Core Training | Theology 101 - The Doctrine of God Pt. 1

Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Englewood

Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.

Thank you so much for tuning into our podcast.

You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word

about important issues facing your life that can guide you

according to the Bible. So I want to welcome everybody

for being here tonight. I also want to welcome those who

are listening online. I appreciate those who do that

and, and also share this with others.

I keep hearing, let me just let me do 1 little infomercial.

I appreciate those who've been listening to the core training

time together. This is just a continuation of

that. Even though we're moving on to a

different subject, which probably should have been the

first subject. We've rearranged some schedule

just because we felt like we needed to continue to talk about

a few things. But also just want to mention

this, and I want everybody listening online to this too,

that our, our Inglewood choir has put together a new worship

CD and you can download that and, or buy the CD.

And so I hope that you'll come by our bookstore at the church

and, and look for a way to get that, especially on Sunday

mornings. And I know that they would

appreciate you doing that and also look forward to the

opportunity of guiding you in worship.

For those who've been listening to other podcasts that we're

doing, I hope you'll continue to do that.

We just recorded another one in Walking in Prayer on spiritual

warfare that'll be posted here soon.

And so we have about eight of those walking in prayer podcast

now that are designed primarily, I mean, for you while you're

walking or driving, but you can use them in your personal quiet

time as well. So I hope that you're listening

to all that. But tonight we're going to get

into a really what I call the bedrock.

This is our bedrock. This is not only a primary

doctor and it's the primary of primary doctrines.

And here's what we're going to do in this session.

I want to talk about the existence of God and some of the

arguments for or against the existence of God because in our

culture today, we need to have some awareness of those

conversations as well as we need to be secure in our own belief.

And then I want in the next week or so or next time together, I'm

going to talk some about some of the characteristics and

attributes of God. We'll talk about some of the

names of God. Sometimes that's confusing in

Bible study and you may not always know this.

Some of you've known this for a long time that in the Old

Testament, especially when you see different words used for for

God and, or if they're capitalized or not, they

actually refer to different Hebrew names.

And so I'll, we'll walk through some of that, but but also some

of the attributes and characteristics of God.

But then we need to spend probably more than one session

on the Trinity. This is an issue that is often

hard to understand. There's some good questions that

were raised by some of you for that.

So we want to make sure that we do that.

It's also a topic in evangelism and conversations with people

that are often, it's often hard to understand.

There are people in our world, in our culture who are anti

Trinitarian and we need to understand what what we believe

about the Trinity. And sometimes that can be a

little confusing because it actually is larger than our

brains will contain. But we're going to do our best

to understand what we can about that.

And so I appreciate that, you know, we we need truth.

I was reminded of supposedly a true story.

Now that I notice what I just said.

So I cannot I am making no claim, but supposedly this was a

true story. Some of you may have heard this

story. A cake decorator was asked to

inscribe first John 418 on a wedding cake.

And 1st John 418 says this. There is No Fear in love.

That perfect love casteth out fear.

So that was going to be on a wedding cake, but the Baker

misread the reference. And when the cake arrived at the

wedding reception, it was John 418, not first John 418, but

John 418 on the cake. And John 418, which had been

inscribed, says this. For thou has had five husbands,

and he whom thou has now is not thy husband.

That's supposedly a true story. Now I will neither verify nor

deny, but that's supposedly a true story.

But we need truth. So at it's very root theology,

if you break the word down, is the study of who, the study of

God, theos God. And so at it's very root we're

we're here to study God. And for us, we want biblical

theology because the word theology in general could be

used to study other gods. And so we want to study biblical

theology. And even more specifically, we

need applied biblical theology. So not only what do we know

about this, but how does this make a difference in my life?

You know, how So what, so to speak, how do I answer the So

what questions? And so why do we need to do

this? Well, we, we've studied the

Bible and I did a session on the biblical authority that we need

to look at. And if you missed that one, you

need to go back and look at it because it is foundational.

But we also need to study the author.

And so we're going to be talking about that.

We talked a little bit about the Holy Spirit in a previous time

and we're going to come back to him later in the Trinitarian

conversation. But, but here he is because God

is the central point from from which the whole framework of

belief hubs out and, and rests. In fact, a Methodist theologian

said this. He said that God is not one of

our religious beliefs. He is the belief.

He's not one doctor and he's the heart of all doctrine.

And so we need to be certain about how we are articulating

who God is. I've said to you before in

previous times that when when we start talking about how to share

the gospel, which we will together, and we start talking

about gospel presentations in our culture here to begin with,

God says or God said, it can often be confusing to people.

So which God, what God do you mean?

What do you mean by God? Or if we say the Bible said,

then they're going to say, why should I care what the Bible

says? Because of their perspective.

And so we need to have a framework and a foundation of

bedrock, so to speak, of what we believe about God, who God is,

and why do we believe God is real?

Why do we believe he exists? So we're going to talk about

that a little bit. Some of this gets quite

complicated to be honest with you.

And again, should be probably a 10 week study in and of itself.

And so we're going to see what we can do here in about an hour,

but but to see what we can do with this.

And so we need to talk about the existence of God for a minute

because there've been many challengers, as you can imagine,

throughout church history and throughout even prior prior to

church history who challenged the idea.

I'm going to assume that all of us in this room believe that may

not be true. I certainly pray that's true

that for those who are attending church on a regular basis that

we have a basic belief in God. And and and that's part of the

issue, frankly, because that's also what the biblical writers

did. And so one of the things that

you don't find really in Scripture is a formal argument

for the existence of God. They assumed God existed when

they were writing. And so you don't see them

articulating it, it in some formal way.

You know this, that you shall believe God exists because

although there are some passages and we'll look at those

together, but Hebrews 11/6 reminds us of this.

And without faith it is impossible to please him.

For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists

and that he rewards those who seek him.

So I, I begin this whole conversation, and you would have

to begin that conversation with that lost person, atheist,

agnostic, humanist, or whoever might be denying the existence

of God, that this is a faith issue.

And it is a faith issue. But there's more that we can add

to it, and we want to be able to do that.

So let's do that tonight. So there have been many of those

over the years who've declared that God was dead.

