Reasons to Believe in God

[0:00] So we've been in Mark for a long time, it's been over a year, but we're going to take a little bit of a breather. It's actually probably a little bit more of a breather for me. We're getting ready to go into Mark chapter 13, which is one of Jesus' longest sermons.

[0:19] It's called the Olivet Discourse, and it's about what's going to happen in the end. And so I wanted to give myself enough time to kind of prepare for that. We'll probably do two, three, maybe even four messages on that.

[0:33] But while I spend some time, maybe a few weeks, preparing for that whole series on the end times, I thought we'd take a little detour here. So if you looked at your bulletin, you'll see the title of this message today is called Reasons to Believe in God.

[0:51] And so we're going to actually take a few weeks to just look at reasons to believe. So we can call that a series. So reasons to believe.

[1:03] You know, Mark Twain famously said about faith. He said, faith is believing what you know ain't so. It's just like tricking yourself.

[1:20] Faith is just tricking yourself to believe something that really isn't true. Is that what faith is? No, it's not. That is, though, I'll say this, what many people surmise faith, specifically religious faith, to be.

[1:37] Is that it's people holding on to something that is not really true. But that's not the case at all. That is not what the foundation of the Christian faith is.

[1:48] The foundation of our faith is built on reasons. There are reasons why we believe the things that we do. Any faith, not just our faith, but any faith that someone has, whether it's a religious faith or a faith in something else, should be founded and based on reasons.

[2:11] Christian faith is no different. Turn your Bible. Open up your Bible. We're going to look at a few passages today, even though a lot of what we're talking about is not necessarily coming from the Bible.

[2:25] We're going to be looking at reasons to believe that really come from reason, come from our own minds and our own observations. But we'll still look at some things in the Bible to help us really explain why we might do that anyway.

[2:40] So 1 Peter 3 and verse 15. 1 Peter 3 and verse 15.

[2:57] It says this, So Peter is telling the believers that he's writing to, saying, Hey, listen, there are people out there that might have questions about your faith.

[3:35] And I want you to be ready to give them answers. And to give them good answers. So the purpose of this message is twofold.

[3:47] The first one is to equip believers, to equip you to give good answers, to defend the truth. You know, a lot of times we see out in the culture, there's a lot of arguments and debates.

[3:59] A lot of them tend to be what? Very emotional. Just based on how I feel. There are dogmatic claims made. Well, you just have to believe this. Well, just because.

[4:10] But we want to be able to defend our faith, to defend the truth of God, of Scripture, of the claims about Jesus Christ.

[4:22] We want to be able to defend those with good reasons. And so this speaks to our evangelistic efforts. You know, we don't just keep our faith to ourselves, right?

[4:35] We are, as Christians, to spread our faith all around us. And so we want to be able to share our faith effectively with others.

[4:47] But many people have a fear. Well, if I share my faith with someone, what if they ask me questions about it? And what if I can't answer those questions?

[5:03] And so it puts us in a position of fear where we might be afraid to even bring up the proposition of God, to even bring up the existence of God or the gospel itself, out of fear that we might get questions that we can't answer.

[5:22] But we should equip ourselves. We should investigate the reasons for what we believe. And we can familiarize ourselves with some of the common questions that people ask and know some good responses, some good ways to answer those questions.

[5:38] The second purpose of this message or this series is to strengthen our own faith. So we want to give reasons to others for why we believe the things that we believe.

[5:50] But we have this opportunity also to strengthen our own faith, to examine the foundations of what we believe. For many people, they came to faith really through some people experiencing God in some kind of special way, or just through intuition that what the Bible says about what God did for us is true.

[6:17] And I think those intuitions are real. But sometimes, especially in times of struggle, when we're struggling in life, there come doubts that come into our lives.

[6:32] When those intuitions, those past experiences are not enough to hold us up, when those doubts assail us.

[6:46] But we can look at reason and logic and use those kinds of mechanisms to bolster our faith and bolster that intuition that we already have even further.

[7:00] Psalm 14.1 is a famous psalm. This is a psalm that many times comes up on April 1st.

