Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

I believe in Who? Romans 1:16-32 We Believe Sermon Series #3 [Open with clip from The Red Planet - The discussion of “Is there a God?”] Is there a God? Can you prove it? Is there even an answer to that question and, If there is a God where did God come from? All of us have had those questions in our minds. Many of us have had someone ask us questions like that and we’ve not always had the answers. The famous astronomer, Carl Sagan, said, “The cosmos is all that there is or ever was or ever will be.” Yet Genesis begins,  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” There is a vast difference between those two statements. How do we answer the question of the existence of God? These questions about the existence of God reminds me of a story from the London Observer. There was a family of mice who lived all of their lives inside a large piano. To them in their piano‑world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was Someone who made the music—though invisible to them—above, yet close to them. They loved to think of the Great Player whom they could not see. Then, one day a very daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how the music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths that trembled and vibrated. The mice must revise all their old beliefs: none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the Unseen Player. Later, another explorer mouse carried the explanation further. Hammers were now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The Unseen Piano Player came to be thought of as a myth. But the pianist continued to play...in spite of what the mice thought. And so God continues to exist and govern the universe no matter what men think. In Romans 1:16-32 (p. 796) the Apostle Paul refers to this devolution of belief on the part of man. Yet the Apostles’ Creed begins with “I believe in God...” At one time the belief in God was an almost universal assumption, everyone believed in God. That’s not the case today. Even in a religious culture like ours, there are many atheists or agnostics. And then, some who believe in God are not talking about the God that we are talking about. As we continue our study on the Apostles’ Creed, we want to consider the question, I believe in Who? 1. To not believe in God has terrible implications. Some wit said, “I considered atheism but there weren’t enough holidays.” The psalmist is more pointed, “The fool says in his heart, There is no God’” (Ps. 14:1). The word atheist describes a “no-Godist,” someone who professes that no God exists. What they do not realize is the terrible implications of a “no God” world. Today Western Culture is going through a phase, which is not just non-Christian but is actually anti-Christian. But those who want to rid the world of God have not considered the horrific price of a God less world. To not believe in God has terrible implications.   A) Without God, there is no basis for morality. Where do we get our standards of right and wrong? For that matter, why do we even sense a need for justice? An Absolute God, who is Himself absolute truth, created us in His image. We have an innate sense of justice even if we only want it for ourselves. But atheism destroys the very foundation of justice. Morality is up for grabs when the belief in an absolute standard from an Absolute standard‑giver is undermined. This is why the Psalmist wrote, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Ps. 11:3). It’s impossible to live in a world with no definitive right and wrong. How can you be righteous if there is no right? You can’t. So how do atheists determine right and wrong? They can’t. If there is no transcendent standard of right and wrong, how do we tell a fourteen‑year‑old Rod Matthews that he is morally wrong. Uninterested in baseball or books, Rod found one thing that did stimulate him: death. His curiosity was intensely aroused by a rental video, Faces of Death, a collage of film clips of people dying violently. He wanted to see death happen in real life. So one winter day Rod lured a young friend into the woods and hammered him to death with a baseball bat. At his trial a child psychiatrist testified that the boy was not conventionally insane. He just “doesn’t know right from wrong...He is morally handicapped.” The declaration “no God” promises freedom from God’s standards. In the end it leads to injustice, cruelty and greater bondage. Several nations tried the contention of the atheist. When the idea of “no God” took root in their political systems the results were Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and Mao. At the Auschwitz death camp there is a plaque on the wall containing these words from the Fuhrer himself: “I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality...We will train young people before whom the world will tremble. I want young people capable of violence – imperious, relentless and cruel.”   