I remember a few decades ago there were there were media

presentations on the fact that God is dead.

And I said then and I say now that that those misconceptions

were a big mistake. And many of them since then have

found out the true reality because they've passed away.

And I promise you, people who have died believe in God.

But the psalmist wrote in more than one place.

It's interesting whenever the Bible repeats itself.

And this is one of those cases because it's so important that

it does. And so the psalmist wrote in

more than one place. We'll see. 2IN Psalm 14, one it

says, the fool says in his heart there is no God.

They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds.

There is none who does good. This is kind of the basis for

you where you get some of these ideas that there's none of us

who are good. No, not one.

But this was so important that in Psalm 53, verse one, it's

almost identical. He says, the full says in his

heart, there is no God. They are corrupt, doing

abominable iniquity. There is none who does good.

And so as the Holy Spirit was inspiring this revelation to the

psalmist, it was really significant that they pointed

this out more than once, that when we speak of God, we're not

just talking about some distant concept.

That's not who we believe God is.

As believers and as Christians, we we actually are talking to a

being, a real being with whom we have a relationship, a real

relationship. So this is a very intimate,

personal thing for us in our walk with God.

But the teachings about God or the gods is central to any and

all religions, which is why we recognize that there are

hundreds of false religions in the world who have their own

gods and their evidence of the way.

Sinful people without the guidance of an authority like

scripture will always misunderstand and distort the

revelation from God. And, and because God is infinite

and we are finite, it's also difficult for us to ever fully

understand God. So even though we believe in him

and we have a relationship with him, we really don't understand

him that well. There's much about God that is

beyond us. And that's not a guess.

The Bible tells us that. And so Psalm 145 verse 3 says

Psalms 145:3

great is the Lord and greatly to be praised and his greatness is

unsearchable. There's no limit to it.

We, we're so finite in our ability to think and God is

infinite and eternal. And those are words that are

hard for us in our current timeline, in our current space

to to think through very well, which is part of the problem.

So part of the reason and some people don't believe in God is

because they can't handle the idea of eternity.

They cannot handle the idea of infinite.

They can't even handle the idea much of somebody greater than

themselves. And so it becomes a burden for

them. The psalmist also write, it

wrote in Psalm 139. He says, such knowledge is too

wonderful for me. It is high.

I cannot attain it. So there are things about God

that we don't know. There are things about God we

don't understand. There are things about God our

little brains can't handle yet. And so it's interesting.

And he goes on in that chapter to say, how precious to me are

your thoughts. Oh God, how vast is the sum of

them. And then Paul wrote to Rome in

in Romans Chapter 11. He said, Oh, the depth of the

Romans 11 · chapter mention

riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his

judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

Therefore, before we really enter into discussion that I'll

do probably in the next session or so about some of the divine

qualities and attributes of God. We want to, we want to bring him

that glory and it'll be, it'll be a fun lesson in time for us

to be together to bring in that praise.

But we need to deal with some prior considerations, including

his existence in our day and time.

This demands our attention and, and we need to pay attention to

it so that we're equipped apologetically to deal with this

world out there. But also I need to know

obviously what I believe and why.

And there's a difference between knowing God and understanding

God. Those things are not equal

because of who He is and who we are and who we are not.

And so we know God based upon His revelation to us.

Most of that we would consider would be the Bible.

We know God because of the revelation that He has given us

to understand those aspects of who He is.

And so He gives us His word to help us understand Him, as well

as the Holy Spirit to help us with that.

And so again, I would encourage you to go back and study the

lesson about the Bible. So we depend upon God's

communication to us in Scripture for our true knowledge of God.

But even then, and this might disturb some people, but even

then, we, we, we can only know God partially.

We can know. We can know God truly, but we

can't know God exhaustively, if that makes sense, we can't

handle. It's like Moses being put in the

cleft of the rock to where the the full presence of God would

have blown him away. It's too much, and it would be

too much for us to actually know everything about him.

But we know what we need to know, and so does knowing equal

understanding. That's part of the question and

the answer to that's no. It doesn't mean I don't

understand everything about God, that God does things on there.

I don't understand why did God do that?

We ask those questions sometimes.

The answer is I don't know why God did that.

And that's frustrating to us. Again, in our temporal little

timeline with our little cranial cavities, we want to be able to

solve every problem and know every answer, tidy everything

up, put in a little box and be able to control it and explain

it. And so sometimes God is not

believed in or sometimes people would say God doesn't exist

because you can't wrap him up and bundle him up the way you

want to. So once again, we recognize that

in fact, Augustine or Augustine, depending upon what county

you're from in North Carolina, he once said, if you can

understand it, it's not God. It's not God at that point.

So unfortunately we're never going to be able to ever

completely answer the question that makes up the title of this

study when we talk about who is God, But but we know God as he

has revealed himself. So we find that revelation in a

couple of places. And I've talked to you about

this before again, in that discussion about the problem of

evil, because you have both general revelation and you have

specific revelation, and we see God in both of those places.

And we'll talk more about that as we move along.

But but we do not totally understand or know

comprehensively that which he has not revealed to us of

himself. And so there will always be an

element of mystery about God. And that's frustrating to some

humans. Humans like again, to be able to

box things up and usually control them, define them and

decide whether they want to cancel them.

But even Jesus said in Matthew 11, he says, all things have

been handed over to me by my Father and no one knows the Son

except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son

and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

So there's this mysterious and this is back to what we'll talk

about some in the Trinity is is is the relationship between the

Son and the Father. John 118 says no one has ever

seen God, God the only Son who is at the Father's side, He has

made him known. And so Jesus is part of the

revelation to us. This is who God is.

This is what God's like. We can see God Incarnate.

So we have the word of God, the Old Testament leading up to

this. Then we have the complete, the

the more complete revelation of God in Jesus Christ as the word

became flesh and we have the New Testament.

But even in the Old Testament, the prophet like Jeremiah said

this. He says Thus says the Lord, some

of you would know these verses. Let not the wise man boast in

his wisdom, Let not the mighty man boast in his might.

Let not the rich man boast in his riches.

But let him who boasts, boasts in this, that he understands and

knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love,

justice, and righteousness in the earth.