[7:13] What is April 1st? April Fool's Day, right? And so Psalm 14.1 says this, The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

[7:28] The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. And so the Bible seems everywhere to assume that God exists.

[7:40] There is a, I'm not sure what to call it. Well, there's a word, apologetics, that describes a kind of a thought, a way of thinking to defend your faith.

[8:02] Apologetics is this enterprise in which people learn how to defend the faith. And so it's interesting over the years, I don't know when this really became a lot more popular, but in maybe the last 30 years or so, there's been a whole movement of growth around this concept of apologetics.

[8:25] And a lot of theological schools, Christian universities and seminaries, there are whole departments on Christian apologetics. How can we give good reasons to the people around us, to the world, for the things that we believe?

[8:40] Apologetics, it sounds like the word apology, right? So it sounds like when you're engaged in apologetics, you're engaged in giving an apology to people for what you believe. And that's not the case.

[8:53] Apology, this is the root word, just means a defense. So apologetics is giving a defense. So why would we defend the basic truths of Christianity, especially when the Bible seems to indicate that only fools would believe that there is no God?

[9:12] Why not just share the gospel? And hey, if people don't want to believe in God, hey, then they'll reject the message and that's on them. But the world is a confusing place today, isn't it?

[9:26] There's a lot of misinformation, fake news, to use a phrase. There's a lot of science, right? And secular thought.

[9:36] And really, even just the idea, and this hasn't always been the case, in most of the past of human history, belief in God was something assumed by everyone.

[9:48] It's only in more of our modern age from probably what the Enlightenment on, where this concept of atheism, of denying the existence of God, is more cool.

[10:04] And so, in many cultures, not all cultures today, but in many cultures, especially in the West, here in America, in Europe, and in many other parts of the world, the belief in God is ridiculed, it's minimized, it's diminished.

[10:23] And for many, it's just dismissed out of hand. Only a fool would believe fairy tales like that. And so, because of that, many people, that's the waters that we swim in.

[10:38] Atheism, atheism, secularism. And so, for many people, that's the waters they swim in. And so, because of that, any claims that any religion makes, including Christianity, about what God did for us, how he created the world, sin, righteousness, judgment day, all of those things are just dismissed out of hand, because there is this hurdle of, well, does God even exist?

[11:09] And if God doesn't exist, how can any of the rest of what Christianity teaches be true? And so, I won't even consider any of those things, any of the claims of Christianity, because those claims are irrelevant.

[11:24] Religion is just an escape from reality. And so, apologetics, learning the skills of apologetics and defending the faith can help us to get people to overcome those hurdles, for us to knock those down.

[11:42] A belief in God, is that sufficient to become a Christian, just believing in God? It's not, right? But it is a sufficient, it is, it's not a sufficient, it's not sufficient in of itself, but it is necessary, right?

[11:58] Hebrews 11 tells us that. Anybody who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who trust in him.

[12:12] So, apologetics can help remove barriers to faith, barriers to even just considering the claims of Christianity. Now, some people just aren't looking for answers, but there are those who are looking for answers, and we should be prepared with good answers.

[12:36] We're going to look at three different arguments for the existence of God, and we'll talk about those in a second. But each of these arguments really looks, when you give any kind of defense, any kind of argument for anything, you have to start with an underlying assumption that everybody agrees with, some kind of common ground.

[12:59] And if there's not agreement on those, what we call a premise, the premise of an argument, then the conclusion can't be reached together. So we need to find common ground.

[13:11] So what we'll look at, when we look at each of these different arguments, is we're going to try to find common ground, things that everybody believes, or at least should believe.

[13:25] These are called first truths. There are ideas and concepts that everybody believes because there is something inside them that makes it impossible to not accept.

[13:43] Somebody put it this way. There are some things that you can't not know. There are some things that you just can't not know.

[13:59] Things about life and about reality. And these are the things that build the foundation for all of our thinking. Assumptions about how the world works, about what reality is like.

[14:15] So by using these arguments and these underlying premises, we can build up an argument to show people the truth of the reality, for example, of God.

[14:28] and show people that if they deny these fundamental premises, then really they undercut all of reality.

