Sermon Transcript
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Sun, Aug 04, 2024 10AM • 1:03:59SUMMARY KEYWORDSgod, atheist, word, people, bible, faith, argument, basics, Jesus, argue, idols, work, bear, worship, pray, miracles, point, world, tells, Paul
Overview
In this sermon, Pastor Gene emphasizes the importance of mastering the basics of Christianity and humility. He discusses the dangers of pride and the need for genuine displays of love, kindness, and patience towards others. We also engage in a thought-provoking discussion on the existence of God and atheism, addressing various arguments for God's existence and the limitations of human knowledge. Pastor Gene warns against seeking human approval and pride in scholarly pursuits, emphasizing the significance of gentleness, humility, and loving communication in apologetics.
Sermon
If you're new here among us. My name is Jean I serve here at c3 church as your pastor. And I heard a story about an atheist walking through the woods, he was noticing and just marveling and all these amazing accidents, right? So this beautiful flower, it's just accidentally there, and the bees, and they're pollinating, it's just all one big accident, and the birds and everything kind of takes care of itself, and there's natural selection. And then he noticed a bear who had apparently naturally selected him for lunch. So this is what we do when faced with a situation like that, right? We do the power walk. See, I've never run from a bear, but that's going to happen to me now that I said it, right? So bears and alligators worry about those things. So, you know, he starts to kind of like I'm moving quickly, but I don't want to look like I'm moving quickly. That does not work, right? So the bear still sees lunch, moving away quickly, so the bear starts to chase him, and he starts running. But then the atheist does something that's not helpful. When you're running from a bear, he keeps looking back, slows you down, so he keeps getting closer and closer and closer. Finally, the bears pause, raised up, poised to strike, and the atheist says, God help.
All of the sudden, time froze, right? So everything turns dark. The bear is frozen like a statue. You could it's like a winter, snowy winter night. You know, we can just you can't hear anything at all, no insects, no bugs, no birds, and a voice comes from heaven. How dare you? You make a career out of denying me, and then you call on me for help. And this time, the atheist thought about it, and he said, Yeah, it kind of be a hypocrite, right? If I came to you, and then even if I survived this, I'd have to go admit that I was wrong. I would tell everyone that you helped me. So he thinks on it for a second, and then comes up with something he thinks is clever.
God, can you make the bear a Christian?
Very well. Time comes back like the intro video, right? Everything starts going again, and the birds, the bees, everything's going on. The Bears there, and he lowers his paw,
then brings the other paw, lowers his head, and speaks …
Lord, thank you for this food I'm about to eat.
Have you ever heard the phrase you need to learn how to walk before you can run?
It's like this, when we learn new things, academic sports, good teachers or coaches will tell you, you need to start with the basics, right? That's really, really important, especially before moving on to advanced techniques, right? The basics are important. But
how often, when we do things do we like rush to being advanced before we've really got the basics down, only to stumble and fall or fail to progress in something?
Is it possible
that we've stumbled in our Christianity in some ways, maybe a better understanding of the basics would be helpful. Maybe we should apply these things to our faith as well. So there are many out there who want a fresh start. A lot of people have stumbled. Maybe they need to get back to the basics. Realize they've kind of gone out towards the advanced a little too much, maybe fallen away a tiny bit, and there are many who are new and really want to get it right. So if that's you today, we welcome you to join us in a reset.
And the video is epic. How can I follow that? Right?
So here's the thing. Have you ever reached a point in something that you're doing right where, like, a coach, somebody tells you, like, if it's a sport, somebody tells you, look, you really ought to brush up on your basics, right? You're not growing, you're not getting anywhere. But it's not because, like, you're not advanced enough yet. It's that you really have to go the other way. It's a lot of people play golf, so I probably I don't. So if you really want to feel like amazing, take me golfing, because I am terrible. Even if you've never played before, you will beat me. So. But anyway, you know, I hear this from a lot of people play, and it's like this in a lot of sports, right? So a coach, maybe you're great around your pals, right? So when you play with your pals like you're the best, right? But then a golf pro come.
Moms or a teacher, and they destroy you, right? So they usually will tell you something, if it's like any other sports that I've done, they'll tell you something like, yeah, you got to brush up on your basics. Or, you know, maybe it's your swing. You really got to hear that a lot. You know, work on your swing. You got to work on your grip, right? And sometimes there are some advanced techniques that are going to help you, but it's not going to be consistent. You need to go back and work on your basics again. So it's kind of funny, because if you know me, you kind of know my story in the martial arts, what I did for business, but I've been a lifelong musician. Played guitar my whole life. I was a worship leader here. That's how I actually got roped into this
careful right? So, but I played guitar. If I was the instrument of my choice, I'm playing it my whole life. But when I became a pastor, I got really busy, and I kind of had to put that on the back burner. I don't really play as much, but then I picked it up again, right after a couple years. I'm like, I don't let this deteriorate. I want to keep up and do this, but I decided to do something different. What I decided to do is go back and learn all these old songs that I thought I knew, but like, learn the note for note, every little detail exactly the way the same sound the original guitar player did it right, just like that, without any ideas of my own, because that's kind of what I did. I was a professional musician. It's kind of like an oxymoron in my case. But anyway, you know, I wrote original music, so I always wanted to have my own style and my own thing. So kind of play, make it sound like that, but then add my own flair touch. I'm like, No flares, no touches, just exactly what they did. So I've been doing this for about a year, and if I have a half hour a day to play that's a lot so, like not a lot of time, so pales in comparison to playing six hours a day was what I used to do. So what I noticed was I started to get actually way better, and I can tell you, even with less practice, I'm probably a better guitar player now than I ever was because I started noticing all these little intricacies and details and different things that I didn't have quite right. So, and I've given this example in the past on the martial arts thing, right? So I had a black belt in other martial art, but I encountered a martial art that was more well rounded, really, had those basics down, and I got tapped out by all white belts, so you have a choice, right? So when you've been doing something for a while, right, or you think you're good at it, maybe you've obtained a title, something like that, and you're faced with this situation, right, where, whether it's on the golf course or on the mat, wherever it is, where you realize like, Man, I really have to go back. Or maybe that golf pro tells you like, No, you're going to start at the beginning again. You're missing your basics. What do you do? And so you can quit.
You just give up. A lot of people do that. You can keep running yourself into the ground, right? Maybe just play golf with your pals and avoid all golf pros, right? So in my case, go back to my dojo and just do my Cobra Kai over here, slip that in there anyway.
Alright, some people watch TV, but
Right? So you can kind of hide out and just say, I'm great. I'm a black belt. I know everything you know. So kind of see this in church sometimes too. Or you can humble yourself and you can go back to the basics, right? And this can be very hard at times, especially when people have time in right? A title, we see this in church too, like titles of pride, and it's just it's hard, it's really hard to start over again. I get it, but here's the thing, pride hinders progress. Remember that pride hinders progress. The prideful have a very hard time with this idea of the basics. They want to be like a master right away, right or admitting right. I don't know something. I was wrong. No hard time seeing that. But the word of God tells us that what pride leads to destruction. So proverbs 16. So even if you're good at something, though, and you've been through this kind of course, you do know that the basics makes up almost everything. You really don't necessarily need a lot of those advanced things all the time. Beyond Christianity. That's not exactly the case, but you get my point. And that you know also, as you get more experienced, you look at those basics through an experience lens, and you can kind of add dimensions to them. So this is what's going to be kind of going on here. So with this all being said, we're going to start at the very beginning. So it's kind of hard for a lot of people to do, but almost like forgetting you know anything at all, right? And just start at the beginning with the most basic question,
how do we know God exists?
So if there's no God, like none of this matters, right? So let's start at that root question, right? So.
So here's the first thing we're going to do. We're going to go with what you may encounter, right? So the first thing usually that someone will say, if they don't believe in God, if they're an atheist, their response, if you say, you know there's a God, I know there's a God. And you continue on, they'll say, Well, you think you know everything. Have you ever heard that kind of thing? Well, you must think you know everything,
and it's kind of a backwards way of thinking on their part. So
let's visualize that. So couple little charts. So let's put up the first bubble so this, this is going to represent, and, yes, that's a Star Wars font. You're welcome. That's for my own entertainment. I just have
this is everything that can and it's tough, right? Like I could have put could be known, right? But it just didn't have enough space for the font. So
anything that can be known by, so just imagine anything in the universe that like undiscovered or discovered. So just everything that can be known about, right, that maybe we don't know about yet, or whatever. It's just everything, and it's all in this, right? So that's it. Now, if you approach an atheist and you ask him the question, like, can you slice out a piece of pie that represents, like, what you know, of that like, of everything that can be known? Now sometimes, like, they'll carve out a bigger chunk, a smaller chunk, but on average, this is usually like, what you're going to see, something like that, right? Okay, so maybe a PhD atheist, that's what they're going to fill in. Now, there are a couple of observations.
First, even if they like, filled in a quarter of everything in the universe, right? And they thought they knew
that 75% of it well would still represent the possibility of God.
You don't know, right? So that's the first thing. Now even that little chunk is amazingly arrogant when you think about so remember the person who just told me, I think I know everything. I mean, think about it for a second. You know, just like, you know, Abraham, right? Like, look at the stars in the sky. That's how many descendants you Why is God using that example? Right? Like the grains of sand? Well, because each one of those little dots, those specks that sometimes you can't see the stars, they're like suns, like our Sun, sometimes bigger, right? So they got planets floating around them and everything. Each one of those little specks
is amazingly like i It's unbelievable, right? You can't even fathom how large the universe is. So to me, this is arrogant, right? So saying there is no God, saying, you know, this much is actually not the humble position. It's the arrogant position, right? So
the atheist is saying, like, Yeah, I know all this stuff, this undiscovered, really. And they're, they're taking the arrogant position by saying there's no God, how do you know? You just told me you don't know at least, like 75% so as a Christian, here's what I'm going to fill in. This is mine. Now, that's it, right? That's a god. That's really it. That's the humble position I'm just acknowledging, right, the enormity of God. And no, I couldn't get like, so that I could still see it. It should be smaller. It should just be like a little hairline. And you don't see right? Because saying God exist is saying I don't know everything.
That's as simple as that, right? So it's the humble standpoint. So in answering the question,
is there a god, what we're going to do today is there's a little bit of logic there. I want to be faithful to God's word. And a lot of Christians, what they do is they kind of, like, step out of what they know, right? They step out of, like, the word if maybe they don't know it's what they're doing. But you want to really stick with the Bible, if you're being faithful, right here. So that's what we want to look at first, right? So for this part of the message, you know many of you are believers here, so this is really to you, and biblically, what God says about himself, that's kind of the most important thing, right? That's what we want to look at, alright?
