Sermon
Is There a God?
Publisher transcript
Transcript
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We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christ Church.
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redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christ Church.
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and the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 1, all as printed in the liturgy.
Romans 1 chapter mention
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A reading from the book of Genesis.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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Now the earth was formless and empty.
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Today, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
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And God said, Let there be light.
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And there was light.
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Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,
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so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky,
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over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.
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So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them,
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male and female he created them.
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God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number,
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fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky,
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and over every living creature that moves on the ground.
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A reading from the Gospel according to John.
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
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He was with God in the beginning.
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Through him all things were made.
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Without him nothing was made that has been made.
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In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
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He was in the world, and though the world was made through him,
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the world did not recognize him.
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He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
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Yet to all who did receive him,
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To those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
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Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will,
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but born of God.
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The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
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We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son,
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who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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A reading from the Epistle to the Romans.
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The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people
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who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
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since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
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For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities,
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his eternal power and divine nature,
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have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made,
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so that people are without excuse.
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For although they knew God,
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they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him,
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but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Although they claimed to be wise,
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they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God
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for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
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Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts
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to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
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They exchanged the truth about God for a lie
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and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator,
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who is forever praised.
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Amen.
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This is the word of the Lord.
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Thanks be to God.
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Well, thank you, Michael, for that scripture reading.
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And good morning, everyone.
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My name is Andrew.
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I'm one of the pastors here.
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And will you join me in prayer as we open up God's word together?
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Father, I just ask that you would reveal yourself to us,
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open our eyes to see your truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
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And would we find that your truth is not only true,
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but that it is beautiful as revealed in Jesus Christ.
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We pray this in his name.
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Amen.
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All right, so let's do this.
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Is there a God?
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Right?
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Yes.
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We're done.
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Now, you probably don't need to guess my answer to this question.
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Look at my outfit, right?
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But the first thing that I want to say is that if you're here,
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and your answer to this question, is there a God, is no, or maybe, or I'm not sure,
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we want to especially thank you for being here.
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And we want to acknowledge that just by stepping into this church,
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you've already taken a huge step of faith.
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You've taken a step into this church in faith that this is not going to be a complete waste of your time.
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So we're super honored that you're here,
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and we want you to know that Christ's church exists not just for Christians,
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but for people just like you.
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The second thing I want to say is that if you consider yourself as someone who doesn't believe in God,
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or if you struggle to believe in God,
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I want to say to you that, you know,
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we Christians actually might agree with you more than you think.
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Because, you know, it's actually quite possible that the God you don't believe in
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truly doesn't exist, and isn't worthy of your faith and trust.
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And it might be that that's also not the God that we believe in either.
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Here at Christ's church, we recognize that a big reason people don't believe in God
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is because they haven't beheld Him for who He really is.
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So we welcome your skepticism, we welcome your questions,
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we hope that you'll join us in our Q&A after this.
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And really, our only hope for you is that you'd be introduced to the God
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that we believe truly is worthy of believing in.
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And we believe that that God is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
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So that's what we're going to be talking about today as we approach this question,
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is there a God?
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We're specifically asking, does the Christian God exist?
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Now, maybe you're expecting the sermon to go something like this.
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Yes, there is a God because, argument one, two, three, and four,
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or however many I can throw at you in the next 30 minutes, right?
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And honestly, I could preach that sermon in probably less than two minutes, right?
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Like, check this out.
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Yes, there is a God because, point one, where did all this come from,
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if not from a divine first cause?
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Point two, how else could we account for the fine-tuning of this universe
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and how intricately this world is sustained and held together?
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And what is the probability that this world is ordered this way just by chance?
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Point three, how else could we ground the transcendent and universal nature
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of morality and justice apart from a transcendent God?
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And then point four, if there is no God, and if this is all there is,
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and the universe is just an impersonal chunk of matter,
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why do our lives feel like they're stories full of meaning?
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Why do our interactions feel so personal rather than mechanical or robotic?
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And what is beauty?
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And why does human love and consciousness seem like something more than just a biochemical reaction?
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And there we go, my four-point sermon.
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We can go home.
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But, you know, while I do personally find these arguments compelling,
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compelling signals indicating God's existence,
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I know that they don't definitively prove God, like, beyond all doubt.