For in these things I delight declares the Lord.

So often in Scripture, what we see is we see these attributes

or these actions or these characteristics or these

descriptions of God. And that's where we put together

the mosaic of all those different pieces to say this,

this is God. This is who we believe God is.

And we need all those pieces to give us the most complete

picture that we can possibly have.

And and then we just have to ask the question, So who does, who

believes in God and who doesn't believe in God?

Well, I'm looking at some research.

It's interesting because according to one news poll back

in 2000, and then I'm going to bring it up to date, but back

in, 2094% of Americans believed in the existence of God.

And that's something you need to wrap your head around.

That's almost always been true. Now, you've got to be careful

with something like that because the definition of God is

extremely varied. So don't think evangelical

Christian biblical definition of God.

It's just a God concept, right? But it's interesting because

even current surveys by and and this is actually a conglomerate

of about three major research groups together that I I know

about and access. As you look at the last two

decades, the last 20 years, the the 21st century more or less,

that includes even a, a decline in the percentage of US adults

who identify as Christians, but also and then a corresponding

rise in those who say they don't, they don't follow any

religion at all. So Christianity and the decline,

the nuns, the NONESS in the rise.

But even during those decades, it's interesting that these

three sources are less clear and uniform about what's happened in

the last essentially in the last five years are different.

Now, I don't want to confuse you here.

Sorry, this is my statisticians brain going here.

So up to 2020, there's a real consistency since 2020,

something weird's going on. Something weird's going on right

now. I'm not sure exactly what that

is. We got to go have a little time

to figure that out. But but what's interesting is up

until about 2020, what you'll find is, is that the, the number

of Americans who believe in God has never dropped below 90%.

So no matter what you see in the media, no matter what you sense

in the culture, there's still a strong God belief, right?

And so they believe in some version of God, right?

Whatever that is. In fact, in this, I'm glad

you're, you know, those who are here are sitting down.

Those who are listening online sit down right now.

Only 4% or so of Americans don't believe in God, and it's never

been higher than that. And so we get perceptions from

media, we get perceptions from entertainment worlds, we get

perceptions from college and universities in higher academia

and science that would indicate to us that the number of

atheists and agnostics and humanists are huge and and

they're running the country and overrunning everything.

And that's just never been statistically true.

Now, again, who God is matters. So we have to define God.

So just saying the word God is not going to be enough.

We need to know what we mean by that and, and, and who we mean

by that. You need to understand that a

total of always less than 5% of the population in the United

States of America actually identify as atheist, agnostic or

humanist. In fact, the Pew Research, this

is in 2023, a couple years ago, they found that 4% of the US

adults self identify as atheists.

That's a slight increase over 3% about 10 years before.

So in the last 10 years, it's gone up by 1%.

OK. Now that's not the perception

that I know a lot of believers have.

And so there are people who sometimes say they're atheists,

but they proved not to be when crisis hits.

So it's, it's interesting, even over 80% of Americans with post

postgraduate degrees believe in God.

So this, this isn't just dumb people who believe in God.

All you smart people believe in God too.

So it's an interesting thing that we got to read.

Einstein believed in God. Einstein read his Bible, he was

Jewish, but he, he, he read his Old Testament.

And so in certain circles, it's higher.

If you break down the population, there's a certain

circles, for example, the National Academy of Sciences,

only 8% of those members believe in God.

And so that's where you, some of these messages come from.

Some of these messages come from specific locations, faculty

members in higher education, scientists who belong to certain

guilds and things like that. And so you'll hear that.

And so it's interesting because it's interesting that these

scientists are like that because God reveals himself in nature.

That's one of that general revelation.

He reveals himself in nature and conscience and of course, more

completely in Jesus. But if you know, I mentioned

Romans one in a previous time together.

But Romans 119 says, for what can be known about God is plain

to them because God has shown it to them.

God reveals himself and they can get there.

But atheism, atheism still puts forth arguments.

And around the world, there are other atheists.

Historically, there's an old atheist that was famous for his

time. For those of you who can

remember, for most of you cannot, it was before your time.

But the, the very first, the, the Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri

Gagarin, the first person to ever orbit the Earth.

Some of you were alive in those days.

Some of you have no idea what I just said, but there was a time

that nobody had ever been in a spaceship and gone around the

world. And this was the very first guy

to do that. And it scared this country to

death because they felt like the Russians were ahead of us in the

in the race, you know, so we had to get the Apollo program going.

But the first person to orbit the Earth while he was in space,

he said, I don't see any God up there.

More recently, a professor at MIT.

He's a professor of science, science and and technology there

at MIT. He says science and technology

are the gods that we serve. And then other atheists, God was

just a projected wish of human beings.

Or another very famous historical atheistic line from

Karl Marx in communism, Russian communism, he says religion is a

human fabrication and used as an opiate serving the vested

interests of those in power. And so there have been people,

Sigmund Freud, some of you have heard that name somewhere in

your past or somewhere along the way.

Sigmund Freud said that belief in God is wishful thinking that

marks the infantile stage of human development.

So we're all a bunch of babies who probably have mother issues,

right? Freud and that right something.

It's been a long time since I've studied Freudian theory,

probably won't ever do it again. But anyway, so, but they're also

the other side of this equation is there have been some

incredible scholars over the years who've done extensive

reading, and not just from Scripture, although they

certainly do that, but they've also interviewed modern

atheists. They've also read as much as

they could of what modern atheists write and argue about

and would say here's why I don't believe in God.

And they've been able to kind of capture, capsulize that for us

in about 7 major arguments or so that are often used by modern

atheist in denying the belief in the existence or the reality at

all of God. And so belief in God, they'll

say, can be explained as an objectification of, of purely

human ideals, wishes, longings or needs.

So in other words, this is just, we just dream this up because

we, we, we want this to be true. You know, this is something we

hope for. So God exists because we, we

want him to exist. We feel like we need him to

exist. Belief in God is in one way or

another inconsistent with scientific method in the

scientific view of reality. I'll talk more about that in a

little bit. That's it's really a funny thing

because I have probably 2 shelves of books written by

scientists who are Christians and I'm in high level

scientists, physicists, etcetera.