And what I want to focus on, too, is how to interact with those who don't believe. Right? Don't believe. So just what does the Bible say? Not like what someone came up with later, in an opinion, what is the Bible say about God right himself, and how to interact with people who don't believe
alright? Because we come into this problem. The first problem is people thinking they know everything, right? This is the first part. I think they know everything, and what they do in that process of trying to like, feel smart or exert that.
Intelligence on you, they start to come up with, like, all this stuff on top of stuff, on top of stuff, until it becomes a whole jumbled up thing that the Bible calls high sounding nonsense. So if we go to Colossians, we've looked at this in the past. Colossians, two eight Don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual principles of this world, rather than from Christ, right? So there's a lot of things going on in that area, that church there, right? So they have asceticism, just different religious practices, but Gnosis is one of them, like you have all this knowledge, right? So Paul God is calling it high sounding nonsense, right? All this stuff. You think you're smart, you think you have this knowledge, those nonsense, right? So the problem with most scholarly philosophy is that it's human thinking. It's very limited. It's just human thinking, and it always evolves or it could be wrong, right? So it's very flawed, and then humans overcompensate for it, because we all know how limited we are, right? By coming up with all these big words and all this high sounding nonsense, right?
So here we get into those cherished titles, right, earn by learning all this nonsense, right? So it's this kind of pride cycle people are right now, a word of caution,
because this is not limited to secular scholars. Right in the process of trying to look good to other humans, we often waste time in the high sounding nonsense. And so
a lot of reasons, Christians will begin to engage with this as they want the approval of these people or these institutions and all these other things. So they just engage in and kind of fall into that trap. But the problem is, God tells us we shouldn't be seeking the approval of people. So you think about Galatians, Paul end caps it that way, because he's going to go hard on them. He does some hard teachings, right? So you know, if I was here to win the approval of people, I wouldn't be a servant of Christ. He ends like, I've been crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to me, or it's basically how he ends the letter. I'd say, I don't care, right? Only to win people to the gospel. We'll talk about that in a minute. So we shouldn't be seeking any other approval, except God's
no but after that period. That's it, right? So seeking affirmation, especially from like non Christians, scientists and scholars, no, it means God's approval is not enough for that person. That's what that means. When you're trying to get people to go, you're so awesome.
That's another problem we'll talk about in a minute, right? So these people should be asking themselves, like, who are they really trying to convince here?
But some people still might want to argue, and they'll say, Pastor Jean, what about First Peter? 315
okay, if you don't know what that is, let me remind you of the context. First of First Peter, right? So it's a people who are suffering. It's a church suffering under persecution. Those fiery trials, right? So they're going to get persecuted. Nero's going to burn them alive. It's really bad. So what is Peter leader in the church? Tell him to do, fight, fight, fight. No. He tells them, You need to suffer as Christ suffered. You need to honor people. You do not argue. You don't repay insult for insult. You be like Jesus. Love people unconditionally, even your enemies. Honor everyone. Everyone, right? So that's the context. So I'm going to give you a couple verses before, and I'll point you to if you don't know what people will point to, I'll explain what's going on. Explain what's going on. First, Peter 313, now we want to harm you if you're eager to do good, but even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don't worry or be afraid of their threats. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks you about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it, Greek apologia. So here we run into this is, like, the apologetics verse. So, like, if people like to argue, had a favorite verse of the day, that's it, right? That's their life verse, right? So they go about making a life of apologia. Well, apologetics, like, if you look it up in Greek, now, it's just apology, it's interesting. It kind of takes a different twist on the word, right? So, but in biblical terms, to make a defense for something,
but the word connotates something, and for those who use apologetics apologia, who use it, they actually don't understand what the word means or the next verse, right? So let's take a.
Look at that, right. So first Peter 315 instead you were just backing up for that. You must worship Christ as Lord your life. And if someone asks you about the hope you have as a believer, always be ready to explain. But do this in a gentle and respectful way.
Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live, because you belong to Christ. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing good, if that's what God wants. You know, hear these a lot. That's not the verse of the day either. And then to suffer for doing wrong.
It's not about arguing. It's it right. If someone asks what you're going to do is
right? Not with the yelling, screaming, fighting, insulting.
Told you, no, no, do not repay insult for those. Chapter Two, don't repay insult for insult. Do not you commend it, not to do that, right? So
humbly, gently. Then when they see what, how smart you are, no, they see how gentle, loving and humble you are, right? Then, oh, wait, then they'll be ashamed, right? Because, Oh, this guy's not even engaging. They're being so nice when they see you suffering for doing good, which looks crazy to the world. Let's try to read First Corinthians, chapters one and two, right? That's what Paul's addressing, right? And that's the context there, right? So they're pastor worshiping. They're worshiping. And who is apostle speaking? Some people follow Peter, some people follow Paul, and he rebukes them. Who is Apollos? Who is Peter? Who is Paul? Right? He talks about the gospel being foolish to the world, this idea that God would die, that's what he's saying, right? It's foolish. It's crazy. What are you thinking? It goes on to say it's a mystery what we believe, right? So this crazy thing, but stop it. It was like worshiping people. Worship God, and it looks crazy to people. I get it. So the problem when Christians engage in this is they get roped into these prideful, foolish arguments, nonsense, right? So the first thing we need to do engaging with people, right? Is drop the pride,
drop that we're just ambassadors. That's it. It's going to tell you what this says, void of my opinions. When they come with the opinions, I'll just repeat what this says. You come with the opinion. I'll just repeat what this says. It says a couple of problems, right? Christians haven't been practicing the basics, so they don't know what this says. That's a problem, all right. So we have to get back to reading this and knowing this really well. That's what always being ready to make a defense for what you believe means, and then it touches you. So you just, you're amazed by God's grace. So you start just giving that grace to everybody else,
which means not trying to make them feel stupid,
not very nice. When Paul's writing to Timothy protege, he writes this First Timothy one three. When I left for Macedonia, I urge you to stay there in Ephesus and stop those whose teaching is contrary to the truth. Let them waste their time an endless discussion of myths and spiritual pedigrees, these things all lead to meaningless speculations which don't help people live a life of faith in God. The purpose of my instruction is that all believers will be filled with love. They come from a pure heart, a clear conscience. There's a clear conscience again, and genuine faith. But some people have missed this whole point. They have turned away from these things and spend their time in meaningless discussions.
Some have missed the whole point. The word of God tells us that when we argue, we miss the point
we are commanded to avoid those discussions, whatever. Here's what the Word says. That's it. I really can't add anything to that. Imagine that right turn to a life of faith with a pure heart, a clear conscience, and we argue by what you're starting to see it, I hope again and again are good example. We argue by loving people, that's your best argument, right there. Okay,
if we keep reading esteem. End caps the letter First Timothy 620, Timothy guard, what God has entrusted to you. Avoid godless, foolish discussions with those who oppose you with their so called knowledge. Some people have wandered from the faith by following such foolishness and God's grace. Be with you all. There's that grace. So notice the word of God calls it so, called knowledge, right? Avoid godless discussions. Doesn't say argue with them, does it? It's.
Have wandered away from the faith by arguing why?
Well, let's go back to Galatians. Remember that fruit of the Spirit versus the sin of the flesh. They're always opposed to one another. You can identify a tree by its fruit. So Jesus talking here. So putting that all in, looking at this Galatians, 519, when you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear, sexual morality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling,
jealousy, outburst of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I've said before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Huh? We focus on a few of our favorites, right? Christians love to pick and pick it on their favorite ones, don't they? Alright? So they love those. Sexual immorality is the worst one. You can make an argument for that. But there's a much larger group of people who do not inherit the kingdom of God,
huh? So how often do you see people self righteously committing a whole bunch of those sins all at once, while trying to rebuke people for just a couple of the other ones?
Hostility,
quarreling
will not inherit the kingdom of God. Jealousy, why are you arguing
outbursts of anger about my position? Selfish ambition,
the titles again, dissension, division,
if we're doing those things, the Bible says we won't enter the kingdom of heaven either. So pick your favorite sin.
We can't put our pride ahead of getting people to the gospel. So sometimes, under this prideful guise, right of defending God like he needs it, defending God, we actually commit the sin ourselves,
kind of like we need the mirror right now, because and then, how can we, like, convince anyone to become a Christian, right? Because I'm so angry all the time, like they don't want to be like us argumentative.
If we read on the second Timothy getting in the way of God. Second Timothy, 223, again, I say, Don't get involved with foolish, ignorant arguments that only Stark fights a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be kind to just his friends.
Come on, you're reading right? Everyone, right. Everyone, even our enemies. Go back to First Peter. That's what it says Romans. So it says, be able to teach. Be patient with difficult people, difficult people, even atheists. Gently, oh, there it is. Does it sound like it's like, over and over and over again, gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts and they will learn the truth. Then they will come to their senses and escape from the devil's trap, live and held captive by him to do whatever he wants. So we see how we're clearly called to engage with people very redundantly, in the Word of God, don't get involved with ignorant arguments. We must not quarrel. There's that quarreling. Again, it was back in Galatians, right? It's the sin of the flesh. So it sounds just like first group. Be gentle, be patient,
be loving.
So again,
many who engage in these discussions under the guise of this apologetics thing, they're actually just sinning. That's what's going on here.
Interesting thing to know, right? When you're patient, when you're kind, when you're showing that fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self, control, all those things, faithfulness,
displaying those things. What does it say? Perhaps God will change their hearts. Did you notice that,
not you?
God will change her? We're just an ambassador, right? We just come with a message, a loving vehicle,
God. So how many people are out there? I'm going to go out and change people's hearts?
That's not what my Bible says. You're
going to change anything. Let the Holy because you're better than the Holy Spirit. You.
Okay, no, not you. So once God changes their hearts. Now, now the truth is self evident. You don't have to do any work at all. So if we go to Romans, Romans, the reason for writing explain this in the past, it's actually for unity. Stop arguing with the Jewish Christians, right? So they had the law, and so we know all this stuff, and they probably know their Bible, the scriptures, way better than the Gentile Christians coming in, right? So they have this superior knowledge, as Paul calls it, your superior knowledge. But he's saying, Guys get along, love each other, don't argue. Stop it. See voice of the Gentiles. He speaks of the Gentiles. Speaks to the Jews. So in the beginning, he's talking about the Gentiles, and he says this, Romans 118 but God chose his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by the wickedness. Do they know the truth about God? Because he has made it obvious to them forever. Since the world was created, people have seen the earth and the sky through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature. So have no excuse for not knowing God.
It's clear. Look around you, and when you look around you with the right heart, it's obvious. There's no coincidence here. There's no accident here, but the heart has to be changed first to see that, to open our eyes, right? So later on, Paul will talk about the gospel message going out to everybody, right? So, and he quotes Psalm 19, which is interesting because it carries over with this in mind, even like 10 chapters later. Psalm 19, one. The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship. Day after day, they continue to speak night after night. They make Him known. They speak without a sound or word. Their voice is never heard, yet their message is gone throughout the earth and their words to all the world,
beautiful.