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In fact, if we're talking about the Christian God,
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I'll be the first to admit that we can't prove this God
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because He is not a God that we can prove or disprove.
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If you tried to prove God at the very start,
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appealing to some more certain, more authoritative, more trustworthy,
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more reliable proof of God,
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you've already begun looking for something greater than God.
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And so from the start, you'd be trying to prove an inherently inferior being
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whose own word and revelation were not authoritative enough to verify His own existence.
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And again, this would not be the Christian God.
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So as circular as this may be, at the end of the day,
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I believe that there is a God because God has revealed Himself to us as self-evident.
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And there is no higher or more reliable authority
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than God's own testimony and communication concerning Himself.
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But now if you're here, I'm sure you don't buy that, right?
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Maybe you think I'm crazy.
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Maybe you think I'm deluded or just incredibly narrow-minded, right?
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And unable to see from any other perspective than my own Christian one
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to say something like this.
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And maybe your fair and logical question to me is,
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well, if God is self-evident, then why do so many people not believe in God?
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And why are we asking this question, is there a God?
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Well, that's the question that I really want to consider this morning.
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Why do we ask this question, is there a God?
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Have you ever given any thought to that?
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Like, why do we ask, is there a God?
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Now, the modern secular person might say it's because God is not self-evident, right?
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Because if He was, then everyone, right, everyone would believe in Him.
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But they don't, so He must not be self-evident.
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And that seems like pretty sound reasoning, right?
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But isn't it possible that something self-evident might still be denied and rejected as false,
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even if it was true?
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Like, is it truly self-evident that all people are created equal?
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Yes?
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Well, if so, then why weren't people treated equal on the southern plantations
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or in the Nazi internment camps?
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It is very possible.
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It is very possible for something to be self-evident and yet not believed.
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Whether people are blinded from seeing the truth as victims of some kind of evil Nazi propaganda
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or people can just deny self-evident truths out of their own wicked and deceitful motivations,
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right?
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Like so many of our early founding fathers who did believe that all people were created equal
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and yet they found ways to justify slavery because they loved money and power and comfort
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more than truth.
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So I want to question and I want to problematize this assumption that God's existence must not
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be self-evident.
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And I want to suggest that there are other explanations for why we ask this question,
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is there a God?
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Because, you know, for the majority of humanity throughout history, divine existence has been
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considered as self-evident.
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And the Christian scriptures would agree.
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Look at verses 19 and 20 of our Romans passage.
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Apostle Paul says what can be known about God is plain, like it's self-evident because God
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has made it plain to us and his divine qualities have been clearly seen and therefore we are
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without excuse.
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So Christians, along with a sizable majority of people throughout history, have considered
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God's existence to be self-evident.
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And of course, this doesn't make us right about the matter, but I do wonder if this should
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factor into how we talk about who should bear the burden of proof in this matter.
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You know, there's this one time, a long time ago, I'm not even sure if I was married yet,
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but I was interacting with my wife, Chelsea, and I wanted to test her.
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And I said, hey Chelsea, why do you believe in God?
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And I expected that she was going to give me a bunch of different reasons, and I planned
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to play devil's advocate, right?
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And to critique her and to use that moment to teach her all the stuff I learned in seminary.
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But to my surprise, she hit me with something that I didn't at all expect.
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And she totally stopped me in my tracks.
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So I'm like, hey Chelsea, why do you believe in God?
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And then she looked at me, annoyed, as you've often seen her look at me.
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She rolled her eyes, and she said, why not?
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And then she just went on carrying on with her own business, leaving me dazed and hemming
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and hawing all to myself.
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Now I share this story not just to give you a pretty representative window into my marriage,
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but to help us see that a big part of how we come at this question, is there a God,
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has to do with where we think the burden of proof lies.
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Like I tried to place the burden of proof on Chelsea to support why she believed in God,
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but then she flipped it back on me to make a case for why she shouldn't.
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And in the same way, I want us to consider, why are we even asking the question, is there
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a God?
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Why aren't we asking instead, is there not a God?
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Now this is not to say that is there a God is a bad question or a wrong question, but it
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is to note that it's a question that comes from a particular historical context and background.
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Right?
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Like did you know that in the Western world, atheism didn't really come onto the scene as a compelling
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like option until the late 1800s.
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So it's worth asking, as the philosopher Charles Taylor does in his massive book, A Secular
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Age, why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God and say 1500 in our Western
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society?
