Good morning. I greet you all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s wonderful to be here together with you. And I also want to offer my personal word of welcome to those who’ve gathered here, especially, uh, for the events today and World Watch and all that will take place in the course of this morning and afternoon. Dr. York, I appreciate very much that introduction. Finishing school and all – most people here don’t know what that was – I will simply say it was a staple of southern culture when I was a boy, 12 or 13 years old, I saw absolutely no use for it, then learned uses for it for the rest of my life. But I guess there was one use for it that I didn’t know was coming as a 12 or 13-year-old boy, and that was to answer a question Dr. York basically asked about eating an egg out of an egg cup with one smooth movement. You take the spoon, detach the top of the egg at the narrow end as it should be set, in one movement, and then using the egg spoon, you eat the contents of the egg. Yes, without spilling. There you go. Now you’re finished. It did raise a host of issues for me because that’s when I discovered some people eat soft boiled eggs. So there was a lot of ick among the 12- and 13-year-olds in that room, but we left finished.

I want us to turn to scripture this morning. First Peter, and in in particular First Peter chapter three, beginning in verse eight. We read, “Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling. But on the contrary, bless for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing for whoever desires to love life and see good days. Let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good. But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed, have no fear of them nor be troubled, but in your hearts regard, Christ, the Lord, as holy, always prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will than for doing evil.” This is the word of the Lord.

The Lord speaks through the Apostle Peter in his instruction to the church then and the church throughout the ages, the church now in this present age. This word is addressed directly to us and it comes in the context of this magnificent letter from Peter. And before we go further, let’s just exalt for a moment in this letter known to us as First Peter. Let’s remember who Peter was. This is the Peter who was Simon, by Christ’s sovereign act, called to be one of his disciples. This is the Peter who, when the question was asked, “Who do you say the son of man is?”, said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is the same Peter who would deny Christ three times. This is the same Peter who in the gospels, Matthew, mark, and Luke and John, will show up either in full strength or not. This is Peter who becomes one of the key leaders of the early church as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we shall see, the Peter who writes this letter is a very different man than Simon the fisherman, all by the grace of God.

I’ve been thinking, as you have been thinking in recent days, over the past couple of weeks, about the lessons learned in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I think even at this point, so many days after that evil act, it is very interesting to hear the cultural conversation, a conversation that was invigorated on that day and continues, a conversation that has continued on two sides of a great worldview divide, a conversation that raises a host of issues for believing Christians. And that is why I believe I was led to this particular text for this day. The key verses of our consideration in First Peter chapter three, I would wish us to look most closely at verse 15, especially the words of command from the apostle that we should be always being prepared to make a defense for anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you. The cultural conversation at this point after the assassination of Charlie Kirk is not what I had expected, not in full. There’s something going on here that is far deeper and I think is truly unexpected, but even as it is shocking, it is important that we pay close attention to what is happening. I want to speak specifically of the memorial service that was held this past Sunday, five hours long. And in particular what’s happened in the last few days in response to that service. The shock of the service for most people was how pervasively Jesus Christ was declared. Christianity was embraced. Standing for Christ was honored. Speaking for Christ was underlined, affirmed. The extent to which witness to Jesus Christ became so pervasive that shocking moments took place, truly shocking moments for someone who has been watching national affairs for many decades. To hear the vice President of the United States, JD Vance, say that in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, he had talked more about Jesus Christ and his salvation, his experience with Christ, his words were, “More in the last two weeks than my entire political life.” Something’s happening there. There were people I had never expected to hear a direct word of Christian witness from who got up with scriptural citations and coherent Christian argument. There were those who got up and spoke not only of the fact that Charlie Kirk was a Christian, but that they had come to know the Lord Jesus Christ through Charlie Kirk’s direct influence and witness. One young man who spoke of the fact that he was aimless, he was lost, he was involved in many different patterns of sin, but he came to Christ through the witness of Charlie Kirk. And not only did he come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and not only was he saved, his life was transformed. And he said, “Here at this service is my wife and our infant baby.” That’s just a picture of everything fractured, becoming something whole by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. President Donald Trump said, “Isn’t this like an old-fashioned revival service?” Now with full respect, I don’t know how he would know. I just don’t imagine he’s actually attended many, but nonetheless, he knows what one is. Or you could put it in different words, he certainly knew one when he saw it. He wasn’t wrong. He was right. The secular response, the political response to this, has come in waves. The first response was that this is just too much. And you know, the thought that is expressed there is not the five hours of length, it’s the depth and comprehensiveness of the Christianity that was declared. One of the hosts of a media program reviewing it said it got to where you caught onto a pattern and everyone who got up was going to talk about Charlie and about Jesus. That was a complaint by the way, that was what was identified as the problem. Also, there have been posted many of Charlie Kirk’s testimonies of the gospel, even in the last days of his life, I think far more than most people recognized – a far more Christ-centered message than many had had thought. I mentioned just in my own reflections in print, that when I first met Charlie Kirk, he was not so clearly identified as a Christian. So this came as something of a surprise to me over the years, and a most hopeful surprise. But I think it’s important to recognize that Charlie Kirk had been working very hard to be ready to give an answer. It became the essence of his mission in Turning Point USA. That’s what he was doing there at Utah Valley University when he dared people to come and he invited them graciously. And you’ll remember the theme was, prove me wrong. And those of you who’ve seen the clips, you’ll know that in so many cases, on so many campuses, young people had come and asked questions and he directed them to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And with a skill that many people would not have expected, he connected the dots of Christian truth into a very clear argument for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then for subsequent arguments about the veracity of biblical truth and subsequent arguments about how the Christian faith is integrated, he didn’t get to graduate, get a job, get married, and have lots of children, he didn’t get there from nowhere, he got there from Genesis.

