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"How Can We Be Sure There is a God?" (02/14/16) (Traditional)

Dr. Tom Pace - 7/2/2019

Start Here: How Can We Be Sure There is a God?
Dr. Tom Pace
February 14, 2016
Genesis 1:1-5, 31

Today we’re going to begin a series called “Start Here” which focuses on the basic doctrines, questions of the Christian faith and how we personally understand those and how we choose to believe them or not believe them. We’re going to begin with talking about God the Father, maker of heaven and earth. I want to invite you to listen now as we hear God’s Word read from the book of Genesis.
In the beginning when God createdthe heavens and the earth,the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from Godswept over the face of the waters.Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.
As we work through these six sermons on doctrine I don’t want us to approach this as sort of a way of talking about what we all believe together. So when we stand and say the Apostles’ Creed we say, “I believe in God the Father,” and we say that all together. And often we use the Creed as a way of talking about what unites us, how we’re pulled together. That’s not what I’m trying to do in this series.
What I really want to do is help us go on an honest authentic journey about what we believe - each one of us - to really ask ourselves, “What do I really believe about God? I’ve read the Bible, I’ve studied the Scripture. What do I believe and why do I believe it?” So that’s why we’re using the image of a journey – “Start Here” - that we can begin to claim ourselves and really during this Lenten Season not just take for granted what we believe, but really think about it. And come to that place of believing ourselves.
Let’s pray together. O God, open us up, open our eyes that we might see and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel and then, O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
The way we phrase the question is kind of a trick. How can we be sure there is a God? And my answer to you is, “We can’t.” I can’t prove to you that there’s a God. I can’t bring just this amount of evidence and put it before you so that if you were sitting on a jury could beyond a reasonable doubt, with a defense attorney arguing the opposite, come to that conclusion. I don’t think you can.
In fact I would tell you that there are many, many smart, intelligent, wise thinking people who have struggled with this question and have come to the decision that there is no God. And so to say “I know there’s a God” or “It’s been proven to me that there’s a God” or “I’m sure there’s a God” is probably erroneous.
That’s why when we say the Creed we use this word: “I believe. I believe in God the Father.” We don’t say “I know God the Father” or “I know there’s a God.” We say “I believe in God the Father.”
Belief is a decision we make about things that are not proven. Hebrews says it that way, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” It is this sense of believing something, of claiming something based on – it’s not sort of a blind faith – it’s based on our experiences. How we’ve experienced the world, the evidence around us, the evidence that we see. We come to that decision.
If I said to one of my daughters when they were growing up, “Did you brush your teeth?” And she said, “Yes,” and I said, “I believe you.” Then I went upstairs and felt the toothbrush to see if it was wet, right. Did I believe her? No, I didn’t believe her. But after a while if I check it enough times it ultimately she’ll say “Yes, I brushed my teeth,” and I can say, “Yes, I believe you,” and I’ll mean it. Because it would have been consistent with my experience. It will not have been proven but it would have been consistent with the experience that we’ve claimed.
So we’re going to be talking about believing and once we make that decision to believe then how we believe begins to color everything we see in the world around us. How we experience the unfolding events of our lives, how we experience the relationships that we’re a part of. Believing is important.
Today we’re going to talking about, “I believe in God,” and we’re using the Apostles’ Creed as our skeleton. I’m going to talk when it’s not a Communion Sunday, when we have a little more time next week, about the Apostles’ Creed in general. But there are really two reasons, two approaches that make me believe that there is a God.
Here’s the first one. Awe. Awe and wonder.
A few summers ago we went to Whistler for a vacation, and I remember standing there in that amazing, incredible, beautiful place looking down at this gorge below with the river flowing through it and just thinking, “Oh, my God!” It was not in that sort of cavalier way we do when we see a YouTube video or some silly picture, but seriously, “Oh, my God!” Creation is absolutely incredible.
In his book The Intelligent Universe Fred Hoyle wrote that the “probability of the world being created accidentally in an instant is the same probability as if a tornado went through a junk yard, and once the tornado was gone right in front of them was a perfectly assembled 747.” The tornado had rolled through and when it was done somehow accidentally all of the pieces came together and they fit perfectly into a 747.
Now here’s what’s interesting. Fred Hoyle is an atheist, and he says that his problem with it is the instantaneous piece. He said he does believe that the world was created accidentally over billions and billions of years, that after iteration, after iteration, after iteration life began to grow and be put together. It’s just hard for me to believe. I’m sorry. When I stand and look at creation… It’s not that I think it happened in an instant, in fact I don’t believe it happened in seven days as we understand seven days, but there has to have been a creator behind that. The creation is just that awesome.
Bill Bryson has a book called The Short History of Nearly Everything, and I will tell you it’s a great book to put in your bathroom for guests to read. It has all sorts of fun, interesting things you can catch in little glimpses. And in the book he says that in the Milky Way Galaxy of which we’re a part there’s somewhere between 100 billion and 400 billion stars. So our little star is a solar system. We’re on the planet earth and one little solar system, and one little star, and in the Milky Way Galaxy there are between 100 billion and 400 billion stars. And there are in the universe they estimate about 140 billion galaxies. So you take that galaxy with 400 billion stars… I can’t even do that math. I don’t know how many zeroes that is. It’s one of those deals where you have to do it with a little exponent up there, because you can’t even figure out how many zeroes that is. It is huge. It is so awesome. And the picture we get in Scripture is at the end of all of that creation God gives himself a “high five.” He says, “Awesome job, God! Well done, you really did it right this time.” That’s the picture we get.
