Can We Be Sure That God Exists

Introduction

If you’d be opening your Bibles, please to 1 Peter chapter 3. 1 Peter chapter 3. In just a moment, we’re going to be looking at a text there that will accompany our lesson this evening. I want to join with Jim in expressing our gratitude as he did in his prayer for our guests who are with us this evening. We’re so glad that you’ve come, and we hope that you will profit from the time we spend tonight studying together from God’s Word. I’m excited tonight because we’re beginning a series that we’ve been talking about now for about a month that we’ve entitled Questions People Ask as we try to contemplate some of the questions that we’re going to encounter as we go out and try to share the gospel with other people.

I thought it would be appropriate this evening for us to think at the beginning of this series about some of the reasons we want to talk about a series of lessons such as this. And there were three things that came to my mind, three reasons or purposes behind this study that we want to have together for the next several weeks or so. One of the reasons I think we need to begin a series like this is because you and I, as God’s children, need to be busy spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost that are around us. We’ve emphasized before how that we live in a lost and dying world, and God has called upon his children to go and to preach to them his message of salvation.

Evangelism is our great mission. You know, as I watched over the course of the past week, the passion that I saw a lot of my brethren exhibit over this presidential election fiasco. As I heard people talk about spending sleepless nights and walking around with a hole in their gut all day, worried about it, I thought, you know, it sure would be nice. If we could get that passionate about lost souls. If we’d spend some sleepless nights fretting over a soul whose eternity was in the balance, if we would pray fervently for the lost souls of men and women. Like we prayed over our country the last couple of days. I tell you folks, it’d make a difference. We’d be winning more souls than we are. And I hope that you’ll keep that in mind as we go through this series.

That premise underlies everything that we’re going to be trying to do. I hope every lesson, although it won’t be a lesson per se, that addresses our need to win the loss, that’s underneath it. And I hope you’ll think about that with each lesson that we consider from this series. Secondly, we need to be talking in this series about this subject because God’s people need to be equipped to do this work. Lessons that just beat up brethren for not being diligent seem to me not to accomplish very much. We need to be reminded of our responsibility to teach the lost, but brethren, we also need to learn how to do that. We need to be equipped for the task. I think a lot of Christians do want to do more to reach their friends and neighbors, and for a lot, they’re just uncertain how to go about doing that.

And I hope that this one series will be one contribution to an ongoing effort, not just to say that we need to teach the lost, but to equip us to do that work. And then thirdly, tonight, we need to consider a series of lessons like this, because doing the work of soul winning involves answering questions, doesn’t it? In fact, it seems to me that often that’s the number one fear that most Christians at least have expressed to me that they have about the work of winning souls. David, I’m just afraid, I’ve had people say, that I’m going to encounter a question that I won’t know how to answer. Let me put your mind at ease about that. If you’ll go out and you’ll start trying to win souls for Jesus Christ, let me guarantee you, you’re going to get hit with a question that you won’t be prepared to answer.

That’s okay. We just need to go find the right answer. But what we need to do is we need to constantly be readying ourselves for battle, which means constantly increasing our knowledge of God’s word, increasing our understanding of His will for us, understanding of misconceptions that people have about God’s will, so that as we face those problems and those questions and that uncertainty in our world, we’ll be ready to give an answer. In that sense, brethren, I want you to appreciate that virtually every sermon you hear from this pulpit and every discussion that goes on in Bible class to some degree is equipping us for this work. I hope you’ll appreciate that. And think about it. Every time we study from God’s word. In 1 Peter chapter 3, if you look down in verse 15, the passage I asked you to turn to a minute ago.

Peter would say, But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. And I suppose that’s in part what these lessons are about. To equip us to be ready to make a defense, to give questions, answers to questions that people have about our faith. We’re going to be taping the lessons in this series. I’m going to hang on to those tapes so that if in the future you’ve got friends who have questions about some of the things we talk about, you can get a copy of that and share that with them. I’m going to be trying to announce the lessons in advance at least a week or so, the lesson for next Sunday nights and the bulletin, so that if you have a friend maybe who has some interest, and one of the subjects we’ll be looking at, perhaps you can even invite them to come.