So step one for our part, right, is being a real Christian,
being loving at all times, kind at all times, patient at all times, self control, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control, fruit of the Spirit at all times, no but
patient with difficult people
at all times, patient with everyone at all times, our enemies at all times, people who disagree with us at all times, all that through the Spirit being displayed right in simple ways, meeting people where They are. Look, I love the Greek, right? And I have all kind which, which is my favorite translation, all of them. I love the Bible. I love all the translations. And sometimes I prefer to read from the Greek, from really complicated translations, right? But I am preaching to you today from an NLT. And so any scholars ever come in the room, any pastors like, why do you use that?
Because I want people to learn. I'm not interested in how smart you think I am, right? Just like a couple minutes when I'm up here, I get to secure about that. But anyway, but you can laugh. So, right? So it concerns me more that you learn, that you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth, right? So a complicated you don't I start reading in Greek, and I'm terrible at speaking Greek, but it's not going to help anybody, right? So that's what we have to do. We have to behave like that. I'm the ultimate example. But look, I don't know what reading level everyone in here is at, so I'm going to pick a simple one, and then when I need to explain, put the Greek in the brackets. But I want you to learn that's my heart, right, not fancy stumbling blocks to make you feel superior, big words so people think I'm smart. When you start catching yourself doing that, start thinking, Who is this about? It's about God and getting people to God, or about me, my ego, my title. So who's God now?
So we won't be falling into the trap putting too much stock in those human arguments. Well, I'll give you a couple, but again, we focus on answers from here, because the people have created the world just this mess of high sounding nonsense when it should be self evident. And so this is what Paul says in Romans, they claiming to be wise. They became fools. If we continue Romans, 121, yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship Him as God, or even give Him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like, and as a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. Instead of worshiping the glorious, ever living God, they worship idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. Claiming to be wise, they became full.
Fools, fools. They
worship
the creation instead of the Creator, and that creation includes themselves.
Later on, it goes to say they give approval to those doing all these terrible things. So the Bible talks about them becoming idols, and we'll look at that. You become like them.
The faithful have been given the answer to the mystery of the Kingdom of God. If we look at Colossians again, Colossians two, two, I want them to be encouraged and knit together by strong ties of love. I want them to have complete confidence that they understand God's mysterious plan, which is Christ himself. In him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. You want wisdom and knowledge, Christ right in him lie all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I'm telling you this so no one will deceive you with well crafted arguments.
Talks a lot about this, doesn't it? Or not to be deceived, or, as we saw, get roped into these well crafted because what Christians end up doing right, well crafted. Well craft. My argument. All you need to do is read your Bible to them.
Who cares about your well crafted argument? It's high sounding nonsense. And the interesting thing, the kingdom of God is a mystery.
So again, you can't see this mystery. Until God changes your heart, you won't see it.
So it's through love, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that the mystery is revealed to the faithful.
No, it says, lie hidden the treasures right of this knowledge and the wisdom it's hidden from those who don't yet have the heart to understand. So Jesus initiates his teaching. It's clear in like the gospel of Mark with parables. So he tells parables. Well, when you think of it in light of what we just read. It makes sense, right? You have to accept him. And there are these treasures hidden parables, right? So they're these mysterious teachings that you have to uncover, kind of like riddles, right? So the initiation of Jesus's parables is with the parable of the sower. Maybe you've heard of it before, but just a quick paraphrase, and he just simply tells it like this. He doesn't go into any explanation yet, right? So there's a farmer scattering seed, or a sower scattering seed. Now he doesn't explain. So scatter. I have something to explain scattering the seed, right? So, and some of the seed falls on rocks, alright, and then birds come and pluck up the cedar it's gone, alright. So then some rocky soil that doesn't have a lot of root can't get up. Son scorches it. Then some fall among like thorn bushes and stuff, and just can't really grow up and produce any fruit. But then fall among the fertile soil, and then they grow up and produce a crop. 30, 6100, fall.
Then mark 410. Later, when Jesus was alone with the 12 disciples and with the others were gathered around. They asked him what the parables meant. He replied, You are permitted to understand the Mysterio in Greek, the mystery of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables for everything I say to outsiders, so that the scriptures might be fulfilled. When they see what I do, they will learn nothing but hear what I say. They will not understand otherwise, it will turn to me and be forgiven. Quoting Isaiah there, so he explains it, right? So the seed is the Word of God. That's what it is. Seed is the Word of God, right? So it falls on the rocky soil, right? So these are, like, these atheists and stuff, like the people just don't have the right hearts, and Berg of the bird Satan come to takes the Word of God from the bottom of it, right? It falls the rocky soil right, right away, they spring up a little bit, right, you know. But because it's like troubles this world and all these other things, right, gets burned up. When Jesus says things get burned up, it connotates, right? So that's that. So then the thorns, right, the lures of wealth and the worries about this world, choke out the growth of the word and the soil, then we have the fertile soil. Seed gets in there, right? So when you think about the rest of the Bible and the God, God's Word in its full context, what, what can we have, like a heart of stone versus a heart of flesh? Right? So the rock is at the heart of stone. So he's implying heart conditions here, right? So the prideful people, they're those stony hearts. The word can't get in there, right? But good, changed heart by God, receives the Word of God, right? Grows down, and then you can begin to produce fruit that all comes together, doesn't it? The fruit of the Spirit. So that's what happens here.
So the prideful rocks, right? So they're kind of like the people that made themselves God, in a way. And the Bible tells us like, when you worship idols, including yourself, all right, you become like the things you make. And so these idols that they're referring to would be like.
You know, just imagine, like, a totem pole or something like that. You know, things you'd carve out. You'd worship them like these false gods. You're superstitious, and you believe that if I pray to this thing, I'll get good luck. All right, so that type of thing, everyone was like, a Lucky Rabbit. Are they legal? Can you have a lucky rabbit's foot
anymore? But, you know, it's like you have, like, think of it like that. They're things that you look to instead of God, so that things will work out well for you, but they become like these idols. So Jesus saying they can't see, they can't hear, because they have hard hearts, right? So,
so this theme in the Bible, Psalm 115, two, why? Let the nations say, where is their God?
Our God is in the heavens, and he does what he wishes. Their idols are merely things of silver and gold shaped by human hands. They have mouths but cannot speak and eyes but cannot see. They have ears but cannot hear and noses but cannot smell. They have hands but cannot feel and feet but cannot walk and throats but cannot make a sound. And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them. So this is the theme that the Bible reiterates a lot. Jesus brings it up, or you have other psalms that do this. These people are blind. They cannot see the mystery that we see. They don't get it right,
which God has revealed through his nature. They can't even see that. So how blind are they? You don't even observe these things. And then certainly right, it's revealed through Jesus, Christ, our Savior, and what he did.
They can't accept that they have the wrong heart. So the question of God's existence today can only, only be understood through a changed heart and the Holy Spirit which come through faith.
Let's define it, or let the word of God define it. Hebrews one. One faith shows the reality of what we hope for. It is the evidence of things we cannot see.
Evidence is revealed by our faith,
not head knowledge. So faith is all about if we keep reading, go ahead another verse, Hebrews 11, three. By faith, we understand that the entire universe was formed at God's command,
that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen
by what faith. It's as simple as that we believe and understand this unseen mystery as by faith that we're good with it.
Now here's the thing,
it doesn't always have to be blind faith, though, if we go back to Romans, Romans, 1016, just before that verse where Paul quotes Psalm 19, but not everyone welcomes the good news the gospel for Isaiah, the prophet said Lord who has believed our message. So faith comes from hearing that is hearing the good news about Christ. So we need to hear something. We need to read His Word. So there is
some evidence that we're shown right in the Bible, but we can't see it clearly unless we have that faith. So these are the loving words that we use when we do articulate the gospel message with people. There's some words that we do have to use, right? So these are the seeds, so to speak. And we see evidence of this in the Bible. Acts 17 like the Bereans, for example. They listen, they hear the gospel, but then they go search the Scriptures day after day, right, to make sure it's correct. And that's what we should be doing. We hear things, read your Bible like that's how we prove it, it's okay. So here's where we take a turn. This is now for those who may be very skeptical, those who don't believe these are some just ideas, but I just want to impress upon you, right,
there's a problem with proof. When people demand proof, there's a bit of a problem like that. So unless it's like pure logic or mathematics like it's just really hard to come up with, like something, like proof that is just unbeatable. You know, that can't be argued. So that's why, like, courtrooms, for example, right? Reasonable Doubt, right? They try to dispel things like that. It's not absolute proof. You don't have to win by absolute proof. It's reasonable doubt. Proof is really tough, right? And demanding proof of God that no one could ever reject is unreasonable. So when you're talking to people, don't shoot for that. You really just have to pray for a changed heart, right? So a person's intent when they come into the conversation is way more influential than any evidence you're going to present them with. And we just saw it's a mirror and it's a mystery, right? So that's not going to be taken as evidence. So again, if the heart isn't fertile, forget it. It goes back to what the word of God tells over and over again. Don't engage with foolish it becomes a foolish argument. If you're sitting there even with good evidence that you think is evidence, and you're arguing with someone you.
Wrong heart, and maybe it's yours, right? So if you keep doing it, so check it right? So the mirror goes up, check your heart.
So it's been said.
The best reply to an atheist is to say something like this, take them to dinner, right? They eat the dinner and say, Hey, do you believe? Did you see the chef,
no.
Do you believe that he prepared it?
Get him thinking, right? Yeah, well, there's faith in that, right? Do you believe that the chef didn't spit in the food? Because
you're an argumentative atheist, you probably should have right? Do you believe that? I hope so you got some faith,
right? And when you came to the restaurant, you were confidently, like, plopped down in the chair, yeah, a lot of faith that there was a creator who made it right.
And so some of these things are kind of a little bit better, because demonstrating to the atheists that they actually have a lot more faith than they think is a helpful place to start.
A lot more faith, maybe than I do.