The world’s offense, the secular world’s offense, is offensive to us. It’s also puzzling to us, but it’s a wakeup call. And I want to turn to this text to remind us that each one of us, and I want to speak particularly to the young Christians in this room, particularly, that you bear in your generation a responsibility to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you. This text from the Holy Spirit through the apostle Peter gives us that message clearly. In light of what we have seen and heard and learned in just the last couple of weeks, I want us to think about readiness for Christian witness.

Now we look to this particular text and I take us back to verse 15, “Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you.” Now, I was raised on, did my early Bible memorization in, the King James version rather than the ESV. And I still love the King James cadence and translation of this text – “Be ready always to give an answer for every man who asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you.”

Three basic affirmations I want us to think about this morning. The first is be always ready. The second is to make a defense, or to give an answer. And the third is for the hope that is in you.

Be always ready. You know, that’s a comprehensive command, always means there’s no time when you’re not to be ready, you’re to be ready, and to be ready you have to be pre-ready. To be ready to give an answer, you have to know what the questions are, and you have to know how to answer those questions faithfully, and that’s not going to come to you by some kind of message from the sky when you need it, it’s going to have to be in your mind and in your heart before the occasion comes. Young Christians, I want to tell you, for the entirety of your lifetimes on this earth, faithfulness is going to require you to be ready to have conversations you’re not ready for now. You need quickly to be determined and to work towards being ready for the moment, the moments, the occasions, the opportunities, the urgencies, that will come to you. We’re living in an increasingly secularized society. The questions are coming with increasing power and increasing frequency, and they’re coming at every level. One of the most interesting things that I know these days is how many incredibly powerful questions come to me through The Briefing from very, very young listeners. Now to be honest, sometimes it’s the parents who send the question. And sometimes the questions are entirely predictable, coming from a certain age and a certain curiosity – “Did Adam have a naval?” Okay, the questions though, they get a lot deeper fast. I give priority to the questions from young children that ask the biggest theological issues. And I have listeners continually say, “Who are these children who ask such questions?” Well, I, I think they’re the children largely of Christian parents who’ve been teaching them the Word and ways of God, and the questions come. You shouldn’t be surprised that a young child doesn’t have questions when there are no dots put on the page. Connecting the dots is largely where the questions arise. At a certain age, middle school, upper elementary school, certainly high school, questions come a bit differently, they come sometimes more complex. I think one of the hopeful signs for me is that when you have a 6-year-old asking that kind of question and a 9-year-old asking this kind of question, and a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old asking these kinds of questions, and this is happening in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, this has to be good. This has to be very good. It should come to us as a tremendous encouragement, but it also underlines that these young people are being taught Christian truth, they’re being taught the scriptures, they’re being taught the Christian faith, otherwise they wouldn’t have this kind of question. And you know, that means that parents have to be ready to give an answer. And I love hearing from parents who aren’t ready, and they’ll write and say, “My 8-year-old has asked, ‘What do I do with this?’” And, and I want to say to this parent, to this mother or father who writes, you are the resident theologian at this moment. You are the entire Christian faculty, husband and wife, mother and father together, you are the faculty of this little university called your family. And I’m glad you asked. Let’s connect the dots.

