Irresistible

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to Your Move, where we help you make better decisions and live with fewer regrets. I'm Andy Stanley and I'll be your guide. Did you know that 75 million Americans identify as either atheist, agnostic, or not religious at all? 75 million. And most of these folks are under 30 years old, your kids or maybe your grandkids age. For many people, faith has just become, well, irrelevant. Christianity in particular. But it wasn't always that way. Once upon a time, the Christian faith was irresistible. The original version, the version depicted in the New Testament, well, it's still very much irresistible. And what did the original, the irresistible version look like and what did it sound like? Stick around and we'll talk about it today right here on Your Move. Our world changed. Our world changed because of the internet.

0:54 And because of the internet, now all the information and the misinformation in the world is at everyone's fingertips, including children, middle school students, high school students, and college students. What you may not know is this, that after 9-11, 2001, after 9-11, and after we were, you know, the World Trade Centers were attacked and our country was attacked. Following that, in fact, in the two or three years following that, there was a firestorm of religious skepticism that swept our country. Initially, it was anti-Islam skepticism, but now, very, very, very quickly, it turned into skepticism about all religion. And some very witty, very educated, and very convincing atheist authors published several books and sold millions and millions of copies. They became rock stars on university campuses.

1:47 They became rock stars in debates. And unlike years before where you had to buy a ticket and attend a debate, unlike years before where you had to buy a ticket and drive to a city and actually show up on a university campus to hear someone speak, those days are long gone. And suddenly everybody in our country, everybody in the world, but everybody in our country had access to all of this misinformation as this group of people began to really war against all religion. And over time, it turned to Christianity in particular. And it fueled the rise of something that many of you, most of you know about, that all of you should know about. It fueled the rise in our country of what are called the nones, the N-O-N-E-S, the people who are religiously unaffiliated. Currently, and all of this happened while we're working hard and creating churches and baptizing kids and doing all this cool stuff, right? Currently, about 25% of everybody in America, 25% of Americans would consider themselves religiously unaffiliated. Now, that's a high number, but the staggering statistic and the thing that bothers me and I want it to bother you is this. In 2007, it was just 16%.

2:57 16% to 25%, that is millions and millions of people. And the thing that bothers me the most and the thing that I want to bother you the most is this, that 35% of men and women, 35% of men and women who were under 35 years old considered themselves religiously unaffiliated and most of them grew up in church. Most of them grew up going to camp. Most of them grew up hearing the same kinds of sermons that many of us heard growing up. And maybe most alarmingly of all is this, that 70% of the unaffiliated, the nuns, the non-religiously affiliated, about 70% view the Bible as completely irrelevant. Ancient myth, ancient literature, certainly not inspired. And more and more and more, there is a movement to argue that the Bible is not only fiction, that the Bible is harmful.

3:52 And when this group of people are surveyed, and the Pew Research Center does these surveys every other year, and they get more and more and more statistics, at the end of the day, when this group of people are asked, Why did you leave your religion? The primary answer is simply this, they just don't believe any more. And I'm gonna pause there and say this. For some of you, this is not somebody out there somewhere. This is the story of your children, isn't it? This is the story of your grandchildren. This is what happened to your sister-in-law, your brother-in-law, and you just don't understand it because they heard all the things. You heard they believed all the things. you have believed. And now when you have conversations with them, it's like, they're not even antagonistic. I mean, they're not even defensive. They just basically say, that's good for you. That's your truth. I don't believe it anymore. And you can't even figure out what it is. They don't believe anymore. And you can't figure out why they don't believe it. For others of you, you are right in the middle of this with your children or your grandchildren, your college son, your college age daughter, your son or daughter, or your niece or nephew that's in graduate school. And fueling this mass exodus, fueling this mass exodus is this, that once upon a time, once upon a time, a person had to read the Bible to know what was in the Bible. Once upon a time, when most of us grew up, if you wanted to know what was in the Bible, you actually had to go find one, borrow one, steal one out of a hotel, you know, drawer. Imagine stealing a Bible. That's kind of weird, you know? When I was a kid, when I was a kid, my dad's pastor, he and he was parked in his reserved parking spot at First Baptist Atlanta, and somebody broke in his car and stole his Bible.

