Good evening. Would you open your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders have obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible." Down in verse 6, "without faith it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must first believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him."
I was reading those very words this week a few days ago and as I was doing it, our insect control guy came over and he was spraying the house. And he recognized me behind my desk and he said to my wife, "I'm not a very religious guy but I do see Skip every now and then on television. But I'm not a very religious guy." And she said, "Well why do you suppose?" He said, "I don't know, it could be that I'm stubborn. I believe in a higher power but I guess I just need proof."
When I was much younger, when I was just a little kid I remember going outside and looking up and saying, "Are you really there? Do you exist? Could you tell me something? How do I know? How can I be sure?" I think we can all relate to Isaiah who said of God, "truly you are a God who hides himself." In contrast to the visible idols of the land which were nothing, the Almighty, the all-powerful, the God who hides himself."
We're in a series were calling "Rediscovering our Foundations," and there's lots of issues at stake: The nature of God, the Bible, the nature of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the church, etcetera. But the fundamental issue is: Is Anybody up there? Does God himself truly exist? Is there a higher power? Is there a personal God? That's the basic question of life, before all other questions.
Mortimer J. Adler, you may recognize his name, the Executive Director on the Editorial Committee of Encyclopedia Brittanica was explaining why God deserved a bigger space in written essay in his set of books called The Great Books of Western Literature." Mr. Adler said, "It's because more consequences for life follow from that one issue than any other issue. "Is Anybody Up there?" Because, if not, if God doesn't exist that means we're alone in the universe, so now what? Is Sigmund Freud really right? That God is simply an infantile illusion that must be discarded? Was the philosopher Ludwig Foyerbach correct when he said, "God is simply a projection of our own humanity." Was Marx correct when he said, "There is no God, all that exists the material. There is no heaven. There is no hell." Was Freidrich Nitsche correct when looking around at the world believed in nihilism, all is useless, all is purposeless. Are those correct? Or does God exist? You see if they are correct and if we indeed are alone in this universe then the next question would be: What's the point? What's the point of it all? If the question, Why am I here? What is the purpose of life can only be answered by "There is no purpose of life, you're here by an accident, that lends itself to hopelessness, absolute despair.
The Russian Datyevsky was correct when he said, "If there isn o God and everything therefore is permissible, the first thing permitted is despair."
Nicholas Cage, most people know, of our generation, was talking about life and he said, "I think there must be a hole inside the soul of our generation." He said, "We have inherited the American dream, but we don't know where to take it."
So, if there is no God, then what's the point? But, if the question, is there anybody up there is, "Yes there is, there is a God." Then there's a whole host of other questions that gives rise to. What's he like? What does he do? What does he expect? Can we know him? Why did he create the world? What will happen if we ignore him or disobey him? All of those questions follow on the heel of a yes to "Is There Anybody Up there?"
And so in this series this evening, I want to talk about that. And I want to look at God revealing himself generally, God revealing himself specially or specifically and then God revealing himself personally.
There are and I'm going to give you four ways that God has revealed himself to mankind generally. A few years ago I took some philosophy courses for a Master's degree in Sacred Literature. I discovered that philosophers are a very confused bunch. They're funny to be around and they're even funnier to read. Talk about despair, talk about walking away going, "Huh?" I did that more than any other time in that class. I like what one person said, "Philosophers are people who talk about things they don't understand but they make it sound like it's your fault." And I sifted through the variety of proofs of the existence of God. Some of them are logical, some of them are scientific and some of them are philosophical. But theologians, philosophers for centuries have grappled with the issue, wrestled with the existence of God and there are two basic ways that we know god exists: by general revelation and by special revelation. General revelation includes a few things. First of all, creation. Just by looking around, by observing our world, noticing sunrises, sunsets, the reliability of time, seasons, watching harmony; we infer intelligence. Paul wrote about that in Romans chapter 1 when he said, "From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and the sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, so they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God." Creation. I know you've heard the little saying, "Nature calls." We know what that means, that means I have to use the restroom typically. The Bible says nature doesn't call, nature shouts in terms of telling us about God's existence. There's an ongoing message system that God has built into the universe so that people in observing would logically go, "Oh, there must be a God." David wrote about that in Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands day after they pour forth speech, night after night they display knowledge."