B) Without God, there is no purpose for pain. One of the great struggles of humanity has been to address the issue of pain. Atheism cannot answer this question. Pain has no purpose because there is no sovereign God controlling the events of human history. Rather than look for an answer, look for an anesthetic. Don’t spend your time searching for purpose. Instead reach for the painkiller. When all is said and done, atheism cannot answer the issue of pain and suffering. As believers though, in the midst of horrible pain, we can join with Job in faith because we trust God in spite of the pain. Job 1 records that, “Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised’.” C) Without God, there is no reason for existence. If there is no God and the evolutionists are right, you and I are the products of blind chance. We are cosmic flukes of the Big Bang. We are no more than the complex evolution of those single‑celled organisms that emerged out of the primordial soup billions and billions of years ago. Our existence has no significance at all. Our accomplishments will be food for worms one day just like us. Even if some trace of our life does survive it’ll be burned up when our sun expands into a super nova. So what’s the point? We’d do just as well to concur with the pessimistic author of Ecclesiastes who moaned: “‘Everything is meaningless,’ says the Teacher, ‘utterly meaningless!’...Generations come and go, but nothing really changes. History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. We don’t remember what happened in those former times. And in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now” (Eccles. 1:2, 4, 9, 11). This is where you must arrive without God. Life is meaningless.   D) Without God, there is no hope for the future. Can you live with the prospect that this life is it? Many people can, but I really don’t see how an atheist with integrity could avoid suicide. If life is just this painful, meaningless existence without hope, why not put yourself out of misery? Instead, atheists do the next best thing. “If there is no resurrection, ‘Let’s feast and get drunk, for tomorrow we die!’” (1 Cor. 15:32). There’s no basis for morality, no purpose in pain, no reason for existence, and no hope for the future if there’s no God. 2. Belief in God can mean almost anything. Our nation’s money says “in God we trust” and our pledge states “one nation under God” but that means little to most people. Dishwalla in their song, “Counting Blue Cars,” sings, “Tell me all your thoughts on God ‘cause I’d really like to meet her and ask her why we’re who we are.”   Back in the mid 1960s Time magazine’s cover stated that God was dead. Yet God stubbornly refuses to show any signs of rigor mortis. Some four decades after Time magazine’s obituary of God, 95% of Americans said that they still believe in the existence of God. But when it comes to defining exactly what kind of God it is that we’re talking about, things get much more complicated.    Some people think of God as "the force" from Star Wars, with both a good side and a dark side. Others picture God as an enormous man in heaven, showing an uncanny resemblance to George Burns, or more recently perhaps Alanis Morresset from the movie Dogma or like Morgan Freeman from Bruce Almighty.  Some see God as a celestial highway patrolman setting up speed traps to capture people. Still other people believe the universe is God, and still others believe themselves to be gods. British philosopher, Edmund Burke, had a point when he said that man “by his constitution is a religious animal.” There is something inherently religious in our nature. We always look for something bigger or greater than ourselves upon which to rely and to whom we give our worship. But the word “God” is so generic. Oscar winning actress, Shirley MacLaine, in her book, Out on a Limb, tells us, “Not that I am God, but that we are god, that all is god, that we’re all part of a cosmic oneness. And if we don’t feel that we’re god, that’s simply because we’re ignorant. And the only way that we can banish our ignorance and discover our godness is by enlightenment that will come through meditation.” It’s just Hinduism dressed up in New Ageism. But if you asked Shirley MacLaine, “Do you believe in God?” she would say, emphatically, yes! She would have no difficulty at all standing up and reciting the first four words of the Apostles Creed, "I believe in God." While most believe in God, for many it’s the god of their own thinking and imagination. They have their own god, who is very indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when they want something, but far away and out of sight when they determine to do something wrong. Such a god is as much an idol as if he were an image of stone. “I believe in God" could mean "I am god." "I believe in God" could mean, "we are god." "I believe in God" could mean, "I believe in a very indulgent, rather weak god who’s near at hand when I can use him and is conveniently absent when he’s an embarrassment to me." Anyone can say, "I believe in God," but what do we mean when we affirm the Apostles Creed, "I believe in God?” You see, while atheism has never really gained popular acceptance, the real confusion comes when we try to describe exactly what kind of God it is that we’re talking about. That’s why we need something “more” when it comes to believing in God. 3. Belief in God has a basis. Can we prove that God exists? Certainly not the same way that you would prove a book weighs 2 pounds or that a truck is blue, because God can’t be seen, heard, or touched with human senses. We can’t see him in a microscope or a telescope. The Russian cosmonauts went into space and when they came back to earth they said, "There is no God. We didn’t see him." But we can’t prove God by any test of the human senses. Something though does not have to be experiential or even scientific to be true. One cannot prove the assassination of John F. Kennedy scientifically. It’s a historical fact, not a scientific one. We start believing when we come to an intelligent conclusion that something is true. We believe in God then when we come to conclusions about God. How do we arrive at these conclusions about God? For instance, how do we arrive at conclusions concerning God’s existence, His nature, attributes, and purposes? Well, we start out discovering reality and coming to conclusions through reason and through revelation. These are the two main avenues that allow us to come to conclusions about God. Down through the centuries there have been several arguments from rationality concerning the existence of God. Some of these have rather long words that are a bit overpowering. Words like ontological, cosmological, and teleological, but you’ll notice that they’re all logical!   