Why Do We Believe?
Why Do you believe God Exists? Either God exists, or he doesn’t exist. Without God, we have no absolute truth. How do you answer the question, why do you believe God exists? Often people will ask Christians why we believe what we believe. Can we answer those questions?
Sermon Given By: Richard Elwell at University Park Church on 8-27-06.
Why Do We Believe?
Why Do you believe God Exists? Either God exists, or he doesn’t exist. Without God, we have no absolute truth. How do you answer the question, why do you believe God exists? Often people will ask Christians why we believe what we believe. Can we answer those questions?
Sermon Given By: Richard Elwell at University Park Church on 8-27-06.
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has anyone ever asked you the question? Why do you believe what you believe? I remember when I was in seminary I had a really great apologetic teacher through, um, it oftentimes when we as Christians or challenged people will ask us the question. Why do we believe what we believe? One of the ironies is is that we never asked the question back to the people who ask us why do you believe what you believe? But it is good to know and be able to articulate clearly, which I think you can turn me down a little bit Here. Do I sound loud? Um, why do we believe what we believe? Can we answer those questions clearly and and simply and in such a way that we know for ourselves and we can communicate with confidence to others? Why we believe what we believe? You know? Why do we believe, for example, that God exists? Why do we believe that? Why do we believe that God is personal and not impersonal? Why do we believe that God interacts with us? Why do we believe that? Why do we believe that God communicates with us? Why do we believe that the Bible is God's word. Why do we believe that? Why do we believe that Jesus Christ is the incarnate word of God? That Jesus Christ is the mind of God in human flesh. Why do we believe that? And why do we believe that our response toe Christ is a life and death matter? Why do we believe these things? Why do we believe the things that we believe? Well, today we're gonna be beginning a short six week Siris on the topic of why do we believe Why do we believe what we believe? Um, we will be in the next six weeks, you know, briefly addressing these six questions that I just went over. These six questions are, if it will come up, There we go. Why do we believe what we believe? Question number one is And this is what we'll be looking at today. Why do we believe that God exists? Question number two. Why do we believe that God is personal? Involved himself in our lives? Question number three is Why do we believe that God communicates with us? Question number four. Why do we believe that the Bible is God's word question? number five is. Why do we believe Jesus is God's word in the flesh and question number six is Why do we believe our response to Christ is a life or death matter? So those are the questions we're gonna be looking at, and this morning we're going to start with the first question Why do we believe that God exists? And I wanna show you a little chart I made up called the No God God chart That will be a guide for us over the next six weeks. And we start out with this question of God or no God, Either God exists or God doesn't exist. There's no other alternatives, right? There's no middle alternative. Either God exists or God doesn't exist. And, ah, the first implication here. If God doesn't exist, let's take for ah for just the sake of argument. Let's say God does not exist. If God does not exist, then the highest, uh, the highest form of moral will is human. Human opinion is the highest authority. If God doesn't exist, which leaves us with five billion different opinions on what is good and what is right, what is true. And so you have a zoo, result of God, not existing. You have no absolute truth. You have five billion different current 1,000,000,000 different sources of truth. And if you include all the people on throughout all history of dead people and everything else who knows how many you have. But ultimately you would have no absolute truth because you'd have no single source for proof there. What's our morality? And therefore there would be no meaning in life. And the only prospect of life is a meaningless death. That that that is the consequence of God doesn't exist. Well, if God does exist, then you have another question. Is he impersonal, like the Eastern religions would hold that he is a force that you tap into and manipulate? Or is he personal? Does he have mine will and emotion? Does he have himself a will that we need to be responsive to? Is he personal? And does he communicate to us? Is the question from that? If he's personal, can we know what he wants? Does he communicate to us? Does it communicate his will in his mind to us and if he does communicate to us is God's main means of communication is his. His body of communication. His word is the Bible, really the word of God to man? Is it really that? Do we really believe that? And further Do we believe what the Bible says about Jesus? That Jesus is the word of God in human flesh? Do