I was just recently with Mary in Europe, and we were retracing the steps of the Reformation, and I was lecturing along the way. We were at Wittenberg and at Leipzig, other places, where in particular Martin Luther was hammering out the reformation. And one of the things you have to come to know about Luther is that Luther didn’t know what he was going to say tomorrow. The Reformation and its doctrine, the Reformation and its clarifications, it’s recovery of the gospel took place argument by argument. You can stand in different places, and different disputations. Leipzig is one of my favorite ones where it becomes very clear as Luther there is debating the Catholic authority. He’s working out justification by faith alone because the logic is taking him to language he didn’t know he was going to use. You can follow Luther and come to know where he came to know that it wasn’t enough to say, “the authority of scripture.” He had to say, “the authority of scripture alone.” Most famously at the Diet of Worms where he was on trial. And I think when we look at historic figures like that, we like to think they’re just ready-made, just add water and stir. All of a sudden, he was Simon over here he’s Peter, he was here unredeemed, un-uneducated, unlettered, unprepared, over here he’s Peter, ready to go. And I am just emphatic about wanting to point out that if you actually read the four gospels, that’s not the way it worked because the four gospels are honest that Simon, having become Peter, did get some things gloriously right more than once. “You are the Christ, the Son of living God.” In John chapter six, when there are so many who leave, who walk away of the false disciples, when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life, he who eats of me will live, he who does not eat this bread will die.” And in John chapter six, Jesus asked the question of his disciples, “Are you also going to go away?” And it is Peter who says, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have come to know that you are the holy one of God.” When Peter said, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God,” Jesus didn’t say, “’A’ on the final exam, Peter,” he didn’t say, “Peter, you know, your theological cogitations have been quite productive,” he said, “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father, who is in heaven,” I have to admit it’s hard to imagine how Peter became Peter, the Peter we find in First Peter. This is an uneducated fisherman, this is a man from Galilee, now listen to him as the apostle of Jesus Christ, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading kept in heaven for you. Who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for salvation to be revealed in the last time.” Later in that same chapter, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully inquiring what person or time the spirit in Christ was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, and the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” So now this unlettered, untaught, Galilean fisherman is telling the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, that the truths that are coming through his ministry, because they’re coming from the Holy Spirit, are things into which angels long to look. This is Peter who is telling the church of the Lord Jesus Christ how to stand fast in a hostile culture, how to be faithful. Just consider this from chapter two, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but you are now God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evil doers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” And then the text of our greatest concern this morning, “Be ready to give an answer to anyone who asketh of the hope that is in you.” Just look at the book of Acts – just think about the book of Acts with me if you don’t have it right in front of you – when we hear the command here, “Be always ready.” I can’t think of any book that demonstrates the fulfillment of that command like the book of Acts. And just for the sake of time, we’ll have to go fast. But just consider how Acts begins in Acts chapter two with Peter on the day of Pentecost. What do we read in verse 14? “But Peter standing with the eleven lifted up his voice and addressed them, ‘Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you. Give ear to my words for these men are not drunk as you suppose for it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel.’” Peter preaching in Acts two. Acts three beginning in verse eleven at Solomon’s porch or portico, “And when Peter saw it, he addressed the people, ‘Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this? Or why do you stare at us as though by our own power or piety we’ve made him walk. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers glorified His servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him. But you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you and you killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses, and his name – by faith in his name – has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given this man perfect health in the presence of you all.’” I don’t think Peter was ready for that, but he was made ready, and when the moment came he, he was ready. The same in Acts chapter four with Peter and John before the Sanhedrin. The same in Acts chapter five with the apostles and their testimony. The same quintessentially in Acts chapter seven. And wasn’t it interesting that in the memorial service last Sunday, just days ago, there was a rather lengthy citation of Acts chapter seven – and this is of course Steven’s testimony. “Brothers and sisters hear me, the God of glory appear to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran and said to him, go out from your land and from your kindred and into the land that I will show you,” and then Stephen goes on and on and on and on, in verse 20, he’s to Moses, “At this time Moses was born and he was beautiful in God’s sight and he was brought up for three months in his father’s house. And when he was exposed, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in all his words and deeds.” And he continues on through, he talks about the tent in the wilderness, and then he ended, or you might say in the context of Acts, his message was ended, when he spoke to the people and said, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one whom you have now betrayed and murdered. You, who received the laws delivered by angels and did not keep it.” And they killed him. Just for the sake of time, I’ll mention Paul at Antioch in Pisidia, Acts 13, Paul at Mars Hill, Acts 17, Apollos at Ephesus, Acts 18, Paul at Ephesus, Acts 19, Paul before the people who are gathered in Acts 21, Paul before the council in Acts 22, Paul before Felix in Acts 24, and Paul before King Agrippa in Acts 26. The Book of Acts is a demonstration of the fulfillment that Peter here issues by the Holy Spirit as a command, “Be always ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you.” They were ready when the moment came. Stephen was ready. Peter was ready, John was ready. Paul, having been Saul, the persecutor of the church, is now ready. Are you ready? My encouragement to you is to get ready. In your generation, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ desperately needs you to be ready to give an answer.

