INTRODUCTION
Does the topic make you a little uneasy? Have you ever said this to God or wished you had enough nerve to say it? Maybe you have had questions in your mind but you have never voiced them out loud. Perhaps one of the questions that has floated through you mind is whether there is even a God to ask life’s most important questions to. I mean, have you ever seen God or heard him speak to you? Has anyone ever shown him to you? I believe in God, but I have never seen him or heard him. God’s Son is my Lord and Savior, but I can’t show him to you.
I recall one of the All in the Family episodes where Archie and Edith were having some discussion that had to do with God, and Mike-their atheistic son-in-law, asked the question, “What God.” Then their daughter, Gloria, said, “Yeah, what God.” Archie could not believe his ears. He knew his son-in-law was an atheist, but he could not believe his daughter said such a thing. When questioned about the statement, their response was, “We just don’t see any evidence of God.”
A recent study from the Barna Research Group-who does much research for religious life, found that hundreds of thousands of adults who are atheists or agnostics attend Christian churches. These are people who don’t believe in God or doubt the existence of God. The study shows that roughly 7% of the adult population-approximately 14 million people, describe themselves as atheists or agnostics. America has more atheists and agnostics than Mormons, Jews or Muslims. Most of these individuals believe that heaven exists but believe that one gets there based on their good deeds. According to the research, most atheists and agnostics are men, under 35, white and residents of the Northeast and West. College graduates and political liberals were also more likely to be atheists or agnostics.
Barna did a survey in 1999 to find out what Americans believe about God. Four percent believe everyone is God. Sixty seven percent believe that God is the all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect creator that rules the world today. Seven percent believe that God is the total realization of personal, human potential. Three percent believe that there are many gods, each with different power and authority. Eleven percent believe that God is a state of higher consciousness that a person may reach. Finally, three percent believe there is no such thing as God.
A casual perusal of world history will quickly reveal that it was common and is common for most people to believe in some deity or deities. Reading the Bible will reveal the same thing as it talks about other neighboring people in addition to God’s people.
Many psychologists and psychiatrists have been unfriendly where religion is concerned. They might say that we appeal to a God whom we believe can help us through life’s troubles that we feel we can’t face. Since we can’t face them on our own, we appeal to someone we believe is more powerful than we are. This leads to another question, “Do we believe only when we need him?”
We might start by asking, “Hey God, are you there?” But if we start with the premise that there is a God, what are some questions we might ask him? “Do you love me? How old are you? Have you always been around? Who made you? How could you always have existed if no one made you? Does it make you mad when people do bad things? Is there really a heaven and hell? Was Jesus really your Son? Are you going to take Christians to heaven with you one day? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why don’t you help the police catch all the bad guys? Why do you allow natural disasters to take many people’s lives and homes?
Many of these questions have run through your mind before. It is no use trying to hide the fact that we have questions to ask God. It is no sense in trying to act as if we have it all figured out. We don’t. If we did, we would be God. I want us to hear some answers from God today.
I EXIST
It is difficult to believe God exists when we have no scientific proof that he does. And we place a great deal of confidence in scientific proof. We place a great deal of confidence in our sense perceptions to aid us in knowing what exists as well as information about what exists. They do us no good when it comes to proving God exists.
Some of you may have seen the movie Santa Claus. It is the story of a little boy whose father becomes Santa Claus. The trouble is, he can’t get his mother and her new husband who is a psychologist to believe it. It begins to cause trouble in the family. One day, his stepfather is trying to get him to see how it is scientifically impossible for one man to get presents to all the children on the same night. Then he questions the young child about flying reindeer. He asks, “Have you ever seen flying reindeer?” The young boy says he has, but the stepfather says he hasn’t. Then the young boy asks him a question. “Have you even seen a million dollars? Just because you have never seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
I think that is sort of the statement God would make to us. Just because you have never seen me doesn’t mean I don’t exist. If God does not exist, there are millions of people who have staked their lives on a false belief. We can read the Old and New Testaments and hear of them. Christian history is full of them. If God did not exist, what made these millions of people believe he did? What makes millions of people believe in him now if he does not exist? How do we explain that?
I think Paul in his letter to the Romans explains the situation. “But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who push the truth away from themselves. For the truth about God is known to them instinctively. God has put this knowledge in their hearts. From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God.”
And so God shows us that he exists not through some personal appearance but through an inward knowledge that he puts in our minds and very beings. Of course, there are fancy names for these arguments for God’s existence. The ontological argument demonstrates God’s existence by saying that God must exist since people have an idea of God. Who else but God could put an idea of God in our minds? The cosmological argument says God must exist as the ultimate cause of the world. Things didn’t just happen. The teleological argument says God must exist because our world has design and order and some powerful being must have designed this. The moral argument says God must exist because of the moral conditioning that is a part of humanity’s existence.
And so the first thing I think God would say to us in answer to our questions is that he exists.