we believe that Jesus and his life is the most profound communication of God's word to us? We believe that. And do we believe that our response matters to Christ? Do we believe Why do we believe that our response matters to cry? So we'll be going through this No God God chart here And we want to begin this morning with the question of why do we believe God exists as we already mentioned, Either he exists or he doesn't exist. So there's no other alternative. Why do we believe that he does? We believe that God exists because our parents told us he exists. We believe he exists because we have friends that say he exists. Those aren't good enough reasons for May, and they're not good enough reasons for you. Why do we believe that God exists? Not because I was raised in a culture that says God exists. That's not good enough. How do you answer the question? Why do you believe that God exists? Others. Many good answers to that to answering that question. And since I'm only spending one message on each question will just answer this today from Romans. Chapter one will be looking at Roman's Chapter one Verses 18 through 20 and the message of this morning's The title of This Morning's messages. God's fingerprint, God's fingerprint and we'll be looking at Roman's Chapter one verses 18 through 20. So turn with me their toe Romans, Chapter one, and we'll begin it 1st 18 Heavenly Father Lord, We come before you this morning, and there's so much to say about the self evident truth of your existence in so many ways. But nothing speaks louder than your creation. Your creation shouts out the truth of your being, and we just pray in a few short minutes as we think about that idea this morning that we would be better able to articulate just in short matters to people who had shot challenges. Why we believe that you exist board. For many, this will be just a matter of you review, but it's good to be challenged again to think about. How do I in my own mind, am I totally settled in confidence, that confident that you existed? How do I communicate that we just praise you, Lord, we ask that this would be a blessing. Today, as we consider again a surety of your existence in Christ's name. We pray that OK, Romans, Chapter one, beginning of 1st 18 says this the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppressed the truth by their wickedness. Since what may be known about God is playing to them, because God has made it plain to them or 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 men are without excuse now. But I would ask the question, Can you see God with your eyes? The answer is obviously no, I can't see God with my eyes. You can't see God with your eyes. A T East. Most of us have never seen God with our eyes. I don't think any of us have ever seen God physically. To where we say, Oh, I saw God, um, Dr Me later, if you have and and, uh, maybe maybe a great moment of visitation for you, but more than likely, you're probably in a in an institution. The passage here says that God's qualities are invisible in one sense, but completely visible in another sense. It says that his invisible qualities those qualities that are very riel, aren't visible to the naked eye, but they're very evident is a consequence of something else that the naked eye can see and sees all the time, Verse 20 again says, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, that is his eternal power and his divine nature. Now his eternal power refers to his limitless power, both in time and space over everything that we see that's self evident in creation and his divine nature, which is literally his Godhead. His d'oh tastes is the word there. God had that is his managerial authority over everything he had. It's obvious that God has managerial authority over the universe, and it's obvious that his power is limitless. The more you contemplate the nature of creation, that's what this is saying that it can be clearly seen what? That which is invisible, can be clearly seen and understood just by looking at what God has made. Okay, so, um, the power and the authority of God are visible among men, much less. Um, Well, let me just try to illustrate to you this way. If I took the president, United States and I stood him next to any other citizen in the United States and dressed him in the same kind of clothes. Is that other person? And you stood the two side by side. What could you say? I see his power and authority. Oh, you couldn't see his power authorities. Just a regular guy standing next to another regular citizen. In order to see the president's power and authority, you would have to see that when he gives the command, something happens. And then when a regular guy gives a command, nothing happened. When the president says I want people to go into into ah into harm's way, they do. And when I somebody like me with nothing would happen, it would be a damn it. That's what would make evidence. The fact that this guy's in charge. And I are you or anyone else isn't It would be what he does and and the effect of his actions that would demonstrate his power and authority. Now here, God, his power, his power and authority are visible in creation in itself. His power, that is that