So you can go down that road, and then you can tie in some philosophical points. But just remember this, whenever you're looking at philosophy, it's just, it's, it's always, it's always going to lead to an argument. That's just it like, so just know that. But these are just some things I'm just going to throw out there. There are three, like, kind of popular arguments, and they're just good to kind of know, but again, like, don't lead with them, just kind of putting them out there, because I don't think the message would be complete without some of these things, according to the world. So what am I doing? I don't know,
but there's the cosmological the teleological, right? And the moral arguments. So really quickly, right? The cosmological argument, I'll read a little bit definition here. It's the argument for the existence of God, which claims that all things in nature depend on something else for their existence, since and the whole cosmos must therefore itself depend on a being, right, which exists independently, right? That's just it. The argument considers the principles of cause and effect. You understand what that is, right? Our universe clearly is not eternal, right or uncreated. So even atheists will agree with that big bang, right? So they'll agree with that, okay, got a starting point. That's what I'm always looking for when you argue, looking for like, commonalities, right? The faith, right? This, right? So it's not argued, so logic points to what God, right? So the uncreated, eternal measure of all things, right? So this first cause of reality, they would say, teleological argument, fun to say right? The Greek, it can mean a few different things, but it's in our language. It mean to what end, right? To tell you, in this particular context, to what ends like. So what's the purpose? It can mean end like it is finished, what Jesus uses on the cross, right? Or to what end. So to what end? What's the point? We can say, right? So it's the explanation of phenomena in terms of like their purpose, right? Rather than like the cause by which they arise. So it suggests the existence of an intelligent creator based on purposefulness. Like, why is this happening here? So the solar system, like I mentioned, like, how is this happening? Like, how is the earth, just like, spinning the way it is, and going around the sun, and we don't burn up, right? That's kind of crazy, right? So we look at DNA, so it's interesting. And this trait here, this intelligent design trait, it's, there's, if you're going to make an argument, that's the strongest argument. Atheists even hard. And atheists have a really hard time explaining this, because when you look at something like DNA, I'm not going to get into it. And this is not a science class, but it's very, very complicated, and I'm not qualified to teach that
class. Nope, failed that so, but it's this complicated, like computer code, you know, think of it like that, really, really, really complicated and very intentional, right? So it's so complicated, right, that it can't happen by chance. It's just impossible, right? So it's kind of like, if you want to think of it in easy terms, like, right? Like ink and paper, right? So ink will be attracted or the paper will absorb the ink, right? So that kind of thing, like they're attracted to one another, right? Okay, we get that, right. But here's the thing you don't like say, I'm going to write a book and stack up a bunch of paper and pour ink on it, walk away, right? Like book is written,
no, just because things are attracted one another doesn't mean it's going to come up in like, a complex code like that, or an entire book, right? Of words that just make sense, right? So it doesn't work that way. So systems with this type of digital information, right? They demand a creator. Something wrote this like something did that. So our DNA code is written so this little watch thing, right? If you know me really well, I just I love.
Of mechanical time pieces. I just, I love that, just how they work. It's a marvel to me. It's just absolutely incredible how they get this done, right? And then it keeps time. It's incredible, right? But you just don't take like metal, right? And just put random metal pieces. I want a leather strap, right? So put some leather in there, and put it in a box, shake it up, and then it comes out a watch. Just work that way. There needs to be a creator. There needs to be a designer who needs to make something that complicated, right? It's a DNA even more, because it's God. So creation demands a creator. So they're always looking at like, how, how did it happen? But why and for what purpose is it happening? Is the next logical argument, right?
So the Bible kind of agrees with science and adds a dimension. It's like Hebrews 11. What we looked at here, right by faith.
We understand the entire universe was formed at God's command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. So it begins to come together. And there's the moral argument, good, evil ethics kind of interesting. It's notable that atheists talk about what should be. What
do you mean? What should be?
Right? That's interesting. Well, you talking about morality here or something, right? Moral principles are drastically different than natural principles, right? So if we're thinking of it like an atheist, no purpose, no morals, no nothing. But we have morals, though. Why?
You're not making sense right now, right? So it's amazing that humans are not like this. Because if you're thinking about the way atheists or this natural selection thing, all this stuff,
and humans should just be self serving, want to just preserve myself at any cost, including killing right? We should all just be like that if, because that's in our nature, right? Like the animals so they do. But no, there's morals. That's kind of amazing, right? The fact that humans can think morally is amazing.
That's weird, right? Because animals don't think like that. There's something about those of us who are created in God's image. So that's the moral argument, right? Kind of amazing, right? And morals have been consistent, right throughout most human cultures. It's also very interesting.
That's my cue. They're never going to get down. It's raining here in southwest Florida. It doesn't take a profit to figure it out, by the way,
or a weatherman wrong. All right. So there's miracles. Miracles, like the rain miracles, alright? So if you know my story at all, like I had dyslexia growing up, that's it. I just selected word reversal problem, so I just couldn't read so good, right? So, and I didn't do well in school. Couldn't really make it through, right? But when I decided to serve God's purpose, then no problem reading. That's gone, completely gone. That's a miracle. I just can't figure that out. I didn't go under surgery, didn't do anything like that. It is a kid like training to help me, like, adapt and be able to kind of read normal ish Lee, but I don't need that anymore. I can read Greek now. So that's a miracle. I attribute that to God, not my intellect. And so just, I don't often suggest some reading, but a good scholar, who's he's got all those, like, letters at the beginning and end of his name, but he's actually really humble, which is really cool guy named Craig keener. Craig keener wrote, I believe he's a two volume set on miracles, and he set out to document all these miracles. So there's, like, a doctor has no idea how it happened.
It happened, right? So, God. So there's miracles. It's God making himself evident. So there's another place you can go. Like, how do you explain that? Like, what are the odds of that? You know, things like that. You perhaps have them in your life. Where do you get to the Bible? In the series, going to talk about the Bible, but we got to acknowledge the fulfilled prophecies. There's a lot, right? So there's a whole bunch on Jesus. And it said, the chances of, like, even one of these prophecies coming through, it would be like, taking a bunch of quarters, if you could do this, and like, spreading them out across America, right? The whole country. And there's quarters everywhere, everywhere there's quarters, right? But you marked them, one of them with, like a red X, and it would be like, you find someone going out across America, starting in Maine, or wherever it is, just like, saying, Oh, I'm going to go to Texas, something like that. And then finding this quarter with the mark on it like that. Those are the odds of even, like one of the prophecies about Jesus being fulfilled in the time, place setting, everything. It's miraculous. So the Bible is a miracle itself, and it's full of miraculous prophecies. They're true
answered prayer. This is a really interesting thing. I've gone to non believers and just asked them if they want a prayer. They say yes,
and then, like, Do you believe in God? Like, no. Who are you praying to? Right? But they pray, but who? That's something I made up to the.
Universe. It's, what did the What are you saying when you say you're praying to the universe, right? You know what I mean? I don't get that right? You know? It's like to see a world and great that praying to it goes back to the idols.
Idols like the universe, or whatever it's going to be like, the secret the universe, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, like,
really,
okay, you know, but that was sarcasm on my part. I'm good. That was so you might not want to use that. But the thing is, look, people are receptive to God. It goes back to Romans. They knew God existed, but they just didn't acknowledge him right for who he is and what he was, right? So a lot of people who say they don't believe in God really do. They really do? And prayer. Then there's the other thing,
receptive, like our like receiver. So we here at this church, we've seen much answered prayer. Pray all the time, right? And so that's what you really hope for. You pray for something, and then if it happens, see a lot of people are really resected to this. They really are. Barna has it, about 82% of people in America believe in the power of prayer, or answered prayer.
Great place to start. And how much does that? Contrast is how most people start.
How you'll start these arguments. How do you see them get started? Or have you engaged in them? How they start? How about you know what? Hold on. Hold on, stop, stop. I know you disagree with me. Can we pray? Do
you think the conversation might end up a little differently
if we just prayed with them?
Now that brings us to a way of life that works. Most of these people are arguing so they don't have the fruit of the Spirit, right? So they have the sin of the flesh, the argumentative, the anger, outburst of anger, all those things. It's because they're living a way of life that doesn't work.
It's our job to show them a way of life that does.
That's it. It's as simple as that
human beings have. Just throughout their history, we've developed all these systems of government, right, education, all these things, entertainment. It doesn't work. It's not working because it's not perfectly in accordance with this
Timothy's not going to Titus would be like, Where'd you get your PhD from? And if he is answering right, like the school the Holy Spirit, you know?
So we've come up with all this other stuff. And it just breaks my heart when Christians do, what do you need that for? I don't know. I can read really well, but it's God, not me. Oh, that's what you need it for. You want to make it about you.
God is able. God is powerful, way more powerful than any degree or Ph. That's fine. If you went to school, great, whatever. I went to pastor school, you know, didn't need it. Could have just read my Bible and prayed a lot,
saved me a lot of
time, right? So that's the question, What progress have we made as humans, with human knowledge and all this stuff?
What progress have we have world peace? No,
in our own country we can't get along. Let's
just think about that for a second. In our own country, we can't agree on anything. We can't get along.
That's how awesome we're doing,
horrible and by God's standards, shameful.
Think about the ironing of this.
The same people, if you ask the same person, there's no God, right? And they all this human intellect, oh, yes, science and this and that, there's good science. I'm not against all science, but like, science is everything and more powerful than God, all this other stuff. All right, did the same people who say that human beings, mankind is responsible for destroying the world,
human intellect, just but, yeah, that's how we made the bombs, right?
So
if this is you this morning, right? If you put your faith in some things that just are not working. If you don't believe yet, still, you know, love to pray with you. Love to get to know you alright, but if you're just sick of it, right? And even Christians, if you've fallen for you, you've gotten advanced, right? So advanced that you're angry, that you're fearful, that you're right. So it's because it's working, right?
If you're willing to admit it's not working, I put my faith in a lot of things that just don't work. They're not bringing me joy, they're not bringing me peace, they're not bringing me happiness. I don't feel loved. If that's you today, we know it's raining on.
Sorry, they're not going to get that. But, yeah, I already, is it there's a tornado. Okay? Because that's in the news.
I ain't going. You know, did you get whisked up? No, relax.
Like we'll pray for the person that did right? Okay,
anyway, but if it's not working right, if the tornado really worried you
good, if it whisks me up, good, then I'm with Jesus. That's what Paul says, right? Yes, an opportunity to die without killing myself, right? So I could be with Jesus, right? That's the joy you want. Where you just you're not worried about these things, right? Tornado is kind of scary, but
at the same time, you have to have intelligent fear. We saw the wise fear. But look, if it's not working for you.
And this goes for a lot of Christians, and that's really the point of this series. Full Circle, I know I'm a pastor, it's not working for a lot of people that call themselves Christians. It's not because you're going to something else to squash that anxiety, whatever it is, the fear, the lack of joy, the depression.
Well, let me show you a way of life that works.
That's the point.
So if you're looking for that inner peace,
right, we can see evidence through God's creation, through all these other things,
but the only way to the Creator Himself is through faith and
trust in Jesus Christ, who's the only one that can bring us true love, joy and peace. Amen,
we pray for you, Lord,
thank you for this time, for everyone's willingness to come in here, for those watching online who couldn't be here today, and thank you for them, their willingness to be humble and humbly dig into your Word to give you all the glory and honor for everything in our lives.