5:28 It's the only thing they stole. I thought, what are they gonna do, read it? Thou shalt not steal, huh? Look at there, you know, anyway. The point being, the only way to find, in the old days, the only way to discover what was in the Bible, you had to have one in your hands and read it. And most people in a bygone age respected the Bible, even though they hadn't read it, and most people hadn't read it. In fact, your experience is like mine. some adult, when you were a child, they gave you your first Bible. They said, this is God's holy word. It's all true. And you believed it was all true and you had not even read it. And I'll let you in on a little secret. Let's keep this in the room. Chances are the adult that handed you your Bible and told you that it was all true, they hadn't read it all either. But that's just the way our culture worked because everybody had so much respect for the Bible. Very few people read We left it to priests and preachers to tell us what was in it. But those days are long gone because now you, your kids, your grandkids, and the future generation and this generation can discover what else is in the Bible without even owning or opening or touching a Bible.

6:40 This calls for a different approach to what we're doing. And post 9-11, this created the perfect storm, the perfect opportunity, and skeptics exploited, skeptics exploited a flaw in the modern version of Christianity because they had something that previous generations of atheists and skeptics didn't have. They had the internet. They had an all access pass to every single curious person in the world. and they have leveraged this extraordinary tool to preach their gospel of disbelief to undermine the credibility of Christianity. And they have exploited a flaw in our modern post-Reformation version of Christianity, a flaw that is very difficult, almost impossible to exploit in a culture that holds the Bible in high esteem.

7:34 And the flaw is simply this, it's a false assumption. It is a shared false assumption regarding the foundation of Christianity. And when I say a shared assumption, I mean this, that Christians assume this, non-Christians assume this, post-Christians assume this, and this false assumption that has been with us since the Reformation has finally begun to take root and we're finally paying a price for it. And it's why I wanted to talk to you about it and it's why I wrote the book, Irresistible. Since the Reformation, and then we're not gonna go back and do a lot of history, but since the Reformation, Protestant leaders, teachers and preachers have taught that the scripture is the final authority for Christians. This was the whole point of the Reformation, that the church isn't the final authority, that the scripture, the Bible, is the final authority for Christians. In fact, most of us grew up hearing that or thinking that, and even if you didn't grow up in church, you assume, well, the Bible is marching orders for Christians.

8:28 So consequently, for generations and generations and generations, preachers have said, the Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible teaches, the Word of God says, the Word of God says, and when you hear the word of God says and the Bible says, basically what they're communicating is at the end of the day, the bottom line is if the Bible says it, that's all we need to know. If the Bible teaches it, we believe it. If the Bible says it, then that settles it. And that kind of language, generation after generation after generation has left generations of Christians assuming that the Bible is the foundation of our faith. Don't leave early. It's not. And it never has been. But most modern Christians think it is. Most of the Christians that left church thought it was. Most of the generation that walked away from church walked away from church assuming it is.

9:21 And modern skeptics and those that are undermining the Christian faith assume that it is the foundation of our faith as well. And this assumption has left many with the impression, and understandably so, that as the Bible goes, so goes. the Christian faith. If you can undermine the credibility of the Bible, all 66 books or any one of the 66 books or any part of any one of the 66 books of the Bible, that Christianity comes tumbling down. As you've heard me say before, it's like a 66-card house of cards. And we're gonna pull out Genesis or we're gonna pull out Leviticus or we're gonna pull out something in Revelation or we're gonna pull out some supposed, you know, contradiction in the resurrection stories out of the gospels. And if one part of it isn't true, then the Bible isn't true. And if the Bible isn't true, Christianity is false. In fact, one of the most prominent new atheists in the introduction to one of his books, I'm not gonna mention his name or the book right now, we're gonna talk about that in the series to come.

