This is the 18th teaching in our series “Growing Deep in the Gospel” and is the second one dealing with defending the gospel. In this study we answered the question “Why Do People Refuse to Believe in God?”. To start we looked at Bible verses that showed us why people should believe in God and why people don’t. Then we looked at quotes from two books that showed us why people don’t believe from different perspectives and we finished by looking how we could help people to find God.

1. Growing Deep
Growing Deep
in the Gospel

2. Defending the Gospel
Defending
the Gospel

3. Why Defend the Gospel?
Why
Defend
the
Gospel?

4. Why Defend the Gospel?
1. It is one of the ways we love others.
2. It goes hand-in-hand with evangelism.
3. To remove obstacles to belief.
4. It helps Christians to know their faith.
5. To protect the Church from heresy.
6. To follow the Biblical examples.
7. Because the Bible tells us to.

5. What is Apologetics?

6. What is Apologetics?
It comes from a Greek word apologia
which means to give a reason or
defense.
… always be ready to give a defense
to everyone who asks you a reason
for the hope that is in you…
1 Peter 3:15 (NKJ)

7. What is Apologetics?
Apologetics is presenting reasonable
defenses for the truth of the gospel
and Christianity.

8. Goal of Apologetics

9. Goal of Apologetics
1. To strengthen and to mature the faith
of Christians.
2. To remove obstacles and clarify issues
in order to bring unbelievers to a
recognition of the truth of the gospel
of Jesus Christ and have them repent
and put their faith in Him.

10. Angry Young Man
Why Do
People
Refuse to
Believe in
God?

11. Why Believe?
He has made everything beautiful in
its time. He has also set eternity in the
hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom
what God has done from beginning to
end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV 84)

12. Why Believe?
Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s
written law, show that they know his law
when they instinctively obey it, even
without having heard it. They demonstrate
that God’s law is written in their hearts, for
their own conscience and thoughts either
accuse them or tell them they are doing
right. And this is the message I proclaim—
that the day is coming when God, through
Christ Jesus, will judge everyone’s secret
life.
Romans 2:14-16 (NLT)

13. Why Believe?
The heavens proclaim the glory of
God. The skies display his
craftsmanship. Day after day they
continue to speak; night after night
they make him known.
Psalm 19:1-2 (NLT)

14. Why Believe?
...since what may be known about God
is plain to them, because God has
made it plain to them. For since the
creation of the world God’s invisible
qualities—his eternal power and divine
nature—have been clearly seen, being
understood from what has been made,
so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:19-20 (NIV)

15. Face in Shadow

16. Bible

17. Why Unbelief?
The human heart is the most deceitful
of all things, and desperately wicked.
Who really knows how bad it is?
Jeremiah 17:9 (NLT)

18. Why Unbelief?
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,who put darkness
for light and light for darkness,
Isaiah 5:20 (NIV)

19. Why Unbelief?
“The atheist does the opposite of the regular
idolater. He quote-mines the Scriptures and
searches out the harsher judgments of God,
and builds an image of God he finds to be
repulsive. Then, once he has made his idol,
he flatly rejects it. And so he should. The
image that he has made of God is evil. It is
without love and mercy. And so the atheist
has the same problem as the idolater. The
image only exists in the atheist’s place of
imagery...in his imagination.”
Ray Comfort

20. Why Unbelief?
The fool says in his heart, “There is no
God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are
vile; there is no one who does good. The
Lord looks down from heaven on all
mankind to see if there are any who
understand, any who seek God. All have
turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good, not even
one.
Psalm 14:1-3 (NIV)

21. Why Unbelief?
But people who aren’t spiritual can’t
receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all
sounds foolish to them and they can’t
understand it, for only those who are
spiritual can understand what the Spirit
means.
1 Corinthians 2:14 (NLT)

22. Why Unbelief?
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled
to those who are perishing. The god of this
age has blinded the minds of unbelievers,
so that they cannot see the light of the
gospel that displays the glory of Christ,
who is the image of God.
2 Corinthians 4:3-4 (NIV)