which he exercised to the fullest reaches of the universe are always obvious by looking at the universe and looking at from the you see A to order in a managerial principle, from the very furthest reaches of the universe to the very depths of the inner core of every molecule. You see a managerial authority there, you see powers that we aren't even aware of that hold things together. There are things that scientists call like strong power that they don't even understand that holds a molecule together because it shouldn't stay together because of the different kinds of electrical charges there. They call these powers that they have no understanding of. They give it a name and they think they know it. But they don't know if there's a There's a managerial power and authority from the furthest reaches of the universe to the depths of every molecule on. If it weren't so. Then when we look up at the night sky every night, we wouldn't be able to tell where the constellations would be. We've tracked constellations for centuries. Why? They're always in the same place. Same time. Why? Because there's something managing it. If it was random every night, Sky would be different. There's obviously a management principle going on up there. All that is physically, all that is all that is in the physical and spiritual realms, you know, is clearly seen by a casual observer as pointing to the existence of God creation. The point of my the theme of the message this morning is creation is God's fingerprint. Creation is God's fingerprint, just like if I had never seen me. But if I put a fingerprint on a glass in a location and that glass remained in that location and you found my fingerprint on it and you knew had my finger print on file, you could prove that I was there without ever having seen me. So to creation itself is clear and convincing evidence of God's existence. When we look at creation, we all have only one of two alternatives, either it created itself or a creator created it, or it came into being by something other than itself. What does the evidence support? Does the evidence support that creation created itself? Or does it support the idea that creator created creation? 1st 20 again, says front, since from creation from the beginning of time. Uh, since from the creation of the world creation itself eyes what visibly manifest God himself. Now imagine this for a second. You're standing in a museum and you're looking at a masterpiece in that museum. You've never met the artist. Is it reasonable for you to deuce as you look at the painting that the artists exists? Wouldn't it be folly if you were to say to yourself, I don't see the artist even looking at his painting, there is no evidence to May of his existence. Now let's take that a step further if it is self evident to anyone who would look at the organization of some pasty oil marks on a canvas as evidence of something intelligence having created, let's talk about Less. For example, say that the painting has is its subject a tree. If you look at the painting of a tree, and you can deduce that an artist exists. Why wouldn't you then be able to look at the tree itself and say, Here is a mechanism that is alive. It reproduces. It does vital things forever. Other things that are necessary, like changing carbon dioxide into oxygen. It produces sugars for other things to live on and and breathing. And we ourselves are a consequence of that chain where were were while we are is organized carbon dioxide. If you want to look at it, you know, to the fullest degree. How do you look at that and say these these smudgy oil prints an organized way? Our marks brush strokes on a canvas are definitely the result of an intelligent designer. But the subject of the painting isn't, huh? 1st 19 There's since what may be known about God is playing to them, because God made it plain to them. God has made what can be known about himself playing to anyone who looks at creation without an anti god bias. Can a fair minded person look at the order and and ah and majesty of living and non living things and not comprehend an intelligent design far more complex than anything that man has ever created. Now we live in a time of great delusion. Over the last 100 years or so, there's there's there's this impression that there is this conflict between science and faith, that somehow science is the enemy of faith and that science is the ally of atheism or the denial of faith or denial of God. A scientist may reject God's existence, but in doing so they suppress the clear testimony of what they're studying. That's what this past says. You have to suppress the truth. There is, however, a change in the wind. I remember sharing with you probably is about six months ago, about one of the most influential atheists of the 20th century. Anthony Flu, after fairly starting to challenge himself with the order and creation, decided he isn't a Christian, but he became a theist because he just couldn't explain it. It's inexplicable how you could say God doesn't exist and you look at the border and creation. And more recently I was read an article about a guy named Francis Collins. Francis Collins is the longtime head of the Human Genome