Is Christ or Apologetics your Focus in Open-Air Preaching?

For a long time in open-air preaching

I used a lot of apologetics

in order to build a crowd and keep a crowd

where I'd answer question on things like

proof of the Bible,

creation, evolution.

Now, I did start with what's called

a presuppositional approach,

believing that each person really knows

God is true,

and I was just really playing with them

so to speak to build a crowd

and to keep a crowd

and maybe answer some genuine questions,

but I've since found

that those things are not profitable.

I actually heard a sermon

by Curt Daniel on defending the faith,

and in there he pointed out

that the biblical approach to apologetics

is simply saying, like Jesus did,

"have you never read?"

"Have you never read?"

Basically saying, "the Bible says this..."

"The Bible says this..."

And what you find is when you simply

declare what Jesus said

and what the Bible says,

then people will eventually stop asking

such stupid questions on many occasions.

You see, many will send you up,

or try to send you up

all these rabbit trails

talking about creation, evolution,

manuscripts.

When you think about it,

you know, the Bible is

the sword of the Spirit.

But so often, someone will say,

"Oh, it's no good quoting the Bible to me.

I don't believe the Bible."

So the Christian will then put the sword

of the Word of God back in its sheath

and then try to prove the
Bible for the next hour.

And that's ridiculous.

I mean, we serve the King of the universe.

Could you imagine in a much lesser court,

the judge - an earthly court -

and someone coming before the judge

and the judge saying,

"how do you plead?"

And then the person saying,

"Well, I don't believe in judges.

I don't believe in law."

Could you imagine there the judge saying,

"Oh, hang on a minute,

we best stop the proceedings

and prove that law and
order and judges exist

before we go any further."

No, of course, that is ridiculous.

But that is like the Christian approach

of trying to prove the Bible

before we witness to someone.

You know, it's the foolishness
of preaching that God uses.

The Gospel is the power
of God to salvation,

not our clever arguments.

And I'll tell you this,

for a long time open-air preaching,

we preached to large crowds,

and we never saw any real converts.

In fact, from the first day we went out

and used what I call

the zero apologetics approach,

although it's really a more
biblical apologetics approach

where we don't do
this man-centered fashion,

we just simply declare
what the Bible says.

This is what God says.

I'm here to declare what God says.

We started to see people converted.

You know, one after another,

not merely in the open air,

but they'd come to the church from it

and then they'd be converted.

We started to see these conversions

when we simply declared the Word of God.

And the other thing is though

the crowds are just as big.

It still draws as many people.

You see, the name of Christ

is the central point.

That should be the focus of our preaching.

And people will still come
to debate and listen

about the person of Jesus Christ anyway.

But if your ground there,

if your footing is on Scripture,

then it's much better,

because you're declaring

as God as the authority,

rather than our silly little arguments.

And there's always a temptation,

because having a
background in apologetics,

I know some good answers to people

when they bring in questions

about creation, evolution,

or Bible manuscripts and things like that,

proof of the existence of God.

But you see, for me to answer those things

is a false assumption that that person

is really listening and really

does not have a depraved mind.

You see, the unbeliever present

doesn't normally bother that his view

contradicts himself
left, right, and center.

He's not really bothered.

He's just looking for
something to argue against

and to get into the way of the Gospel,

so every time someone asks me a question,

I will simply tell them
what the Bible says,

even if it sounds foolish.

You see, I'm not here to declare

my own opinions.

I'm here to declare the Word of God,

what He says.

And people can see this

because it's like,

rather than speaking to a man,

they're speaking to this big, infinite God

and I think this really does

hold a weight on people

when you do this.