There's actually a movement about amongst microbiology and

astronomy of people coming to Christ because they're looking

at the smallest things. They're realizing that much of

what is being projected out there is truth is not truth.

And and then also looking at the biggest things they see, they

see that there has to be more than what we are trying to to

put together. Belief in God.

The term God lacks clear univocal meaning, which means it

can be ambiguously communicated. In other words, the word God

means too much. It means everything, so

therefore it means nothing. These are atheistic arguments.

Belief in God is irreconcilable with the extended intensity of

human suffering. We're back to the problem of

evil God. Why?

Why could God exist when all these bad things happen?

The sovereignty of God is inconsistent with recognition of

the worth, freedom, and full responsibility of man.

Somehow they think that because God's sovereign that we're

squashed. We have no ability, we have no

free will, we have we have nothing and and no value in and

of ourselves that we're that we're just captives of God.

Belief in God produces passivity in the presence of injustice and

opposition to social change. Some of these at the end are

actually these early ones are pretty classic arguments.

These last ones are the ones that bother me more, to be

honest with you. It's a kind of weird.

They're not even that theological, but but there are

atheists who believe that people who believe in God don't care

about injustice and, and our society, we don't care.

And the problem with that is, is that who, who have they seen

that from? Why do they think that?

Because they've seen the church not care at times.

And so, and, and this last one I think is related.

It says it's untenable for many persons, many persons today who

are seriously committed to the highest human values and have no

personal awareness of God. So, so in other words, you know,

if, if you believe in God somehow you're, you're mean or

you're not caring or you don't care about what happens around

you in a way. And so it's, it's interesting

where they've seen that. So everything from scientism to

the problem of suffering to responsible humanism, to social

injustice, these are all experiences.

One of my favorite rebuttals, and it comes from a person that

I would almost never quote, but but Hans Kung, I don't know if

you've ever heard that name before.

Hans Kung is a is a Swiss Catholic theologian who was so

liberal in his views toward the Catholic Church that the

Catholic Church censored him. They banned him because he

questioned a ton of very classic Catholic doctrine and so

including papal authority. And so they they didn't like him

at all, which is always interesting.

So he got in trouble a lot of time.

He never left the church to my knowledge, but he anyway, but he

gave a classic reply to atheism. He said atheism too, lives by an

indemonstrable faith. In other words, in other words,

they can't prove what they believe any more than they think

we can prove what we believe. And, and they have.

And for many, atheism is a religion.

You know, they, they have great faith in the absence of God.

And they push that because if God exists, it really messes

with their entire framework of life.

And suddenly they're accountable.

Suddenly they, they, they're going to, they're sinners.

Suddenly they have to struggle with things that they don't want

to struggle with. They don't want authority in

their life, many of them. So they'd have to live by

different standards. So like us, in a sense, atheists

believe in something they can't prove scientifically.

So atheists are believers just like us.

They just believe that they're, that we're accidents on our own,

basically, you know, which is not where we want to live.

So a Christian apologetics and just hang in there with me for a

minute. It's going to get a little

philosophical at times. Christian apologetics would

include ideas like why is there something rather than nothing?

Let me just start with a line like that.

Why is there anything? Why does anything exist instead

of nothing? And that's actually a question

about the world and creation and the universe.

So there at least here's some 7 considerations to show the

viability of belief in the existence of God.

And then I'm going to get into some classic arguments.

Let me show you a few books that I have up here with me.

One of them is a really good book, a really healthy book that

it that if it doesn't do anything else for you, it would

help you sleep at night. So no, it's actually a very good

book, but you can see that it's a bit thick.

But if you've never read No One Like Him by John Feinberg, this

entire book is on the doctrine of God.

So you can see the fact that this 3 inch book that I have or

whatever this is in my hand and I'm trying to put a synopsis in

an hour together. You could have you.

I have multi volume sets of people who write about the

doctrine of God. That's not the most famous book,

although it's a good one. And if you want to, a really

good book just on the doctrine of God.

Feinberg's book, he's a professor at Trinity.

No one like him. A more interesting 1, and I

actually referred this to one of our staff today, is called

Reflections on the Existence of God by Richard Simmons.

He's actually not a theologian. He comes, he works in a ministry

now, but he actually comes out of the business world.

But he's a best selling author, put together several essays,

everything from the problem of evil to the existence of God to

arguments about the existence of God.

It's an interesting apologetics primer, Reflections on the

Existence of God by Richard Simmons.

And then the most famous one perhaps would be Ji Packers

Knowing God. I'll quote him some toward the

end. This is a book that some people

have probably have read or been exposed to, but Ji Packers

Knowing God is a classic and been published I don't know how

many times as well. So I, I, I appreciate these

authors and lean on them for some of these ideas.

So these considerations, just listen to this.

Some of this is just kind of pragmatic and common sense.

It says many in today's world do believe in God, so they're going

to be limits to these atheistic assertions about the absence of

God. In other words, the very fact

that you have billions of, you know, you have millions and

billions of Christians in the world is a testimony that there

must be something to this, right?

This isn't just some opiate for the people.

Secondly, when people have rejected or failed to exercise

faith in a personal God, and this is an interesting argument

that I've seen many places, they tend to make idolatrous

somethings. In other words, they're the

human beings have a a tendency or proclivity to worship.

We're going to worship something.

Feinberg himself says human beings are incurably religious.

And so we're going to worship a rock or we're going to worship a

tree, or we're going to worship in Hinduism 1,000,000 gods or

we're going to worship something.

So no matter almost in fact, you could argue and I, I'm, you

know, my background of mythology is also in cultural anthropology

to some degree to where I would argue that every single culture

in the world has some form of worship.

And so there's a reason for that.

There's something inside of us that recognizes we need to do

that and there's something greater than us.

So another one, this goes in a different direction.

Christian martyrs and other believers in God have suffered

for and given witness to their faith in God.

Often when renunciation, if they could just renounce Christ, they

would have, it could have prevented their deaths or

alleviated their sufferings. And so, and that's not just a

church history thing. I do hope that you recognize

that more Christians were martyred for Jesus Christ in the

20th century than any other century prior.

And we're on pace in the 21st century to set a new record.