Project. He's headed up this project that has mapped out the genetic sequence in human beings. And he's written a book called What? After Spending his Life Studying the very foundation of Our Physical Being, Our genetic code, he wrote a book entitled What Does Anyone Know? It is Looks called The Language of God, The Language of God. That's what he calls the genome sequence the language of God. And he defends the inevitability of of God's existence, just based on you know what he's thinking. He shares a rational approach to science and God, and he is a born again Christian. Any of you who know me know that I could rattle on until you're totally bored to tears on this subject. My wife last So I'm gonna limit myself this morning and just ask one question, How do you know anything is created by an intelligent being? How do you, as a person, looking at things go that was created and that one just was blew up? How do you know? How do you determine that something was created by an intelligent being? Um, for example, would you all say that it's self evident that this podium was created by an intelligent being Why, Yeah, I can't Would can't do this to itself, you know, Would can't form into this form by itself. It had to have been ordered that way by an intelligent being. Why is it self evident to ah child? That order demands an intelligent cause and to many of the world's smartest people, they don't see that self evident truth. For example, for decades, for literally decades now, there has been a project that tons of money and manpower has been spent on to find intelligence in outer space. This project, I'll show you a picture of it. Here, this is This is a radio telescope in Puerto Rico. This project is called the Phoenix Project, and it's funded by a group called The Set. They into institute and said they was ah, you know, study for until, uh, uh, extraterrestrial intelligence. So what they're doing here in this in this with this radio telescope here in other places around the world is they're searching the cosmos for radio waves that they could discern are coming from an intelligence stores other than man. And the idea is that if they confined just radio sequence ways, they don't even need to know what the meaning is. They can just determine that there must be meaning to it because there's order to it when they just Whenever they would find that, then they would be able to term determine that there's intelligence somewhere other than on the on the earth. So I think we would all agree with them. If, if they ever did find, you know, radio transmissions from another culture that were intelligible, then they had to have been created by intelligence. Right now, we would agree with that, even if it was just a simple is a Morris code dot dot dash, dash, dot dot dash dash. You know, just even even simple stuff. We would go, Yeah, something intelligent had to create that pattern. Now let me let me take this a little bit further. I want you to think about this for a second. Many of these scientists and many of these researchers who rightly consider simple organizational patterns to be indisputable evidence of an intelligence source, deny that the highly structured order of creation day of a flower or say of insect or let's say, of a chemical compound doesn't come from an intelligence source. Everywhere we look in God's creation, we can see the fingerprint of God everywhere. It's indisputable that that which has order comes from an intelligence. And when you look at it and you and and the more you see about the majesty of creation, you go. This guy's smarter than we are. The guy who made the tree is smarter than the guy who can paint the tree. It seems it's easy to figure that one out. The guy that not only can make order but can make order reproduces a pretty smart guy. I remember one time when, when? When? When? When, when Marty was first pregnant, our very first child, we went to a lummox class, and I just I was just blown away by the intricacies, probably only a fraction of what which we were being taught that had to occur between just in the just ation process. And I just I just thought, Why isn't this place breaking out into a hallelujah choir? It's just amazing. Just one little sliver of creation and how it testifies to the majesty of God. Well, what does this mean for us? What means this? And this is where the rub comes why people deny God if God created everything. What's the implication of that? He has authority over everything. If you made something, you own it right. If your kids made a go cart, I couldn't just come over and take it. They own it. They made it. They have authority over it if he owns it. If he created, he owns it. Now. If God created me, he has authority over me. Now that's where the rub comes in for stubborn human being. That's why people want to escape the inevitability of the existence of God. Therein lies Man's reason for denying and refusing to admit that they plainly see that he exists. Because once you admit that, then you admit that you he owns you, that he has authority over you, that he has a right to rule you and you. Then you have to ask the other questions. Well, does he communicate with May? Does he show me what's right? Has he given a moral code for us to follow? Uh, those are questions that some men and really all men really don't want to answer. So it's easier just to deny the existence of God not have to answer. Creation is God's fingerprint. Point number one is man. Men have to suppress the truth to deny God's existence. 