[14:39] Everything that they've built their life upon. And that is really what atheism does. Atheism tries to deny some of the most fundamental aspects of reality, the foundation upon which we build all of our lives.

[14:54] Each of us builds our lives. Many people, though, do deny some of these fundamental ideas.

[15:08] And we'll look at what those fundamental ideas are, at least a few of them. But the concept here is to show that if you deny these fundamental ideas, then life becomes meaningless.

[15:23] It becomes absurd. There's no meaning in our lives. And for many people, they have accepted that.

[15:33] In fact, has anybody ever heard of Bertrand Russell? He was a famous atheist, Bertrand Russell, a philosopher. And he said this, we have no choice but to build our lives upon the firm foundation of unyielding despair.

[15:50] He said, listen, life has no meaning. He says, without God, there is no meaning in life. And you can go two ways with that, right?

[16:01] You can either say, well, there must be a God, but he went the opposite direction. He says, no, there is no God, so that means life is without any meaning. And anything, anything we say to try to add meaning to life is just creating an illusion for ourselves.

[16:18] All right, so we're going to look at three arguments today for the existence of God. There are actually probably at least a dozen. A lot of them get kind of heady and way over a lot of people's heads.

[16:34] But we're going to look at three. The reason I picked these three because they are fairly accessible and I think easy for anybody to both argue and to understand.

[16:45] The first one kind of uses a big word, but it's called the cosmological argument. It's really an argument from causation, cause and effect.

[16:56] The next one is an argument from design, looking at the world around us and things that appear to be designed by intelligence. And then the third one is called the moral argument in which we'll look at why, where does good and evil come from?

[17:17] What is the standard? And who sets it? Now, with apologetics, there are different things that you can defend. Today, we're defending something very basic.

[17:30] We're looking at defending just, is God real? Is he there? Is there someone, some kind of a God out there who is the source of all this?

[17:42] And that's a fairly modest, a fairly modest argument, a fairly modest claim. We're not trying to prove Christianity, though, in the following weeks, we will look specifically at things.

[18:03] So, for example, we'll look at the Bible. Is there a defense for the Bible? Why should we accept the authority of the Bible? We'll also look at the primary claim of Christianity, which is, did Jesus rise from the dead?

[18:19] And we'll look at that. And so, those speak more directly to Christianity, to Judeo-Christian history, and the claims of Christianity and Judaism, and then also, specifically, the claims of Christianity.

[18:34] But today, with just this idea of God, there might be many religions, right? You have Islam and other, both monotheistic and polytheistic religions, but we're just going to be looking at, is God real?

[18:53] So, let's start with the first one. So, if you're writing notes, you can write this down. The first one, the cosmological argument. Some people also can call it the contingency argument.

[19:06] And this is, you know, those are kind of two big words, but it's really this argument from cause and effect. There's a famous question by an old German dude who had a cool name.

[19:22] His name was Gottlieb Wilhelm Leibniz. That's a cool name, isn't it? And Leibniz asked this famous question, which is one of the most fundamental questions that you could ever ask.

[19:40] And here's the question. Why is there something rather than nothing? There's something here.

[19:52] There's a lot here. We look around and there are things everywhere. We look up, we look down, we look in microscopes, we look in telescopes, and everywhere we see something.

[20:05] And so, there's this huge question. Why? Why is it there? Why are you out there? Why am I here?

[20:16] Why is there something rather than nothing? Through our experience, through all of life, and this is universal to everyone, we observe that for everything that we see or observe in some way, you know, our observation is not always by sight, that there is some kind of explanation behind it, some kind of cause.

[20:46] and so, everything that exists, it seems, there is an explanation or a cause behind it.

[21:07] For example, and this is just examples from our own experience, you take a walk through the woods, and you look around as you're walking, and you see lots of trees everywhere.

[21:22] Now, do we think to ourselves, I wonder if those trees were there ten minutes ago. Maybe they just popped into existence, and when I walk away, maybe they'll just pop out of existence.

[21:37] But that's not what we observe anywhere, right? Things don't just pop into existence and then pop out of existence randomly.

[21:50] We know that those trees got there because there were, well, seeds that generated and were nurtured in soil, with water, with sunlight, and those are the reasons, the explanation for why the tree is there.

