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Hope Channel

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

Sebastien Braxton

Felecia Lee

Joe Reeves

Paul Samuel

01 Why Apologetics?

Jonathan Walter

02 Climbing Mars Hill

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Joe Reeves, with Inverse.

This is a Bible study with friends where we are studying the Bible, challenging topics, good topics.

You can see all of our past Bible studies at inversebible.org today we are looking at apologetics, episode number 2 of this season.

And you can see all of our past seasons on hopetv.org forward slash inverse.

And we are excited to dive into the Word with you, wherever you are watching from.

And I will ask Jonathan to pray for us as we open the word today.

Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for the opportunity to study together here in the studio, but also with those who are watching and joining us from wherever they are.

We ask that your spirit will speak to our hearts and teach us and guide us and help us as we focus on your word, as we learn what you try to teach us.

So we thank you and we pray all these things in the name of Jesus, amen.

Apologetics, we learned in the last episode, it is not learning how to apologize, but it is learning how to give a defense of one's belief.

Christian apologetics is the study of answering difficult questions about Christianity, the Christian worldview, and giving a defense for it.

And so we have many opportunities for that in our own world today.

And we hope as we study these stories today and this season, that you are digging down into the foundations of your own faith and thinking about why am I a believer?

We are going into the story from Acts 17.

Today, a story of Paul in Athens, an epic narrative of him engaging with philosophers and foreigners and people from different world views and let's see what lessons we can learn.

Sebastian will read for us from Acts 17 and starting in verse 16.

Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols.

Therefore, he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshippers and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there.

Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him.

And some said, what does this babbler want to say?

Others said, he seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods, because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.

And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, may we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak?

For you are bringing some strange things to our ears.

Therefore we want to know what these things mean.

For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing." Okay.

You get the sense here that there's some sort of showdown that's getting ready to take place between these different ideas and they're wanting to hear from Paul and they know that he is a speaker and there's Paul in the Bible and there's Paul at the table.

Can you tell us a little bit about the setting here in Athens and who is he speaking to?

These are people who believe God is way out there.

God's created stuff, but he's unconcerned with creation and God is far away.

The Stoics on the other hand, they see God everywhere.

They believe pleasure is the ultimate reason to live, even in the face of death, even in the face of pain.

They want as much as possible to feel pleasure and reduce pain as much as possible.

The Stoics, on the other hand, they're running the other direction.

They want to be, sort of, you know, grit their teeth through pain and endure it and kind of stick with it.

2 sort of opposite ways of looking at life.

The other God is near and everywhere and in everything.

One's very focused on feelings and pleasure.

One's very focused on discipline and thinking.

So 2 kind of polar ways of relating to life.

Are these philosophies that we have in our world today?

I mean, I think if you if you look on social media right now, you'll see a lot of Stoic post in this philosophy kind of reviving again My daughter my oldest is now a teenager.

And so she's getting into all the lingo of saying, oh yeah, this is so Sigma, whatever, whatever.

Because I had to learn it, right, as a parent.

And what ends up happening is you're talking about the alpha male, the beta male, right?

And then there's the sigma, and it's like, oh, he's not bothered, he stays focused on his task, he goes to work even if the girl's like, oh, you should come over, I really miss you.

No, I gotta stay focused, I gotta finish my job.

And so now something is sigma is kind of like this thing you can't really bother, you can't really disturb.

And it's another way to say like, hey, that's cool, that's really nice, it's attractive, whatever.

And so, you can even see some of this language seeping into just modern lingo and slang, which is all a stoic philosophy is like, oh, the man who is no longer moved by pleasure of a woman or is not moved by the attraction of marriage or a relationship, like, no, he's got goals, he's got determinations, he grits through it, he denies himself comforts of a woman, he denies himself comforts of community.

He must always pursue virtue in all cases and situations.

And you're like, I mean, I kind of agree with what you're saying, but you can obviously see the righteousness by works that comes up in that, and the self-righteousness that can be built on that, and that's anti-Jesus for sure.

This is so fascinating, because of course popular culture has the other side of it as well with the Epicureans.

What have you seen on social media and popular culture?

And so it's the idea, YOLO, go do whatever is fun, make the best of it, You know, like this is your last day.

And it's about the thrill, the extreme, the fun, all of it.

And so that's in contrast to the, you call it sigma?

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Series

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

02 Climbing Mars Hill

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

01 Why Apologetics?

28m

02 Climbing Mars Hill

29m

Sound Doctrine