their conversion is not really genuine. They have no genuine peace.
They have no genuine assurance. All we pray are, God, that thou wilt convict of sin and bring to a genuine conversion experience. that they may know what they believe, why they believe it, and rejoice in the salvation of our God, and that their lives will conform to their lips. To this end, we just cast ourselves upon these, for we are helpless in producing conversion, for only you can do it. And we ask you to graciously work through the preaching of the gospel, for we pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen. Now, we're living in an age when many seek the witness for Christ, and they feel it's so necessary to know philosophy so that they can speak on the level of the intellectual today. And today is the day of the philosopher. Therefore, if we're going to speak about apologetics or Christian evidences, we have to define our terms. what we mean by these terms. First of all, as I said last week, what do we mean by evangelism? By evangelism, we simply mean the preaching of the evangel.
It means the spreading of the gospel, the preaching of the gospel with power and in winning the loss to Christ. It is to proclaim the message of man's complete ruin and sin and God's perfect remedy in Christ. That is evangelism. Now, what do we mean by apologetics? That's a big word. Well, we find the word apologetics in that word apologetics. It has to do with the defense and proofs of Christianity. In other words, apologetics has reference to the rationale of our belief, defining what we really believe.
First Peter chapter three verse fifteen is usually used for apologetics where it says, oh just flip my mind, be ready. Three fifteen of first Peter says, but sanctify the Lord God in your heart and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason. And the reason is the rationale for the faith and the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. So in order to be able to give an answer, we should be able to define our belief, to be able to tell somebody else what we believe and why we believe it.
Now, Christian evidences. Christian evidences is closely related to apologetics. but it includes the miracles and archaeology, and especially the fact of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now it's interesting to take the passage that is before us of the rich man and Lazarus, and we look at the limitations of Christian evidences that's found in this passage. And I say that because I believe it is very important because you can know a lot about Christian evidences and still be lost.
The rich man was. The gates of heaven were closed to this man forever. He's in a lost eternity. He's in the place of torment. Now, the limitation of Christian evidences comes down to the empirical sign gift or the miracles that are written about in the Gospel account. When miracles did occur on rare occasions in human history, the miracles in and of themselves never brought any inward change in the person who saw them.
This is very important to grasp. It did not work an inward change. A good example of this is what I mentioned last week in the closing verses of John's Gospel chapter two. In John chapter two we read in verses twenty-three to twenty-five the word. Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men. and needed not that any should testify a man, for he knew what was in man.
And that automatically leads to the third chapter. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do the miracles that you do except God be with him. And our Lord expounded the Nicodemus, who had beheld the miracles. who were studying the miracles, the necessity of the new birth. And he taught him the truth of the love of God and the gift of God's dear son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Now this was also true of the multitude in John six that was fed with a little boy's lunch by the Lord.
They wanted to make him king. And the Lord said, you want to make me king. Not because of who I am, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. You had a free lunch. And of course, when our Lord expounded the truth of the bread of life, and especially in that truth that salvation is the result of a divine act of God, many of those who had followed him, his own disciples went back and walked no longer with him. And in verse sixty-six of John six, Our Lord turns to his own disciples and said, will you also go away? He gave them the opportunity to back off.
And it was then that Peter said, to whom can we go? You alone have the words of eternal life. Now, the story of the rich man in Lazarus in Luke chapter six, his response to Abraham tells us why the gates of heaven are forever closed to him. It was not because he had no concern for his brother. He had concern for his brother. Furthermore, it is not because he didn't have respect to the word of God. It was because he had no respect for it. That was the reason for it. It was the word of God. Abraham said, Your brothers have Moses and the prophets.
Let them hear them. So what you have in the discussion between Abraham and the rich man is this, the rich man desired a miracle for his five brothers. Empirical evidence is what he asked for. Abraham replied, if they will not believe the word of God, they will not believe Moses and the prophet, or they will not believe if somebody rose from the dead. They will not believe a miracle either. So we are shut up to say, Moses and the prophet are utterly irrelevant to my brothers, is basically what he was saying.
My brothers won't listen to the Old Testament, but they will believe if somebody arose from the dead. He had real concern for his brothers, but he had disrespect for the word of God. And you see, Christian evidences are a great thing, as I'm going to show you in a moment. But we got to remember that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And we must be very careful in this day of seeking to give people explanations that we base what we tell them squarely upon the word of God and make much of the gospel.
Now, let us consider for a moment the fact that miracles were never intended to be a substitute for genuine faith in Scripture. They were never intended to be a substitute. Miracles only confirmed the claims of the divine messengers. Whether the divine messenger was Moses, or our Lord Himself, or Elijah, or Elisha, or Daniel. It only confirmed the claims of the divine messengers, that their claims were true.
