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I've kind of longish message
this morning, so I want to get right into it and hopefully not
go overtime. But before I introduce it, you
can turn to Psalm 14 verse one. We'll start there. Familiar verse. The fool hath said in his heart,
there is no God. That's a good description of
an atheist, a fool. That's what Scripture says. And
I want to start with the subject of atheism this morning and just
talk about how to answer atheists before I ever finished our verse
by verse study of Galatians a couple of months ago, people started
asking me what I intend to do next. And I've been kind of vague
about it because I'm not really sure where to go next. Not because
I didn't have any clue about where to go next, but because
I wasn't really sure how to organize all the stuff I had in mind.
Obviously, we prefer to do expository messages here at Grace Church,
and that goes for Grace Life. And for more than two years,
I think, running now, Don Green and I have been tag-teaming while
he preaches through the Sermon on the Mount and I was preaching
through Galatians. But I've had this sort of mental
list of other issues I want to deal with, which are mostly,
it's kind of become a long list of standalone messages rather
than book studies. For example, I mentioned last
week that I want to do a message on the unpardonable sin. I want
to kind of do an in-depth study on what did Jesus mean when he
spoke about the unpardonable sin. And for a long time, I've
wanted to explore the major arguments for the existence of God and
just see how scripture deals with God's existence, how to
answer an atheist. And that's what I want to do
this morning. I also want to do a message where
we talk about the gospel. What is the essence of the gospel
and how do you explain it to people who have no clue? And
I'd like to take on some of the hard questions people ask about
Christianity. You know, can you lose your salvation?
And how can I get assurance of my salvation? And what about
people in parts of the world who live and die without ever
hearing the gospel message? Is there hope for them to be
saved? These are all sorts of issues that people keep asking
me about, and I keep thinking, I'd like to do a message on that.
So I've got a whole bunch of these standalone messages in
mind that deal with a lot of tough issues like that. And I've
been trying to organize my thoughts on those things to sort of maybe
deal with them in a series. I actually started this two weeks
ago, starting with the message that I did on sin. And I decided
what I want to do is gather up all these topics and do a series
that covers them all, because those are all issues you need
to be aware of and have a reasonable grasp of if you're going to share
the gospel with your friends or your loved ones or people
on the street. And so what I want to do is sort of give you a series
that we'll call a Toolbox for Evangelism. And for the next
few months, we'll be sort of assembling these evangelistic
tools for you in a message at a time. And my goal is to deal
with each of those issues in a single message so that we won't
have any two- or three-part titles or anything like that. And I
hope you will find it profitable. Two weeks ago, actually, we dealt
with the subject of sin. And if I were going to be totally
logical and try to deal with everything in logical order,
I would do a message on maybe total depravity or something
like that and talk about how sin renders the human heart spiritually
dead. And I do intend to do a message
on that before this series is over, but just to sort of challenge
myself and make sure that all of these messages in this series
will be kind of standalone units, you know, something you can turn
to and listen through single message and get the idea without
having to go through a long sequence of tapes, I've decided I'm not
even going to try to follow a particularly logical sequence. It's not that
I'm going to be illogical, it's just that I want to deal completely
with each issue on its own merits without tying all the other things
together in a sequence. And so this morning I want to
talk about how to answer atheists. We'll talk about the existence
of God and how we can be sure of it. Now there are several
classical arguments, rational arguments for God's existence.
The major part of what I want to do this morning is discuss
what those arguments are and then see what the Bible says
about addressing the issue of proving that God exists. Now
that is first and foremost a problem for apologetics. That is the
issue apologetics, that's the ultimate issue, apologetics sets
out to address. Now, most of you are familiar
with that expression, apologetics. It has nothing whatsoever to
do with making apologies to your wife or to anyone else. It's
not about apologies. It's a theological term, apologetics,
that speaks of giving a reasoned defense of the faith. It comes
from 1 Peter 3, 15, where Peter says, sanctify the Lord God in
your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man
that asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness
and fear." In fact, if you read that in the New King James Version,
it says, be ready to give a defense of the hope that's in you. And
the Greek word Peter uses for giving a defense or giving an
answer is apologia. It's the same word from which
we get the English word apology, Peter isn't talking here about
making apologies. He's talking about defending
the faith. And that's what the expression apologetics means.
It's the defense of the faith. It's the discipline of making
a reasoned defense of the faith, being prepared to say why you
believe. And notice, that's a biblical
command. Peter says you need to be prepared
to give a reason, give a reasoned defense for why you believe.
And if you do any evangelism, you have to be prepared with
that. You're going to have to be prepared to give a reason
to basic defense of the faith. Now we have some seminary students
in our midst always, and they are probably anticipating that
I'm going to have to deal with the two main competing ideas
about how Christians should defend the faith. Because there are
two dominant ideas about how Christians should defend the
faith, and there is so much in disagreement that sometimes it
makes for really lively arguments, the kind seminary students love.