So martyrdom and persecution are higher today than they have ever

been in the world for Christians.

And so I know that we were shocked at the assassination of

Charlie Kirk. I get that.

I get, I get the the response to that.

I certainly do. You just got to understand that

in my world, where I live with the people I know around the

world, I've lost students, I've lost friends, I've lost people

who, and it's happening all the time where people are being

imprisoned, their homes are being destroyed, they're being

forced out of where they live and, and are persecuted.

So just recognize that martyrdom is alive and well.

And so the the idea here is such suffering to be explained due to

an illusion or a projection of human wishes with with so many

for so long go through so much. If there wasn't something real

about this number 4 Christian missionaries could also say

people in church life have given and do give their entire adult

lives to the sharing of the faith in God with others,

usually crossing the barriers of language and culture.

Why would they do that if there wasn't something real?

Christians believe in God despite close contact with

atheists and atheistic cultures and in spite of persecution.

Later this year, you're going to meet a dear friend of mine,

Doctor Combis Sahui, who is was a radical Muslim, came to

Christ, housed church pastor in Iran, arrested, threatened to be

killed. The church praised judge dies.

They're terrified of him. They let him go.

He came to work for me for years.

I still work with him. He's going to preach for us on a

Sunday morning here and share his testimony.

But to think through what what the believers that we still work

with inside of places like Iran and Afghanistan and what they're

going through. I've met many of them and know

many of them and, and we hear stories on a regular basis of

what they're going through. But they're not going to give up

their faith and they don't want to leave.

That's not the goal. The goal is to see people saved.

Number six Christian believers have been for centuries and are

presently engaged in various ministries designed to meet

human need and alleviate some human suffering.

So this is a direct rebuttal of that other argument to where we

don't seem to care where we care.

We're doing stuff all over the place.

I don't know if you know this or not.

And there's moments where I need to feel like I need to say

things because I learned that I learned yesterday about some

things that you all don't know. And you all may know this one.

I hope you do. But I hope you realize that

Southern Baptists are in the top three providers of disaster

relief food in the United States of America.

That whenever there's a hurricane, whenever there's a

disaster, a flood, whatever, that Southern Baptists are

either top 2 or top three provider of food and resources

to the Red Cross and to disaster relief.

And that's just a little piece of what we support here.

When you give to what's called the Cooperative Program and we

have a budget line item where we give to the Cooperative Program

and that's part of that money goes to help that disaster

relief. We, we recognize that here in

North Carolina when we talk about Western North Carolina and

sending people to work in Western North Carolina, which is

a subset of that. But this happens on the national

level and even international level to where our World Hunger

Fund, some of you, and I'm not, don't misunderstand me, I'm not

telling you not to do something, but some of you may support a

Feed the, a Feed a Child program someplace.

And you need to understand that up to 60% of what you give to

that program goes to the promotion of that program.

Whereas because of our international mission structure,

100% of money we give to our World Hunger Fund goes to

actually food and medicine. And so it's if you want to give

to help that child, give to the church and let us give to the

Cooperative Program where your dollar will go much further than

sometimes those individual programs that you have.

So just recognize some of those things just about some Southern

Baptist stuff and #7 Christian believers have been in our work

to help affect societal reform. So some of those things are

just, some of these atheistic arguments are just based on lack

of knowledge. All right, I'd say ignorance,

but that may be to me. So all that said, to get to this

part and stay awake, keep listening and try to follow this

and I will do my best to summarize extremely complex

conversations in subtle and concise and easy to understand

form. This may be impossible.

I spent, Michelle will tell you that I labored over this and

labored over this and labored over this to get this to you.

So there are some traditional proofs, quote UN quote, for the

existence of God. And these proofs have been

constructed by philosophers at various points in history.

Some of these go way back, pre medieval OK, and they are

attempts to analyze the evidence to show it is not rational to

reject the idea of the existence of God.

So these are for the existence of God.

There are at least four of these, but there are probably

400 subsets of these four and they have been adapted and

argued about and debated all the way up to probably yesterday.

OK. But it'll be interesting for you

to know that some of your atheist friends or some of your

non believer friends will actually be familiar with some

of these terms because non believers perhaps study these

more than believers do. And it might be common to run

into somebody who understands the ontological argument for the

existence of God. And I'll get to that one.

The first one is let's do a couple easier ones.

Not that any of these are easy, but some of these will make a

little more sense easily. The cosmological argument is

simply this. Every known thing in the

universe has a cause. Therefore the universe itself

must have a cause and the cause of such a great universe is God.

OK, it's much more complicated than that, but that's it in a

nutshell. So it's a cause and effect kind

of argument. Cosmologically, the whole

universe, in other words, the whole cosmos, the whole cosmos,

everything, the whole universe, everything has a purpose and A

cause and, and a subset of that is number 2.

So the the teleological or teleological argument.

Focuses on, and this is what some of you would be familiar

with in creationism and intelligent design.

And so it focuses on the evidence of harmony, order and

design in the universe and argues that the order and design

give evidence of an intelligent purpose.

And so since the universe appears to be designed with a

purpose, there must be an intelligent and purposeful

designer or God who who created it to function that way, right.

And so, in fact, humans built, almost built into us is this

idea that we, we want to understand why we are and who we

are. And you may not understand that

or believe that, but I promise you that I can give you evidence

that. And one of the easiest evidences

of that, and you may not realize this at all, that the number one

selling paperback book in the United States of American

history is Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life paperback.

Yeah. And so it's interesting.

People are longing to understand purpose and why.

So we need and we need to seek something beyond ourself to tell

us about our purpose, right? And this is part of it.

So in other words, to think through this order, to think

through this function, to think through who we really are and

why we really are is really significant.

And, and so this is the intelligent design.

There's too much order. Some of you have probably had

statistics. You've seen, you know, if the

Earth was, you know, one inch off or three feet off or

something, we'd burn up or we wouldn't, we'd freeze to death.

You know, I mean, everything's just perfect for us to exist as

we exist. The way we exist in relation to

the sun, in relationship to the moon and the race relationship,

the way we we rotate without any of those factors it we couldn't

exist. And so there's a perfection to

what's happening here. And the argument here is is that

can't be an accident. That's that's by design.