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Why?
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While in 2000, many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable.
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Now that question is way above my pay grade.
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And even if I could answer it, we don't have time.
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But my point is, when we ask, is there a God rather than, is there not a God?
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It might actually reveal far more about us than it does about whether or not God exists.
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When we ask, is there a God, we display our own cultural and historical conditioning and
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situatedness and the background beliefs that come with being modern, secular people.
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Because see, according to the Christian account of world history, the first humans, Adam and
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Eve, especially before they began to doubt God's word, they would never have even thought
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to ask such a question as, is there a God?
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Even when Adam and Eve experienced God's divine absence, right?
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God came into the garden, then he went out of the garden.
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They experienced his divine absence, but they never doubted his existence.
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And then even after the fall of humanity, when we began to doubt God and his words,
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no one, no one doubted his existence.
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Even when they stopped going for walks with God in the garden, virtually all of the ancient
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world, even those who didn't worship the same God as Abraham.
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Moses and Adam.
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For them, doubting the divine just wasn't plausible in the ancient world.
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And even when they experienced long bouts of divine absence, right?
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They didn't doubt the divine, but they actually pined for the divine presence all the more.
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All the more, right?
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But here we are as modern Western people, and we hold the background belief that God isn't
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self-evident.
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That God's existence is up for debate, and that it's acceptable to doubt him.
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And probably our biggest obstacle to belief in God is the problem of evil and suffering, right?
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Like, how could God allow it?
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And why hasn't he given us an explanation for evil and suffering?
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Because we moderns, right?
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Because we moderns are so confident that we can understand so much of the universe and how it works,
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it's hard for us to believe in a God that we can't fully grasp and explain.
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And so, like, if I can't think of a reason why God would allow pain and suffering, then
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there must not be a reason, and God must not exist.
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But for pre-modern people, who probably suffered, like, far worse than any of us, it was like,
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of course we can't understand everything that God allows to happen.
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And suffering actually drew them nearer to God than further.
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Because after all, if we have a God big enough to be mad at, because he's all, you know, he's all
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powerful and he's all wise, if we have a God that's big enough to be mad at, that he doesn't fix things,
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then we probably also have a God big enough to have some reasons why he doesn't fix things,
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reasons that we just might not yet know as finite creatures.
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So what I'm saying is, sure, we can ask, is there a God, but why do we ask?
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And might it be that we ask not so much because God's existence is clearly implausible,
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but because we live in an age that has suppressed the truth and made God's existence implausible?
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Now, I'm not saying that modern Western people are any worse than the people of any other time.
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But I do want to point out that we aren't as neutral as we like to think we are.
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And we do have blind spots.
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And our particular blind spot is that since Descartes, right, since the Enlightenment,
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we've been conditioned to pursue truth and certainty, not by faith in God who reveals things to us,
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but by doubt.
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Think about that.
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We've been conditioned to pursue certainty through the method of skepticism.
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We've been taught to doubt everything and doubt as much as you can.
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And at the point in which you cannot doubt anymore, then you finally arrived at certainty and truth.
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And that's what Descartes did, right?
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He doubted and doubted and doubted until he realized,
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I think, therefore, I am.
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Or in other words, I can know that I exist because I'm thinking.
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And I could not think unless I existed.
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So I am certain that I exist because I am thinking.
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Descartes believed his doubting led to certain knowledge.
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And we've been influenced by this method ever since, using skepticism and doubt to discern
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and discover the truth.
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But the thing is, you know, Descartes, honestly, he could have doubted some more.
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He could have.
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We can always keep doubting if we want to.
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There are no limits to skepticism.
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Sure, I believe my wife loves me.
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I believe she's a mortgage loan processor and a real estate agent.
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But how do I really know that she's not a Chinese spy?
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Plotting my demise.
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I could always doubt if I wanted to.
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But none of us lives that way, right?
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None of us lives that way as absolute skeptics because it's impossible to live that way.
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When you sat down in these pews today, you didn't research the tree that this wood came from.
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You didn't try to discern how old the wood was.
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Or you didn't measure the thickness of the pew and calculate the physics relative to your body weight.
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No, you just sat in it, all right?
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You trusted the pew would support you.
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None of us can live a life of radical doubt and skepticism.