23. Why Unbelief?
This is the verdict: Light has come into the
world, but people loved darkness instead
of light because their deeds were evil.
Everyone who does evil hates the light,
and will not come into the light for fear that
their deeds will be exposed. But whoever
lives by the truth comes into the light, so
that it may be seen plainly that what they
have done has been done in the sight of
God.
John 3:19-21 (NIV)

24. Why Unbelief?
You, dear children, are from God and have
overcome them, because the one who is in
you is greater than the one who is in the
world. They are from the world and
therefore speak from the viewpoint of the
world, and the world listens to them. We
are from God, and whoever knows God
listens to us; but whoever is not from God
does not listen to us. This is how we
recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit
of falsehood.
1 John 4:4-6 (NIV)

25. Why Unbelief?
With the Lord’s authority I say this: Live no
longer as the Gentiles do, for they are
hopelessly confused. Their minds are full
of darkness; they wander far from the life
God gives because they have closed their
minds and hardened their hearts against
him. They have no sense of shame. They
live for lustful pleasure and eagerly
practice every kind of impurity.
Ephesians 4:17-19 (NLT)

26. Why Unbelief?
The wrath of God is being revealed from
heaven against all the godlessness and
wickedness of people, who suppress the
truth by their wickedness, since what may
be known about God is plain to them,
because God has made it plain to them.
For since the creation of the world God’s
invisible qualities—his eternal power and
divine nature—have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been
made, so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:18-20 (NIV)

27. Why Unbelief?
For although they knew God, they neither
glorified him as God nor gave thanks to
him, but their thinking became futile and
their foolish hearts were darkened.
Although they claimed to be wise, they
became fools and exchanged the glory of
the immortal God for images made to look
like a mortal human being and birds and
animals and reptiles.
Romans 1:21-23 (NIV)

28. Why Unbelief?
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful
desires of their hearts to sexual impurity
for the degrading of their bodies with one
another. They exchanged the truth about
God for a lie, and worshiped and served
created things rather than the Creator—
who is forever praised. Amen.
Romans 1:24-25 (NIV)

29. Why Unbelief?
Because of this, God gave them over to
shameful lusts. Even their women
exchanged natural sexual relations for
unnatural ones. In the same way the men
also abandoned natural relations with
women and were inflamed with lust for one
another. Men committed shameful acts
with other men, and received in
themselves the due penalty for their error.
Romans 1:26-27 (NIV)

30. Why Unbelief?
Furthermore, just as they did not think
it worthwhile to retain the knowledge
of God, so God gave them over to a
depraved mind, so that they do what
ought not to be done.
Romans 1:28 (NIV)

31. Why Unbelief?
They have become filled with every
kind of wickedness, evil, greed and
depravity. They are full of envy,
murder, strife, deceit and malice. They
are gossips,slanderers, God-haters,
insolent, arrogant and boastful; they
invent ways of doing evil; they disobey
their parents; they have no
understanding, no fidelity, no love, no
mercy.
Romans 1:29-31 (NIV)

32. Why Unbelief?
Although they know God’s righteous
decree that those who do such things
deserve death, they not only continue to
do these very things but also approve of
those who practice them.
Romans 1:32 (NIV)

33. Why People Refuse to Believe
1. Their hearts are deceitful, wicked, darkened
and hard.
2. They love sin and darkness; hate God and
the light; want to be their own god.
3. They are alienated from God and His life.
4. Their minds are corrupt, they suppress the
truth, their thinking is futile, they are
ignorant and are enemies in their minds.
5. They are not thankful.
6. They are prideful and arrogant.
7. They are blinded by Satan.

35. The Making of an Atheist
“How do leading atheists account for
their unbelief? As one reads Dawkins,
Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens, two
principal lines of argument emerge:
the problem of evil and the scientific
irrelevancy of God.”

36. Problem of Evil
...one cannot, whether by appeals to
evil or anything else, eliminate the
need to explain the existence of the
universe.
At most, evil should prompt us to
reconsider what kind of God exists,
not whether God exists.