All right. I've told you about my brother

some before, but I have A and my brother David who will visit

with us someday, but he's a a medical doctor.

He's a brilliant mind member of Mensa.

A person has taught medicine at times.

I had a really hard time following him in school and as

the younger brother. But you're not like your brother

David, are you? But anyway, I was a believer.

He was not. And he was a very scientifically

minded person. He was a chemistry major in

college. He was straight A student,

everything, valedictorian, etcetera.

And then I have to come along after that.

And then he gets into medical school early.

He, he didn't need, you know, he, he had a, he was a chemistry

major, but didn't even have to worry about that degree.

He just got into Med school, top of his class in Med school,

chief resident could go do anything you wanted to do

anywhere in the world as a doctor kind of guy.

So just a brilliant guy. But anyway, he was in medical

school and came home and I've told some of you this story, so

bear with me, but it's worth having again.

And so he comes home where it's at, where it's Thanksgiving.

I've been away. I hadn't been home in about two

years. I hadn't seen him in a long

time. And we're staying up late just

talking at my parents house. And we're just, we're not

talking about faith or Jesus or anything.

We're just talking about what's going on, you know, in your life

and what's going on in medical school.

Well, they were working on the cadaver.

They were basically dissecting a human body and learning about

that in Med school. And and he says to me, this

comes out of the blue. You got to say I haven't prepped

anything with, you know, I'm, I'm transformed by the blood of

the lamb or nothing. You know what I'm saying?

And he says, Johnny, he goes, you wouldn't believe this.

He goes just by studying the human hand.

They were dissecting the hand and he says just looking at the

human hand, he says there's so much order and so much perfect

design to just the human hand. He said, and you can understand,

my brother was a a Darwinian micro and macro evolutionist,

scientifically oriented. If he couldn't dissect it or cut

it apart, it didn't exist. He didn't have room, faith and

religion would have been magic, you know, and and so this and so

he just says you just wouldn't believe this Johnny.

He goes just looking at the human hand and design and order.

There has to be someone who created all this.

This couldn't have just happened.

And I said, you know, I believe that.

And I might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier or even

in my family, but I knew I had a moment and I shared the gospel

with him. And we were kneeling on the

floor about 2:00 in the morning as he's praying and ask Christ

into his heart. He's now an out elder of his

church preaching some and which has been fascinating for and

entertaining for me #3 the ontological argument.

I cannot explain this to you. I am not adequate in my

explanation. I just confess upfront, I will

do my best. But this is the kind of argument

that you read the sentence and then you go back and you read

the same sentence about five times and try to understand what

it really means. So let me give you as simple A

version as I can. This is one of the oldest and

most unique arguments for the existence of God, and it

actually started in medieval times by a monk named Anselm and

has been debated and changed and tweaked.

So if you Google this, you're going to see Anselm's version,

Descartes Vert. You're going to see all these

different versions throughout history where people have

adapted it, changed it, disagreed with it, argued with

it, etcetera. Again, probably all the way up

to yesterday. So there are many versions and

critiques. It's very philosophical.

It's often very difficult to follow.

Here is 1 summary, and notice what I just said, one summary.

So the ontological arguments, unlike other classical arguments

for God's existence, it's not like the cosmological argument.

It's not like the teleological argument which appeal to the

world. They appeal to the empirical

world, things that we can see creation, the cosmos, you know,

design and order. It's nothing like that, nothing

that it would include observable evidence, so to speak.

This argument seeks to prove God's existence through the very

concept of God himself. Now you're already lost.

So this this is about the argument of of what a God and

who a God is, right. And so again, it started back in

the medieval times. And the argument begins with the

premise. Let me make this is easy as I

can that God is that then, which nothing greater can be

conceived. That's a quote.

So there's nothing greater than God that can be thought of.

So far so good. We can't think of anything

greater than God is the idea. And that implies that God

possesses all conceivable perfections, including existence

itself, because God is defined as the greatest conceivable

being, the greatest thing I could ever conceive, the

greatest being ever. And a being that exists is

greater than a being that it does not exist.

So if he's the greatest one, and a being that exists is greater

than a being that doesn't exist, God must exist you with that

logic. So if God only, but then that

goes on. So if God only exists as an idea

in the mind, then something greater could be conceived that

one that exists both in the mind and in reality.

So it can't just be in the mind. Therefore God must exist in

reality, because existing in reality is a necessary

perfection for the greatest conceivable being, right?

So it takes you in these loops of logic, right?

So I'm going to ask some of you all to stand up and repeat that

to me. The last one, the moral argument

is a little more down to earth. It says it's this idea of why do

we have a sense of right and wrong?

Basically, so man has a sense of right and wrong and of the need

for justice to be done. And it argues that there must be

a God who is the source of right and wrong and who will someday

made out justice to people. So we have a sense that there

are rules of right and wrong when people who are saying

anyway do and that we would you should be held accountable for

that. And so that's that idea of a

just thought and morality, the idea that immorality even exists

is a testimony to the existence of God.

It's part of our conscience. It's part of that general

revelation, if nothing else. But let's get more specific.

So how do we as believers know God exists?

How do how we think of that? And again, we come back to the

idea, first of all, that most people do have an inner sense of

God. And we may or may not believe

that, but, and some may deny that, but that denial will often

be made evident in times of crisis.

I have met, I can't tell you the number of people who claim to be

atheistic or agnostic or whatever they were.

And then when trouble hits, they want me to pray for them, they

want me to counsel with them, and they want to find some

external source of help and they believe that they can find one.

I can't tell you the number of people that I've had in my life

like that. I've seen atheists saved and

baptized in a matter of weeks, etcetera.

I've seen atheists whose children were saved and suddenly

their children leads them to the Lord and they are within a

matter of, I mean, what was it when Dave, remember Dave?

So Dave the atheist was saved in less than six weeks after his

son was saved. So but I mean violent, almost

angry atheist all the way to baptized.

I can't wait to trust in Christ Dave, you know, so it's it's

always interesting to me. Can't hope that for everybody.

The book says that they're going to be people in the end who

don't believe. So not everybody is going to do

that. But again, Romans, one says, for

the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all God,

ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their

unrighteousness suppress the truth.