[22:04] And where did the seed come from? Well, it came from trees before it that produced those seeds. You might go grocery shopping at the store, and as you're shopping for your food and the items, and they're organized on shelves and different departments and categories, did those grocery items just pop into existence there on the shelf?

[22:30] Well, not at all, and we have no expectation that something like that would ever happen. But we know that there's this long train of cause and effect of farmers growing food and people transporting raw materials and there are processing and manufacturing processes to put them into boxes and containers and mix the ingredients together.

[22:56] Distribution and sales, lots of cause and effect went into those things being on the shelf. this is the world that we experience.

[23:07] There is cause and there is effect. And really, if we would doubt such a thing, to doubt that there's a cause for every effect, really we doubt all of reality, all of our argumentation, all of our thinking, all of our scientific inquiry, and all of just the living of life, assumes that there's a cause for everything that we see and experience.

[23:40] And to believe that there is anything that exists that's without a cause is tantamount to believing in magic. Right? But even with magic, at least you have the magician's hat and the magician himself, right?

[23:56] Right? Right? If dad goes to look for his drill in the garage, and the drill's not there, what is the assumption?

[24:13] Has this ever happened before? What does dad do? Does he think, hmm, I wonder if that just popped out of existence. Maybe it just spontaneously combusted.

[24:25] No, no. Dad goes around the house, all right, who took my drill? Who did it? There was a cause behind that drill going missing.

[24:40] And if we assume this for small things, that for trees and grocery items and drills, there's a cause and effect to their existence for all the little things in the world, how much more so for the big things?

[24:58] how much more so for the biggest thing of all, the entire universe? If you find a baseball in your backyard, you might wonder, I wonder how it got here.

[25:14] Maybe some neighbor kids were throwing the ball around and it got in my backyard. If you find a 747 in your backyard, is your curiosity going to be higher or lower?

[25:27] Is the cause going to be smaller or greater? And so when we look at the universe, why is it here? Why is there a universe?

[25:37] rather than nothing at all? We know that the cause must be great as well and our curiosity should match the size of both cause and the effect.

[25:54] There are really only two explanations for why there's something rather than nothing, why there's the universe here. Number one, it just was always here, that the universe is eternal.

[26:06] eternal. And the other one is that somebody put it there, somebody created it, someone or something. The eternal universe theory has, you know, we've seen it actually a lot in the past.

[26:22] Many of the old ancient philosophers actually believed in an eternal universe. Today, almost no one does. There's almost no one, you cannot find almost anyone who believes that the universe is eternal.

[26:37] All of our investigations into reality, philosophy, science, when it comes to the material universe, indicates that that just cannot be.

[26:48] The Big Bang Theory, which most of us are familiar with, is a testament to that. The Big Bang is this idea that there had to be a beginning to everything. There are laws of nature that we have discovered, and there is specifically one called entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, and it says that everything, basically, to summarize in simple terms, the second law of thermodynamics is this, everything breaks down and towards disorder.

[27:23] Energy dissipates, basically, fires all burn out. And so, if the universe is eternal, then all of the stars, our sun, everything would have burned out by now because they can't last forever.

[27:38] The energy eventually dissipates from everything. And so, people reject that idea that the universe can be eternal. So, over the centuries, and millennia even, philosophers have decided there must be a first cause, something that caused everything that we see.

[28:04] With all these effects, there must be behind it one ultimate cause that itself had no other cause. One of those old Greek guys, Aristotle, called that the first mover or the first cause.

[28:25] And he didn't know, he applied maybe possibly divinity to it, but said that there was this first cause, an uncaused first cause. There's something or someone not dependent on anything else for its existence.

[28:43] Something or someone who has no beginning, like the universe has. Something or someone that transcends the material universe that we see.

[29:00] So, this is a difficulty, right, for those who are secularists or atheists, because they certainly don't want to look to a being as the cause of everything.

[29:14] They want to explain everything only in naturalistic, material terms. There's a famous theoretical physicist. His name is Lawrence Krauss.