37. Scientic Irrelevancy
The notion that science is sufficient
to account for all of human
knowledge and experiences.
Naturalism can explain neither the
existence of the cosmos nor its vast
instances of design.

38. Descent into Atheism
1. Precipitated by some personal rebellion.
2. Withdrawal from contact with fellow
believers.
3. Growing doubts about their faith.
4. Continued indulgence in sin.
5. Conscious rejection of God.

39. Descent into Atheism
Because God failed to live up to their
expectations or allowed something bad
to happen.

40. Willful Rebellion
Faith of the Fatherless by Paul C. Vitz,
t e a c h e s p s y c h o l o g y a t N e w Yo r k
University. (atheist who became Catholic)
Intellectuals by 20th century historian
Paul Johnson.
Degenerate Moderns by E. Michael Jones

41. Willful Rebellion
Reflecting on his change of mind, Vitz
observes that his “reasons” for
becoming an atheist in the first place,
during his college years, were not
intellectual so much as social and
psychological.

42. Willful Rebellion
“The philosophical systems and social
ideals of many modern intellectuals were
decided by their will to be immoral, not
their quest for truth. They wrote the
books they did to suit their personal
lives, not vice versa.”
Paul Johnson

43. Willful Rebellion
“There are ultimately only two
alternatives in the intellectual life: either
one conforms desire to truth or one
conforms truth to desire...”
E. Michael Jones

44. Willful Rebellion
“For myself as, no doubt, for most of my
contemporaries, the philosophy of
meaningless was essentially an instrument
of liberation. The liberation we desired was
simultaneously liberation from a certain
political and economic system and
liberation from a certain system of morality.
We objected to the morality because it
interfered with our sexual freedom.”
Aldous Huxley

45. Willful Rebellion
“We don’t know because we don’t want to
know. It is our will that decides how and
upon what subjects we shall use our
intelligence. Those who detect no meaning
in the world generally do so because, for
one reason or another, it suits their books
that the world should be meaningless.”
Aldous Huxley

46. Willful Rebellion
“I want atheism to be true and am made
uneasy by the fact that some of the most
intelligent and well-informed people I know
are religious believers. It isn’t just that I
don’t believe in God, and, naturally, hope
that I’m right about my belief. It’s that I
hope there is no God! I don’t want there to
be a God; I don’t want the universe to be
like that.”
Thomas Nagel - Atheist Philosopher

47. Descent into Atheism Summary
“The descent into atheism is caused by a
complex of moral-psychological factors,
not a perceived lack of evidence for God’s
existence. The atheist willfully rejects
God, though this is precipitated by
immoral indulgences and typically a
broken relationship with his or her father.
Thus the choice of the atheistic paradigm
is motivated by non-rational factors,
some of which are psychological and
some of which are moral in nature.”
James S. Spiegel

49. Willful Blindness
“This is where our willful blindness
originates: in the innate human desire
for familiarity, for likeness, that is
fundamental to the ways our minds
work.”

50. Willful Blindness
“That we fight so hard to protect our
self-esteem is a universal. It doesn’t
matter how successful or wealthy
people are. They all need to feel they’re
good people, even, or especially, when
they’re bad.”

51. Willful Blindness
“It feels easier to be blind than to deal
with uncomfortable feelings.”

52. Willful Blindness
“If you maintain an illusion, you don’t
have to make the hard choices. Life just
goes on. But if you accept reality, it
forces a huge decision and many people
want to avoid that.”

53. Willful Blindness
“Nations, institutions, individuals can all
be blinded by love, by the need to believe
themselves good and worthy and valued.
We simply could not function if we
believed ourselves to be otherwise. But
when we are blind to the flaws and failings
of what we love, we aren’t effective either.
As Colm O’Gorman said, we make
ourselves powerless when we pretend we
don’t know. That is the paradox of
blindness: We think it will make us safe
even as it puts us in danger.”

54. Willful Blindness
“Much of our identity is defined by
what we believe and we actively seek
confirmation of those beliefs. Actually,
we go even further: Our brains treat
differently any information that might
challenge our closely held beliefs.”