10:20 In the introduction of the book, he says this. He says, come on, Christians, this is how it works. If Christianity is true, then I have a frightful surprise waiting for me when I die. But if the Bible is false, then Christianity is false and you're all living. a fairy tale. This is the assumption of the modern church. And I understand how we got there and I'm not being critical of anybody, but the time has come for us to call out and draw a circle around this false assumption. Not for our sake, I'm fine. Not for your sake, you're probably fine. For your children's sake, for your grandchildren's sake, for this generation's sake and for the sake of the next generation. And with the help of the internet, the skeptics have done a masterful job exploiting this false assumption about Christianity. And what has the church done? How has the church responded? In my opinion, the church has done nothing.

11:14 Churches preach and teach as they've always preached and they've always taught. They keep preaching the same way. They just tell children, here's your Bible. It's all true, believe it. The children believe it because the children will believe anything an adult tells them to believe. And then they graduate from high school and we send them into an increasingly post-Christian culture. And when they come home with real academic questions, we give them Sunday school answers and no wonder they're walking away from faith. Now there is a group that has responded to all of this, some Christian authors and apologists, and they've written many, many books defending the Bible. And I think, I'm not exaggerating, I think I have read every single one of their books, Ask My Wife. It's all I listen to because I love apologetics and I love this stuff, but here's what I know. you are not gonna get a 25-year-old, a 22-year-old, or your brother-in-law or your sister-in-law to wade through a 250-page book.

12:10 And when that didn't answer all their questions, give them another 250-page book. So if you're really interested in knowing how to defend the Bible, there's lots of information. But you're not gonna get anyone's undivided attention for that long. And somebody has to be really interested. Somebody has to be looking for something to substantiate their faith to wade through those fabulous books. Given enough time and interest, you can defend the Bible. So years ago, I decided that's not the best approach, even though I love those books and recommend them all the time. And in our next series, I'm going to recommend two or three of those books to you. Years ago, I was watching one particular atheist do an incredible talk at a university. It wasn't a debate. He was just speaking and the crowd was going wild. I mean, he was completely dismantling the Old Testament, dismantling parts of the New Testament. You know, Christian, the Bible is false.

13:03 The Bible has contradictions. The Bible can't be trusted. And as the Bible goes, so goes Christianity. And the crowd was just cheering. And I sat watching him on my computer and I thought, I gotta do something. And I don't think I wanna spend the rest of my life teaching apologetics and trying to prove to people that the Bible is true, because what we need to do, what I feel like I need to do, was address the fatal flaw. the fatal flaw that as the Bible goes, so goes Christianity. So about eight or nine years ago, I changed my approach to preaching and teaching. Contrary to some people's opinion, I did not change what I believed. In fact, just the opposite, just so you know, I am more convinced than ever that following Jesus will make your life better and make you better at life. And you should follow Jesus, even if you don't believe you should follow. I'm so convinced of that. I'm more convinced than ever. In fact, I don't know why everybody wouldn't want the message of Christianity to be true.

13:58 I just don't understand why people who are skeptical and people who don't believe wouldn't be asking, okay, I don't believe, but as the person, one of the people that Jesus healed in the gospels, he said, help my unbelief. I wanna believe it's true. I wanna believe that in the end, everybody gets justice. I wanna believe that in the end, there's forgiveness. I wanna believe that in the end, there's a personal God who's invited me to call him father. Why wouldn't everybody want that? I'm totally sold out to the message of the gospel, the message of Jesus. And not only did I change what I believe, I didn't change my view or my respect for the Bible. None of that changed. But what did change was my approach to talking about the Bible. I stopped saying anything that would support this notion that as the Bible goes, so goes Christianity. And I embrace what I believe is the approach of our first century brothers and sisters as it relates to faith. And their approach was this. It was an approach that argues from and anchors to the event of the resurrection rather than the authority of the Bible. And the reason I feel so confident about this is because this was the way the first and second century Christians survived and how the church thrived.

15:11 Because long before, long before there was Christian scripture, long before there was Christian scripture, there were Christians. So I've done my best in these past few years to step back, to step back and to teach and to preach from the standpoint of anchoring your faith and the faith of your students and the faith of our churches to the event of the resurrection rather than the authority of scripture. How many times have you heard me say this? If someone predicts their own death and resurrection and pulls it off, I go with whatever that person says. I have said this every single chance I get and I'll tell you why. Because when you begin to doubt and your son or your daughter begins to doubt, I want you to know that you can anchor your faith and their faith not to the 66 books of the Bible, but to the event that launched this thing to begin with.