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For as C.S. Lewis would caution us, the one who sees through everything sees nothing.
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We all live with implicit faith.
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And even when we doubt, it takes faith to doubt.
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You know, we tend to often think of faith as a blind leap and of doubt as honest.
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But there is such a thing as a reasonable faith.
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And there is also such a thing as blind, irrational, and dishonest doubt.
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Whatever we believe to be true or whoever we believe to be telling the truth,
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we always believe with a measure of faith.
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Or to put it differently, we believe things to be true by some measure of trust.
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Trust.
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All knowledge of anything requires trust.
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Every time we push on the brakes in our cars, right?
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We don't just know that the car is going to stop.
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We trust that the car is going to stop.
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Or as the Scottish philosopher David Hume would famously remind us,
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when we anticipate the sun rising once again tomorrow,
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as it has ever since we've ever known a bazillion times,
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because we still can only trust and believe by faith that it's going to rise again tomorrow.
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Everything we say we know, we actually trust that we know it.
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We know by at least a small measure of faith.
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So when it comes to the question of is there a God,
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whether we answer yes or no or maybe,
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every answer, every answer requires faith.
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Prior assumptions and commitments that we do not doubt but also cannot prove.
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Now you may be wondering, if all knowledge then requires a measure of faith,
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and if none of us are as neutral or unbiased as we like to think,
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am I saying that we're all just stuck in this chaotic and subjective world of competing,
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he said, she said, they said, we said?
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Well, no, let me be very clear.
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It is because I believe, our text this morning, Genesis chapter 1,
Genesis 1 chapter mention
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that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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It is because of my faith in this God that I also believe in objective and absolute truth,
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that all truth is God's truth,
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and that therefore all truth is also public truth, universal truth,
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because this world belongs to a God who's holding it all together.
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And even though we are fallible and finite,
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I also believe we can know objective, public, and universal truths
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because God made us in His image and in His likeness.
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And He wants us to know Him, and He wants us to know ourselves,
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and He wants us to know the rest of His creation.
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But you see, it is precisely because of my faith
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that I can account for an objective world.
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In fact, you know, even when Francis Bacon was articulating the scientific method,
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he wasn't doing that in a vacuum.
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He was a committed Christian.
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He developed a scientific method based on his faith in a God
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who ordered and sustains the universe.
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So you see, Christians, we very much affirm truth as objective,
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even as we also recognize that there's always a subjective measure of faith and trust involved,
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as with everything we claim to know and live by.
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When God spoke to Adam and Eve in person,
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telling them how to live and what to do and what not to do,
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they were to live and they were to obey by faith and trust in God's Word to them.
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Just because they saw God face to face didn't mean that they didn't have to have faith in Him.
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But see, their faith, it wasn't a huge blind leap of faith.
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It was simply the natural way of relating to their Maker.
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Just like a newborn implicitly trusts and has faith in her mother
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and trusts her mother with her whole life.
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We were always meant to have faith,
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even from the beginning when we walked with God.
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A reasonable faith.
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A faith that comports with logic and our sensory experiences
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and our most basic intuitions about God and ourselves and this world.
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And not just a faith, but a hope and a love and an affection too.
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See, contrary to the theory that modern secular people
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can just subtract faith and religion and emotion and dogma
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in order to finally see the world clearly and rationally and truly as it really is,
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again, Charles Taylor, he's formerly a philosopher at Oxford,
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now he's at Northwestern.
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He points out that secularism is not the absence of belief,
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but just another set of beliefs with motives of its own.
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Oftentimes that are unexamined and at the end of the day,
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just as unprovable as the beliefs and motives of religious people.
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So you see, a big reason why we are asking,
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is there a God today,
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is because we are modern people who've been conditioned to pursue truth
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through doubt and skepticism.
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But if we're honest with ourselves,
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even when we doubt, it takes faith to do so.
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We only doubt because of something else that we do believe by faith.
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So I'm not saying that doubt is necessarily wrong.
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Doubt is even warranted by the Christian scriptures.
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Adam and Eve should have doubted the serpent
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instead of doubting God in the garden.
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And as finite and fallible human beings
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living in a broken world amongst broken people,
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we have great reason to doubt a whole lot of stuff in this world.
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And maybe that's why you doubt God's existence as well.
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Because you rightfully doubt religious people
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and religious institutions who have hurt you or others
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or who've manipulated you or others
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or who've taken advantage of your trust.