And it goes like this. On the one side you have evidentialists
who basically suggest that the way to convince unbelievers of
the truth of the gospel is by collecting objective evidence
of the truth of the gospel and citing that evidence of the truth
as proof. R.C. Sproul is an evidentialist.
Josh McDowell is an evidentialist. And in fact, that's why Josh
McDowell's famous book is titled Evidence That Demands a Verdict. His idea is the way you prove
the resurrection is assemble all the historical and other
kinds of evidence and prove it through evidence. That's one
approach to Christian apologetics. The other side is known as presuppositionalism. And for those seminary students
who are looking for a fight, I'll just tell you I'm a presuppositionalist. So is John MacArthur. So are
most of the men who teach at—I suppose all of the men who teach
at the Master's Seminary, certainly the ones that teach apologetics.
The best-known and most influential presuppositionalist was Cornelius
Van Til, who was a Dutch Reformed writer and a philosopher and
a theologian who taught at Westminster Seminary for a large chunk of
the 20th century. And here's the basic idea. I'm
not going to go into detail on this because I don't want to
bore anyone who's not a seminary student, but basically here's
the idea. The presuppositionalist says you cannot argue someone
into the faith by showing him evidence. But instead, the best
way to defend Christianity and the truth of Scripture is to
assume or to presuppose, that's where the name comes from, presuppositionalism,
presuppose the truth of Scripture and then use it to show how that
unravels every other conceivable worldview and exposes the fallacies
of every other conceivable philosophy of life, and it shows how every
other view except Christianity is untenable. That's presuppositionalism. And you can actually make an
impressively powerful defense of the truth of Scripture by
that method. And in fact, if you want to hear
it in action, Look for the tapes or the recordings. You can actually
download these sound files off the internet of a debate between
Greg Bonson, who was a presuppositionalist, and Dr. Gordon Stein, who was
a committed atheist. And they had a debate, and Bonson
used a presuppositional method, an argument, that left Stein,
the atheist, gasping for air before the debate was over. Like
I said, I'm a presuppositionalist, and I'm not going to try to give
you a complete overview of a defense of the presuppositional philosophy
in one hour because I simply couldn't do justice to the subject
in that amount of time and it would probably leave a lot of
you bewildered anyway. So let's leave aside for the
moment the underlying philosophical issues about apologetics and
let's just talk about the various ways Christians throughout history
have made arguments for the existence of God. And I'll preface it by
saying these arguments would be favored mostly by the evidentialist
side of that debate. But some of them are good arguments,
and I want to talk about them. First, a warning. And I say this
as a presuppositionalist. Don't get so swept up in the
philosophical arguments for God's existence that you forget to
let Scripture just defend itself and do its own work. It is good
to know what the arguments are, and occasionally you might find
them useful to combat error and ignorance or to expose how shallow
the thinking of the atheist really is. But don't build your evangelistic
strategy or your apologetical strategy on philosophical and
rational grounds. It's not a good thing to do.
And in fact, if you have only ten hours to devote to study,
I would say spend nine and a half hours studying Scripture itself
and save the other half hour to study apologetic methods. It's just about that important.
And bear in mind, God has not called us to impress the world
with heady philosophical arguments. How you do apologetics is not
one-tenth as important as how you preach the gospel. If you
get the gospel right, I really don't care how you do apologetics.
And I frankly think that when people get caught up in making
a rational defense of Christianity, it can sometimes be actually
more of a hindrance than a help to evangelism. Remember how the
Apostle Paul said he did evangelism. It wasn't heavy on apologetics.
He did do apologetics, and you see that in Acts 17 on Mars Hill. But that wasn't where he focused
his energies. That wasn't where he built his
strategy. He said, 1 Corinthians 121, it
pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who
believe. And he's talking there about
preaching the gospel. It's the gospel, not our rational arguments,
but the gospel message itself is the power of God unto salvation
for those who believe. And we do need to be ready to
give an answer to people who ask why we believe, but don't
feel like you need to limit that answer to rational and philosophical
arguments, and don't feel like you need to overcome people's
intellectual resistance to the truth before you can preach the
gospel itself. Because the gospel has an impact
on people's hearts and minds, on its own merits, on its own
power. It is the gospel that actually awakens unbelieving
hearts to faith. So keep that in mind. Remember,
Paul described his own ministry to the Corinthians in exactly
those terms. That society, by the way, was
in love with philosophy and human wisdom. And they would have listened
with great respect for hours if Paul had gone into that city
with the attitude of a peripatetic philosopher and just walked around
teaching what he believed from a philosophical perspective.