1st 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppressed the truth by their wickedness. The suppression of the truth of God's existence occurs not because not because there's an absence of evidence but because of man's wickedness. That's why the truth of his existence is suppressed. And the reason why on wickedness is the desire to escape his authority. When I was probably in my 19 or 20 or so Ah, one of the kids in the neighborhood I grew up with was very dangerous to party with. This guy was a musician, and he had played with some name bands. Back then, he backed up Linda Ron's dead, and I don't know if you're old enough to remember the Hoyt Axton band, but he was. He was sort of in and out and around the Hollywood crowd, and whenever he was back in town, he was dangerous for me to have a party with, because I mean, it was like, always an all night affair and there was just no end to it. And this one particular night I was with him and, uh, Dawn had come and we weren't done having fun. And so we started trying to, uh, but blankets up over the windows toe. Keep the light out. I don't know if you've ever tried that way. Try that hero. When we do plays and stuff, it's pretty darn hard to keep the light out. When the sun is up, it finds a way to show itself through some crack unless you mean you have to be really, really diligent to keep the light out. And uh, that's what it's like, you know, even in the darkest minds, those who suppress the truth still have cracks of light that seep in. We have to willfully shut our I not to see God. We have to literally shut our eyes to the truth. We have to suppress the truth to deny his existence. We have to not want God's evidence to be examined, you know, as a young atheist, I've shared this story before. When I was in college, I actually tried to, through the use of formal logic, just proved the existence of God. And as I continued down my logical sequence of reasoning, I started realizing I was doing the opposite. And so instead of letting it take me to where it would take me to the inevitability of God's existence, I quit the project. I didn't and I didn't want God to exist. Three only way to escape God's authority is to deny its existence. Men deny or ignore the existence of God when they don't want to be answerable to him. Our knowledge of God begins with our accountability to him, which, for any honest person, is a fearful prospect. Intel In the revelation of himself, we discover his mercy. It's a fearful thing to be accountable to a holy god until when we get to know him. We discover that arson, the very thing that causes us to want to deny and hide from him, has been the thing that drew him out and brought him to us to forgive us and cleanse the very thing that caused the gospel to come about, that Christ died for us and that he wants to live in us and wants toe change us from the inside out again. Creation is God's fingerprint point number one is men have to suppress the truth to deny God's existence. And point number two, those who deny God's existence have no excuse. 1st 20 or since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, he's eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse. Years ago, I was told this true story. It's a true story of a husband and a wife where the husband was denying the existence of God. And in this story, the wife was standing in the dining room. The husband was standing in the kitchen and he was saying, I want God to prove himself to me if he exists. I don't believe he exists, but he's never shown himself to me personally, and I want him to prove himself to me. And the wife says, Okay, well, what would it take for God to prove himself to you? And the husband said, if I took this glass and he picks his glass up off the counter and dropped it straight onto this tile floor, and if it didn't break after I prayed for it not to break. That would prove to me that God exists. So she said, All right, pray and see what happened. He wasn't really expecting that. So he said, all right. And he prayed, God, if you exist, when I drop this glass, I pray that it wouldn't break. So he's standing out there, Okay, not drop it. He's sitting airiness and start shaking like this, and she says, Drop it and he couldn't drop it. He's holding on to this glass knees and she thought he was goofing on, you know, she thought he was goofing on her and, you know, he's I can't drop it. So finally, he changes it over to the other hand going. I don't know. I just I was afraid to drop it, so you know, she said, we'll put it in your hand and drop it So he gets it back out there again, and his hands start shaking and didn't drop it. So he puts it back into the other hand. She says not. Come on, just drop the glass. So finally he stretches his hand out over the tile, and he dropped the glass last, inexplicably kind of curved in. He's no one could