Maybe you’ve seen Lily Tomlin in a play in New York called “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” It won a Tony award. She plays a woman named Trudy who is homeless, but she’s very wise. She’s the one who understands stuff. One day she talks about walking through New York City, and she says this, “We stopped to look at the stars and as usual I felt in awe. And then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have to be in awe about something. Then I became more awestruck at the thought that I was in some small way a part of that which I was in awe of. And this feeling went on and on and because the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life you don’t understand you are closer to understanding it more than at any other time. You can stand and say, ‘This is just amazing!’”
Now atheists, agnostics, believers all agree that the creation is awesome. I don’t know anyone you could talk to who would say, “Oh, it’s not all that awesome.” The question is did it just happen? Or is there a creator?
I went this last week to see Don and Jan Wagner at their home. They’re members of our church and they had invited me over for lunch. They live at University Place over by HBU, and I went into their apartment, and Jan pointed to a wall that had a painting on it. She said, “That’s the first painting I did when I was in Germany.” And it looked like a Rembrandt – it was incredible. Just a magnificent painting.
So every one of you would have the exact same response that I did, which was “You did that?” You don’t just say, “Wow, what a great painting!” You begin immediately to think about the painter, the artist. You’re not just in awe of a painting, you’re in awe of an artist. And that’s what happens when we make that jump from how incredible creation is to realizing that if there is a creation, then there has to be a creator.
Stuart Hine was a missionary in Poland in the 1920s, and he was hiking in the mountains with his wife, who was also a missionary, and they were overcome by one of those quick moving thunderstorms that come through the mountains. And they hid away in a little school house there. There was a teacher there who invited them in, and they had a conversation. In the midst of that thunderstorm he penned three verses of a hymn. It goes like this: “Oh, 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 power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul… my God how great thou art! My God, oh, my God, how great thou art!”
I cannot experience the world around me, all of creation from the tiniest amazing cell to 140 billion galaxies, without looking to a creator.
We experience and we say “I believe in God, creator of the heavens and the earth.” But there’s another piece to it that I think is important. And it speaks to me not just that there is a God, but what kind. I believe in God the Father.
It could be Mother, doesn’t have to be Father, it could be Mother. You’d think in this sophisticated world someone would say, “We need to let go of those archaic anthropomorphic images of God and let’s say, ‘I believe in God the creative force in the Universe. Or simply, ‘I believe in God the creator.’” I’ll hear people refer to the trinity as God the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer – it’s called the Economic Trinity – what God does. Because they’re looking for other images that look not quite so anthropomorphic.
Here’s the reason God the Father appeals to me. It’s not just that God created us; it’s that God loves us. You don’t get loved by a force in the universe. You get loved by a personal God.
This is a confessional sermon, and I want you to understand that what I’m trying to do is to take you on the journey I go on when I talk about why I believe in God, and you all go on your own journey. But when I look at life – my life – and I begin to peel back the superficial stuff, when I try to get down to the core, the kernel, the central foundational element of life, what makes life worth living, is it achievement? I don’t think so. Is it pleasure? I don’t think so. I think it’s love. The essence of what it means to be a human being in the world around us is love. And that doesn’t come from a creative force in the universe. It has to have a personal - yes, God the Father, God the Mother – those are handles we can hold on to, but they’re handles that are designed to help us get something, and that the essence of life itself is a relationship of love. The love that I feel for my brothers and sisters and you all, for my family, my friends, for everyone, comes from some place. It’s divine. When you experience it, you experience it as divine, as something of God.
This is tautological, I recognize that, but I believe in God because I’ve been loved by God. And from somehow when I experience the world around me with all of its brokenness, and all of its pain, and all of its struggles, and all of the ups and downs and all of that stuff, that at the very base of it I experience love.
So I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. Now do I know that to be the case? Am I sure that’s the case? No. I think that’s what Paul meant when he said, “For now we see in a mirror dimly...” Sometimes it’s translated “through a glass darkly.” (I Corinthians 13) “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. For now I know in part, but then I will know fully even as I am fully known.”
One day we’ll know for sure, but as for today I choose to believe. I choose to believe in a God who creates, and a God who loves.
Let’s pray together. Gracious God, Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. Surround us with your love in such a powerful way that we live in awe of you, not just of creation but of the creator. Pour your love upon us so that in a way that transcends even the understanding of our minds we know that you are God and you are love. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.