And Paul had the mental ability to do that, but he didn't do
it. If he had spent hours just walking around in a flowing robe
and spouting deep philosophy, he would have gathered a big
crowd in Corinth. If he wanted a hearing, if he only wanted
a hearing, if he only wanted to gather a crowd, that's what
he could have done. But here's how Paul said, He took the gospel
to Corinth. He went and approached them,
determined just to give them the gospel. First Corinthians
2, verses 1 through 7, he says to them, when I came unto you,
I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring
unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know
anything among you except for Jesus Christ and him crucified.
And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.
And my speech and my preaching were not with enticing words
of men's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power that
your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the
power of God. Howbeit, he said, we speak wisdom among them that
are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world nor of the princes
of this world that might come to naught. But we speak the wisdom
of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom." Notice how he's
contrasting God's wisdom with human wisdom and saying it's
two totally different standards of what real wisdom is. God's
wisdom is antithetical to human wisdom. God communicates his
truth to us not through human philosophy, not through rational
arguments, not through complex, abstract reasoning. Instead,
he has deliberately made the gospel message so simple that
in the eyes of the unbelieving world, and particularly in the
eyes of philosophers, it sounds like foolishness. Now just a few verses after that
passage I just quoted, Paul says this, "...the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness
to him. Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned." And still later in chapter 3, verses 18 through
21, he says this. And by the way, this was the
passage that I read as an unbeliever that convinced me I needed salvation. 1 Corinthians 3 verses 18 through
21, let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth
to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may
be wise. For the wisdom of this world
is foolishness with God. For it's written, he takes the
wise in their own craftiness. And again, the Lord knoweth the
thoughts of the wise that they are vain. Therefore, let no man
glory in men. That's just a preliminary warning.
Don't become so enamored of human wisdom and philosophy that you
lose sight of the simplicity of the message we are to proclaim
to the world. And particularly, because we're
talking about this in the context of evangelism, don't go out there
with the intent of being an evangelist and shift your mode to where
you become a philosopher, or that you make intellectual arguments
only. Preach the Word, because it is
the gospel that's the power of God unto salvation. On the other
hand, First Peter 3.15 does tell us that we should be, we need
to be, we must be, we're commanded to be always ready to give an
answer, to make a defense to anyone who asks us to give an
account for the hope that is in us. That's Peter. Now notice, Peter is not contradicting
Paul. Peter, who was a fisherman and
the furthest from Paul's intellectual category, It certainly isn't
arguing for intellectual arguments where Paul said they're not necessary.
He is not suggesting that rational arguments can persuade an unbeliever
into the kingdom. But Peter is saying, and this
is an important point, that true faith, authentic faith, is rational. It's not irrational. Faith is
not a mere feeling. It's not an absurd hope in some
unknown and unseen delusion. You know, people have that idea
of faith. Faith is not a blind leap in the dark. We have sound
reasons for our faith, and we need to think through what those
reasons are and be ready to answer people who want to know the reasons
for our faith. And when Paul told the Corinthians
they needed to be fools in order to be wise, he was not suggesting
that they need to embrace something that's irrational. He was not
telling them, by the way, to abandon their logic and good
sense. He wasn't saying that Christianity is unreasonable
or illogical. He was simply calling them to
let go of the complex reasoning of worldly philosophy and turn
instead to the simple, straightforward truth of God's Word, which nonetheless
is perfectly rational. Now, that's crucial to understand.
When Paul called the gospel foolish, he's not saying it's nonsense. A lot of people have that idea
today, these days, especially in these postmodern times, that,
you know, it doesn't matter if it contradicts itself, it doesn't
matter if it's illogical, it doesn't matter if it sounds like
utter nonsense, because truth might contradict itself. That
is not at all what Paul is saying when he calls the gospel foolish.
He's simply comparing the gospel to the complex maze of secular
philosophy and pointing out the obvious how simple and how unsophisticated
the gospel is. It's only foolish in the eyes
of the worldly wise because it's so simple. Not that it's self-contradictory,
not that it's illogical in any way. It just doesn't seem like
it's very deep because you know what? It's not. It's simple. So Paul is in no sense belittling
reason or intelligence. He's not arguing for something
illogical instead of that which is logical. He's simply saying
that the wise and learned philosophers who were so influential in Greek
philosophy and Roman society needed to just come down out
of the clouds and lay hold of God's truth, which is the most
profound truth in all the universe, but it's so simple even a child
can get it. And so I'm going to, this morning,
try my best to stay out of the deep end of the philosophical
swimming pool. And since we're talking about
the existence of God, I thought I'd begin with an atheist joke. You know what the atheist had
written on his tombstone? All dressed up and nowhere to
go. Actually, here's a Here's an
illustration that I find humorous, too. This really isn't a joke,
but you may have heard the story of Robert Ingersoll, the notorious
atheist of the 1800s who made the rounds challenging God in
19th century America. He became quite famous for this,
and he'd go around doing atheist lectures. And in one of his lectures,
he challenged God to strike him dead. He stood up and he told
the audience, according to the Bible, God has struck men dead
for blasphemy. He says, I'm going to blaspheme
him and I'm going to give him five minutes to strike me dead
and damn my soul." He was that bold with his atheism. And he
pulled out his watch and he stood there in absolute silence for
five solid minutes. And one minute goes by, then
two, the audience grows restless and a little nervous. Three minutes
pass, four minutes, he curled his lip in contempt. And when
the clock reached five minutes, He snapped his watch shut, put
it in his pocket, and said, you see, there is no God. Otherwise, he would have taken
me at my word. And at the time, someone described
that whole incident to Joseph Parker, who was one of London's
best-known preachers at the time, just across town from Spurgeon.