I just pray that those who don't yet believe that they want to have that fertile heart that they'd open up to you, surrender to you, to your will
so that you can do your work in them.
I ask these things in Jesus' name. I
Overview
In this sermon, Pastor Gene emphasizes the importance of mastering the basics of Christianity and humility. He discusses the dangers of pride and the need for genuine displays of love, kindness, and patience towards others. We also engage in a thought-provoking discussion on the existence of God and atheism, addressing various arguments for God's existence and the limitations of human knowledge. Pastor Gene warns against seeking human approval and pride in scholarly pursuits, emphasizing the significance of gentleness, humility, and loving communication in apologetics.
Sermon
If you're new here among us. My name is Jean I serve here at c3 church as your pastor. And I heard a story about an atheist walking through the woods, he was noticing and just marveling and all these amazing accidents, right? So this beautiful flower, it's just accidentally there, and the bees, and they're pollinating, it's just all one big accident, and the birds and everything kind of takes care of itself, and there's natural selection. And then he noticed a bear who had apparently naturally selected him for lunch. So this is what we do when faced with a situation like that, right? We do the power walk. See, I've never run from a bear, but that's going to happen to me now that I said it, right? So bears and alligators worry about those things. So, you know, he starts to kind of like I'm moving quickly, but I don't want to look like I'm moving quickly. That does not work, right? So the bear still sees lunch, moving away quickly, so the bear starts to chase him, and he starts running. But then the atheist does something that's not helpful. When you're running from a bear, he keeps looking back, slows you down, so he keeps getting closer and closer and closer. Finally, the bears pause, raised up, poised to strike, and the atheist says, God help.
All of the sudden, time froze, right? So everything turns dark. The bear is frozen like a statue. You could it's like a winter, snowy winter night. You know, we can just you can't hear anything at all, no insects, no bugs, no birds, and a voice comes from heaven. How dare you? You make a career out of denying me, and then you call on me for help. And this time, the atheist thought about it, and he said, Yeah, it kind of be a hypocrite, right? If I came to you, and then even if I survived this, I'd have to go admit that I was wrong. I would tell everyone that you helped me. So he thinks on it for a second, and then comes up with something he thinks is clever.
God, can you make the bear a Christian?
Very well. Time comes back like the intro video, right? Everything starts going again, and the birds, the bees, everything's going on. The Bears there, and he lowers his paw,
then brings the other paw, lowers his head, and speaks …
Lord, thank you for this food I'm about to eat.
Have you ever heard the phrase you need to learn how to walk before you can run?
It's like this, when we learn new things, academic sports, good teachers or coaches will tell you, you need to start with the basics, right? That's really, really important, especially before moving on to advanced techniques, right? The basics are important. But
how often, when we do things do we like rush to being advanced before we've really got the basics down, only to stumble and fall or fail to progress in something?
Is it possible
that we've stumbled in our Christianity in some ways, maybe a better understanding of the basics would be helpful. Maybe we should apply these things to our faith as well. So there are many out there who want a fresh start. A lot of people have stumbled. Maybe they need to get back to the basics. Realize they've kind of gone out towards the advanced a little too much, maybe fallen away a tiny bit, and there are many who are new and really want to get it right. So if that's you today, we welcome you to join us in a reset.
And the video is epic. How can I follow that? Right?
So here's the thing. Have you ever reached a point in something that you're doing right where, like, a coach, somebody tells you, like, if it's a sport, somebody tells you, look, you really ought to brush up on your basics, right? You're not growing, you're not getting anywhere. But it's not because, like, you're not advanced enough yet. It's that you really have to go the other way. It's a lot of people play golf, so I probably I don't. So if you really want to feel like amazing, take me golfing, because I am terrible. Even if you've never played before, you will beat me. So. But anyway, you know, I hear this from a lot of people play, and it's like this in a lot of sports, right? So a coach, maybe you're great around your pals, right? So when you play with your pals like you're the best, right? But then a golf pro come.
Moms or a teacher, and they destroy you, right? So they usually will tell you something, if it's like any other sports that I've done, they'll tell you something like, yeah, you got to brush up on your basics. Or, you know, maybe it's your swing. You really got to hear that a lot. You know, work on your swing. You got to work on your grip, right? And sometimes there are some advanced techniques that are going to help you, but it's not going to be consistent. You need to go back and work on your basics again. So it's kind of funny, because if you know me, you kind of know my story in the martial arts, what I did for business, but I've been a lifelong musician. Played guitar my whole life. I was a worship leader here. That's how I actually got roped into this
careful right? So, but I played guitar. If I was the instrument of my choice, I'm playing it my whole life. But when I became a pastor, I got really busy, and I kind of had to put that on the back burner. I don't really play as much, but then I picked it up again, right after a couple years. I'm like, I don't let this deteriorate. I want to keep up and do this, but I decided to do something different. What I decided to do is go back and learn all these old songs that I thought I knew, but like, learn the note for note, every little detail exactly the way the same sound the original guitar player did it right, just like that, without any ideas of my own, because that's kind of what I did. I was a professional musician. It's kind of like an oxymoron in my case. But anyway, you know, I wrote original music, so I always wanted to have my own style and my own thing. So kind of play, make it sound like that, but then add my own flair touch. I'm like, No flares, no touches, just exactly what they did. So I've been doing this for about a year, and if I have a half hour a day to play that's a lot so, like not a lot of time, so pales in comparison to playing six hours a day was what I used to do. So what I noticed was I started to get actually way better, and I can tell you, even with less practice, I'm probably a better guitar player now than I ever was because I started noticing all these little intricacies and details and different things that I didn't have quite right. So, and I've given this example in the past on the martial arts thing, right? So I had a black belt in other martial art, but I encountered a martial art that was more well rounded, really, had those basics down, and I got tapped out by all white belts, so you have a choice, right? So when you've been doing something for a while, right, or you think you're good at it, maybe you've obtained a title, something like that, and you're faced with this situation, right, where, whether it's on the golf course or on the mat, wherever it is, where you realize like, Man, I really have to go back. Or maybe that golf pro tells you like, No, you're going to start at the beginning again. You're missing your basics. What do you do? And so you can quit.
You just give up. A lot of people do that. You can keep running yourself into the ground, right? Maybe just play golf with your pals and avoid all golf pros, right? So in my case, go back to my dojo and just do my Cobra Kai over here, slip that in there anyway.
Alright, some people watch TV, but
Right? So you can kind of hide out and just say, I'm great. I'm a black belt. I know everything you know. So kind of see this in church sometimes too. Or you can humble yourself and you can go back to the basics, right? And this can be very hard at times, especially when people have time in right? A title, we see this in church too, like titles of pride, and it's just it's hard, it's really hard to start over again. I get it, but here's the thing, pride hinders progress. Remember that pride hinders progress. The prideful have a very hard time with this idea of the basics. They want to be like a master right away, right or admitting right. I don't know something. I was wrong. No hard time seeing that. But the word of God tells us that what pride leads to destruction. So proverbs 16. So even if you're good at something, though, and you've been through this kind of course, you do know that the basics makes up almost everything. You really don't necessarily need a lot of those advanced things all the time. Beyond Christianity. That's not exactly the case, but you get my point. And that you know also, as you get more experienced, you look at those basics through an experience lens, and you can kind of add dimensions to them. So this is what's going to be kind of going on here. So with this all being said, we're going to start at the very beginning. So it's kind of hard for a lot of people to do, but almost like forgetting you know anything at all, right? And just start at the beginning with the most basic question,
how do we know God exists?
So if there's no God, like none of this matters, right? So let's start at that root question, right? So.
So here's the first thing we're going to do. We're going to go with what you may encounter, right? So the first thing usually that someone will say, if they don't believe in God, if they're an atheist, their response, if you say, you know there's a God, I know there's a God. And you continue on, they'll say, Well, you think you know everything. Have you ever heard that kind of thing? Well, you must think you know everything,
and it's kind of a backwards way of thinking on their part. So
let's visualize that. So couple little charts. So let's put up the first bubble so this, this is going to represent, and, yes, that's a Star Wars font. You're welcome. That's for my own entertainment. I just have
this is everything that can and it's tough, right? Like I could have put could be known, right? But it just didn't have enough space for the font. So
anything that can be known by, so just imagine anything in the universe that like undiscovered or discovered. So just everything that can be known about, right, that maybe we don't know about yet, or whatever. It's just everything, and it's all in this, right? So that's it. Now, if you approach an atheist and you ask him the question, like, can you slice out a piece of pie that represents, like, what you know, of that like, of everything that can be known? Now sometimes, like, they'll carve out a bigger chunk, a smaller chunk, but on average, this is usually like, what you're going to see, something like that, right? Okay, so maybe a PhD atheist, that's what they're going to fill in. Now, there are a couple of observations.
First, even if they like, filled in a quarter of everything in the universe, right? And they thought they knew
that 75% of it well would still represent the possibility of God.
You don't know, right? So that's the first thing. Now even that little chunk is amazingly arrogant when you think about so remember the person who just told me, I think I know everything. I mean, think about it for a second. You know, just like, you know, Abraham, right? Like, look at the stars in the sky. That's how many descendants you Why is God using that example? Right? Like the grains of sand? Well, because each one of those little dots, those specks that sometimes you can't see the stars, they're like suns, like our Sun, sometimes bigger, right? So they got planets floating around them and everything. Each one of those little specks
is amazingly like i It's unbelievable, right? You can't even fathom how large the universe is. So to me, this is arrogant, right? So saying there is no God, saying, you know, this much is actually not the humble position. It's the arrogant position, right? So
the atheist is saying, like, Yeah, I know all this stuff, this undiscovered, really. And they're, they're taking the arrogant position by saying there's no God, how do you know? You just told me you don't know at least, like 75% so as a Christian, here's what I'm going to fill in. This is mine. Now, that's it, right? That's a god. That's really it. That's the humble position I'm just acknowledging, right, the enormity of God. And no, I couldn't get like, so that I could still see it. It should be smaller. It should just be like a little hairline. And you don't see right? Because saying God exist is saying I don't know everything.
That's as simple as that, right? So it's the humble standpoint. So in answering the question,
is there a god, what we're going to do today is there's a little bit of logic there. I want to be faithful to God's word. And a lot of Christians, what they do is they kind of, like, step out of what they know, right? They step out of, like, the word if maybe they don't know it's what they're doing. But you want to really stick with the Bible, if you're being faithful, right here. So that's what we want to look at first, right? So for this part of the message, you know many of you are believers here, so this is really to you, and biblically, what God says about himself, that's kind of the most important thing, right? That's what we want to look at, alright?
And what I want to focus on, too, is how to interact with those who don't believe. Right? Don't believe. So just what does the Bible say? Not like what someone came up with later, in an opinion, what is the Bible say about God right himself, and how to interact with people who don't believe
alright? Because we come into this problem. The first problem is people thinking they know everything, right? This is the first part. I think they know everything, and what they do in that process of trying to like, feel smart or exert that.