A) Evidence of the existence of God from reason. The ontological argument was developed by Archbishop Anselm many centuries ago. Anselm pointed out that people somehow or other have a concept of God as "a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived." His argument, very simplified, is basically this: If man has the ability to conceive of something greater than which can be conceived, then there must be reality behind this human conception. According to this argument, man’s striving to improve himself ultimately for perfection is evidence for a perfect source–God Himself. You and I are imperfect creatures living in an imperfect world. Where did we get our concept of perfection, if not from the “perfect One,” God Himself. The cosmological argument comes from Aquinas. He argues from what he believes is the principle of cause and effect. The things that we see happen have a reason for happening. If suddenly a brick comes whistling through the air in my direction while I am preaching, there will probably be two reactions: number one, I will duck; and number two, we will look around to see who threw it. Now why should we assume someone threw it? Why can’t we just assume the brick took it into its brickish head to hurtle itself in my direction, perhaps feeling that what I was saying was anti‑brick? We would not assume that. We would instead assume every effect, that is, a brick hurtling through the air, has cause. Cause and effect.   If we argue backwards, then eventually we have to ask the question, Is there a first cause? Is there something that initially caused something, of which we see the effects all around us? This world/universe didn’t just happen; there was a reason behind them. We then ask the question, Was there an unmoved mover? Is there an uncaused cause? And the answer probably would be yes. It is either 1) an infinite universe that was uncaused and is unchanging, or 2) an infinite God who was uncaused and is unchanging. It seems from the argument that we back up to either an infinite universe or an infinite God. The problem with the infinite universe argument is, among other things, the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics teaches us that there are hot things and cold things, and if you put a hot thing next to a cold thing, the hot thing will cool down and the cool thing will warm up, because the energy of heat will flow from one to the other. And in the end, the hot will have cooled and the cooled will have heated until they are the same temperature, and then you have non‑energy; you have entropy. Our universe is cooling down. If it’s cooling down, that suggests that at one stage, it will end. If it has an end, it is reasonable to assume it has a beginning. Therefore, the universe is not infinite, which leaves us with a conclusion that the uncaused cause, the unmoved mover, is not an infinite universe but an infinite God. That’s basically the cosmological argument.   One philosopher stated the teleological argument rather simply: "If a watch proves the existence of a watchmaker, but the universe does not prove the existence of a great architect, then I consent to be called a fool." To put it positively, what he is saying is this: If it is reasonable to assume that the intricate design of a watch presumes the existence of a watch designer, it is equally reasonable to assume that the intricacies of the universe presuppose an intelligent designer of the universe. It would be foolish to suggest that a watch could create itself. It would be even more foolish to suggest that the universe could do the same. The teleological argument is an argument from design. Another traditional argument for the existence of God is the moral argument. Man has a sense of morality. He has a sense of fair and unfair, ought and ought not, should and should not. He is born with a conscience. Where in the world did he get this moral sensitivity? The answer from the moral argument is that there is a source of morality, justice, and righteousness, and that source we call God. People object to that sometimes. They’ll say, "People learn their morality from their surroundings, from their society." The problem is that some of the most moral people that we acclaim, we acclaim because they stood up against the prevailing morality of their society. Rather than being the products of it, they have been the changers of it. The moral argument, then, is that man’s sense of morality presupposes an ultimate morality. These are some of the arguments from reason for the existence of God, and they should be understood and carefully considered. But even if you agree with all those arguments for God’s existence, you don’t necessarily finish up with the God of the Bible. There are still great holes in your understanding of God. You don’t finish up with God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You could end up with a generic God. That’s why we must have . . .   