[29:25] I haven't seen him making the rounds lately, but years ago he was all over media. He's a theoretical physicist, and he wrote a book called A Universe From Nothing, and he took on this tremendous task of proving that the universe at least could result from nothing.

[29:51] You could start with nothing and get a universe. That sounds quite the challenge, right? And so, in the book, he finally comes to the conclusion and he says, listen, this is how it happened.

[30:08] Gravity created everything. Gravity. created the universe.

[30:20] Now, does that sound very compelling? Now, first of all, isn't gravity part of the universe? Gravity's part of the universe, so how could gravity create the universe that it's part of?

[30:33] And second, I think, isn't gravity a little bit more than nothing? Right? Nothing, I'm pretty sure, has nothing to it.

[30:44] Like, something can't be nothing. But anyway, it was a gallant attempt, maybe we could say. So there's this argument.

[30:54] So here's how the argument goes. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. This is our experience. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist at some point in the past, therefore, it must have a cause.

[31:11] Now, with this argument, there's no claims necessarily about what kind of cause. It could be an impersonal force like in Star Wars. It could be a pantheon of gods like the Greeks believed in or the Hindus teach today.

[31:25] Or it could be a personal god like Jews, Muslims, and Christians teach. Here's what the Bible teaches. Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

[31:38] God and the God and the God which kind of echoes Genesis 1. John 1-1 says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

[31:53] He was in the beginning with God. And this is what he says, All things were made through him, and without him, nothing was made that was made.

[32:03] everything that exists was made by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So that's argument number one, cosmology, the cosmological argument.

[32:18] Number two, an argument from design. And we'll actually look to some of the scriptures. Psalm 19 verse 1 says this, The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.

[32:34] The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. In the book of Romans, we actually see Paul as he's teaching through really his great theological system that he's developing.

[32:54] And he starts off with actually some apologetic arguments. And so we have biblical reasons why to use arguments like these. In Romans chapter 1 verse 18, this is how Paul's argument starts.

[33:11] Where he looks at design. Romans 1 18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

[33:23] Because what may be known of God is manifest in them. For God has shown it to them. Well, how has God shown us himself?

[33:35] For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and God head, so that they are without excuse.

[33:52] We can know the creator by the things that are created. created. Now, in our last argument, we just looked at, well, why is there anything?

[34:03] Why is there something rather than nothing? In this argument, we're looking a little bit more into that. The universe does more than just exist, right? It operates, it moves, it functions.

[34:17] Everywhere we look, we find purpose. We look into the stars, and they bring light. the moon, the sun, they bring light and warmth.

[34:32] We see the planets moving, and they seem to move logically in an orderly way. There's clouds, and trees, and rivers, and seas, and all of these things, it seems very clear that they all have a purpose and a design in which they were created for.

[34:53] Not only that, but we even find beauty in the things around us. We don't live in a monochrome world, we live in a world of vibrant color.

[35:07] There's diversity everywhere. Even people, we all, even though we're similar in so many ways, we all look different and have different hair colors and types and body sizes and nose shapes and ear shapes and such a beautiful diversity.

[35:29] And so there's this other question. So with Leibniz, he said, why is there something rather than nothing? And we can follow up with that. Why is there order in the universe?

[35:42] Because there could just be a big rock and that was all that there is. But that's not what we find. We find that there is order everywhere we look.

[35:53] Why is there order? Why is there design? Why is there beauty? Let's go back to our walk in the woods. And you're walking through the woods and you look down and down in front of you, you find an old pocket watch.

[36:10] You pick it up and you examine it. You open it up and you see two little hands and some numbers in a circle. And it's moving at a gradual pace.

[36:21] You're able to open it up even further and look on the inside and you find gears and springs and there's a lot of fair bit of complexity in there. It has a function, it has a purpose.

[36:33] There's a casing that's ornate and it's beautifully designed. And would any of us ever pick that up and look at that and say, this must have just come here randomly.

[36:49] There must have been some kind of fire or storm or explosion and this arrived here. You can think of something even more simple.

[37:00] Just a little fire ring. You're walking through the woods, you see some rocks in a circle and some sticks that are burnt, configured in a certain way.

[37:12] That's pretty simple, right? But even that, we intuitively know without any question, someone built that. Someone put it there.