16:11 Every Easter for the past five Easter's, I've begun our services the same way. I've said this, hey, if you're here today and this is your first time in one of our churches, here's what we want you to know. We believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, but not because the Bible tells us so, it is better than that. I've said that the last five Easter's in a row. Why? I wanna anchor people's faith and I want you to anchor your faith to the event of the resurrection, not the 66 books of the Bible. Do I think there's anything wrong with the 66 books of the Bible? No, this is not about me. This isn't even about you. This is about a generation we're losing that we're losing unnecessarily because I'm convinced 99% of the people who have walked away from faith did not walk away from anything that had anything to do with the essentials of our faith. And that has to change. And I want all those people to come back because I believe that following Jesus will make your life better and make you better at life.

17:07 The first century Christians, the second century Christians, they knew what we either didn't know or have forgotten, that the foundation of our faith is not, it is written. The foundation of our faith is something happened. Our epic story does not begin in Genesis. Our epic story begins Easter morning when disheartened and sad and brokenhearted and disillusioned men and women stared into an empty tomb and met their resurrected friend and rabbi who they would later declare as their savior. Our story, come on, your story, your children's story, our grandchildren's story does not hang in the balance of whether 66 ancient documents are all accurate at every level and can be proven true. The story of our faith hangs on a single event. Now, if you think I'm making this up or I'm discounting the importance of scripture, please pay attention.

18:02 In fact, the apostle Paul, who brings us about half the New Testament said it best. The apostle Paul in the book Irresistible, I spent a lot of time on this. The apostle Paul who, and this is unimaginable, in the course of a day, went from a law abiding Pharisee who was so committed to the law and the temple that he was rounding up Christians and having them tortured and executed. In the course of a day, he went from a law abiding Pharisee to a Jesus follower in one day. And when the scales fell from his eyes, he not only could see physically, he had extraordinary clarity about the contrast between the old covenant and the new. And the apostle Paul himself says, there's only one thing, there's only one thing that serves as the foundation of our faith. And if this goes away, our faith goes away. And it was not something written. Here's the words of the apostle Paul himself. This is big.

18:53 He said, and if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless. And so is your faith and your faith and your faith and your faith and your faith and your faith and your faith and your faith. So wait, wait, wait, wait, Paul, that's kind of risky. I mean, you're saying the whole thing teeters on a single event, Paul would say, yes, do not be mistaken. This is not the it is written religion. This is the something happened religion. And if this happened, game on. God has done something in the world for the world. And if this did not happen, ignore my preaching and ignore your fairytale faith and go back to the temple or go back to your polytheism or your paganism because Christianity is not true. Christianity rests on a single event. And the apostle Paul did not say this about anything else.

19:52 The Bible did not create Christianity. I want the next generation to know that. I want them to know if they decide to walk away from the Christian faith, they're not walking away from a book. They are walking away from an event that has been documented. And more importantly, they are walking away from a person. Just as the constitution did not found our nation, Just as the company handbook did not start your company, the Bible did not launch Christianity. Put it a different way. Your birth certificate didn't birth you.

20:33 Your birth certificate documents you. When people came to the hospital after your mother had you, nobody asked to see the birth certificate. They wanted to see the baby. And the thing I love about you and I love about our church, for 23 years, we've been showing people the baby. And I say, we keep doing that. And if it means we have to do some things that other people aren't willing to do to reach some people that other people aren't reaching, that's what we do because that's what you have always done. The baby that showed up as an adult man on the banks of the Jordan River and John the Baptist looked at him and said, oh no, or oh yes, or oh good, or oh my, it's about to happen. The promise given to Abraham all those years ago is about to come true right here in our generation. Behold, the final lamb of God who has come to take away the sin, your sin and my sin, the sin of the whole world.