Intelligence on you, they start to come up with, like, all this stuff on top of stuff, on top of stuff, until it becomes a whole jumbled up thing that the Bible calls high sounding nonsense. So if we go to Colossians, we've looked at this in the past. Colossians, two eight Don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual principles of this world, rather than from Christ, right? So there's a lot of things going on in that area, that church there, right? So they have asceticism, just different religious practices, but Gnosis is one of them, like you have all this knowledge, right? So Paul God is calling it high sounding nonsense, right? All this stuff. You think you're smart, you think you have this knowledge, those nonsense, right? So the problem with most scholarly philosophy is that it's human thinking. It's very limited. It's just human thinking, and it always evolves or it could be wrong, right? So it's very flawed, and then humans overcompensate for it, because we all know how limited we are, right? By coming up with all these big words and all this high sounding nonsense, right?
So here we get into those cherished titles, right, earn by learning all this nonsense, right? So it's this kind of pride cycle people are right now, a word of caution,
because this is not limited to secular scholars. Right in the process of trying to look good to other humans, we often waste time in the high sounding nonsense. And so
a lot of reasons, Christians will begin to engage with this as they want the approval of these people or these institutions and all these other things. So they just engage in and kind of fall into that trap. But the problem is, God tells us we shouldn't be seeking the approval of people. So you think about Galatians, Paul end caps it that way, because he's going to go hard on them. He does some hard teachings, right? So you know, if I was here to win the approval of people, I wouldn't be a servant of Christ. He ends like, I've been crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to me, or it's basically how he ends the letter. I'd say, I don't care, right? Only to win people to the gospel. We'll talk about that in a minute. So we shouldn't be seeking any other approval, except God's
no but after that period. That's it, right? So seeking affirmation, especially from like non Christians, scientists and scholars, no, it means God's approval is not enough for that person. That's what that means. When you're trying to get people to go, you're so awesome.
That's another problem we'll talk about in a minute, right? So these people should be asking themselves, like, who are they really trying to convince here?
But some people still might want to argue, and they'll say, Pastor Jean, what about First Peter? 315
okay, if you don't know what that is, let me remind you of the context. First of First Peter, right? So it's a people who are suffering. It's a church suffering under persecution. Those fiery trials, right? So they're going to get persecuted. Nero's going to burn them alive. It's really bad. So what is Peter leader in the church? Tell him to do, fight, fight, fight. No. He tells them, You need to suffer as Christ suffered. You need to honor people. You do not argue. You don't repay insult for insult. You be like Jesus. Love people unconditionally, even your enemies. Honor everyone. Everyone, right? So that's the context. So I'm going to give you a couple verses before, and I'll point you to if you don't know what people will point to, I'll explain what's going on. Explain what's going on. First, Peter 313, now we want to harm you if you're eager to do good, but even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don't worry or be afraid of their threats. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks you about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it, Greek apologia. So here we run into this is, like, the apologetics verse. So, like, if people like to argue, had a favorite verse of the day, that's it, right? That's their life verse, right? So they go about making a life of apologia. Well, apologetics, like, if you look it up in Greek, now, it's just apology, it's interesting. It kind of takes a different twist on the word, right? So, but in biblical terms, to make a defense for something,
but the word connotates something, and for those who use apologetics apologia, who use it, they actually don't understand what the word means or the next verse, right? So let's take a.
Look at that, right. So first Peter 315 instead you were just backing up for that. You must worship Christ as Lord your life. And if someone asks you about the hope you have as a believer, always be ready to explain. But do this in a gentle and respectful way.
Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live, because you belong to Christ. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing good, if that's what God wants. You know, hear these a lot. That's not the verse of the day either. And then to suffer for doing wrong.
It's not about arguing. It's it right. If someone asks what you're going to do is
right? Not with the yelling, screaming, fighting, insulting.
Told you, no, no, do not repay insult for those. Chapter Two, don't repay insult for insult. Do not you commend it, not to do that, right? So
humbly, gently. Then when they see what, how smart you are, no, they see how gentle, loving and humble you are, right? Then, oh, wait, then they'll be ashamed, right? Because, Oh, this guy's not even engaging. They're being so nice when they see you suffering for doing good, which looks crazy to the world. Let's try to read First Corinthians, chapters one and two, right? That's what Paul's addressing, right? And that's the context there, right? So they're pastor worshiping. They're worshiping. And who is apostle speaking? Some people follow Peter, some people follow Paul, and he rebukes them. Who is Apollos? Who is Peter? Who is Paul? Right? He talks about the gospel being foolish to the world, this idea that God would die, that's what he's saying, right? It's foolish. It's crazy. What are you thinking? It goes on to say it's a mystery what we believe, right? So this crazy thing, but stop it. It was like worshiping people. Worship God, and it looks crazy to people. I get it. So the problem when Christians engage in this is they get roped into these prideful, foolish arguments, nonsense, right? So the first thing we need to do engaging with people, right? Is drop the pride,
drop that we're just ambassadors. That's it. It's going to tell you what this says, void of my opinions. When they come with the opinions, I'll just repeat what this says. You come with the opinion. I'll just repeat what this says. It says a couple of problems, right? Christians haven't been practicing the basics, so they don't know what this says. That's a problem, all right. So we have to get back to reading this and knowing this really well. That's what always being ready to make a defense for what you believe means, and then it touches you. So you just, you're amazed by God's grace. So you start just giving that grace to everybody else,
which means not trying to make them feel stupid,
not very nice. When Paul's writing to Timothy protege, he writes this First Timothy one three. When I left for Macedonia, I urge you to stay there in Ephesus and stop those whose teaching is contrary to the truth. Let them waste their time an endless discussion of myths and spiritual pedigrees, these things all lead to meaningless speculations which don't help people live a life of faith in God. The purpose of my instruction is that all believers will be filled with love. They come from a pure heart, a clear conscience. There's a clear conscience again, and genuine faith. But some people have missed this whole point. They have turned away from these things and spend their time in meaningless discussions.
Some have missed the whole point. The word of God tells us that when we argue, we miss the point
we are commanded to avoid those discussions, whatever. Here's what the Word says. That's it. I really can't add anything to that. Imagine that right turn to a life of faith with a pure heart, a clear conscience, and we argue by what you're starting to see it, I hope again and again are good example. We argue by loving people, that's your best argument, right there. Okay,
if we keep reading esteem. End caps the letter First Timothy 620, Timothy guard, what God has entrusted to you. Avoid godless, foolish discussions with those who oppose you with their so called knowledge. Some people have wandered from the faith by following such foolishness and God's grace. Be with you all. There's that grace. So notice the word of God calls it so, called knowledge, right? Avoid godless discussions. Doesn't say argue with them, does it? It's.
Have wandered away from the faith by arguing why?
Well, let's go back to Galatians. Remember that fruit of the Spirit versus the sin of the flesh. They're always opposed to one another. You can identify a tree by its fruit. So Jesus talking here. So putting that all in, looking at this Galatians, 519, when you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear, sexual morality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling,
jealousy, outburst of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I've said before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Huh? We focus on a few of our favorites, right? Christians love to pick and pick it on their favorite ones, don't they? Alright? So they love those. Sexual immorality is the worst one. You can make an argument for that. But there's a much larger group of people who do not inherit the kingdom of God,
huh? So how often do you see people self righteously committing a whole bunch of those sins all at once, while trying to rebuke people for just a couple of the other ones?
Hostility,
quarreling
will not inherit the kingdom of God. Jealousy, why are you arguing
outbursts of anger about my position? Selfish ambition,
the titles again, dissension, division,
if we're doing those things, the Bible says we won't enter the kingdom of heaven either. So pick your favorite sin.
We can't put our pride ahead of getting people to the gospel. So sometimes, under this prideful guise, right of defending God like he needs it, defending God, we actually commit the sin ourselves,
kind of like we need the mirror right now, because and then, how can we, like, convince anyone to become a Christian, right? Because I'm so angry all the time, like they don't want to be like us argumentative.
If we read on the second Timothy getting in the way of God. Second Timothy, 223, again, I say, Don't get involved with foolish, ignorant arguments that only Stark fights a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be kind to just his friends.
Come on, you're reading right? Everyone, right. Everyone, even our enemies. Go back to First Peter. That's what it says Romans. So it says, be able to teach. Be patient with difficult people, difficult people, even atheists. Gently, oh, there it is. Does it sound like it's like, over and over and over again, gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts and they will learn the truth. Then they will come to their senses and escape from the devil's trap, live and held captive by him to do whatever he wants. So we see how we're clearly called to engage with people very redundantly, in the Word of God, don't get involved with ignorant arguments. We must not quarrel. There's that quarreling. Again, it was back in Galatians, right? It's the sin of the flesh. So it sounds just like first group. Be gentle, be patient,
be loving.
So again,
many who engage in these discussions under the guise of this apologetics thing, they're actually just sinning. That's what's going on here.
Interesting thing to know, right? When you're patient, when you're kind, when you're showing that fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self, control, all those things, faithfulness,
displaying those things. What does it say? Perhaps God will change their hearts. Did you notice that,
not you?
God will change her? We're just an ambassador, right? We just come with a message, a loving vehicle,
God. So how many people are out there? I'm going to go out and change people's hearts?
That's not what my Bible says. You're
going to change anything. Let the Holy because you're better than the Holy Spirit. You.
Okay, no, not you. So once God changes their hearts. Now, now the truth is self evident. You don't have to do any work at all. So if we go to Romans, Romans, the reason for writing explain this in the past, it's actually for unity. Stop arguing with the Jewish Christians, right? So they had the law, and so we know all this stuff, and they probably know their Bible, the scriptures, way better than the Gentile Christians coming in, right? So they have this superior knowledge, as Paul calls it, your superior knowledge. But he's saying, Guys get along, love each other, don't argue. Stop it. See voice of the Gentiles. He speaks of the Gentiles. Speaks to the Jews. So in the beginning, he's talking about the Gentiles, and he says this, Romans 118 but God chose his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by the wickedness. Do they know the truth about God? Because he has made it obvious to them forever. Since the world was created, people have seen the earth and the sky through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature. So have no excuse for not knowing God.
It's clear. Look around you, and when you look around you with the right heart, it's obvious. There's no coincidence here. There's no accident here, but the heart has to be changed first to see that, to open our eyes, right? So later on, Paul will talk about the gospel message going out to everybody, right? So, and he quotes Psalm 19, which is interesting because it carries over with this in mind, even like 10 chapters later. Psalm 19, one. The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship. Day after day, they continue to speak night after night. They make Him known. They speak without a sound or word. Their voice is never heard, yet their message is gone throughout the earth and their words to all the world,
beautiful.