[37:24] Someone designed that. Those things did not make themselves. They're not the effects of random chance.

[37:35] A random storm didn't assemble any of those things. Not even that fire pit could have been designed in that way. They were put there, they were designed with intention and purpose by someone with intelligence.

[37:50] So what about the other things that we see in the woods? The morning glories, the ivy, the evergreens, the maples.

[38:03] Those things weren't made by a man, right? But are they any less designed? Are they any less complex? or are they more complex?

[38:19] By orders of magnitude, hundreds, even thousands of times more complex. Are they any less beautiful? Do they have any less purpose to them?

[38:31] Not at all. The prevailing theory for design, why there seems to be design in the universe, is that order comes from just random processes, random chance.

[38:45] There is the appearance of design, it's not real, but the appearance of design comes from just impersonal, unintelligent forces of nature. And again, that is undermined by this second law of thermodynamics, entropy.

[39:00] Things don't order themselves. Things tend towards disorder unless a mind comes and puts them in order.

[39:12] A person of some kind applies their intelligence and creativity and orders something together. So in the universe, we see design not just in the woods, but we see it everywhere we go.

[39:28] In fact, the more we investigate, and over the years and centuries, we've been able to look further out and further in. The more we look, the more we see the hallmarks of design and purpose.

[39:45] We look out through the telescopes and we see as far as we can see, and we haven't reached any limits. We can't see any ceiling out there. It just seems to go on and on and on.

[39:56] But everywhere we look, we see purpose. We use our microscopes and other other things to look deeper and deeper into the intricacies of the small universe, at atoms and molecules.

[40:18] Even the human cell. There's a documentary called Unlocking the Mystery of Life. Tremendous. I was looking for it so I could bring it today, but I couldn't find it.

[40:29] I believe we have it at our house, but if not, we'll see if we can order another copy. Darwin, who was the progenitor of the famous theory of evolution, had these ideas about how things evolved, and when it came to the human cell or biological cells, he just assumed that they were kind of like just Lego bricks put together, and all of our cells make up our human body, bodies of other animals and plants and biological things.

[41:06] But modern molecular biology has found something completely different. Do you know that the human cell, one cell out of the, what, trillions of cells in your body, every single one is like a bustling city with the same complexity of a huge city?

[41:31] There are detailed blueprints of every aspect of that city. There are computers in your cell that decode and encode information for those blueprints, and copy the data from one city to another, from one cell to another.

[41:54] There are factories that generate proteins. There's construction machinery that builds things, builds roads and pathways.

[42:06] There are post offices and distribution centers for all the things that are being created and distributed throughout the cell. There are streets and railways and buses and subways. There are garbage collectors and recycling centers.

[42:21] There are power plants and power distribution mechanisms all inside one single cell. It's absolutely incredible.

[42:33] It just causes people's brains to explode. How could there be that much complexity, that much design, that much purpose, that much intelligence and information inside one single human cell?

[42:47] people's eyes to know. So, knowing that there's a designer, when you see something that is designed, we know that there's something more than just the material world itself.

[43:03] Somebody, something, or somebody created this. And unlike the cosmological argument with this one, we know that a little bit something about a designer.

[43:16] Have you ever gone to an art gallery, whether it's a big fancy one, or maybe you just go to the kindergarten gallery at the end of the school year, and you look at all these pieces of art.

[43:29] And as you observe the art, they tell you a little bit, they give you some clues about the artist, right? And so, if it's full of color, then it tells you something about who, they love color.

[43:46] If it's just black and white, you know, you know something about who made that. If it's kind of scary and dark, you know, okay, this is a person that's just, you know, not happy in life. And so, we can discover, we can intuit, we can have clues about what God is like just by the things that were made.

[44:09] In fact, that's what that verse that we read speaks to. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

[44:27] We know that the one who created all this is the kind of person who is a God of order. An intelligent God. A personal God who would make personal beings.

[44:40] A relational God who would make relational beings. And also, a good God who would make people concerned about things like good and evil.

[44:54] Which leads us into our last and final argument. And that one's called the moral argument. And I think this is the powerful one. Going back to Romans, Romans chapter 2, which comes right after what we just read, speaks to this same argument.