Now that brings us to the message of the Word of God. Now in contrast to the intricate philosophizing that is so much in vogue today in Christian circles. Even when our Lord was performing his miracles, he emphasized the priority of the Word of God. To the people in John chapter five, he said, You search the scriptures. In them you think you have eternal life. But they are they which testify of me. The scriptures speak of me.
in the raising of Lazarus in John chapter eleven. It's John chapter eleven. Many of the Pharisees came to see Lazarus who had been raised from the dead. But at the same time they sought to kill both Lazarus and the Lord Jesus. Well, there is that delight and desire to see a miracle. And that hasn't changed down through the history of humankind. There's that desire to see a miracle. But the miracles do not produce faith.
It is the Word of God that does. Well, you say, what's the value of Christian evidences then? Ah, here's the joy of Christian evidences. And the same is true when it comes to the study of apologetics. Nowhere does the Scripture indicate that the Spirit uses any instrument other than the Word of God to bring true conviction and conversion. Nowhere. This is why the Word of God is so important. And we can't say that often enough. Nowhere does the Scripture ever indicate that God uses anything.
other than the word of God to bring conviction and conversion. I want you to turn with me to Isaiah fifty-five. Isaiah fifty-five, there's some great verses here in this fifty-fifth of Isaiah. We'll begin at verse ten and read verses ten and eleven. He uses an illustration of nature. He says, For as the rain cometh down in the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater.
So shall my word be. When rain comes upon the earth, it brings results. It causes the parched land to yield and increase in truth to this. The same way in verse eleven, So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void. But it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the things whereunto I sent it. This teaches me that the God of the word is sovereign, that his word will not return void. And the only way that that can be is that God will accomplish His purposes through His word.
And He does. How do I know? Hebrews chapter four, verses twelve and thirteen. Verses I'm sure that all of you can quote. For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. piercing even to the dividing of thunder, of soul and spirit, of the joints and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thought and the intent of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in any sight, for all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. And God uses the word of God to penetrate heart.
It is the word of God. Now, having said that, and laying... strong emphasis in evangelism upon the word of God. What about Christian evidences? Oh, friends, there are great values to the child of God. And if I can get this little bit across, I will have accomplished something. We take a story in Luke sixteen and we show that it wasn't a miracle that the five brethren needed. They needed the gospel. They needed to hear the word of God through Moses and the prophet. That's what they needed.
But to the child of God, Christian evidences are important for this reason. Number one, they give you a great degree of intellectual satisfaction. They really do. When you study the miracles of our Lord, when you study the resurrection of Jesus Christ, When you study the evidences that God has given in nature concerning himself, they give you intellectual satisfaction. And we need that as the children of God. One of the big things that the world throws at the children of God is that we're ignorant. We haven't studied and done our homework.
But all when you study Christian evidences, it does something to you. It really does. The second thing it does for the child of God. And I believe that this is something that we need today. That when I talk about intellectual satisfaction, I'm talking about that encouragement that we get and can have day by day as a children of God. We can get encouragement from nature if we look for it. We can get encouragement from the Word of God when we consider the signs that God wrought among men. But there's a second thing, a deeper appreciation for the marvels and complexities of God's universe.
Sometimes I sit, I stand or sit and meditate upon some of the things I see in nature. I'll just give you one illustration. One morning I went out to feed the dogs. Dogs have to be said. The Bible says a righteous man regardless the life of his beast. So I go out to feed the dogs. And when I went out to feed the dog, I picked up this dog dish from the day before, and there were two ants in that dog dish. And you know what I did to those ants? I stepped on them. And then I began to think about what I did. I stepped on two ants. And I wondered, I began to wonder, I wonder what the size of the heart is of that ant.
See, Bob Montgomery had a doctor hold his heart. in his hands make holes in it and sew some vein onto it I tell you that's a marvel I don't care how what you think that's a marvel but what's the size of the heart of an ant and I began to think I wonder what the size of the lungs of that ant are and various things concerning and I marveled and I worshiped You see, the intricacies of the universe. The God who loved me and gave himself for me created the earth as well as us and as well as an elephant who has a much larger heart than we have.