And he asked Parker what he thought of that. And Parker said, did
the American gentleman think he could exhaust the patience
of God in five minutes? Atheism has gained a lot of ground
in America since Robert Ingersoll's time. I read a report about the
first convention of American atheists in Austin, Texas several
years ago. That was the organization Madeleine
Murray O'Hare founded, and the organization literally ultimately
killed her. Twelve people showed up for that
first national convention, and two of them hid under the table
when the news media arrived. refused to come out until the
cameras left the room. Think about that. Society has
declined significantly since then. And now the atheists conventions
are well attended. They're neatly marketed events.
Now they even give out an award called Atheist of the Year. And
one year they gave it to a guy from Indiana named Lloyd Thorin,
who had started the first Dial an Atheist phone service. which
always struck me as kind of funny. You know, it's amazing that people
will get so worked up about something they don't believe in. Heywood
Hale Brown, the news commentator, said, nobody talks so constantly
about God as those who insist that there is no God. And it's
true. But it's frightening to see what's
happening to society, secular society, not just in America,
but all over the Western world. used to be unusual to encounter
people who would frankly admit that they don't believe in God.
That's not true any longer. And in fact, you probably all
know or have met people who identify themselves as atheists. Most
people are practical atheists in our society. They live as
if they believe there were no God. And sadly, that's true of
even a lot of people who go to church. But what do you say to
someone who asks for proof of God's existence. How can you
give them an answer for the hope that is in you? And I want to
look at the arguments and proofs for God's existence in a way
that will kind of help you frame your thinking on this issue.
Now, I've already read the text this morning. It's just short,
and I just want to refer to it, because this is the key statement
in all of Scripture regarding this issue of God's existence. Psalm 14, verse 1. This is scripture's
answer to the atheist. The fool has said in his heart,
there is no God. And by the way, that verse is
repeated verbatim in Psalm 53, verse one. The fool has said
in his heart, there is no God. So I want you to notice the biblical
label for the atheist. He's a fool. The Bible assumes
the existence of God. It doesn't argue the point. Have
you ever noticed that? That is a crucial truth. Keep
it in mind because I'm going to return to it later. But that
is the biblical approach to answering atheism. It assumes there's a
God and argues from there. Presuppositionalism. But the
point of Psalm 14 verse 1 is this. Unbelief, not faith, but
unbelief is irrational. You want to talk about what's
intellectually dishonest, and stupid and foolish and all the
other adjectives that you can name as synonyms for that. It's
not faith. It's unbelief. The fool is not
the one who believes, but the one who denies God's existence. God does not ask us to or expect
us to suspend our rational faculties in order to believe in Him. Faith
is not gullibility. It's not mindlessness or blind
trust. Faith is more rational than unbelief. And I hope that'll become more
clear as we look at the classic arguments for God's existence.
And I want to start with, and you'll have to follow my outline
as I go along this morning, but I'll try to pause if you're taking
notes and give them down. Let's start with the rational
arguments. These are some rational arguments
for God's existence. And I'm going to begin with three
traditional philosophical arguments that attempt to prove God's existence. These are arguments that are
so basic and so familiar that you will find, if you read philosophy,
they are dealt with by most of the great philosophers, both
Christian and non-Christian. And the first is called the cosmological
argument. Cosmological argument. C-O-S-M-O,
logical. Cosmological. And this argument
reasons from effect to cause. It argues that everything that
exists must have a cause. And every cause is in turn caused
by something else, so that whatever caused the last thing itself
had a cause, and so on and so on, back to the original cause
of everything. That's God, the first cause. Now, there are several ways of
framing that argument. Here's another one. This is the same
argument, just worded differently. The universe must have had an
adequate cause to explain its being. And whatever caused the
universe must have been an indefinitely great cause. In fact, an infinitely
great cause. That's God. Now, you think about
it. Every three-year-old plays with
the cosmological argument. It is so fundamental to the human
mind and our human thought that we've all considered this. And
if you've ever raised children, you probably dealt with it When
your kids turn about three, Daddy, how do they make paper? Well,
it's made from trees. Where do the trees come from?
Well, they grow from seeds. Where do the seeds come from?
God made them. You ultimately get back to that.