So step one for our part, right, is being a real Christian,
being loving at all times, kind at all times, patient at all times, self control, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control, fruit of the Spirit at all times, no but
patient with difficult people
at all times, patient with everyone at all times, our enemies at all times, people who disagree with us at all times, all that through the Spirit being displayed right in simple ways, meeting people where They are. Look, I love the Greek, right? And I have all kind which, which is my favorite translation, all of them. I love the Bible. I love all the translations. And sometimes I prefer to read from the Greek, from really complicated translations, right? But I am preaching to you today from an NLT. And so any scholars ever come in the room, any pastors like, why do you use that?
Because I want people to learn. I'm not interested in how smart you think I am, right? Just like a couple minutes when I'm up here, I get to secure about that. But anyway, but you can laugh. So, right? So it concerns me more that you learn, that you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth, right? So a complicated you don't I start reading in Greek, and I'm terrible at speaking Greek, but it's not going to help anybody, right? So that's what we have to do. We have to behave like that. I'm the ultimate example. But look, I don't know what reading level everyone in here is at, so I'm going to pick a simple one, and then when I need to explain, put the Greek in the brackets. But I want you to learn that's my heart, right, not fancy stumbling blocks to make you feel superior, big words so people think I'm smart. When you start catching yourself doing that, start thinking, Who is this about? It's about God and getting people to God, or about me, my ego, my title. So who's God now?
So we won't be falling into the trap putting too much stock in those human arguments. Well, I'll give you a couple, but again, we focus on answers from here, because the people have created the world just this mess of high sounding nonsense when it should be self evident. And so this is what Paul says in Romans, they claiming to be wise. They became fools. If we continue Romans, 121, yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship Him as God, or even give Him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like, and as a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. Instead of worshiping the glorious, ever living God, they worship idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. Claiming to be wise, they became full.
Fools, fools. They
worship
the creation instead of the Creator, and that creation includes themselves.
Later on, it goes to say they give approval to those doing all these terrible things. So the Bible talks about them becoming idols, and we'll look at that. You become like them.
The faithful have been given the answer to the mystery of the Kingdom of God. If we look at Colossians again, Colossians two, two, I want them to be encouraged and knit together by strong ties of love. I want them to have complete confidence that they understand God's mysterious plan, which is Christ himself. In him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. You want wisdom and knowledge, Christ right in him lie all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I'm telling you this so no one will deceive you with well crafted arguments.
Talks a lot about this, doesn't it? Or not to be deceived, or, as we saw, get roped into these well crafted because what Christians end up doing right, well crafted. Well craft. My argument. All you need to do is read your Bible to them.
Who cares about your well crafted argument? It's high sounding nonsense. And the interesting thing, the kingdom of God is a mystery.
So again, you can't see this mystery. Until God changes your heart, you won't see it.
So it's through love, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that the mystery is revealed to the faithful.
No, it says, lie hidden the treasures right of this knowledge and the wisdom it's hidden from those who don't yet have the heart to understand. So Jesus initiates his teaching. It's clear in like the gospel of Mark with parables. So he tells parables. Well, when you think of it in light of what we just read. It makes sense, right? You have to accept him. And there are these treasures hidden parables, right? So they're these mysterious teachings that you have to uncover, kind of like riddles, right? So the initiation of Jesus's parables is with the parable of the sower. Maybe you've heard of it before, but just a quick paraphrase, and he just simply tells it like this. He doesn't go into any explanation yet, right? So there's a farmer scattering seed, or a sower scattering seed. Now he doesn't explain. So scatter. I have something to explain scattering the seed, right? So, and some of the seed falls on rocks, alright, and then birds come and pluck up the cedar it's gone, alright. So then some rocky soil that doesn't have a lot of root can't get up. Son scorches it. Then some fall among like thorn bushes and stuff, and just can't really grow up and produce any fruit. But then fall among the fertile soil, and then they grow up and produce a crop. 30, 6100, fall.
Then mark 410. Later, when Jesus was alone with the 12 disciples and with the others were gathered around. They asked him what the parables meant. He replied, You are permitted to understand the Mysterio in Greek, the mystery of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables for everything I say to outsiders, so that the scriptures might be fulfilled. When they see what I do, they will learn nothing but hear what I say. They will not understand otherwise, it will turn to me and be forgiven. Quoting Isaiah there, so he explains it, right? So the seed is the Word of God. That's what it is. Seed is the Word of God, right? So it falls on the rocky soil, right? So these are, like, these atheists and stuff, like the people just don't have the right hearts, and Berg of the bird Satan come to takes the Word of God from the bottom of it, right? It falls the rocky soil right, right away, they spring up a little bit, right, you know. But because it's like troubles this world and all these other things, right, gets burned up. When Jesus says things get burned up, it connotates, right? So that's that. So then the thorns, right, the lures of wealth and the worries about this world, choke out the growth of the word and the soil, then we have the fertile soil. Seed gets in there, right? So when you think about the rest of the Bible and the God, God's Word in its full context, what, what can we have, like a heart of stone versus a heart of flesh? Right? So the rock is at the heart of stone. So he's implying heart conditions here, right? So the prideful people, they're those stony hearts. The word can't get in there, right? But good, changed heart by God, receives the Word of God, right? Grows down, and then you can begin to produce fruit that all comes together, doesn't it? The fruit of the Spirit. So that's what happens here.
So the prideful rocks, right? So they're kind of like the people that made themselves God, in a way. And the Bible tells us like, when you worship idols, including yourself, all right, you become like the things you make. And so these idols that they're referring to would be like.
You know, just imagine, like, a totem pole or something like that. You know, things you'd carve out. You'd worship them like these false gods. You're superstitious, and you believe that if I pray to this thing, I'll get good luck. All right, so that type of thing, everyone was like, a Lucky Rabbit. Are they legal? Can you have a lucky rabbit's foot
anymore? But, you know, it's like you have, like, think of it like that. They're things that you look to instead of God, so that things will work out well for you, but they become like these idols. So Jesus saying they can't see, they can't hear, because they have hard hearts, right? So,
so this theme in the Bible, Psalm 115, two, why? Let the nations say, where is their God?
Our God is in the heavens, and he does what he wishes. Their idols are merely things of silver and gold shaped by human hands. They have mouths but cannot speak and eyes but cannot see. They have ears but cannot hear and noses but cannot smell. They have hands but cannot feel and feet but cannot walk and throats but cannot make a sound. And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them. So this is the theme that the Bible reiterates a lot. Jesus brings it up, or you have other psalms that do this. These people are blind. They cannot see the mystery that we see. They don't get it right,
which God has revealed through his nature. They can't even see that. So how blind are they? You don't even observe these things. And then certainly right, it's revealed through Jesus, Christ, our Savior, and what he did.
They can't accept that they have the wrong heart. So the question of God's existence today can only, only be understood through a changed heart and the Holy Spirit which come through faith.
Let's define it, or let the word of God define it. Hebrews one. One faith shows the reality of what we hope for. It is the evidence of things we cannot see.
Evidence is revealed by our faith,
not head knowledge. So faith is all about if we keep reading, go ahead another verse, Hebrews 11, three. By faith, we understand that the entire universe was formed at God's command,
that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen
by what faith. It's as simple as that we believe and understand this unseen mystery as by faith that we're good with it.
Now here's the thing,
it doesn't always have to be blind faith, though, if we go back to Romans, Romans, 1016, just before that verse where Paul quotes Psalm 19, but not everyone welcomes the good news the gospel for Isaiah, the prophet said Lord who has believed our message. So faith comes from hearing that is hearing the good news about Christ. So we need to hear something. We need to read His Word. So there is
some evidence that we're shown right in the Bible, but we can't see it clearly unless we have that faith. So these are the loving words that we use when we do articulate the gospel message with people. There's some words that we do have to use, right? So these are the seeds, so to speak. And we see evidence of this in the Bible. Acts 17 like the Bereans, for example. They listen, they hear the gospel, but then they go search the Scriptures day after day, right, to make sure it's correct. And that's what we should be doing. We hear things, read your Bible like that's how we prove it, it's okay. So here's where we take a turn. This is now for those who may be very skeptical, those who don't believe these are some just ideas, but I just want to impress upon you, right,
there's a problem with proof. When people demand proof, there's a bit of a problem like that. So unless it's like pure logic or mathematics like it's just really hard to come up with, like something, like proof that is just unbeatable. You know, that can't be argued. So that's why, like, courtrooms, for example, right? Reasonable Doubt, right? They try to dispel things like that. It's not absolute proof. You don't have to win by absolute proof. It's reasonable doubt. Proof is really tough, right? And demanding proof of God that no one could ever reject is unreasonable. So when you're talking to people, don't shoot for that. You really just have to pray for a changed heart, right? So a person's intent when they come into the conversation is way more influential than any evidence you're going to present them with. And we just saw it's a mirror and it's a mystery, right? So that's not going to be taken as evidence. So again, if the heart isn't fertile, forget it. It goes back to what the word of God tells over and over again. Don't engage with foolish it becomes a foolish argument. If you're sitting there even with good evidence that you think is evidence, and you're arguing with someone you.
Wrong heart, and maybe it's yours, right? So if you keep doing it, so check it right? So the mirror goes up, check your heart.
So it's been said.
The best reply to an atheist is to say something like this, take them to dinner, right? They eat the dinner and say, Hey, do you believe? Did you see the chef,
no.
Do you believe that he prepared it?
Get him thinking, right? Yeah, well, there's faith in that, right? Do you believe that the chef didn't spit in the food? Because
you're an argumentative atheist, you probably should have right? Do you believe that? I hope so you got some faith,
right? And when you came to the restaurant, you were confidently, like, plopped down in the chair, yeah, a lot of faith that there was a creator who made it right.
And so some of these things are kind of a little bit better, because demonstrating to the atheists that they actually have a lot more faith than they think is a helpful place to start.
A lot more faith, maybe than I do.