You see, God and the complexities of his universe, he's not only made big things, he's made very small things. and how important they are. All the appreciation this gives you for God. But more than that, it becomes a helpful background for material and in various studies of biblical revelation. Oh, what a help it is. If you can sit with an intellectual and you can talk to him about archaeology, and the finds of archaeology and how they proved the Bible and then turned from that, use it as a springboard to speak of genuine faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
These things are hell. While the Word of God, while they won't convert, Christian evidences won't convert, but they describe the God that we worship and that we adore and the God who sent his sons. and the God who has an eternal purpose, and that eternal purpose is in Christ Jesus the Lord, as we read in Ephesians chapter three, by whom all things have been created. What a privilege. But you see, Christian evidences cannot create. They cannot sustain, nor can they increase faith in God. If that were the case that they could, the Palestinian archaeologists would all be believers.
but ninety percent of them aren't. Maybe more than that. Most of the archaeologists are not believers. But if Christian evidences could create and could sustain faith, then they would be believers, you see. But how do we get faith? Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. But I'll tell you, the blessing of Christian evidences to the believer is it gives us a way to attract and to hold the attention of the unbeliever so that we can tell him what he really needs he needs the gospel he needs the gospel of Christ now God has given us who have been saved by his grace a message that convicts and genuinely converts it is a gospel we should tell it expecting the Holy Spirit to work in and through, not our intellectual ability, but in and through the Word of God.
It's not the intellectual ability of the preacher, but it is the power of the Spirit working through the Word of God, and we really have to believe that. For unless we do, we'll be very useless in spreading the message of evangelism. You see, the saddest story, or the saddest part of the story of the rich man in Nazareth, the story closes with him arguing and unrepentant. He's unrepentant in spite of the flames of a lost eternity, and in spite of the fact that Abraham, the friend of God, told him what is really necessary.
Isn't that sad? Oh, friends, let us lay hold of the truth. The rich man was still rejecting the word of God, and he's still arguing with the word. I said, thanks be unto God for the opening of the eyes of his people through the word and it's as we proclaim the word now I rejoice in Christian evidences they just have done something to me they've simply confirmed my faith in the word of God they didn't create it it just helped confirming it Christian evidences what a blessing hopefully they have to be put in the right place.
And the same we'll see with a subject of apologetics. Our time's gone and I'll have to make the announcements tonight. I don't know of any announcements that need to be made other than the meetings on the Lord's Day, beginning with the Lord's Supper. And I'd just like to mention a few things. concerning the sick. Brother Sutton is coming along. He's not hurting as much today as he was yesterday and the day before. So I'm sort of thinking by about Sunday he'll be back with us. I'm looking for him on Sunday to be back with us.
Roy Rothland told us at AT&T at noon time at the Bible study there that there's a young lady at Alamance Christian School She was a cheer or she is a cheerleader, but she came down with a disease that they can't diagnose at Chapel Hill. She can't walk. And her blood is coming to the surface of her skin. Is that right, Lord? And we need to pray for that girl. That if she's a child of God, that her faith will not fail in the midst of the trial. Because that is a real trial for a young person in high school.
And then we need to remember Mildred Petre, who asked for prayer Sunday morning at Sunday school. She's having real difficulty with her leg. When she stands on it for a little while, she has terrible pain and has to get off of it. She cannot work. And it probably is coming from something in her back. She may need surgery. She's trying to get rid of the problem with therapy. So we need to remember her in a special way. And of course we have a report on Jane South. Everybody does. So they, who are on our prayer list for cancer, who are done with cancer is Carol Edgerton, Sarah Page, Ms.
Granoff, Elsie Wright, Clyde Kirkman, May Helms and Anne Conklin. And then they who have multiple sclerosis, Elton Rudd. Heart problems are Ms. Alford and also a good brother, Bob Montgomery. And then spack and spine problems, Audrey Thompson. And it seems every Lord's day that I see her come in, She seems to be bent over just a wee bit further to me. But I'm glad that she's able to get out.
And I'm glad when I see her in the meeting. And then the shut-ins, Oscar and Bobby O'Hare. And this is a difficult case. Bobby will never be any better. In fact, one of these days, he's going to slip away home. And when only the Lord knows. Then remember the special prayer of those in our church family, Esmer Sutton, Bob Montgomery, Janie Smith, and especially we need to keep before the Lord our Sunday school and the desire that the Sunday school grows. Then those in rest homes are young people at home in school in the military.
And then our missionary family, Sarah Murdoch, And by now she's back in Bolivia, had a nice letter from Larry Pell, who is the director of SIM, telling a bit about the work of Sarah and his thankfulness for our help toward her. And then the Grady Hope family in Kenya, Africa, as they work at Rift Valley Academy, West and Marianna Steppen. In the United States, And in Bolivia, he, I think, is at home at the present time.
So he and his wife and the children are there in Warrenville in a bordering town of Wheaton. Mrs. Patterson in the Virgin Islands, our radio program on WSML. It's amazing. I get a note once in a while. concerning that five-minute broadcast that he's held on a Tuesday morning than Radio W.H.P.E. and High Point and the Precious Child Ministries. And many weeks there is more than one who contacts the Precious Child Ministries to whom they minister in regards to unwanted pregnancies and what the Word of God has to say concerning abortion and the importance and the sanctity of life.
So let's keep these before us and we'll go to prayer at this time and I'll ask Brother Moody if you will to close the meeting tonight this portion in prayer.