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Your doubt, I want you to hear from me, is warranted.
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But as important as your doubt is,
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we also need to consider where our faith lies as well.
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Because we were always meant to doubt out of and by faith.
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Like contrary to Descartes who said,
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we must doubt in order to know truly,
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Augustine said, we need to believe in order to know truly.
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See, Adam and Eve should have doubted the serpent
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because of their faith in God's word to them.
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God's word that spoke creation into being
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and brought order into chaos and light into darkness.
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Look at Genesis chapter 1 verse 3.
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God's word here is constituting reality.
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And God said, let there be light and there was light.
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So you see, it was by faith.
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It was by faith in that powerful, authoritative word of God
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speaking into creation that we were always meant to live.
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It was by that light that God spoke into the world
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that we were meant to see and behold all of reality as it truly is.
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Again, as C.S. Lewis would put it,
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I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen.
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Not only because I see it,
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but because by it, I see everything else.
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And therefore, the reason we ask questions like,
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is there a God,
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is because we stop seeing by God's light.
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We stop trusting in God's reality constituting word
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and we've chosen darkness instead.
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To use Paul's language here in Romans chapter 1 verse 19,
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even though God made himself known to us plainly,
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we wickedly suppress the truth in our unrighteousness.
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Verse 21,
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And although we knew God,
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we refused to give him glory and thanks.
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And thus our very thinking and reasoning
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and understanding of the world became futile.
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And our hearts were darkened to the point
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of adoring things other than God,
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things less than God,
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less glorious,
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less wonderful,
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less good.
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Verse 22,
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Although we claim to be wise,
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we became fools
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and exchanged the glory of the immortal God
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for images of created things.
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In verse 25,
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we exchanged the truth about God for a lie
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and worshiped and served created things
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rather than through creator.
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We totally got it backwards.
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We totally mixed it up.
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And you see,
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this is the Christian account
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for why we ask the question,
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is there a God?
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It's because of this thing called sin.
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It's not just a problem of the head,
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but of the heart
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and of the hands as well.
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And I'm not condemning you as a sinner
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for being genuinely curious
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and asking the question,
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is there a God?
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I'm quite glad that people
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are asking this question,
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but what I do want to make clear
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is that sin is the reason
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why this question has come about
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as plausible in the first place.
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A sinful suppression of the truth
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and an exchanging of the truth
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about God for a lie,
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elevating the creature
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above the creator.
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And while it is possible
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to ask this question
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with an honest heart,
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and with a true desire
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to seek God,
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it's also possible
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to ask this question,
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is there a God
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with a darkened heart?
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A darkened heart
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that's already determined
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what it is willing to believe
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apart from God.
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A darkened heart
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that's faithfully committed
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to a radical skepticism
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and doubt
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that excludes
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and suppresses
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the truth about God
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from the very start.
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And if that's you this morning,
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I don't have words
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of condemnation for you,
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but I do have words
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of warning and invitation.
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Like, might it be
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that it's not for intellectual
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and rational reasons
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that you struggle
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to believe in God?
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Might it be
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that you are bound
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to desires
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that you already know
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are not of God?
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And it's interesting to me
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how Paul mentions
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one kind of powerful desire
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here in verse 24.
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Therefore, God gave them up,
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God gave them over
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in the sinful desires
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of their hearts
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to sexual impurity
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for the degrading
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of their bodies
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with one another.
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He talks about sex
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right in the middle
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of all that.
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And you know,
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the atheist,
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the famous atheist
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and author
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and philosopher
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Aldous Huxley,
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he was honest enough
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to admit
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that this was the reason
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why he didn't want
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to believe in God.
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Because it would interfere
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with his sexual freedom
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and condemn
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what he called
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his erotic revolt.
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You have another
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famous atheist,
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Thomas Nagel.
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He's professor of law
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and philosophy at NYU.
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And he too is honest
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enough to admit
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that he doesn't just
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not believe in God,
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but he doesn't want there
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to be a God.
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And he describes himself
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as having, quote,
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a cosmic authority problem.
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See, Huxley and Nagel,
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they recognize
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and they admit
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that their hearts
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and their hands
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are very much at play
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along with their heads
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in their denial of God.
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And this morning,
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I just want to ask,
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might that describe you
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as well?