[45:12] Romans chapter 2 verse 1 says this. Romans chapter 2 verse 1. Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge. For in whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself.

[45:26] For you who judge practice the same things. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God?

[45:43] In our culture today, there are battles raging everywhere. Cultural battles, political battles. There are disagreements about sexual morality and human rights.

[45:56] but you know what the underlying assumption of all these battles is? Well, there's these fundamental values.

[46:06] There are fundamental values. We might disagree on what they are but there are fundamental values that are worth fighting over. There is right and wrong that exists.

[46:17] There is a standard by which all of us universally should abide. Every single person in the world experiences both guilt for things that they have done wrong and it is such a strong intuition.

[46:33] We feel it so strongly. It's impossible to deny. And also, not just guilt but also moral outrage when people abuse our rights, do things against us.

[46:48] And that's what Paul is speaking to here. When you're judging somebody else for stealing your goods, for taking your things, what are you saying? There is some arbiter, there is some standard outside of all of us, outside of me, outside of you, that determines what is right or wrong.

[47:09] There are secular theories about where right and wrong comes from, social contract, utilitarianism, evolution, just kind of the pressures of evolution caused, you know, animals to work together in harmony for their survival.

[47:24] But none of those can provide a grounding, a reason for why right is right and wrong is wrong. wrong. We all know that there are moral values that are objective, not just relative.

[47:43] And what you'll find is that for many people they default into considering things relative like preferences. But we all know that right and wrong doesn't have to do with anyone's preference.

[48:00] We all have different preferences. that it's wrong to take someone's life, an innocent person's life anyway, regardless of anyone's opinion, regardless of anyone's belief.

[48:19] Stealing and murder are not wrong because that's your preference, but because there is some kind of right that is given to us, that is applied, some kind of standard, that is outside of all of us.

[48:36] One of the primary objections to the concept of God, anyway, a good God, is called the problem of evil.

[48:47] If there's a good God out there who's all-powerful, why would he allow evil in the world? God out and all of us experience so much evil in the world.

[49:03] And so some people reject the idea of God altogether because they experience evil in the world. But here's the problem. If there is no God, if there is no standard for right and wrong, can there be evil?

[49:18] evil? There can be no evil. Everything is just subjective. But the Bible tells us that there is a universal lawgiver, the one who will hold everyone to account for the things that he put in their conscience, the things that we all know intuitively.

[49:45] He will hold us all to account. He's the one who creates the rules. He's the one who sets the standard. So, if God exists, and these are just three arguments for the existence of God, so if we can take away these hurdles to the existence of God and convince someone, and for many people, this is an easy question to answer.

[50:17] They know that God is real, even though they might not be Christians, they might not be believers, but for others, this is the first hurdle, this is the first obstacle to be taken down, and once they realize, okay, there must be a God behind all of this, then come the next questions.

[50:35] What am I responsible for now? Will I acknowledge this God? Will I honor him? Will I worship him? Will I seek after him? What does he expect of me?

[50:49] And is the God who's out there who created all of this, is he worthy of my affection? I'm going to end right there, and Keith, if we can grab the microphone and see if there's any questions or comments.

[51:11] Was any of that helpful at all? Okay, two of you. I'm glad you were here. I'm just kidding. I saw some thumbs up.

[51:27] Yeah, any questions or comments? we'll see how long we can bask in the awkward silence.

[51:44] silence. So one of the things that, you know, as you talk through some of the people or theories or thought processes that are supposed to give an answer other than God, you start to kind of realize that to believe in the God of the Bible probably takes the least amount of faith than there is against the other ones, because the other options are just so absurd when you really start to look into them, whether it's science or whatever it is.

[52:25] But that's just one of the things I thought about as you were kind of going through, and you allude to different theories that try to give a different explanation, and logically or reasonably, they just fall short.

[52:38] You know, they really fall short, and especially with the science and stuff that we have today, I mean, with design, it just, it doesn't exist, right? So the alternative answer other than there is no design, there is no God, and there is no evidence of it.

