From His Heart

Speaker 1

Today on From His Heart, Pastor Jeff Shreve answers one of life's biggest questions.

Speaker 2

You say, well, Jeff, I don't understand because some of these smart people, you go to the universities in Oxford and Stanford and places like that, and it seems like in their science department, all those guys are evolutionists. And so many of the professors, they don't believe in God and they're so smart. So if the smart, smart people don't believe in God, maybe I shouldn't believe in God either.

It seems like the dumb people believe in God and the smart people don't believe in God. That's not true. There's some dumb people that don't believe in God. There's some smart people that do believe in God; it has nothing to do with a person's intellect.

Listen, those that don't believe in God, those who reject God, they are morally wicked. They don't have a head problem; they have a heart problem. And they love their sin. Men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds are evil.

He can heal every scar with real truth, real love, real.

Speaker 1

Since the beginning of time, people have been asking big questions about life. And the question of all questions is, does God exist? When people answer that question wrong, it skews their view of life, turns them cynical, and eventually leaves them hopeless.

This is the Thursday edition of From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, who's in his series called Life's Big Questions, a six-message collection that addresses six of the most profound questions we could ask. This one is a giant one today. It's called Does God Really Exist?

He began this lesson last time, and we'll do some catching up today. But you won't want to miss the final part of this program. You can listen anytime online after it has aired at fromhisheart.org. There, you can also download a free mp3 of any broadcast and the sermon outlines from Pastor Jeff.

But let's get to the message now. It may be life's biggest question: Does God really exist?

Speaker 2

You know, for thousands of years, people have been asking questions—big questions concerning origins, purpose, meaning, and the whys and wherefores of life. And God's word gives us answers to these big, big questions. So we want to tackle this great question because it's such a fundamental question, such a foundational question: does God really exist?

Now, I want you to notice with me three discoveries concerning the question, does God really exist? Discovery number one: the Bible doesn't try to prove God; it simply presents God. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The scripture doesn't try to argue for God's existence. It doesn't try to defend God's existence or explain God's existence. It just presents God. In the beginning, God—Elohim—created the heavens and the earth, and the Bible presents Him right off the bat as a God who is eternal. He is also presented as the all-powerful creator. You have to have a tremendous amount of power, an unfathomable amount of power, to step into nothing and speak everything into existence just through the power of your word. That's how God did it. He said, "Let there be light," and there was light. Everything obeys God because God is the all-powerful creator. And that's how the Bible presents Him. It doesn't prove Him; it just presents Him. In the beginning, God.

Now, the second discovery: not only does the Bible not try to prove God, it simply presents God, but secondly, the Bible gives evidence for the existence of God. You know, you can't really prove God, but you can look at the evidence and determine with a rational mind whether there is a God or not, depending upon the evidence. Romans chapter one talks about the evidence and it says this in verse 18 and following: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." They hold back the truth in unrighteousness. Why? Because that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

I want you to underline in your notes the word evident. That which is known about God is evident within them because God made it evident to them. That word evident means apparent, manifest, known, obvious, and plainly recognized. That which is known about God is plainly recognized. It is obvious. And God, in the verses that we read in Romans, has given two voices that cannot be discounted that show every single man, woman, boy, or girl that God is real, that God really exists. The first voice is the voice of creation, and the voice of creation clearly tells us there's a Creator. God says that He made it evident to them, clearly visible to them, that it's understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Now, you just go outside and look at what has been made. You see trees, grass, the sky, stars, the moon, the sun, mountains, and lakes, and you ask, "Where did all that come from?" It came from a Creator. Every creation has a creator; we know that. The Bible says in Psalm 19 that the heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their utterances to the end of the world. God is saying here, "Hey, you just look in the heavens. The heavens are telling of my glory and my handiwork." There are books in brooks and sermons in sunsets. They don't have a voice that you can hear with your ears; their voice is not heard, but their voice is strong, and it goes out as a revelation of the fact that creation has a Creator.

Hey, do this for me. Take your fists and put them together like this. Everybody do this. It'd be good exercise for some of you who haven't exercised in a while. Did you know that when your fists are together like this, that's about the size of your brain? The human brain is about this big, weighs about three pounds, and is unfathomably complex. A professor in microbiology from Stanford University, Stephen Smith, said this: "A single human brain has more switches than all the computers, routers, and Internet connections on earth." In this little three-pound, two-fisted size gray matter, God has put all that complexity. Your brain controls everything, and it's controlling everything all at the same time. It's going through so many things; it's just amazing. Doctors will tell you they don't understand how the brain works. That's why if you have a brain injury, it's like, "Man, I wish you had just broken your ankle. We can fix that." But you start messing with the brain, and all bets are off because it is so very complex.