So you can go down that road, and then you can tie in some philosophical points. But just remember this, whenever you're looking at philosophy, it's just, it's, it's always, it's always going to lead to an argument. That's just it like, so just know that. But these are just some things I'm just going to throw out there. There are three, like, kind of popular arguments, and they're just good to kind of know, but again, like, don't lead with them, just kind of putting them out there, because I don't think the message would be complete without some of these things, according to the world. So what am I doing? I don't know,
but there's the cosmological the teleological, right? And the moral arguments. So really quickly, right? The cosmological argument, I'll read a little bit definition here. It's the argument for the existence of God, which claims that all things in nature depend on something else for their existence, since and the whole cosmos must therefore itself depend on a being, right, which exists independently, right? That's just it. The argument considers the principles of cause and effect. You understand what that is, right? Our universe clearly is not eternal, right or uncreated. So even atheists will agree with that big bang, right? So they'll agree with that, okay, got a starting point. That's what I'm always looking for when you argue, looking for like, commonalities, right? The faith, right? This, right? So it's not argued, so logic points to what God, right? So the uncreated, eternal measure of all things, right? So this first cause of reality, they would say, teleological argument, fun to say right? The Greek, it can mean a few different things, but it's in our language. It mean to what end, right? To tell you, in this particular context, to what ends like. So what's the purpose? It can mean end like it is finished, what Jesus uses on the cross, right? Or to what end. So to what end? What's the point? We can say, right? So it's the explanation of phenomena in terms of like their purpose, right? Rather than like the cause by which they arise. So it suggests the existence of an intelligent creator based on purposefulness. Like, why is this happening here? So the solar system, like I mentioned, like, how is this happening? Like, how is the earth, just like, spinning the way it is, and going around the sun, and we don't burn up, right? That's kind of crazy, right? So we look at DNA, so it's interesting. And this trait here, this intelligent design trait, it's, there's, if you're going to make an argument, that's the strongest argument. Atheists even hard. And atheists have a really hard time explaining this, because when you look at something like DNA, I'm not going to get into it. And this is not a science class, but it's very, very complicated, and I'm not qualified to teach that
class. Nope, failed that so, but it's this complicated, like computer code, you know, think of it like that, really, really, really complicated and very intentional, right? So it's so complicated, right, that it can't happen by chance. It's just impossible, right? So it's kind of like, if you want to think of it in easy terms, like, right? Like ink and paper, right? So ink will be attracted or the paper will absorb the ink, right? So that kind of thing, like they're attracted to one another, right? Okay, we get that, right. But here's the thing you don't like say, I'm going to write a book and stack up a bunch of paper and pour ink on it, walk away, right? Like book is written,
no, just because things are attracted one another doesn't mean it's going to come up in like, a complex code like that, or an entire book, right? Of words that just make sense, right? So it doesn't work that way. So systems with this type of digital information, right? They demand a creator. Something wrote this like something did that. So our DNA code is written so this little watch thing, right? If you know me really well, I just I love.
Of mechanical time pieces. I just, I love that, just how they work. It's a marvel to me. It's just absolutely incredible how they get this done, right? And then it keeps time. It's incredible, right? But you just don't take like metal, right? And just put random metal pieces. I want a leather strap, right? So put some leather in there, and put it in a box, shake it up, and then it comes out a watch. Just work that way. There needs to be a creator. There needs to be a designer who needs to make something that complicated, right? It's a DNA even more, because it's God. So creation demands a creator. So they're always looking at like, how, how did it happen? But why and for what purpose is it happening? Is the next logical argument, right?
So the Bible kind of agrees with science and adds a dimension. It's like Hebrews 11. What we looked at here, right by faith.
We understand the entire universe was formed at God's command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. So it begins to come together. And there's the moral argument, good, evil ethics kind of interesting. It's notable that atheists talk about what should be. What
do you mean? What should be?
Right? That's interesting. Well, you talking about morality here or something, right? Moral principles are drastically different than natural principles, right? So if we're thinking of it like an atheist, no purpose, no morals, no nothing. But we have morals, though. Why?
You're not making sense right now, right? So it's amazing that humans are not like this. Because if you're thinking about the way atheists or this natural selection thing, all this stuff,
and humans should just be self serving, want to just preserve myself at any cost, including killing right? We should all just be like that if, because that's in our nature, right? Like the animals so they do. But no, there's morals. That's kind of amazing, right? The fact that humans can think morally is amazing.
That's weird, right? Because animals don't think like that. There's something about those of us who are created in God's image. So that's the moral argument, right? Kind of amazing, right? And morals have been consistent, right throughout most human cultures. It's also very interesting.
That's my cue. They're never going to get down. It's raining here in southwest Florida. It doesn't take a profit to figure it out, by the way,
or a weatherman wrong. All right. So there's miracles. Miracles, like the rain miracles, alright? So if you know my story at all, like I had dyslexia growing up, that's it. I just selected word reversal problem, so I just couldn't read so good, right? So, and I didn't do well in school. Couldn't really make it through, right? But when I decided to serve God's purpose, then no problem reading. That's gone, completely gone. That's a miracle. I just can't figure that out. I didn't go under surgery, didn't do anything like that. It is a kid like training to help me, like, adapt and be able to kind of read normal ish Lee, but I don't need that anymore. I can read Greek now. So that's a miracle. I attribute that to God, not my intellect. And so just, I don't often suggest some reading, but a good scholar, who's he's got all those, like, letters at the beginning and end of his name, but he's actually really humble, which is really cool guy named Craig keener. Craig keener wrote, I believe he's a two volume set on miracles, and he set out to document all these miracles. So there's, like, a doctor has no idea how it happened.
It happened, right? So, God. So there's miracles. It's God making himself evident. So there's another place you can go. Like, how do you explain that? Like, what are the odds of that? You know, things like that. You perhaps have them in your life. Where do you get to the Bible? In the series, going to talk about the Bible, but we got to acknowledge the fulfilled prophecies. There's a lot, right? So there's a whole bunch on Jesus. And it said, the chances of, like, even one of these prophecies coming through, it would be like, taking a bunch of quarters, if you could do this, and like, spreading them out across America, right? The whole country. And there's quarters everywhere, everywhere there's quarters, right? But you marked them, one of them with, like a red X, and it would be like, you find someone going out across America, starting in Maine, or wherever it is, just like, saying, Oh, I'm going to go to Texas, something like that. And then finding this quarter with the mark on it like that. Those are the odds of even, like one of the prophecies about Jesus being fulfilled in the time, place setting, everything. It's miraculous. So the Bible is a miracle itself, and it's full of miraculous prophecies. They're true
answered prayer. This is a really interesting thing. I've gone to non believers and just asked them if they want a prayer. They say yes,
and then, like, Do you believe in God? Like, no. Who are you praying to? Right? But they pray, but who? That's something I made up to the.
Universe. It's, what did the What are you saying when you say you're praying to the universe, right? You know what I mean? I don't get that right? You know? It's like to see a world and great that praying to it goes back to the idols.
Idols like the universe, or whatever it's going to be like, the secret the universe, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, like,
really,
okay, you know, but that was sarcasm on my part. I'm good. That was so you might not want to use that. But the thing is, look, people are receptive to God. It goes back to Romans. They knew God existed, but they just didn't acknowledge him right for who he is and what he was, right? So a lot of people who say they don't believe in God really do. They really do? And prayer. Then there's the other thing,
receptive, like our like receiver. So we here at this church, we've seen much answered prayer. Pray all the time, right? And so that's what you really hope for. You pray for something, and then if it happens, see a lot of people are really resected to this. They really are. Barna has it, about 82% of people in America believe in the power of prayer, or answered prayer.
Great place to start. And how much does that? Contrast is how most people start.
How you'll start these arguments. How do you see them get started? Or have you engaged in them? How they start? How about you know what? Hold on. Hold on, stop, stop. I know you disagree with me. Can we pray? Do
you think the conversation might end up a little differently
if we just prayed with them?
Now that brings us to a way of life that works. Most of these people are arguing so they don't have the fruit of the Spirit, right? So they have the sin of the flesh, the argumentative, the anger, outburst of anger, all those things. It's because they're living a way of life that doesn't work.
It's our job to show them a way of life that does.
That's it. It's as simple as that
human beings have. Just throughout their history, we've developed all these systems of government, right, education, all these things, entertainment. It doesn't work. It's not working because it's not perfectly in accordance with this
Timothy's not going to Titus would be like, Where'd you get your PhD from? And if he is answering right, like the school the Holy Spirit, you know?
So we've come up with all this other stuff. And it just breaks my heart when Christians do, what do you need that for? I don't know. I can read really well, but it's God, not me. Oh, that's what you need it for. You want to make it about you.
God is able. God is powerful, way more powerful than any degree or Ph. That's fine. If you went to school, great, whatever. I went to pastor school, you know, didn't need it. Could have just read my Bible and prayed a lot,
saved me a lot of
time, right? So that's the question, What progress have we made as humans, with human knowledge and all this stuff?
What progress have we have world peace? No,
in our own country we can't get along. Let's
just think about that for a second. In our own country, we can't agree on anything. We can't get along.
That's how awesome we're doing,
horrible and by God's standards, shameful.
Think about the ironing of this.
The same people, if you ask the same person, there's no God, right? And they all this human intellect, oh, yes, science and this and that, there's good science. I'm not against all science, but like, science is everything and more powerful than God, all this other stuff. All right, did the same people who say that human beings, mankind is responsible for destroying the world,
human intellect, just but, yeah, that's how we made the bombs, right?
So
if this is you this morning, right? If you put your faith in some things that just are not working. If you don't believe yet, still, you know, love to pray with you. Love to get to know you alright, but if you're just sick of it, right? And even Christians, if you've fallen for you, you've gotten advanced, right? So advanced that you're angry, that you're fearful, that you're right. So it's because it's working, right?
If you're willing to admit it's not working, I put my faith in a lot of things that just don't work. They're not bringing me joy, they're not bringing me peace, they're not bringing me happiness. I don't feel loved. If that's you today, we know it's raining on.
Sorry, they're not going to get that. But, yeah, I already, is it there's a tornado. Okay? Because that's in the news.
I ain't going. You know, did you get whisked up? No, relax.
Like we'll pray for the person that did right? Okay,
anyway, but if it's not working right, if the tornado really worried you
good, if it whisks me up, good, then I'm with Jesus. That's what Paul says, right? Yes, an opportunity to die without killing myself, right? So I could be with Jesus, right? That's the joy you want. Where you just you're not worried about these things, right? Tornado is kind of scary, but
at the same time, you have to have intelligent fear. We saw the wise fear. But look, if it's not working for you.
And this goes for a lot of Christians, and that's really the point of this series. Full Circle, I know I'm a pastor, it's not working for a lot of people that call themselves Christians. It's not because you're going to something else to squash that anxiety, whatever it is, the fear, the lack of joy, the depression.
Well, let me show you a way of life that works.
That's the point.
So if you're looking for that inner peace,
right, we can see evidence through God's creation, through all these other things,
but the only way to the Creator Himself is through faith and
trust in Jesus Christ, who's the only one that can bring us true love, joy and peace. Amen,
we pray for you, Lord,
thank you for this time, for everyone's willingness to come in here, for those watching online who couldn't be here today, and thank you for them, their willingness to be humble and humbly dig into your Word to give you all the glory and honor for everything in our lives.
I just pray that those who don't yet believe that they want to have that fertile heart that they'd open up to you, surrender to you, to your will
so that you can do your work in them.
I ask these things in Jesus' name. I