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And this is not just
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a question aimed
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at the atheists
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and the agnostics
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in the room,
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but even those of us
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who identify as Christians,
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for all of us
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who struggle with unbelief
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and a lack of faith
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and trust in God
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and in his words
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and in his ways,
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don't we all have
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a cosmic authority problem
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that's more than just
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a matter of our intellect
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and what's going on
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in our heads?
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Like, I know
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it's way more comfortable
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to argue these points
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and just have it all
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up here in our minds
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in some kind of
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abstract way,
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like it's just some kind
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of intellectual exercise.
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But God didn't make us
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as brains on sticks.
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We are people
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made in his image
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meant to engage
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the world
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with our head,
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our hearts,
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and our hands.
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And the implications
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of this, I get,
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can be terrifying
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to reckon with, right?
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That this,
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is there a God question
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is something more
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than a philosophical debate
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over what our heads
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ought to think,
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but it has major implications
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for what our hearts
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are supposed to love,
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what our hands
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are supposed to do.
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Like, this could change
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everything for us,
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and that's why many of us
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don't want to be confronted
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with God's truth.
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But at the same time,
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don't we all want
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the kind of rich
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and whole
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and coherent life
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that we might have
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if we accept
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the truth about the world,
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regardless of what it
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might cost us.
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A head, heart,
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and hands life
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aligned, right,
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with the truest
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possible story
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of the world.
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And not just the truest
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story of the world,
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but the most beautiful
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story of the world
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about this loving God
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who came
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to save the world.
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According to our final text
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that we haven't yet
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touched today
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from John's Gospel,
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the good news
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of Christianity
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is that yes,
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there is a God
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who made us
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and who is light.
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And even when we chose
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darkness again
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and again and again
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throughout our lives
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and throughout human history,
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God sent His Word
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and light back
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into the world
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once again,
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even knowing
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that His light
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and His Word
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would be rejected again.
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But He still sent Him
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with the intention
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of drawing His wayward children
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back into His family.
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And this light,
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this Word that He sent
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was none other
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than His Son,
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Jesus Christ,
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the fullest revelation,
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the fullest proof
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of God
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and His glory
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right here in the flesh,
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dwelling amongst us,
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not just full of truth
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but also full of grace.
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For although we had
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the audacity
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to exchange the truth
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about God
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for a lie
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and to substitute
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our creaturely selves
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as gods
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into that high
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and holy place
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of glory
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only reserved for God,
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Jesus,
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the Son of God,
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He had the compassion
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to exchange His blood
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for our sin
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and to substitute
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His creator self
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as a man
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on a cursed cross
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of judgment
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reserved for sinners
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like us.
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Now I know
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that I haven't proved
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God to you this morning
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but to summarize
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what I've tried
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to present to you
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more than just reasons
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and arguments
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for God's existence
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is a narrative.
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A narrative
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that assumes
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that the God revealed
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to us in Christ
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is real
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and that we all
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implicitly know
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of this God.
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And not only that
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but I've tried to present you
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with a narrative
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that accounts for why
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we find it so hard
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to believe in God
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in the first place.
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We've wandered
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as the scriptures say.
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We've wandered away
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from His light
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and we don't see
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as we ought.
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Now you may or may not
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agree with me
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that this narrative
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is a plausible explanation
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of God's existence
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or of human unbelief
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but I hope
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that you could
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at least take some steps
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toward agreeing with me
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that this story
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of the Son of God
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pursuing wayward brothers
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and sisters
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and bringing them back home
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to His Father
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all at His own
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costly expense
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I hope you could agree
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with me
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that that is a beautiful story.
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A story unlike any other.
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And don't you want
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to believe
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that this is the God
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who made
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and sustains
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the world
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and who will one day
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save the world
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from itself.
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Jesus Christ
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come to dwell with us
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full of grace
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and truth.
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Will you pray with me?
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God I just pray
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that you would give us
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eyes to see
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what you have made
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self-evident
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and that we would not only
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encounter the truth
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but the way
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and the life
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of Jesus.
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Show us the beauty
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of the story
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that you've written
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and give us a longing
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to align ourselves
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with your ways
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and your story
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to know you
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as the God of love
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who sent your Son
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to save us
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even through his death.
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God help our unbelief.
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Help our unbelief
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I pray in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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Amen.