figure out why, but it curved in and hit his foot. It rolls off his foot across the tile onto the carpet. Did he believe God existed? You know what he said. That's weird. It shouldn't happen that way and went off to nine goddess. He had denied him at the beginning. That's weird. It shouldn't happen that way. It was unconvinced. He did not concede that that was proof of God's existence. It is really Harrigan for us to ever demand God prove himself when he already has proved so. And it's amazing when he even responds to our arrogance. What you don't expect him to. D'oh! Don't think that he's gonna do that for you. Uh, you know. Yet even if he does respond to our arrogance, it doesn't matter if we don't want to believe it. That's weird. There's always that. That's weird explanation. If you want to close your eyes, it doesn't diminish the fact that the viewing of creation alone makes God's existence self evident. You don't need any proof with your eyes open with an open mind. There is no need for any further evidence that God exists, you know, all of us when we were kids, you know, read the story of Israel in the desert and every one of us ask the same question. How did they doubt God was powerful enough to give them entrance into the land when he had just ah, taking them through the Red Sea and conquered all of their enemies without an arrow being shot? After seeing that, how did they come to the point? Just a few days later saying, God, we can't do it, You can't do it. We don't believe you. What does it take for God to prove himself? What does God have to do for us? Beyond the gift of his only begotten son, as in atoning sacrifice to us to prove his love for us? What does he have to do? Beyond that? It is a fearful thing to think about what Israel did in denying God's power to deliver them. It's a fearful thing, and what happened to them is that doubting generation spent 40 years in the desert waiting for a new generation to be brought up into the land. What will the fate of those who doubt God's love be? If that was the fate of those who doubted God's power. But, pastor, you may be saying to yourself, Well, but what about those in this world that experienced great evil? How can they believe in the existence of God when so many bad things have happened to them? And this is what I'd have to say that every bad thing that has happened you is a result of somebody denying God's authority over them because of their ignorance of his existence, and that he that he created them So something is evil has happened to you because of the denial of God. You want to perpetrate and perpetuate that yourself by denying God yourself. The very thing that authored the evil that happened to you will author your evil behavior, the other people. If you follow that same pattern, evil is in origin. The denial of God's goodness, his existence in his right to rule creation is God's fingerprint men who men have to suppress the truth to deny God's existence. Those who deny God's existence have no excuse. I'd like to conclude this morning by just again looking at the No God God chart and talk about where we're going next week this week, we looked at the idea. Does God exist or doesn't God exist? Next week? We're gonna look at the idea. Is God personal or is the impersonal It's really looking at? The difference between Eastern thought and Judeo Christian thought is God Ah, force that that is just behind everything that doesn't have mine will and emotion Or does God has got a person? Does God have a will? Because God has got affected by us? Does God have ordered mine? And what are the implications between believing a God who is impersonal, as opposed to believing in God, who is personal? Why do we believe that God is personal is what we'll be looking at next week? And what difference does it make in our lives? Let's pray, Heavenly Father Lord, we just come before you this morning, and I know that this is Ah, you know, some of the thoughts that many have thought about thought about over and over again. But it's always good for us to come back and appreciate you and be sure of your existence. If for any other reason, just by looking at ourselves because I exist, you have to exist because there's no way I'm smart enough to create myself. And I don't know any other people that could put together this machine and make it alive and make it able to reproduce. Lord, I thank you, father, that even the evidence of my physical body is evidence of you but also my soul or the very thing that I would long for along for right and wrong. I'd long for what is true. I want people to treat me well. All these things were also evidences of you that we haven't even discussed. If you didn't exist, there would be no sense of morality. There would be no sense that of good and evil. Father That lord, you are Ah, you are here and your evidence we just ask God that that first of all we had acknowledged you. And second of all, in our acknowledge of you that we would submit you and be blessed by being led by Lead us this day, Lord and may are thoughts be authored by you? May our deeds be authored by anything that is in us. That is not a few He dismissed a za result of of ah are committing to you