That's the verse I want you to think about.

I shared that in our devotion this morning with staff.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God

has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes,

namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly

perceived ever since the creation of the world and the

things that have been made. So they are without excuse, for

although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give

thanks to him. But they became futile in their

thinking, and then their foolish hearts and their foolish hearts

were darkened. What we see up front is because

of sin, people suppress the truth, and that verb's very

active. In other words, I'm doing all my

best to squash the truth. So there's a very active, very

active movement in the world. We have an enemy who helps us,

and they're trying to read. They don't just reject it,

they're going to. It's a willful suppression.

It's an active act of willful suppression.

I'm rejecting this. I'm going to help you reject

this. I'm going to make sure everybody

rejects this. It's very strong.

Psalm 14 one again says, the fool says in his heart, there is

no God. They are corrupt.

They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good.

And then the psalmist also says in Psalm 10, For the wicked

boast of the desires of his soul, and the one greedy for

gain curses and renounces the Lord in the pride of his face.

The wicked does not seek him, and all his thoughts are there

is no God. Because I don't, I don't want a

God. See, I don't, I don't want a

God. I want to be able to do what I

want to do in my pride. I want to be able to do what I

want to do in myself. Control.

I want to be able to control my environment.

I want to be able to control my world.

I, I also, and I get the, I get understandable arguments.

I can't deal with the thought of all the evil out there.

If there's a God, I get some of this, I get the real struggle as

well. But in the life of the believer,

obviously there's an inner awareness of God that becomes

stronger the more we walk with him.

And so we come to know God not as just some being, but as a

loving father. And even though we have not seen

him, we love him. And that's part of the faith

issue that I started with. Peter writes about it in First

Peter 1/8. He writes, he says though you

have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him,

you believe in him and rejoice with joy.

That is inexpressible and filled with glory.

And he was writing to people who were under massive persecution,

who were suffering because they loved him, who suffered because

they believed in him. You know, the second thing that

we've kind of talked about already is we do have evidence

of Scripture and nature. That's a hard place to begin

sometimes with people because they don't believe the Bible.

But that doesn't mean we don't mention the Bible because the

Bible has a power and the Bible won't return void.

And and the Bible is our our basis of authority.

So we'll still share the Bible even with people who don't

believe the Bible. But we, we just preface it with,

I know you may not understand this or believe this, but you've

got to understand that my life is based upon this.

So I can't ignore it. So again, you remember in Romans

one we've read, we've seen this idea of nature and again this

idea of some of these scientists have come to Christ.

I've got a a book by a physicist who used to be an ABC science

correspondent. So he wrote a book to other

physicists that said, can a smart person believe in God and,

and talks through some of this. But Acts 1417 says Yet he did

not leave himself without witness, for he did good by

giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying

your hearts with food and gladness.

There's a benefit even of general revelation to everyone.

You get to live on a planet that produces and feeds you and takes

care of you. In a way, the psalmist wrote in

Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of of God in the sky

above proclaims his handiwork, day-to-day pours out speech, and

night to night reveals knowledge.

So in one sense, everything that exists gives evidence of God's

existence. Everything is a testimony of

him. And I know people who believe,

You know, I feel like I'm closer to God when I'm in the mountains

or I'm at the beach. Now, for some of you, it's

because you like to go to the mountains and you like to go to

the beach, but there's a nature element there.

But when we do believe that God exists, we're not basing our

belief on some blind hope. Apart from any evidence, there's

an overwhelming amount, amount of reliable evidence from from

God's works and, and God's word throughout history.

We're not alone in this and, and others are just evaluating that

evidence incorrectly. The overwhelming evidence.

I mean, it's kind of like somebody, if there's somebody

alive today who actually doesn't believe in a historical figure,

Jesus, they're, they're just not paying attention to anything

that that's beyond even biblical evidence at that point.

So remember that in this sinful world, God also has to help us

believe. It's part of it, part of the

salvation experience. Second Corinthians 4/4 says, in

their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of

the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the

gospel, of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

So there's spiritual blindness. I talk about it all the time.

I, I can't blame a lost person for being lost.

They're in the dark, they can't see.

A person who's lost doesn't know where to go.

A person who's lost doesn't know their way.

They can't see. It's too dark, it's too foggy.

And, and that's the world we live in.

It's a very foggy world, all right.

And human wisdom doesn't do it for you.

First Corinthians 25 says so that your faith might not rest

in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

So we recognize that we're dependent upon God to remove

that blindness, to remove the irrationality that's caused by

sin, the feudal Ness, the suppression of truth, that

irrational suppression of truth, and to enable us to evaluate the

evidence rightly and to believe what Scripture says and then

come to that saving faith in Christ.

And when you when you look at Ji Packer's book, Knowing God, he

asks a series of really important questions.

Let me help us with this. What were we, what were we made

for the answer to know God. What aim should we set for

ourselves in life to know God? What is eternal life that Jesus

gives? It's the knowledge of God.

What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight and

contentment than anything else? It's the knowledge of God.

What of all states God ever sees man in gives God the most

pleasure, the knowledge of himself.

John 17 three says, and this is eternal life, that they know

you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you've sent.

But even in the Old Testament, in Hosea chapter 6 verse 6, it

Hosea 6:6

says for I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice the knowledge

of God rather than burnt offerings.

Just going through the motions isn't enough.

It's going through the rituals isn't enough.

Just bringing sacrifices to the temple, it was not enough.

There needed to be more. There needed to be an

understanding why we're doing this.

Why are we worshipping this way? I need to know God.

So what we have said provides a foundation, a shape and a goal,

plus principles of priorities and kind of a scale of values.

How do we know what's right or wrong?

But what makes life worthwhile is having a big enough

objective, something that catches our imagination,

something that lays hold of our allegiance.

And this the Christian has in a way that no other person has.

We have something they don't have for what?

Hire what? More exalted what?

What more compelling goal can there be than to know God?

So knowing God involves several things.

Packer writes these four. He says listening to God's Word

and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it in

application to oneself. Knowing God involves noting

God's nature and character as his word and work reveals it.