You come back to that point no matter what route you take through
the cycle of cause and effect. It brings you back to God. Thomas
Aquinas loved this argument, and he devised several arguments
for God's existence that are all variations of the cosmological
argument. One is based on motion. It goes
like this. Everything that is now in motion
had to be set in motion by something else, which in turn was set in
motion by something else, and so on and so on, back to the
unmoved mover. That's God, the unmoved mover. Or another variety of the same
argument is based on existence. Every being is either self-existent
or it was made. If you think about it, there's
no other possibilities. If something exists, it either
exists in and of itself or it was created, it was made. Since
all the beings we see are finite, they cannot be self-existent,
so they must have been made or caused by something. And if you
go back through all the antecedent causes, that have brought things
into existence, you eventually arrive at the ultimate maker.
That's God, the ultimate maker. Now, the cosmological argument,
it seems inescapable, right? I mean, we do all think that
way. You can't avoid thinking that way. But that argument has
been attacked by atheistic philosophers since the time of Immanuel Kant.
Because Kant asked the same question every three-year-old ultimately
asks, Well, then who made God? Nobody made God. That's exactly
why He's God. And so the arguments against
the cosmological argument are all ultimately inconclusive.
You can't argue against this argument. I like the cosmological
argument. I find it convincing. But while
it proves God exists, it cannot prove that He is the God of the
Bible or that He's even a personal God. At the end of the day, it
seems obvious to me that the cosmological argument alone cannot
bring someone to a knowledge of the true God of Scripture.
And therefore, it's really limited as far as its usefulness is concerned. It can overthrow atheism, but
it can't bring someone to faith in the existence of the God of
Scripture. And so we turn to another argument. Here's a second
one. The teleological argument, teleological, T-E-L-E-O, logical. teleological argument. This is
actually so similar to the cosmological argument that it's easy to get
them confused. But here's the way to remember
it. Cosmological always deals with cause and effect. Cosmological,
cause. That's how I remember them anyway.
But instead of the teleological argument, instead of arguing
merely from effect to cause, it actually argues from design
to a designer. It's a more sophisticated argument.
The teleological argument suggests that since our universe is orderly,
it must have been designed by an intelligent being, and that
intelligent being is God. And if you think about it, this
makes sense. Nature is governed by laws. They imply the existence
of a lawgiver. Our solar system is so intricately
designed that, did you know that if Earth's axis were just one
or two degrees off, all the polar ice caps would melt, the seasons
would swing wildly between fiery hot and icy cold, and Earth would
be left uninhabitable. The balance that keeps our Earth
livable is so finely tuned that it couldn't possibly have happened
by accident. Everything in creation runs according
to the seasons. which follow a rhythm that's
established by the rising and setting of the sun. It's an extremely
precise timetable. That kind of orderliness is only
possible in intelligent design. Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered
many of the laws that govern gravity and the motions of planet,
was a committed Christian. I don't know if you realize that,
but he was. He lived in England near the end of the Puritan era.
And he was known for his faith. He was a Christian. And he had
a watchmaker friend who built for him a working model of the
solar system, a little watchworks model of the sun and the planets. And you could wind it up and
a little orbs would revolve around the model of the sun on a scale
that closely duplicated the actual planets. And Newton was showing
that model to an atheist friend. And the man was absolutely enthralled
with the little model, and he wanted to have one like it, and
so he said to Newton, who made this? And Newton said, well,
nobody made it, it just happened. That's a good answer. Ultimately,
that is exactly what atheists must believe about the entire
universe. Nobody made it, it just happened. On the face of
it, that is a totally absurd idea. Order implies thought,
purpose, design. Only intelligence can devise
and design order into any kind of system. It could be, for example,
you could take a bag of watch parts and shake it up for all
of eternity, and you would never get a working watch out of that
bag. Because the only way to get a
watch is to have a watchmaker design and build it. And the
same thing is true with the universe, only on an infinitely large scale.
It couldn't have happened by accident. Everything we know
tells us that. That's the teleological argument.
Ronald Nash, who's one of my favorite Christian writers, said
in his book, Faith and Reason, he said this, suppose the first
American astronauts to walk on the moon had brought back, along
with the moon rocks, an oblong black box that appeared from
the outside to have been crafted by machines. And suppose further
that when opened, the box contained the workings of a camera and
it had parts that functioned like the lens and the shutter
and other components of a camera. Obviously, he says, such an object
would excite enormous and justifiable curiosity about how it came to
be. He says it's hard to imagine
any skeptics gaining respect by maintaining that the principle
of sufficient reason didn't apply to such an object. Equally absurd
would be efforts to explain the box in terms of chance, natural
forces. He says, the very nature of the
object pointed to its having been made by an intelligent being.