55. Willful Blindness
“Fear of change and fear of conflict have
the same effect.”

56. Willful Blindness
“As human beings, we are highly driven
to find and to protect the relationships
that make us feel good about ourselves
and that make us feel safe. That’s why
we marry people like us, live in
neighbourhoods full of people like us,
and work with people like us. Each one
of those mirrors confirms our sense of
self-worth.”

57. Why Willful Blindness?
1. To feel good about ourselves
2. To confirm our sense of self-worth
3. To protect our self-esteem, even if we’re bad
4. To avoid uncomfortable feelings
5. So you don’t have to make hard choices
6. To believe we are good, worthy and valued
7. To confirm what we already believe
8. To feel safe and avoid change and conflict

61. Heart Idols
1. Comfort/Security
2. Affirmation/Approval
3. Power/Control

62. What Can
We Do to
Help
People Find
God?

63. Address the Heart
1. Pray for God to open their hearts - Acts 16:14
2. Pray for wisdom and guidance
3. Love them and invite them into your life
4. Live out the gospel in front on them
5. Show them that no one comes to God in their
own power or thinking
6. Encourage them to seek God
7. Ask Questions
8. Show them what is needed most to find God

64. Show Them
For those God foreknew he also
predestined to be conformed to the image
of his Son, that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers and sisters. And
those he predestined, he also called; those
he called, he also justified; those he
justified, he also glorified.
Romans 8:29-30 (NIV)

65. Show Them
… just as He chose us in Him before the
foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and without blame before Him in love,
having predestined us to adoption as sons
by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to
the good pleasure of His will,
Ephesians 1:4-5 (NKJ)

66. Encourage Them
But if from there you seek the Lord your
God, you will find him if you seek him with
all your heart and with all your soul.
Deuteronomy 4:29 (NIV)

67. Encourage Them
…For the Lord sees every heart and knows
every plan and thought. If you seek him,
you will find him. But if you forsake him, he
will reject you forever.
1 Chronicles 28:9 (NLT)

68. Encourage Them
And you will seek Me and find Me, when
you search for Me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:13 (NKJ)

69. Encourage Them
From one man he made all the nations, that
they should inhabit the whole earth; and he
marked out their appointed times in history
and the boundaries of their lands. God did
this so that they would seek him and
perhaps reach out for him and find him,
though he is not far from any one of us.
Acts 17:26-27 (NIV)

70. Encourage Them
For there is no difference between Jew and
Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and
richly blesses all who call on him, for,
“Everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord will be saved.”
Romans 10:12-13 (NIV)

71. Encourage Them
And it is impossible to please God
without faith. Anyone who wants to
come to him must believe that God
exists and that he rewards those who
sincerely seek him.
Hebrews 11:6 (NLT)

72. Questions to Ask
What do you mean that you don’t believe in God?
Why do you believe there is no God?
If there is no God how did the universe come into
existence?
If God was real would you want Him in your life?
Why are you so angry when I talk about God?

73. What is Needed Most
A Humble and Sincere Heart
…God resists the proud, but gives grace
to the humble.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the
Lord, and He will lift you up.
James 4:6, 10 (NKJ)

74. A Humble Prayer
“God, if You are real, I want You in my life.
I beg You, please open up my heart to You
and give me understanding of You and the
truth.”

75. Reection
How would you summarize why people
refuse to believe in God?
What are the best things we can do to
help people believe in God?

76. Growing Deep
Grow Deep!

77. Man
Reading
Bible

78. despreisus.ro
Despreisus.ro
upper part

79. Despreisus.ro
lower part

80. Last Word
Take a hold of
the gospel so
Jesus can take a
hold of you!

81. Last Word
Take a hold of
the gospel so
Jesus can take a
hold of you!

82. Last Word
Take a hold of
the gospel so
Jesus can take a
The Lord is not slow in keeping his
promise, as some understand slowness.
wanting hold of you!everyone
Instead he is patient with you, not
anyone to perish, but
to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9 (NIV)