B) Evidence of the existence of God from revelation. There is one strange omission in the Bible. Though the Bible is a supremely religious Book, It never attempts to prove the existence of God. It’s assumed. To truly know God, we need revelation in addition to reason. However, many people are not prepared to accept revelation; we must start with them on the basis of reason. Paul did this. Both in Athens and then in writing to the Romans he pointed out to them that the invisible things of God are clearly seen in the things that are created. In other words, he argued from creation to the existence of God. But he didn’t stop there because it is an incomplete picture of God. As Ritschl said, “Without Christ I should be an atheist.” This past summer we went to Florida on vacation. One of the things that I love to do is to go crab hunting. Now we’re not real sophisticated. We go out at night, take a bucket and a flashlight. When we see a crab, we try to scoop it up in the bucket. You can't get the ocean in a bucket. You can put the bucket in the ocean and get enough ocean in the bucket to understand the characteristics of the ocean, but there*s no way you can include the whole ocean in a bucket. Finite minds cannot comprehend an infinite God. But if an infinite God pours his oceanness into our bucketness, then we can understand something of who He is by revelation, still recognizing finitely we can never understand His infinite being. That*s what Scripture is all about. It’s the infinite God revealing Himself to finite people, taking the initia­tive and pouring His oceanness into our bucketness in order that we might grasp something of who He is that we could never under­stand without His revelation. We could call this special revelation, faith arguments. Let me suggest three of them. There is the witness of Scripture. The Bible begins with God in Genesis 1, not trying to prove His existence but assuming it as foundational to everything else. It continues to offer a coherent interpretation of history, culture, society, and human life based upon the existence of a sovereign God. There is the witness of the Son. The witness of Jesus Christ regarding the existence of God is given in John 14:9: "He who has seen Me has seen the Father." To know Jesus is to know God, plain and simple. To not know Jesus is to be ignorant of God. He is the way to the Father. Finally, there is the witness of the Spirit. The witness of the Holy Spirit is subjective but powerful: Rom. 8:16 says, "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children." You can't put the witness of the Spirit in a test tube; you can't submit it to philosophical analysis; but everyone who has experienced it knows how powerful it is. If we*re going to have a solid Christian belief in God, we utilize reason and revelation. And then we can speak with compelling effect to our lost world. 4. Belief in God though is just not enough. Sadly, there are professing atheists whose disbelief in God is possibly more reverent and honoring than the glib, easy‑going, casual claim of belief some Christians offer. "I believe in God," says the Apostles Creed. That little word in makes a world of difference! Suppose the Creed had said, "I believe about God"? What would that mean? To believe about someone or something means that your experience is limited to what you have read or been told or perhaps seen from afar. I believe what I’ve been told about Mount Everest, that it’s the highest mountain on earth but I’ve never seen it. But almanacs and encyclopedias tell me that Mount Everest is the highest point on this planet, 29,028 feet high. So, I accept the fact; I’m willing to believe what I read about Mount Everest. Or I might read an article on golf telling me the value of a relaxed swing rather than trying to hit the ball with all my strength. From what the article and my observation of successful golfers tell me, I can profess to believe what I know about the power of relaxation. But until I use the technique myself– until I commit myself to swinging my golf club without tension throughout my neck, shoulders, and the rest of my body–I can’t claim to believe in relaxation, even though I talk about relaxation as the key to improving my golf game. Belief in God means advancing beyond merely acknowledging His existence. That’s just the starting point. What the Apostles’ Creed declares is a daring commitment, an abandoning of ourselves to God. Jack Heinsohn, once the pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, was a circus aerialist as a young man. He tells of the struggle facing every beginning trapeze artist when he first attempts the flying bar.  Only when he throws himself off the platform and grabs the bar can he hope to keep from falling into the net, or worse, to the floor many feet below. “I believe in God” means that I acknowledge Who He is and on that basis commit myself wholly to Him. That’s what it means to “believe in God.” Conclusion: If you want to stir up the Christian community, talk about atheists and atheism. As a group, they are responsible for all kinds of mischief; the removal of prayer in schools, removing the Ten Commandments from the courtroom, nativity scenes from public parks, “under God” in our pledge. They are vocally opposed to God in our national life. And those of us who believe in God want to distance ourselves from them. In God’s eyes though, atheism is not a belief or a philosophy, it’s an action. And God is much more interested in what our actions demonstrate than what we might say with our mouth. Every event in our lives is an opportunity to practice faith in God or it is an opportunity to act as if God does not exist. “I believe in God” is not just head belief or merely lip service. “I believe in God” means that I completely trust and commit myself to Him. That’s what the Apostles’ Creed means when it begins, “I believe in God.” Friend, do you believe things about God or do really believe in Him?