You know, one of the arguments for the existence of God has to do with the complexity of everything. Honest scientists are saying there is irreducible complexity, which means you can't just put this all together slowly over time; this thing has to come into being with all this complexity right away in order for it to work. Think of it. You remember the game Mousetrap? Some of you played Mousetrap when you were kids. You built the mousetrap thing and had the guy on the diving board, adding all these parts. If you left out a part, it didn't work. It had, I don't know how many parts—10 parts, 12 parts, something like that. For a little mousetrap with the ball to go all around everything to throw that guy into the bathtub, you had to have all these parts. You can't just say, "Well, give it a billion years, and they'll come together." It doesn't work like that. It's irreducible complexity, and if you take out one of the parts, it doesn't work.

The world is very complex, and the world is extremely ordered, which is another argument for the existence of God. It's called the teleological argument. Philosophers like to use that. William Lane Craig, a great Christian philosopher, uses that argument. The cosmological argument says, "Hey, the world was created; the universe is created, so it had to have someone create it." The best explanation is that the someone who created it is God. The evolutionists will say, "No, the universe created itself." Well, how does that work? Out of nothing, you get nothing. They say, "Well, there was nothing, and then the universe created itself, and then there was everything, and there was a big bang." But you don't have anything to bang; there's no banging material. You have nothing. It doesn't work; it all falls apart. Richard Dawkins, one of the big proponents of atheistic evolution, admits, "Nobody knows how that happened." Well, yeah, they have no explanation. The explanation is, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," and God is the uncaused cause because God is the eternal God who created everything, just like He says in the very first verse of the very first chapter of the Bible.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Hey, there's the voice of creation that you can't get around. But secondly, there is the voice of conscience that clearly tells us that there is a Creator. Did you see what it says there? It says that that which is known about God is evident within them. When God made man, He put within them the knowledge of God. It says in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11, "He has put a sense of eternity in people's minds, yet mortals still can't grasp what God is doing from the beginning to the end of time." He set eternity in men's minds or hearts, as some versions say. They know about eternity, and they know about the eternal God because that which is known about God is evident within them.

God gives every man, woman, boy, or girl a conscience, and in that conscience, there is a knowledge that God is real. There is a man who has a trucking business, and he gives prospective employees a lie detector test. When they take the lie detector test, he asks this question: "Do you believe in God?" From time to time, somebody will say, "No, I don't believe in God." And every time they say, "I don't believe in God," the lie detector test goes off and says, "He's lying. He's lying." Why? Because it is within him. He knows there's a God. A man, a woman, a boy, or a girl has to kick their conscience to death to try and get their conscience to say, "I'm not going to convict you anymore."

I heard about a dad who was an atheist trying to teach his young son, "Hey, there is no God. The Bible's not true. You can't believe in God. Don't believe in God. God's not real." The son was listening to his dad, saying, "Okay, Dad. Okay, Dad." One day at the dinner table, he said to his dad, "Daddy, do you think God knows we don't believe in Him?" It's innate in your heart, in my heart, in the heart of every man, woman, boy, or girl to have an understanding. It's rudimentary, but there's an understanding of God and a rudimentary understanding of right and wrong that is so important.

No true atheist exists anywhere. The Lord says, "I've given you creation, and I've given you a conscience, and you are without excuse because you know, and God knows you know." Deep down, you know. If you're here and you would say that you are an atheist, you know there is a God. You might say, "Well, Jeff, I don't understand. Some people, you know, some of these smart people, you go to the universities in Oxford and Stanford and places like that, and it seems like in their science departments, all those guys, evolutionists, and so many of the professors, they don't believe in God."

And they're so smart. If the smart people don't believe in God, maybe I shouldn't believe in God either. It seems like the dumb people believe in God and the smart people don't believe in God. That's not true. There are some dumb people that don't believe in God, and there are some smart people that do. Believing in God has nothing to do with a person's intellect. This is what God says: He gives two verses to the person who doesn't believe in Him—two verses, and they're exactly the same. Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1 say this: "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt; they have committed abominable deeds."

The fool does not mean the mentally deficient person. He's not talking about the village idiot. The professors at Oxford and Cambridge and some of these other prestigious universities are not mentally deficient. The fool—the Hebrew word is "nabal"—means the morally wicked person, the morally perverse person. The morally perverse person says, not in his head, but in his heart, "There is no God." Literally, "No God. No God." He says no to God. It's kind of like if you're out at a restaurant and the waitress comes by and says, "Do you want some dessert?" and you say, "No dessert." That doesn't necessarily mean you don't believe dessert exists; it just doesn't exist for you. You don't want it, so you say, "No dessert."

The fool says in his heart, "No to God." And so then I kick my conscience to death to say that God doesn't exist. Listen, those that don't believe in God, those who reject God, are morally wicked. That's what the scripture says. They don't have a head problem; they have a heart problem. They love their sin. Men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds are evil. They don't want the idea of God to be true. Why? Because then I'm responsible to God. I'm accountable to God.

Speaker 1

And.

