If This Is True - Is There A God?

May 28th, 2023 | Casey Middle School

Pastoral Heart: Why talk about these questions?

People in the room:

The people in the room who are close to following Jesus, but you have so many questions.

The people who believe in Jesus, but feel unequipped to defend their faith

The people who feel shy about being a christian because you feel you might be seen as unintelligent or ignorant

I remember early in my life going to conferences and seminars on the topics we’ll be discussing the next several weeks. I would stay up late at night reading books on both sides of the arguments. I would especially look at the historical evidence surrounding the stories, manuscripts, and artifacts described in the Bible. I remember so vividly those moments when certain aspects of God’s character and nature were revealed to me through discovery.

It’s my hope and prayer that through this series you will have a similar experience. May God give you wisdom and understanding as you seek to find answers to these great questions of the bible, origin, morality, purpose, and destiny.

Illust: Did you grow up with a parent that ever used this line “because I said so?”

How many of you grew up in an atmosphere where you heard “Cause the bible told me so.”? At Pinewood we believe the Bible did say so. And we believe that the Bible is our best source for finding answers to life’s greatest questions. Not just because it is a trustworthy piece of historical literature, but because it is God’s Words to all humanity.

But I want to engage the conversation at another level and say that it’s ok to have a dialogue about these questions and not just simply be afraid or run from them. I want to give a better way than just “Cause the bible told me so.”

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This morning I want to address the question of Origin: Where did we come from?

As I spent time thinking about these questions over the last several months there seemed to be a process of questions that needed answered before arriving at a basic level of understanding.

If we were created, then there would need to be a creator (not just of people, but of all things), and if there is a creator, then that creator would need to be an eternal being outside of the physical realm. (beyond time and space)

The outline for this morning is simple and I’m going to move through them quickly:

1. Is there a God?
2. Did God create something from nothing?
3. Do we bear His image?

RESOURCES:

Dr. John Lennox

Dr. Michael Heiser

Unbelievable? Podcast

Reason For God by Dr. Timothy Keller

TheosU series on Genesis with Dr. David Campbell

Question 1: Is there a God?

• Three Major Religious Worldviews

1. Theism

   1. Belief in the existence of God

   2. Pantheism

   3. Belief that the universe is a manifestation of God

   4. Belief in many or all gods

   5. Atheism

   6. Belief in no God

• Problems with Atheism

1. Something can’t come from nothing.

   1. There’s difficulty in defining nothing. There’s books and books written on nothing. Sounds like a Seinfeld series for books.
   2. The reality is that something exists, something can’t come from nothing, therefore an eternal being has to exist.

   3. Atheism can’t deal adequately with our greatest questions in life.

   4. Origin, morality, purpose, and destiny.

• Problems with Pantheism

1. Universe has a beginning and it is not eternal

   1. It’s pretty much unanimous among all leading scientists that the universe had a beginning.

   2. A leading atheist and scientist, Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, said in a lecture on the beginning of time...

      1. “The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.”
      2. (The figure is now put at about 13.8 billion years.) We may have different beliefs on how the universe began; but I agree 100% with Stephen Hawking on the conclusion that the universe did indeed have a beginning.
      3. All gods and religious worldviews cannot all be true at the same time.

   3. Take for example the problem with destiny. Different worldviews teach different things about the afterlife from reincarnation, to heaven, to purgatory, to nothing at all as atheists would say. Anyone of these destinies could be true, or they all could be false. But hopefully we can agree that not all of them can be simultaneously true. We cannot be reincarnated, go to heaven, go to purgatory, and simply turn to dust all at the same time.

   4. There is a truth claim that needs to be made in order for the larger questions of life to make sense. The question becomes which worldview is true if any?

• Problems with Theism

1. God of the gaps

   1. Anytime a theist can’t explain something they throw God in the mix.
   2. A God that created all things is a fairy tale that has no scientific evidence.

   3. Where did God come from?

   4. If something can’t come from nothing, then who created God?

   5. This seems like a rational and honest question.

I am empathetic towards agnostics, because I believe the agnostic is still curious.

Atheist - There is no God

Agnostic - I don’t know if there is a God

• Turn in your bibles to Genesis 1:1a
  • In the beginning God…

• Illust: Moses and the burning bush

  • “God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.” - Exodus 3:14

  • God is eternal

  • The God that Abraham worshiped is the eternal God (Gen. 21:33)

  • Moses told the Israelites, "The eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deut. 33:27 NIV)
  • Habakkuk said that God was "from everlasting" (Hab. 1:12, and see 3:6)

  • Paul called Him "the everlasting [eternal] God" (Rom. 16:26; see 1 Tim. 1:17)

  • “When you seek to fathom the depths of the divine eternal counsels, you will be overwhelmed. But don't be discouraged, for over the centuries, good and godly scholars have disagreed in their speculations and conclusions. One of my seminary professors used to remind us, "Try to explain these things and you may lose your mind; but try to explain them away, and you will lose your soul." - Warren Wiersbe

  • *We are all in between these two extremes*
  • Moses said it best: "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deut. 29:29 NKJV). The important thing is not knowing all that God knows but doing all God tells us to do. "For we know in part" (1 Cor. 13:9).” - Warren Wiersbe

Question 2: Did God create something from nothing?

• The common ground for me between non-faith explanatory models and faith explanatory models for the origin of the universe is that there was actually an origin. Everybody agrees on that now. The question is where did it come from.