[52:54] You know, you can't look around and ever see anything ever working that way, just like the watch in the woods. I mean, no one's going to say, oh, wow, I'm going to look under some leaves and find another one, because when you go to the woods, you find watches.

[53:05] No, you don't. You know that that watch was made by someone, and so, and yeah, he lost it. So it's just, that's just one of the things to consider, that sometimes as Christians, and I know I've felt fallen into this, I've never really maybe given time or study to the apologetic side of things, because I don't question it myself, right?

[53:29] And, but we need people out there to present this thought process and the evidence, because without it, you know, I'm trying to think there's a proverb, I think it talks more about two sides of a story, but when you hear one side of the story, it seems right until you hear the other side, right?

[53:49] And this is true too. Some, even the most foolish things can sound pretty credible until we actually take a good look at it, and that's the purpose or importance of apologetics, but just some things I thought about, so maybe that gives someone else something to think about, too.

[54:06] Awesome. Well, if there's somebody else, we'll take time for it, but while you're considering whether you're going to raise your hand or not, a few resources, so this is a book called On Guard, this is helpful, William Lane Craig is a, a long-time apologist, and has really spent a lot of time looking into these arguments, so this book is a great kind of overview if this is something you're interested in digging more into.

[54:34] I just, the purpose today was to try to just whet your appetite, and so my kid's kind of grown at William Lane Craig because he's like a evolutionist now, I guess, which is kind of weird, but the book is, book is pretty good.

[54:52] Here's another one, Stealing from God by Frank Turek, and Frank Turek is a great apologist out there, he goes to universities all the time, talks to students, answers his questions, and this is really about how, hey, the things that we build our lives on, the logic, the reasons, those things that we talked about, these premises, in order to believe in them, you have, there has to be a foundation for those things, and that foundation is God, and so, you're stealing from God those things even though you may not believe in him.

[55:25] And then, there are a few videos here, and these are videos about the creation, this is metamorphosis about butterflies, living waters, about dolphins and other things in the water, flight, and they're really just opportunities to look at the complexity of design, and the glory of the designer behind it.

[55:46] So, these are great resources, we'll try to make these available. I'd like to build like a little library, we already have a library back there, but it's like, there's too much in there.

[55:58] We're going to try to build a library that's kind of, with some focused resources that people can use. You know, there's lots of great books you can buy, but they get kind of expensive when you buy a lot of them.

[56:09] Any other questions before we wrap it up? All the way in the back, quick. Quick? Man, she's fast, isn't she? There are times when I doubt.

[56:23] Yeah. But last night I was sitting on the back porch eating tater chips and Coke, all created by man. Yeah. And I watched a hummingbird come up, and they've got, we've got two or three of them now, and they've got a pecking order.

[56:36] And it's just amazing to see that thing. Some of them don't like, they just sit there fluttering, drinking, and that long beak, little tiny thing goes through that little tiny hole, never see him miss, and then he's on guard because if the boss comes around, gone.

[56:54] It's just amazing. And see him drink and that little bitty sips, you know, that's something that was created. It was not, didn't just ooze out of the muck.

[57:07] Yeah. There's this concept called irreducible complexity. Life is so complex, and of course the evolution, Darwinism claims that these little things were changed little by little, but you can't do that.

[57:21] You have all these interconnected things that have to work all at the same time in order for life to happen. And so, you know, the whole Darwinian explanation just does not fly.

[57:35] All right. Okay, well, I think that's it. We'll close in a word of prayer. Any last announcements?

[57:48] Sign-ups for the luncheon, singles luncheon? But let's go ahead and pray. Father, we love you. You gave us in the stars and in everything around us, in the creation itself, answers to who you are and that you are a creator that loves us and that is a righteous God and wants us to live for you.

[58:10] And then you revealed yourself in other ways which we are grateful for. Lord, we thank you for all the love and care you have for us. We pray that we would train ourselves and that we would be good defenders.

[58:23] ambassadors. We would be good. We would give answers to those who are looking for them to represent you, to be good ambassadors for you in the life that we live here and the sphere of influences that we have.

[58:39] We thank you for working in us to make us better ambassadors for you. In Jesus' name, amen.