I AM SOVEREIGN
Sovereign is a big word and perhaps a word that we are not very familiar with. It means ultimate governance or control. To put it in simple language, it means God is in control. He is the boss. There is no one over him. He is the top dog. No one tells him what to do.
When we take into consideration how wicked people are and how crazy this world seems to get sometime, I am glad I believe there is someone who is good in control. Since the Bible teaches that God is holy and perfect in all ways, it is comforting to know that we have this kind of God in control of our world. We think things are pretty bad now, but just imagine what it would be like if a bad god was in control. A god who gave in to his own selfish ambitions and used us as pawns to do his dirty work. A god who took everything from us that we worked hard to get. A god who never punished anyone for their crimes and wickedness. A god who hated instead of loved. A god who didn’t care if everyone burned in hell for all eternity. Isn’t it wonderful that we don’t have that kind of God in control?
I am also thankful that someone is in control. It would be a scary thought to think things were out of control, to have a world that was spinning on its own, to have natural forces that did not act according to any laws of nature, to have chaos all over the place. I realize that sometimes it seems as if no one is in control, but the Bible teaches the sovereignty of God.
Some of the biblical authors employ a forceful analogy from the ancient cultural world to speak of God’s sovereignty. It is the analogy of the potter and clay. Just as the potter has the right to do with the clay as he chooses, so God has the right to govern his creation in accordance with his will.
The prophet Isaiah wrote; “Destruction is certain for those who try to hide their plans from the Lord, who try to keep him in the dark concerning what they do! ‘The Lord can’t see us’, you say to yourselves. ‘He doesn’t know what is going on!’ How stupid can you be? He is the Potter, and he is certainly greater than you. You are only the jars he makes! Should the thing that was created say to the one who made it, ‘He didn’t make us’? Does a jar ever say, ‘The potter who made me is stupid’?”
Since God is sovereign, he is free to rule as he wants to. Now that would be a scary thought if it were not for the fact that the Bible teaches that God rules according to his character. God’s character is love. So while God does rule and is free to rule, he always rules in love. That is a comforting thought. This being the case, God will always seek what is best for the universe he created and for the people he created to inhabit it.
God’s sovereignty is present and future. It is not always so obvious that God rules now because of the evil that is so prevalent in our world. And there are times when things seem to be out of control. But God does have a final goal for this world, and he is bringing the world toward that end. In that sense, he is sovereign.
We can imagine what our country would be like if no one was in control, if no one was governing. What would our country be like if we did not have a president? What would our country be like if we had no Congress to make laws? What would our country be like if we had no Supreme Court to interpret the laws that are made? If everyone did what everyone wanted to do, and no one was in charge, we would have chaos. It is comforting to know that someone is in charge, and that ultimate someone is God.
I AM KNOWABLE
How do we know that God is knowable or even wants to be known? The entire Bible is pretty much a record that teaches that. In the very beginning, God created the world and all that is in it. Had he not had any desire to be known, he could have stopped with the animals or the sun, moon, stars and other planets. That he created humans and had communion with them is proof that God is knowable and wants to be known.
After creating Adam and Eve, and after they disobeyed God by eating the fruit that he commanded them not to, we read, “Toward evening they heard the Lord God walking about in the garden, so they hid themselves among the trees. The Lord God called to Adam, ‘Where are you?’” God had communion with them.
The entire Bible is God’s record of his interaction with humanity. That he would send his Son to pay for our sins is proof that he loves us and wants us to have fellowship with him and he with us.
To some degree, God is knowable through reason or intellectual reflection. We can know something about him through our sense perceptions and experiences in the world. God is knowable through religious experiences. We usually term this conversion or being born again. We believe what God says in his Word, that we need to trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior, that we need to ask his forgiveness for our sins. God is knowable through his self-revelation. He makes himself known in creation, in the Bible, in his Son Jesus Christ, in his mighty acts in history.
God is near to all who call on him. We can have an intimate relationship with him. At the same time, he is far above us and more powerful than we are. The words that describe these qualities of God are immanent and transcendent.
I AM LOVE
We have touched on this already, but I want to expand on it. God’s love of course includes many more attributes, but he is love. The pictures given of him in Scripture that illustrate this love are father, shepherd and friend.
A good father loves his children unconditionally, cares for their needs, is there for them when they need him. A good shepherd takes care of the sheep, not because of what he is paid but because he loves them. A good friend is always there in the good times and the bad. They always have an open ear and a concerned heart. God is all of these things and more.
He demonstrated his love in a very real way by sending his Son to take the punishment for our sins. We are responsible and accountable to God for our sins. The end of our sins is death, spiritually and physically. Because of his love, God chose to pay for our sins that we might have forgiveness.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that anyone who would believe in him might have forgiveness and eternal life.”
CONCLUSION
A song I dearly love is How Great Thou Art. Listen to the first two verses:
O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy pow’r thro’out the universe displayed.
When thro’ the woods and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze:
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
God exists, he is sovereign, he is knowable and he is love.