And I would still be willing to entertain if somebody wants to make a suggestion about a question you’ve encountered or you think folks in the religious world are asking that we need to be ready to answer. If you’ll submit it to me, we’ll include that in that series. If it’s a real hard question, we’ll get Brother Harkwriter to preach on. But there’s still time to do that. I hope in the end, folks, that our efforts will be in glory to God and that more souls will be one for his kingdom. Well, the first question I want us to think about this evening may well be the most fundamental question, I suppose, that somebody could ask. I think as we go out and share the gospel, sometimes we’re going to have people ask us this question.

1. People’s Foundations Are Changing

Can we be sure that God exists? You know, interestingly, America is a nation of believers. When you ask folks, do you believe in God? Survey after survey indicates that an overwhelming majority of people in our country will say yes to that question. Yes, I believe in God. In fact, the surveys I’ve seen have always had numbers that were up around 95 or 98 or more percent of people would say, Yes, I believe in God. Someone says, David, doesn’t that betray everything you’re trying to do right now, then? You’re talking about questions that people are asking out there. If most people believe in God, then why do we need to be looking at this question? Well, I don’t know that those statistics always tell the whole story.

I don’t know that they accurately reflect the changes that are taking place in this country. And I don’t know that just because someone says they believe in God that that necessarily says much about the depth of that conviction. And I’m convinced, brethren, that what’s happening in our country is that people’s foundations are changing. Maybe what’s on the surface seems to be the same, but I’m fearful that what lies underneath isn’t. This country isn’t what it was a generation ago when it seemed like everyone not only believed in God and Jesus and the Bible, but those convictions were rock solid and settled and deeply rooted and ingrained. Moms read Bible stories to their kids at night. And when children misbehave, they would be punished by being made to memorize verses from the Bible.

Prayers were still led in school. When I went to high school, they still had prayers at graduation and before the football game started. And God at times would even be openly discussed in the classrooms. Kids just grew up with God, believing in God. And that was solid and firm conviction in their hearts. But our country’s change. If not on the surface, at least with regard to the underlying foundation. You know, families don’t read the Bible together anymore, at least not much. Children don’t memorize Bible verses. In fact, I fear that’s the case even among the most dedicated, not to mention in the world generally. And God has been banned from our public school system. In fact, a while back, when my little niece was in second grade, around Thanksgiving time, around this time, her second grade teacher gave her a poem, or a little story, I guess it’s better put, called The Legend of the Five Colonels.

I don’t know any of y’all ever heard that before. What I found interesting about this poem is it kind of tells a little story about the pilgrims, but you’ll notice there’s a big black mark I’ve circled up there. You know what that is? That was a reference to God in the story. And at Schilling Elementary School and in the Chicago suburbs, it was inappropriate to distribute something to the children that said something about God, and so that teacher took a big black marker and marked it out. They can give contraceptives to our children in schools, but God forbid they should mention the name of God. Well, things have changed, haven’t they?

Don’t pray in schools anymore. Couldn’t post a copy of the Ten Commandments in school anymore. There’s no reference to God or the Bible in classes. No praying before football games or graduation. In fact, what our children are fed is a diet of skepticism. They’re taught that God didn’t really create the world, but everything around us has merely evolved over millions and billions of years in evolution. And the further our children go in their education, if they leave high school and go on to college, the more those ideas are ingrained in their system more and more deeply. In fact, they may even begin to encounter teachers and professors at school who will attack belief in God and ridicule the notion that God created the world as it’s recorded in Genesis.

I’m convinced that those changes have taken their toll in our culture. I don’t think they’ve made us a society of atheists. I think the surveys tell us better than that. But I do think they’ve created a culture of people with foundation problems. Folks just aren’t as confident and certain about that anymore. I don’t think you’re going to meet very many people who say to you, I don’t believe in God. Prove it. But folks, I found increasingly that I meet people who say, I believe in God. I just kind of have some doubts or have some questions. Can we really be sure that God exists? I want you to appreciate with me tonight, and I think what we need to be sharing with our friends who have doubts about that question is that God has answered it.

