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.