Knowing God involves accepting his invitation and doing what he

commands. Knowing God involves recognizing

and rejoicing in the love that He has shown us and approaching

us and drawing us into fellowship with Him.

So there are some foundational principles that really ought to

make up our belief system. So here ought to be your

doctrine of God. More or less.

These are the biblical Christian type doctrines that we ought to

have. God has spoken to man and the

Bible in is His word given to us to make us wise unto salvation?

God is Lord and King over his world.

He rules all things for his own glory, displaying his perfection

and all he does in order that men and angels may worship and

adore him. Reading a passage the other day

of in Luke before I finished the gospel of Luke and my personal

quiet time and was talking about how we'll, you know, we are we

going to be like angels? I've always kind of wondered

what it what does it mean to be like an Angel?

What all does that mean? One of these days we'll do an

angiology study. It's a fascinating thing.

Heaven, hell, and the hereafter study to be good one.

God is Savior, active and sovereign.

Love to the Lord Jesus Christ or rescue believers from the guilt

and power of sin, to adopt them as His children and to bless

them accordingly. God is triune, and we're going

to spend some time on that. There are within the Godhead 3

persons, the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the

work of salvation is is 1 in which all three act together,

the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing redemption, and

the Spirit applying it in our lives.

So godliness means responding to God's revelation and trust and

obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission

and service. And so life must be seen and

lived in the light of God's Word.

And then over the years there have been several statements of

theology that had been made, summaries of.

Here's what the church believes about God.

Here at Inglewood, we constitutionally say that we

follow the Baptist faith in Message 2000.

Let me just read that article about God for a moment before we

close. It says there is one and only

one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual

and personal being, Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and ruler

of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and

all other perfections. To Him we hold we owe the

highest love, reverence and obedience.

The eternal God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son in the Holy

Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division

of nature, essence or being. So man I bet about didn't make

it through that sentence. So what is my ultimate aim?

What is my ultimate object? What occupies my mind with these

things? What do I intend to do with my

knowledge about God once I have it?

That's the question that we need to put upon others that we share

with. Our aim must be to know God

better. That's the discipleship path

that we're talking about on Sundays here.

I need to know God better. I need to know how to serve God

better because knowing God is more than knowing about Him.

It's different. It's not just a knowledge about

Him. And God is so completely above

us and we have to completely forfeit our all claim on His

favor because of our sin. We're dependent upon His grace.

So what matters supremely is not the fact that I know God, but

the larger fact which underlies that is the fact that God knows

me. That's what's amazing.

As one writer said, I'm graven in the palm of his hand.

I'm never out of his mind. I know Him because He first knew

me and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who

loves me. And there's no moment when his

eye is off me or his attention distracted for me, and no

moment, therefore, when His care falters.

This isn't an incredible thing to recognize if you embrace it,

that the God of the universe cares about you, every detail of

you, every thought of yours, every word of yours, every

action of yours. There's an unspeakable comfort

and there should be a deep humility in us because of that.

In the sense that I'm not worthy of that knowledge.

And yet I know him, and I don't know that I understand it.

I don't know if I'll ever understand it until I die.

Why in the world he would want to know me?

But he does. So I'm going to do my best to

help others to know that is real.

I can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of

God. And I got to be careful.

One can even know a great deal about godliness without much

knowledge of God. There are people who know how to

live the Christian life, so to speak, but they're not walking

very closely with the creator of it.

They know how they've studied it.

So in the end, the big question is what effect?

What change does knowing God have upon you?

One of the things that we'll talk about, and I've mentioned

this to you before, is when we we do personal evangelism

training later on, and I hope you'll all come back.

I was kidding with the pastor's the other day that that'll kill

Wednesday nights if I start teaching personal evangelism.

But on Wednesday nights when we talk about personal testimony

time, my personal testimony has that last bit.

I've told you about this before where you're asking the question

of of of not my life before Jesus or How I Met Jesus or my

life after Jesus. Those are standard.

My for mine has mine has a fourth that I make students

write about. It's a paper due in class and

after write about it. How does Jesus affect my life

today? Not what happened to you when

you were a kid, not happened to you back at camp when you were a

teenager. Wonderful and incredible story

that is, and it's powerful and it needs to be shared.

But So what if the knowledge of God doesn't affect you right now

and how you are approaching the rest of today and how you

approach tomorrow, Then you've got to ask yourself, do I really

know Him that well? Because it ought to impact

everything. It ought to impact everything.

Father, thank you that we dare. We're able to come before you

tonight. Thank you, Father, that we

could. We were bold enough to even pray

to you tonight. Thank you, Father, that we could

have the courage to come with that sense of boldness, with a

sense of total honesty because you told us that we could.

Father, I don't even deserve to talk to you.

I, I certainly don't deserve to hear from you.

I, I don't deserve for you to do anything for me except condemn

me. But Father, I pray that one day

when I'm standing in the back of that throne room watching all

these wonderful Saints from every tribe and every tongue in

every nation worship you. And I might be there in the back

with a smoky clothes on, But Father, I get to be there, the

Father. Maybe then I'll understand.

Grace. I appreciate it.

I depend upon it. I embrace it.

I expected even, but I don't deserve it.

So, Father, thank you for revealing enough of you to us,

to where we could understand enough about you to know you.

I look forward to spending eternity learning more and

understanding more. But for now, Father, there are

people around us who don't have anything to do with you.

They're not even exposing themselves to you on a regular

basis, Father. They, they might believe in you

if you asked them, but they're not engaged in any kind of study

like this or any kind of small group.

They're not doing anything to grow in their knowledge of you.

So help us, Father, to invite them.

Help us, Father, to share with them about you.

Help help us, Father, to show you in our lives so they can see

it. And help us, Father, to help

them to appreciate and to embrace and to celebrate the

knowledge of who you are. Father, thank you that you

brought us into existence. You have always existed and you

always will. Thank you for allowing us to

join you, even for this brief time that we're here.

But for the rest of time, I can't wait.

But until then, we got work to do, so help us please, in

Christ's name, Amen. God bless you all.

Thank you all so much. Thank you so much for listening

today. And I also hope that you'll go

to [email protected]

as well as our app and find many other resources that will bless

you and your families. Thank you once again.