Alright, how are you going to do that? Just recently I was reading of a principle of trial law, the principle of trial law that I thought was brilliantly expressed and it captured my mind and I thought, you know, I’m going to share it with you. You didn’t come here for a principle of trial law, one of the most important principles of a trial lawyer making a closing argument. But to me, it is immediately applicable to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially in the context of preaching. But it’s especially relevant to every single one of us, even when we think about a gospel conversation. The principle of the law for trial lawyers in making a closing argument is that you must know there are three arguments. You must keep in mind three arguments. And as you’re preparing to defend the faith once delivered to the saints, you get the immediate application – there are three arguments you need to keep in mind, okay? Remember, this is coming from the context of the closing argument in a trial with so much at stake. The three arguments are these. Number one, the argument you plan to deliver. The second argument is the one you actually deliver in court. And the third argument is the one days later you wish you had delivered. Now, I think those of you who preach and teach, you get the meaning of that immediately. And we understand that’s exactly the way it works. You plan to say something, that’s the first speech. You say something, that’s the second speech. And then days later you think, “I wish I had said.” Now you get the point in the training of lawyers. You want as much as possible to make certain that the argument you make in court is the one you’re going to be satisfied with days later. Now you say, “Why is the first one different than the second one? Why in the practice of law is the first argument not exactly the second argument?” It is because in the second argument, you’re looking at a jury, you’re in a different context than when you were at your desk preparing this argument. Now you’re before a jury with a judge observing, and you’ve got to make an argument because at that point, your audience is the members of the jury, and you’re going to have to do whatever it takes in making this argument to address it successfully to them. Similarly, in preaching, you have a sermon you plan to deliver. You work hard on the material, the content, the words, the arguments. But in contact with a congregation of living people, I believe it should be a different sermon, not a radically different sermon so there’s no continuity with the first, but when you’re looking at people and when you’re preaching to a congregation as I am right now, I’m looking at real live human beings, and that changes how I will make these expressions. But like a trial lawyer, there is no preacher worth anything who doesn’t a few days later say, “I should have said that. I could have defined that a little better. I could have linked this to that.” You know, that’s just what it is to be human. But I think you get the relevance even in the defense of the faith, you know you’re going to have a conversation, and so you plan what you want to convey in the defense of the Christian faith in that conversation, in that class presentation, in this opportunity, but what you say then is not exactly what you plan because you’re dealing with a real flesh and blood human being. You’re in a conversation or you’re before certain people, and there’s a human dynamic. You can tell, “Okay, I need to lay into this just a little bit further. I need to define this a little more clearly.” You know, you connect the dots and then days later you’re going to think, “Oh, I didn’t connect that quite the way I would connect it now,” That’s how we learn, that’s how we improve. But this particular pattern is not just important to trial lawyers, but you can certainly see why it would be. And you want a trial lawyer who’s thinking these ways because you want that middle one, the argument he actually gives, you want it to be the best one possible. You want it to be better than the one he prepared. Similar for the preacher in the sermon, similar for the Christian in any gospel conversation.

What we have heard is the command to be always ready, but ready to do what? Ready to make a defense, to give an answer for the gospel. An argument is a defense for the faith. This is what we call apologetics. It is the intentional defense of Christian truth. It is to make an apology. And you know, in English that sounds like you’re saying, “I’m sorry, I’m a Christian.” That is profoundly not what it means. It’s from the Greek word apologia, which means a defense of the faith. It is a courageous projection of the reasons you believe what you believe, of the foundational principles behind what you say. It means presenting an argument for the truthfulness of Christ and the truthfulness of Christianity, and it means doing so boldly. Boldness is baked into this text. Be always ready to give a defense. That means reasons. Be always ready to give reasons, to give a reason for the hope that is in you.

I desperately needed Christian apologetics as a teenager, as a high school student in particular. There were huge questions that I was being confronted with in school. There were huge questions that I was being confronted with in the middle of the night, just coming from my own mind and heart. “How in the world do I think this? What am I supposed to think about this?” And I was connected by God’s grace to good, healthy influences of Christian apologetics, and I ate it up. I ate it up. I didn’t know anything about different methodologies of apologetics. I just knew I need smart Christians who are faithful Christians, who know what the gospel is, and how to make arguments, and I need to see how they make arguments because when I go to school tomorrow, I’ve got to know how to make those arguments. And besides that, sometimes the biggest arguments are in my own mind and I need to know how to settle those.