And he has told us beyond any doubt that yes, we can believe in him and believe that he exists. In fact, the evidence for his existence is so overwhelming that not to believe is irrational. You know, sometimes the intellectuals in our culture would try to have us to believe that to be a Christian, you kind of got to put your head in the sand and throw your reason out the window if you’re really to accept the notion of God. And brethren, what we need to be saying this evening is that just the opposite is true. The evidence for God’s existence is so overwhelming and irrefutable that one has to be irrational not to believe in him. What is that evidence? Well, I want you to look with me tonight at three key pieces.

2. The Design of the Creation

And I will confess at the outset that time does not permit us to even begin to pursue these in any kind of depth. I want to point you to some general areas of evidence that you can ponder and consider. And what I’ll say to you going in is that if you’ll take what we start with tonight and you’ll look into it and you’ll dig deeper and deeper and deeper, you’ll become more and more and more convinced. It’s so overwhelming. So let’s get a taste of the evidence that God has given us tonight. What are these three key pieces of evidence that leave us without any doubt that God does indeed exist? Well, let me tell you first of all, the first piece of evidence we need to look at is the design of the creation that is all around us.

You know, even to the most unscientific, casual observer. If he will stop and just notice, he can’t help but be overwhelmed with the impressive design that characterizes the world in which we live. We’re sitting here in this audience tonight at this very moment without appreciating all the delicately balanced and intricate systems that are going on and are at work all around us right now that we don’t even think about and perceive most of the time that sustain human life in this world as we know it. Right now, this uh this ball on which we live is plummeting through outer space. You think about that? But not aimlessly. It moves around that great fireball that we call the sun, just perfectly distanced from it so as to provide the exact amount of heat and light that is needed in order to sustain life.

The slightest changes from that prescribed order would render our planet uninhabitable, all those things delicately balanced just right so as to stay in life, and yet that system goes off and works so perfectly every single day that we didn’t even think about that when we got up this morning. And I doubt there’s anyone in this audience up to this point that was sitting there fretting. I sure hope the earth stays on track tonight. You weren’t thinking about that, were you? I mean, it just goes like clockwork perfectly balanced, just like it’s supposed to every single day. I want to know how it got that way. And stays that way. With our own little world. At this very moment, there are countless systems that are at work which sustain our existence.

You know, seeds have been planted, and tonight they’re germinating. And trees and flowers are growing and food is growing that is necessary for our survival. And right at this moment, the water cycle is at work, rain falls and water runs off, and evaporation occurs, and all of it works to keep the earth watered. And plants are doing their job to produce the oxygen that is necessary for you and I to breathe. And folks, that’s not even the beginning of all those little systems that are going on and are at work around us right now, making life sustainable for human beings. In fact, right now, even within your own body, right this minute, there are countless little, delicately balanced systems that are working to keep you alive.

And I know we all hope they keep doing that. Right now, your circulatory system with the heart acting as the pump is carrying blood throughout your body, keeping you alive. Your digestive system is working on lunch. And for some of us, it’s working overtime because of how much lunch we have. And our respiratory system is taking in and processing oxygen. And our eyes, I see your eyes open, looking up at the chart when we allude to it. Your eyes are looking at the chart and feeding back information to your brain that’s processing that and hopefully learning something from that. And our ears are retrieving the sound, some of them with a little help tonight. That’s okay. But retrieving the sounds, feeding them to the brain. Brains, processing all of that, taking it in, learning something.

The nerves in our fingers. Feel the book that I hope is open in your hands tonight. As your eyes look down on the pages to which you’ve been asked to turn. And in just a moment, your ears will pick up another signal as I ask you to turn to another page, and your brain will send a message to your fingers, say, turn the page. And you know what’ll be amazing? You’ll all turn to the right one. How did it work out that one? And the reality is, brethren, that the deeper we go, the more complex and amazing these systems become. I listened to Buddy Payne talk a couple of months ago about one cell and all the stuff that’s going on inside of this, and I tell you, after about 20 minutes, I was lost.

It’s just too much. It’s amazing what’s going on inside of us right at this moment.