Speaker 2

And I don't want that. The fool has said in his heart, no God. No God for me. Hey, the Bible gives evidence for the existence of God. And lastly, and quickly, the Bible tells us about Jesus, who is God in the flesh.

So you might be here and say, well, okay, I mean, in the beginning, God created the heavens and earth, but maybe it was the Muslim God, maybe it's Allah that did that. Maybe it was the Hindus' Hindu God. The pantheon of Gods. Maybe it was Buddha that did that. What kind of God do we have here? And this doesn't say, just because you believe in intelligent design, just because you believe that God must have created everything, doesn't mean that it would follow that you would believe in Christianity.

But here's the kicker. The Bible tells us about Jesus. Who is God? God in interesting. Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. John, chapter one, verse one. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by him. And apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. In him was life. And the life was the light of men. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory. Glory as an only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh.

The apostle John said in First John chapter one. In the easy to read version, we want to tell you about the Word that gives life. The one who existed before the world began. This is the one we have heard and have seen with our own eyes. We saw what he did and our hands touched him. Yes, the one who is life was shown to us. We saw him and so we can tell others about him. We now tell you about him. He is the eternal life that was with God the Father and was shown to us. Jesus Christ was real. Was real.

Richard Dawkins in his book tried to say that Jesus is just a legend. And I saw in an interview where someone called him out on that and they say what noted historian believes that Jesus Christ wasn't real. There are secular historians in the first century that talk about Jesus Christ. Josephus talks about Jesus Christ. Tacitus, the Roman historian, talks about Jesus Christ. Thallus, the Samaritan historian, is quoted by Africanus in the year 200 about Jesus Christ. Pliny the Younger, who lived in the first century and the second century, talked about Jesus Christ. Lucian, who is a Greek satirist in the second century, talks about Jesus Christ. He's real.

And John says, hey, you want to know how real he is? I touched him. I was there with him. I walked with him for three and a half years. Don't you tell me he wasn't real. He was real. And Jesus died on the cross for your sins and my sins, and rose again from the dead. He proved that he was God through his miracles and through his resurrection. There's an empty tomb in Jerusalem that shows that there is one God and one mediator between God and man. The man, Christ Jesus. He is the only one. He is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. And no one comes to the Father but through Him.

Now, I want you to think about this. You know when God created. God is Spirit. And Elohim is a plural noun. In the beginning, God, a plural noun, created the heavens and the earth. Now, that sounds almost like there's a plurality of gods, because it really says in the beginning, Gods created the heavens and the earth. But we know that God is one. But God is one in three. God exists in Trinity. And that's why it says in Genesis, chapter 1, verse 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. God is speaking, the one God speaking in the Trinity.

And God who doesn't have a body. God who is spirit. God who just spoke everything into existence. God who is immaterial in Jesus. He became a man. And God put on human flesh. God, not God the Father, but God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity put on human flesh. And the scripture says of him, he is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature. If you want to know who God is, just look at Jesus. Because he's the perfect image of God. He's the spitting image of God. He's the tip off the old block. He is God in the flesh and he loves you. He loves you and he died for you.

Is God real? Yes, he's real. And he really does love you.

Speaker 1

Well, that is a question for us all to answer, and the most important one at that. What will you do with Jesus today? Jesus said, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Will you come to him today in repentance and faith? When you do, you become a child of God. And when you do that, you will be forgiven for all your sins. When you do, you'll have a great and growing desire to serve him out of your own love for him and for what he did for us.

To learn more about who Jesus is and what it means to be and become a child of God, we hope that you'll visit our website at fromhishheart.org and click the "Why Jesus" tab on the homepage. There is lots of helpful information there and some free resources to help you get started in your Christian walk. Go to fromhishheart.org and click the "Why Jesus" link.

Today, you heard part two of the first message in this timely series from Pastor Jeff. The series, "Life's Big Questions," includes today's topic: "Does God really exist?" There are six riveting messages in this series that include: "Why am I here?," "Why should I believe the Bible?," "Is true happiness really possible?," "How could a good God allow so much suffering?," and "What lies beyond the grave?" This foundational series is our gift of thanks to you for your support of From His Heart this month of any amount.

With that gift, we'll also send you his bonus booklet, "The ABCs of the Christian Life." When you give, you are extending your influence in your community and around the world through From His Heart. Just call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-24253) or go to fromhishheart.org to make your gift. God bless you, and thank you for helping us this month.

Well, thank you for joining us today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles, trusting that you'll be right back here tomorrow to hear the answer to the next big question that Pastor Jeff Shreve will tackle from this series, "Life's Big Questions." It's entitled "Why Am I Here?" That's on Friday, right here on From His Heart.

Speaker 2

There is hope. There is hope that you always dream of. He can hear every scar.

Speaker 1

From His Heart is the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve, speaking the truth in love to a lost and hurting world.

Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more at fromhisheart.org.