The human mind properly balks at the suggestion that a camera-like
object was produced by chance and by natural forces. And Ronald
Nash says this, but then how much more should we reject claims
that something far more intricate such as the human eye, resulted
from anything less than an intelligent being. I think that's an unassailable
argument, but atheistic philosophers have attacked that as well. I
know you've heard of David Hume, the famous philosopher who lived
at the beginning of the so-called Enlightenment era. Hume took
delight in trying to debunk all the classic arguments for God,
He suggested that if the teleological argument proves anything at all,
it simply proves that God isn't a very good designer. Otherwise,
he says, why would he have designed a universe with so much pain
and suffering? Now, that shows the fallacy of
a merely rational argument, because apart from divine revelation
and the truth of Scripture, Hume's argument might actually pose
a serious problem to the teleological argument. If you accept Scripture,
Hume's argument doesn't pose any challenge at all because
we know about sin and we know about the curse. We know about
the righteousness and justice of God. So Hume's argument doesn't
really defeat the point of the teleological argument for a Christian.
But if you don't have Scripture, that's a hard argument to answer. Darwin's evolutionary theory
is actually an attempt to evade the teleological argument. Evolutionists
believe that given enough time, an infinite amount of time and
an infinite amount of possibilities, a world like ours could evolve
into an orderly system. The problem with Darwin's whole
argument is that science itself argues otherwise. The second
law of thermodynamics which defines the property of entropy, says
this, every isolated system naturally moves from order to disorder.
Things run down. It's the very same law of physics
that renders perpetual motion impossible. And it proves that
nature prefers disorder and chaos. Things aren't evolving in a positive
direction. We see no evidence of that whatsoever.
And science even explains why with the second law of thermodynamics.
It means that in an evolving system, apart from the influence
of an intelligent force, an outside power, every system will degenerate
from order to confusion, not the other way around. And so
the teleological argument is ultimately unassailable, and
it has one great advantage over the cosmological argument in
this. It proves that God is an intelligent
being. personal being. But you know
what? That still doesn't prove the
God of the Bible. So we move on to another one. This is the
third classic argument for God, the ontological argument, ontological
argument, O-N-T-O, logical. This is the last of the major
philosophical arguments from God, and I think it's the most
interesting. It's called the ontological argument because
it has to do with the nature of being itself. Onto, ontos,
from the Greek word that means being. Simply stated, it goes
like this. If you can conceive of a perfect
being, he must exist because existence is one of the attributes
of perfection. If he didn't exist, he wouldn't
be perfect. So God must exist. because we can conceive of a
perfect being and he wouldn't be perfect if he didn't exist.
Or to state it in a way that might be easier to grasp, the
ontological argument says this, God exists by definition. Self-existence is one of the
defining attributes of God. You can't define him at all,
you can't conceive of him at all, if he doesn't exist. Now that doesn't work with every
It only works with the supreme being. Understand, the argument
wouldn't... People often want to say, well, hey, I can conceive
of unicorns and they don't exist. But you can't conceive of unicorns
as perfect beings. The point is, with God, you're
conceiving of a perfect being. He must have all the perfect
attributes, and since one of them is self-existence, he must
exist. It's actually a trickier argument
to overthrow than you might think. Immanuel Kant, who was another
Enlightenment-era philosopher, a contemporary of David Hume's,
who also liked to debunk arguments for God, said that the ontological
argument only proves that if there is a God, He exists. And
if you don't think it through carefully, you might think, yeah,
that sounds right. But let's look at it a little
more closely. Where did this argument come from? Anselm, the
great Christian theologian who lived around the year 1000 gets
credit for developing the ontological argument in its classic form.
Here's the way Anselm stated it. He said, God is the greatest
conceivable being. That's true by definition because
if you could conceive of something greater than God, then that would
be God. And so nothing greater than God
could possibly be conceived or imagined. And here's his argument
then that follows. It's greater to exist in reality
than it is to exist only in the imagination. If God only existed
in our minds and imaginations, then something greater than him
could be conceived. But God is the greatest conceivable
being, therefore he must exist in reality. Or let me frame it
one more way. A being whose non-existence is
inconceivable greater than a being whom we can conceive as non-existent. Therefore, the greatest being
we can possibly imagine must exist." I actually like that
argument. Anselm correctly defined God
this way. He said, God is that being then
which no greater can ever be conceived. God is the sum of
all perfections. And we can't imagine a situation
in where He does not exist. Here's the genius of that argument.
It shows why God's existence is the fundamental presupposition
that underlies all human logic. It's a very simple, but I think
profound, argument. Is it biblical? Well, to some
degree it certainly is, because if you think back to when God
revealed himself to Moses in Exodus 3, the name he gave was
a statement about his self-existence. I am who I am, Exodus 3, 14. And he told Moses to tell Pharaoh,
I am has sent me. In a sense, the whole ontological
argument is wrapped up in the name of God. Now, I should note
that there are lots of fine theologians who I respect who would dismiss
the ontological argument anyway and say it's circular reasoning.