21:30 The baby who grew to be a man and the apostle Paul would say about him later in Ephesians 2.20. And if you doubt what I'm saying, you need to look up Ephesians 2.20 later. You know what the apostle Paul said about Jesus? He said, the foundation of our faith is a person, Jesus. The cornerstone, the very first stone laid, the thing that determines everything else about the building, the foundation of our faith is not it is written. The foundation of our faith is something happened. God sent his son into the world. The same baby that grew to be a man that after his resurrection would gather his closest followers and he would say something that was just crazy. Nobody would say this unless there was some evidence to back it up. and they'd seen him die. They knew where he was buried. Several of them had breakfast later with him on the beach. And now there he was alive in front of all of them. And he makes a statement that I hope you'll wrestle with. He says, no, but who would say this? All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Do you know what the final authority for your life as a Christian is?

22:35 it's a person. It's Jesus. My final authority is Jesus. The foundation of my faith is Jesus. And nobody loves the Bible in this room or listening more than I do. In fact, one of the great things about being an empty nester, not to make you jealous, but Sandra and I can get up early in the morning with our coffee and we can read our Bibles longer. And we are such nerds. We sit around and talk about theology and that we just love it, love it, love it. Nobody loves the Bible more than me, but the foundation of my faith is not a book. It's a person. That's what Paul said. And the authority is Jesus. That's what Jesus said. So as the Bible goes, Christianity doesn't go. The skeptics have it wrong. Unfortunately, most Christians have it wrong. The people who walked away had it wrong. And we together are going to get it right. It's not as the Bible goes, so goes Christianity. It's as Jesus goes, so goes Christianity or so goes, or Christianity goes. And if you wanna know how Jesus goes, don't cross-examine the Bible.

23:35 That's what skeptics do. To take down Christianity, you'll need to cross-examine a list of people and a list of unexplainable events. You don't cross-examine the Bible. You have to start with a document called Matthew and ask Matthew, where did all this intricate detail come from? And when you're finished with Matthew and you're able to write Matthew off, the game has just begun because then you've got to wrestle with Mark, who tradition says got his information from the apostle Peter. And once you've discounted Mark, you're just getting started. Then you've got to go to Luke, who said, I thoroughly investigated all these things. Then you've got to go to John, who lived to be an old man. When you're done with John, then you've got to take on Peter. Then you've got to take on James. Did I mention that James is the brother of Jesus? Did I mention he was stoned illegally and he went to his grave believing his brother was his Lord?

24:29 Before you discount Christianity, you gotta wrestle with James. And then if you get through all that, which you won't, then you're confronted with the apostle Paul who's smarter than you can ever imagine being. The apostle Paul who said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on. I was a proponent of first century Judaism and I became a Jesus follower. I have been there and I have done that. And I have spent time with Peter and I have spent time with John and I have spent time with the other apostles and I've been to Jerusalem. I'm telling you, God has done something among us and the entire old covenant was pointing to this period of time. And this man, Jesus rose from the dead. And after you've taken on each one of those individually, then you have some more explaining to do. You've got to explain the survival of the church, sandwiched between, again, empire and temple? Then, once you get through that, you've gotta explain Jesus' extraordinarily detailed account of the destruction of the temple.

25:27 How in the world did he give that much detail to something that was actually going to happen that was considered impossible when he made the prediction? Why is there no mention of the four-year Jewish war between Rome and the people of Israel in any of the gospels or any of the literature of the New Testament? Why is there no mention of the destruction of the temple in any of the gospels or any of the documents of the New Testament because it hadn't happened yet. These documents weren't written 100 years after the fact. They were written while the temple was still standing. You gotta explain all of that. You can have Genesis. You can have Leviticus. You can have Exodus. You can have Revelation and Philemon. You can have 1st, 2nd, 3rd John. Just give me two gospels in 1st Corinthians. Game on. Jesus rose from the dead. That's where we anchor our faith and that's where we must anchor the faith of the next generation. So thanks for listening.

26:22 But before you go, I wanted to take a minute to thank everyone who supports Your Move financially. It's the generosity of our listeners that makes this podcast possible. So if you have found this content helpful, we would like to invite you to make a tax-deductible donation to Your Move. You just visit yourmove.is forward slash give. That's yourmove.is slash give. Thanks for considering, and make sure you join us next week.