What I’m trying to get you to see, brethren, is that there isn’t just one impressive thing about the design that’s in our creation. You just can’t look around at anything without being overwhelmed with all the stuff that’s going on and how it’s just working perfectly. How’d it get that way? How do we account for that? Who ordered these delicate systems? And who sustains them. I tell you in the end, when you boil down all the discussion, there are only two options which one can believe about that. Either we conclude that all of this just happened to work out this way, some kind of grand cosmic accident, or someone designed it to be this way, but we’ve got to decide what’s more rational. Those who reject the notion of God are forced to say it’s all by chance.

The result of blind forces working on mindless matter. Just give it enough time. That’s what the evolutionist says. Give it enough time, and as chance would have it, all those systems that we’ve just alluded to and multiplied millions besides them, give it enough time, it would just all work out that those would naturally form and come to be ordered as they are and work so efficiently as they do. And brethren, let me tell you tonight, I would argue that that is simply unreasonable and irrational. And I say that because it just goes against everything we know to be true. I’m not asking you tonight to become a scientist, to become a PhD expert in the human body or into the workings of our earth and solar system.

What I would ask you to do tonight is use plain old common sense that you use every day. And plain old common sense tells us that when we see design, there has to be intelligence behind it. Don’t we assume that? And the more intricate and delicately balanced those designs are, the more strongly they argue for the need for intelligence to be back of them. If I might illustrate. Suppose you and your wife take a drive out here in the country somewhere. And you’re driving down this two little two-lane country road. And all down the road on either side of you are just these lush green forests of trees and bushes and shrubs. And you can tell nobody keeps it because it’s all overgrown and grown up, and you can’t even really see much beyond the edge of the road because it’s just thick with overgrown brush and greenery.

Ever seen that scene? And you’re driving along the road and you’re observing all of that, and all of a sudden, to your right, there’s a break in all of the shrubs. And kind of off the road, set back a little bit is a beautiful home. And all the grass, some of the trees have been cut back, and all the grass is just perfect height, been cut just right. And around that home are all these beautiful flower beds that have been laid out in circles and rectangles and swirled patterns, and within those flower beds, there are shrubs that have been that have been rounded in some cases, cut just right, like they do out at Disney World, or squared off in some cases, beautifully trimmed. And in front of those rural swirling rows of flowers have been planted, and in front of that border grass, got to get the order right on all that.

And the grass in the yard grows right up to the edge, and then it’s been cut off and edged around, and it’s just a beautiful landscape scene. And suppose, lady, your husband looks over there and says, Isn’t that interesting? How the grass just naturally grows short in that yard? And isn’t it funny how all their shrubs just naturally go in perfectly round patterns? Or some of them grow perfectly squared. I wonder how they did that. Isn’t it interesting how those flowers just naturally grew up in those swirled patterns in front of those neatly trimmed bushes and how the grass knew just to grow right up to the edge and stop? Ladies, if your husband said that, would you begin to think you needed to start doing the driving?

Of course you would. You’d hope he was kidding, because if he wouldn’t, wasn’t, you’d begin to wonder about his sanity, wouldn’t you? Seriously. If somebody could look at that and suggest that that was a natural occurring phenomenon, you’d think he was a nut. Why? Because when we see design, we presume intelligence, don’t we? I’m going to tell you something, folks. A landscape yard doesn’t even begin to compare with the kind of systems that are at work in our world. And for us to think a guy is nuts who would think that could happen by accident, can you fill in the rest of it? What would we say about someone who would come around and look at the multiple designed systems that are at work in our world, literally billions of them, and ask us to believe that all that happened by chance?

Is that reasonable? If I took you back to my office and showed you my computer? And said, you know, you know how I got that computer? You know, I bought all these computer parts and I just kind of dumped them out there on the desk back there. And, you know, over the years, as people opened and closed the door and the wind blew back and forth and stuff, that just kind of evolved up into a computer and it works great.

You’d laugh at me. If I was serious, you’d worry about me. Yet people tell us that something far more amazing and complicated, like the human brain, has just somehow evolved, and people find that reasonable? Why doesn’t it make sense?