  • Creationists say, “How can something come from nothing? We never see examples of this in nature, so why would we expect the origin of time, space and matter to do so? You have to have an eternal, un-caused Cause to explain the beginning. The best explanation is a being best called God.
  • Atheists say, “We are still working on the problem of how something can come from nothing. Some physicists point to quantum effects in which particle pairs appear out of a vacuum. We are making progress and science shouldn’t just lazily throw up our hands like Creationists and say ‘God did it’.”
  • The question still remains…where did the vacuum and its fields come from if anywhere? And how did a random, unguided process produce the highly tuned laws of physics that are required to sustain life on Earth.
  • There is no proof for either side. There are presumptions and biases. We all have the same facts. It is how they are interpreted and explained. It comes down to faith on both sides. The real question is…given the finely tuned universe, solar system, Earth, human body, ….which of the two faith based explanatory models of our origins is more rational?
  • Something doesn’t come from nothing.
  • Intelligence doesn’t come from materials.
  • Personality doesn’t come from impersonal.
  • Conscience and morality do not spontaneously emerge from an amoral natural process.
  • The argument is not about the facts or the evidence. We all have the same universe to observe.
  • The real argument is about faith…atheistic scientists think they don’t need faith…they only need facts and any appeal to faith pollutes the science. Creationists say, science and faith are not mutually exclusive. It takes faith to even do science.
  • We’re not defending science, we’re defending faith.
  • The argument is not about the evidence but about how the evidence is interpreted. And there is never proof in a mathematical/scientific sense. But there is evidence. And you have to start with faith (an explanatory belief about the way the world works) to even begin to do science.
  • The nail in the atheistic coffin for me is this:
  • If our minds are simply brain cells produced by unguided and random natural processes, then we have no free will at all. We might have the perception of free will, but we don’t actually choose anything. We are just doing what our cells are programmed to do and there are no consequences. We cannot change the process at all. A killer is not wrong for killing…he is dancing to the music of his DNA (as Dawkins would say). He has no choice.
  • But the problem is clear…by saying our brains are the product of chance and unguided processes of nature, why would anyone trust their brain? It is programmed by nature to have specific thoughts out of the person’s control. How could anyone have a rational thought and say “This is true or this is not?”
  • To say that ….is to literally cut off the very tree branch they are standing on. This undermines the very rationality people rely on to do their science in the first place.

  • Genesis 1:1

  • “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

  • Only God can create ex nihilo (out of nothing).
  • Hebrews 11:3 says “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
  • Illust: Go get your own dirt
  • Revelation 4:11 says “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

  • Genesis 1 describes the biblical creation account.

  • Day 1: Light

  • Day 2: Atmosphere
  • Day 3: Land and Plants
  • Day 4: Sun, Moon, and Stars
  • Day 5: Fish and Birds
  • Day 6: Land Creatures, Man, and Woman
  • Day 7: Rest

  • There is great debate surrounding the biblical creation account and evolution. Due to the amount of time that we have this morning, I’m not going to be able to adequately discuss each view, but I want to point out a few core beliefs as it relates to creation.

  • God created the heavens and the earth (time, space, and matter)

  • God created species of like kind.
  • God created male and female in His image as a special act of creation

  • Notice that there is no mention of how old the earth is? There are many Godly men and women that adhere to an old and young earth model, and I would say that should not be a hill to die on.

  • One creation model places millions and billions of years between the time God created the heavens and the earth and the time he started forming his creation, preparing the earth for humankind.

  • Another creation model believes that each day could have been a long period of time and not a 24 hour day.
  • And then you have some that believe in the young earth creation story that the earth is somewhere between 6,000-10,000 years old. That God created the earth to have the appearance of age, but in fact it is very young. Just as God could create a 30 year old man from the dust even though he had only been seconds old.

  • Big Bang vs. Creation

  • Illust: The hummingbird

    • Beats its wings at 50-200/second
    • Heartbeat is 1200/minute
    • The only flying species that can fly backwards, and one of the only ones that can hover.
    • The rufous hummingbird has the longest migration of any hummingbird species. These hummers fly more than 3,000 miles from their nesting grounds in Alaska and Canada to their winter habitat in Mexico.
    • The ruby-throated hummingbird flies 500 miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico during both its spring and fall migrations.
      • Illust: The eyeball, galaxies, the ecosystem, this guy (pic)
      • Webster's definition of the Big Bang: a theory in astronomy: the universe originated billions of years ago in an explosion from a single point of nearly infinite energy density.
      • Webster’s definition of Creation: the act of bringing the world into existence out of nothing.
      • Even Richard Dawkins, the most famous advocate for Darwin's theory, writes in The Blind Watchmaker that a single cell could store the 30-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica three or four times over, and every one of us has trillions of cells in our bodies, which all have to work together in marvelous harmony.
      • Also, where did the small ball of energy come from?
      • Romans 4:17 says “as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’ - in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”
      • “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” - Job 33:4 CSB
      • “When you send your breath, they are created, and you renew the surface of the ground.” - Psalm 104:30 CSB
      • “For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created through him and for him.” - Colossians 1:16 CSB
      • “Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, you are God.” - Psalm 90:2 CSB

Question 3: Are we His image bearers?

• Genesis 1:26-27

  • “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
  • Where we come from is where we get our identity? How do I fit into the greater story?
  • “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
    ‭‭Psalm‬ ‭139:14‬

  • God’s image on us consists not of the physical, but of righteousness, holiness, and knowledge.

  • “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
    ‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4:24‬

  • “and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
    ‭‭Colossians‬ ‭3:10‬
  • As image bearers we have value.

No God:

Chaos - Everything was birthed out of chaos.

Chance - We are all here by chance.

Searching - We are on a constant quest for answers.

Hopeless - We have no hope of life after death.

God:

Order - God was intentional in His creation.

Love - We are a part of a greater love story.

Identity - We understand our beginnings.

Hope - We have hope for the future.

Closing:

Dr. Tim Keller “We know God is there. That is why even when we believe with all our minds that life is meaningless, we simply can’t live that way. We know better.”

Experience God.