There are different schools of apologetics. One of them is evidential wisdom, and it’s just piling up, evidences, piling up arguments, sometimes little arguments, bigger arguments. You just pile up arguments so you can convince people of the truthfulness of Christianity. That was the first apologetic approach I encountered. And I ate it up. Here’s a question, here’s an answer. Here’s a question, here’s an answer. Here’s a denial, here’s how to confront it. And theologically, I think that can be helpful to people, but ultimately I do not believe that one who is dead, lost in sin and trespasses, is going to become a Christian simply by piling up evidence. I do believe you can knock down and destroy some false claims.

The next school of apologetics I encountered was classical presuppositionalism. In so many ways, the opposite of evidentialism. Presuppositionalism is the mode of apologetics that says you have to get back to the most ultimate presuppositions and then work forward. And the most ultimate presuppositions, according to presuppositionalism, and fully in accordance with Christian theology, is the existence of the triune God and the fact of divine revelation. That is a great theological gain. It is a tremendous theological gain. And it reminds us that the way human beings think is we think from basic presuppositions to different thoughts. And thus a part of what we have to do, and, young people, part of why when you encounter people who have very weird beliefs, those weird beliefs don’t come from nowhere. They come from deeper, deeper presuppositions that are the assumptions they’re making. And the problem is the assumptions are wrong. Just to make the issue transparent for a moment, if your presupposition is, “there is no God,” then guess what, the outworkings of your thought are going to be, “There is no right and wrong. There is no morality. There is no ultimate reality. I can make of life, I can make of truth, I can make of beauty, I can do anything with anything because there is no objective reality.” There is nothing that simply is, if there is no God. There is no objective right or wrong, if there is no God. There’s no objective true or false, if there is no God. And so presuppositionalist apologetics would come back and say, “No, we have to trace it back to those original presuppositions. And if those are wrong, everything else is wrong. There is only one set, only one set of true presuppositions. And that begins with the existence of the triune God and the fact of divine revelation.” You work from that, you’ve got right and wrong. You work from that, you’ve got light and dark. You work from that, you’ve got all that you need. Including, just to point this out, if there is no God, you really don’t even have male or female, thus our modern confusion. But if you start from the Christian presuppositions, you’ve got male and female, you’ve got comprehensive meaning, you’ve got right and wrong, you’ve got truth. I really was a very ardent presuppositionalist. At the theological level, I basically still am. But I’ve also come to see the gains in classical apologetics in terms of building arguments, because I don’t think the arguments themselves save, only Jesus saves, but the arguments can really help and it also helps to form out a more cohesive argument. I think there are so many examples through Christian history in which that kind of classical apologetic approach works. There are other methods of apologetics, cumulative case theory, fideism – I don’t have time for all that today – reformed epistemology, – all that is out there. All I want to tell you is you need to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you, and so every single one of you is called to be an apologist.

And if, as I expect, you don’t know where in the world you fit on a spectrum of apologetics, I want to tell you right now that is unimportant to me. What is urgent in this text is that you commit your life to being prepared to give an answer when the time comes. And to give an answer for what? The hope that is in you. This is the hope of the gospel. This is Christ, the hope of the world. This is the hope that is secure, the hope that is ours, the hope that belongs to us simply because we are Christians. It is the heart of the gospel, Christ in you, the hope of glory, the Christian hope that is sure and firm, our blessed hope. In Colossians 1:5, the hope laid up for you in heaven, Colossians 1:27, the hope of glory.

Be always ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you, and that means a Christian bearing witness. This doesn’t mean the hope that you heard about. It doesn’t mean the hope that someone has told you about. It means your hope because you have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ is in you, the hope of glory.

What’s at stake in all of this? Well, just think of public debates going on right now. So much is at stake. The future of civilization is at stake. The existence of our civilization is at stake. What’s at stake in this? Listen to the public conversation, even in the course of the last several days, you’ll understand what is at stake in this. We’re the ones who know that what’s at stake in this is heaven and hell, salvation or damnation, being lost or being found.

Let’s remind ourselves that these last few days – especially for many young Christians – these last few days are only bearable because Jesus Christ is Lord and Jesus saves and Jesus is in us as believers, the hope of glory.

So be always ready – quite a task, quite a calling. It’s not addressed to some, as believers, it’s addressed to all. To give an answer, to provide reasons – again, our responsibility. We’re not finished with it until Jesus comes or takes us home. We should be getting better at answering these questions and defending the Christian faith and telling about Jesus until Jesus comes or takes us home. And what are we talking about? It’s not just about an argument, it’s not just about principles of right thought, it is about leading people to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, and for them to also know the hope of glory.

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