They suggest that it assumes at the outset the very thing
it purports to prove. James Henry Thornwell, who was
a brilliant and godly Presbyterian theologian of the 19th century,
said that if you follow the ontological argument to its extreme, he says
it ends inevitably in empty abstractions. I don't agree with him, but,
you know, I respect him nonetheless. In recent years, this argument,
the ontological argument, has been making a comeback. One recent
secular writer said this, when you think about it, she says,
the argument is not merely as simple-minded as it appears.
Just where did you get your idea of a perfect being if you're
absolutely sure no such thing exists? It really is a hard argument
to overthrow. The ontological argument goes
further than the other two because it reveals not only a personal
intelligent being, but more specific, a God who is perfect in all his
attributes. And that gets us much closer,
but still falls short, to bringing us to the God who reveals himself
in Scripture. Those are the rational arguments for God's existence.
Let me give you one moral argument. This is the moral argument, which
can be summed up like this. Some sense of moral responsibility
is inherent in the character of humanity. Every society known
to man has some sense of right and wrong, good and bad, a moral
sense. The existence of moral principles and a universal moral
sense proves the existence of a lawgiver, a moral being, and
that lawgiver is God. In other words, we innately know
guilt and responsibility. That means there must be someone
we're accountable to. that someone is God. Again, I
think that's a strong argument, but it doesn't ultimately compel
us to faith in the God of Scripture. There's another argument, the
ethnological argument, which bears some resemblance to the
moral argument. It goes like this, all known
peoples and tribes have some religious tradition, some sense
of the divine, And since that phenomenon of the belief in God
is universal, it must be part of human nature. And if there's
something that's part of human nature that compels us to worship,
that something can only be adequately explained by the existence of
a real God. Now, I don't see much merit in
that argument as an appeal to reason alone, especially since
every form of human religion is seriously errant. But if you
take that argument and lay it alongside What Scripture tells
us in Romans 1, you do have a compelling case. Paul says in Romans 1 that
humanity has suppressed what they know about God. They have
suppressed the truth in unrighteousness because that which may be known
about God is manifest in them. God has revealed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him, things we wouldn't otherwise
know about God, are manifest from the creation of the world.
being clearly seen, being clearly understood by the things that
are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that people who
don't believe in God are without excuse. Because when they knew
God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful. And there, humanity's natural
fascination, universal fascination with religion is explained. The knowledge of God is manifest
within every person. If you think about it, if that's
true, you really don't need to start with rational arguments.
A knowledge of God is innate in us, but we've all sinned,
and so our natural tendency as fallen creatures is to suppress
that corrupt and perverted knowledge of God. And that's why there
are so many false religions. In some kind of spiritual entropy,
Religion always devolves and degenerates into chaos and confusion. And if we don't carefully guard
our faith, it happens within Christianity, too. Here's the
ultimate proof. If you think through all the
rational arguments for the existence of God, I think they all make
valid points. But in the end, what they really
prove is the need for divine revelation. Apart from Scripture,
We could never know the true God who has revealed Himself
to us. It is impossible, ultimately,
to take people through a purely rational process and thereby
introduce them to the true God. Without the pure truth of divine
revelation, reason and our sin would conspire to lead us astray,
and that is why Scripture is so important. And that's why
when you do evangelism, don't camp out on all the apologetic
stuff. Move past that as quickly as
you can to get to Scripture. That's where you bring people
face to face with the ultimate and only irrefutable proof of
God's existence. And what is that proof? You see
it referred to clearly in Hebrews 11 verse 1. Now faith is The substance of things hoped
for the evidence of things not seen. Faith, says scripture,
is the only evidence you need. And I think when scripture defines
faith as substance and evidence, it's what it's saying is this
true saving faith. That's what he's talking about
here. Genuine faith in the true God is not an ambiguous or uncertain
hope. It is a sure certainty. It's
all the proof you need. When you come to genuine faith
in Christ, the search for proof of God's existence is over. That
says some significant things about the nature of Christian
belief. First of all, it means saving
faith is substantially different from other varieties of faith.
You've heard people illustrate faith by saying, well, everyone
has a kind of faith. You know, you had faith when
you sat down in that chair that it would hold you up. You had
faith when you came to church today that your car would start
and it would run long enough to get you here. That, according
to some people, is all there is to faith. And we live our
lives making faith choices of that type. But I disagree. That's not the same kind of faith
as the faith I have in Christ. That kind of faith might be nothing
more than gullibility. That chair might collapse. In
fact, if you sit on a wobbly chair and it collapses, Your
faith turns out to be nothing more than a big mistake. Faith
in Christ is not like that. Why? Well, for one thing, the
object of our faith is infinitely more trustworthy. He cannot fail.
He will not disappoint. He's not like a chair that might
actually collapse. He's not like a car that might
break down or run out of gas. But faith in Christ is different
ontologically different from everyday faith and That's for
a very important reason because this true faith saving faith
has its source in God himself We are saved by grace through
faith and that not of yourselves. It's a gift of God that speaks
of the whole package of salvation regeneration faith freedom from
sin all of it is a gift from God and God is the one who gave
you your faith. And the proof of that is this,
none of us would turn to God in faith at all if he didn't
sovereignly intervene. Faith is not a natural human
tendency. False religion is, true faith
isn't. Jesus explicitly affirmed that
truth. No one can come to me unless
it's been granted to him by the Father, John 6.65. Faith is also spoken of as a
divine gift. Acts 3 16 the faith which comes
through him has been has given him this perfect health in the
presence of you all Philippians 1 29 to you it has been granted
for Christ's sake to believe in him 2nd Peter 1 1 Simon Peter
a bondservant and Apostle of Christ to those who have received
a faith the same as ours faith is not a wishful longing or a
blind confidence or a naive gullibility. It's not something you have cooked
up within yourself. But true saving faith is a supernatural
certainty that gives us an understanding of supernatural realities, which
I hath not seen or ear hath heard, which have not even entered into
the heart of man, but God has revealed them to us through His
Spirit. And that verse says God reveals
Himself and His truth to our hearts by faith. It's a supernatural transaction
that unites us with Christ and establishes a personal relationship
with Him. If you have that, you have all
the proof you need. If faith were merely a human
decision, it wouldn't be any kind of assurance at all. In
fact, it might be a bad decision. If believing were just a function
of the human mind, Faith wouldn't be any grounds at all for confidence.
The mind can be easily deceived, mistaken, deluded, misinformed.
But real faith, according to all those verses I just cited,
real faith is a divinely implanted assurance that rises above the
mere functioning of the human mind. Because the human mind
is blinded by sin, 2 Corinthians 4.4. As unbelievers, We would
never see on our own the light of the gospel of the glory of
Christ, who is the image of God. We would never on our own have
ever reached out to God in faith. And if you believe, it's because
He sovereignly invaded your life and gave you a new heart of faith.
It's not because you were wiser or better than someone else who
doesn't believe. It's not because you made a blind
leap into something you weren't really sure of, but our faith
is God's work in us. It's God who's at work in you,
both to will and to work for His good pleasure, Philippians
2.13. And that faith, which is His gift to us, is the highest
proof that the Bible is true and that God is real. And I make
that point for two reasons. Number one, if you are a non-believer
who demands to be convinced rationally before you take God at His word,
You'll never have irrefutable proof that God exists until you
turn to Him in faith. And my prayer for you is that
God will grant you that faith. But second, if you are a Christian,
your search for proof of God should be over. You should be
able to look at your own heart and gasp in wonder at what God
has done inside you. Your heart should be new, washed,
different. and different in such a way that
you could not possibly take credit for the change that has taken
place in you. And if what you see when you
look within is still really just an evil heart of unbelief, then
you're not a true Christian and you need to beseech God to give
you faith. Now, in closing, I just want
to reiterate something I said earlier. The Bible assumes the
existence of God. It doesn't argue the point. That
is to say, Scripture follows a scheme that is presuppositionalist,
not evidentialist. I'll go even further. Scripture
teaches that the existence of God is a self-evident truth. It requires no proof. God authenticates
Himself. And the only reason people can
look at the skies at night or look at the glory of creation
in the daytime and reject God is because sin blinds their eyes
to the truth. Hebrews 11, 6 says, God demands
faith. He calls us to faith. And when he redeems a soul, he
bestows faith as a divine gift. But he doesn't waste time arguing
with unbelief. He doesn't waste time in intellectual
games with unbelievers about his existence. He declares the
truth, and he demands that we believe it. We can believe it
with the perfect confidence that it is rational, it is reasonable,
and more than that, it's true. Let's pray. Lord, we confess that it is only
the sinfulness of our hearts that would ever cause us to doubt
or wonder. We do believe that You are and
are a rewarder of those who seek You. And Lord, the living proof
of that is in the incarnation of Christ and His life and His
death and resurrection. And I pray, Lord, that You would
help us as believers to keep our eyes firmly focused on those
truths. May they be the substance of
our message to unbelievers for the glory of Christ in whose
name we pray. Amen. We hope you've enjoyed
this message from our pastor. We have a variety of sermon resources
to help you grow in the knowledge of God's Word. If you would like
to enroll in our sermon library or simply learn more about Grace
Life, visit us online at www.swordandtrowel.org. That's www.swordandtrowel.org. Again, the web address is www.swordandtrowel.org.
What You Need to Know about Answering Atheists
Series Evangelism Toolbox
| Sermon ID | 83010153704 |
| Duration | 57:03 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Psalm 14:1 |
| Language | English |
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