I have a little article from USA Today that talks about Harvard University putting an eighty-five foot dish, a receiving dish, it's like an ear, outside of Boston, Massachusetts to listen to any communication from outer space, find out if there's anything intelligent life would want to say. It's quite capable with all of its intricacies of computer hookups, to listen to and process a hundred twenty-eight thousand signals at any given time twenty-four hours a day. And so Harvard's going like this, "Is Anybody Up There?" David's point is God has already shouted, proclaimed, his message and creation is witnessing his existence and his glory. And here's David's point: he's saying, "Look, if the art that's hanging in the skies is that glorious, what must the artist be like? If when you see something like a sunset and you go, "Wow, isn't that cool? Isn't that beautiful?" Go beyond that and think of the one who put it there. His glory, his existence. You know every time I see a sunset I feel like applauding, sometimes I do. And people go, "What's he doing?" And they think it's even weirder when somebody says, "Well he knows the artist." When you personalize it, the art that's hanging in the skies, how glorious. And it was on this basis that Paul wrote, we just read it, "There are people that have no excuse." That's from general revelation. There's no excuse. Worldwide, god is getting his message across of his glory and his existence.
The director of NASA's space institute, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Professor Robert Jastro wrote a little piece called, "God and the Astronomers." Listen to this: "For the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance. He's about to conquesr the highest peak. He pulls himself over the rock and he's greeted by a band theologians who've been sitting there for centuries. He goes to discover something and he finds out it's already been discovered, we've found out there is a God." Creation is general revelation.
Number two in general revelation is conscience. Your conscience tells you there is a God. Otherwise, if your conscience didn't tell you there was a God, you wouldn't ask the question, "Is there a God?" There's something in your conscience, just the way you were born. God's moral law innately put within every human being that cause you to inquire, "Is there a God?" It's part of your makeup. Dogs don't do that. Cats don't do that. Frogs don't do that. But people do. It's part of the moral law, the conscience. This sense of right and wrong that is innate. Romans chapter 1, we were in that a moment ago, verse 19, Paul says, "the truth about God is known to them instinctively. God has put this knowledge in their hearts." Now you can mess with that and you can erase it and you can tamper with it and abuse it but it's there. I listened to Dr. Adrian Rogers one time talk about this. He's from Atlanta, Georgia. He said, "In Atlanta, they ran a lie detector test and asked people who said they didn't believe in God in a a lie detector, "Does God exist?" They said, "No." And the test said, "Liar."
Turn with me to Romans chapter 2. Paul is forging his way through this argument. In Romans 2, verse 14, he says, "For when Gentiles (pagans would maybe be a better term here) who do not have the law (that is the written law of God) by nature do the things in the law these although not having the law are a law unto themselves who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves, their thoughts accusing or else excusing them." In other words, the conscience of every man tells them that there is a right or a wrong. Now again, your conscience can become callused, you can mess with it and not everybody's conscience is the same. For instance, if when you first lie or cheat or deceive you don't do anything about it, you don't repent of it, you don't change, the next time you lie, cheat or deceive; it'll get easier and easier and easier until your heart becomes hardened or calloused. But generally, in all cultures, no matter education or background, there is this value system that it's wrong to steal, wrong to kill, wrong to commit adultery. It's universal, that's general revelation.
Third, cause and effect. Cause and effect. There is a piece of wise philosophy found in a morass of "Huh?" every time I red philosophers. There's one little piece of wise philosophy that says, "Wherever there is a thing there must be a preceding thought. And wherever there is a thought, there must have been a thinker." Example: We have some friends in the fellowship who have a really neat house, they have a heated pool in the backyard and we love whenever we're invited for a barbecue. And the pool is nice and the yard is nice and the house is beautiful, it took a while to design and to build. Now imagine if I stood in that house and looked around, I said, "Wow isn't it amazing how that concrete and steel and wood just happened by chance to come together and form this house?" He'd look at me like, "What are you talking about?" This was cause and effect. You are looking at a thing and because there is a thing it points to a thought that came first and behind the thought and thoughts were thinkers that helped bring this about. That's cause and effect. Theologians call it the cosmological argument. If you're into that, there's a term for you: the cosmological argument. It comes from the word cosmos, or world, that everything in the world has an origin or a basis. Every effect must have a cause. And since every effect must have a cause, there must be what they call the first uncaused cause, who is God. Now there's something closely related to that, cause and effect. It's called design. The house that I referred to is beautifully designed, well thought through. And because it's designed, we automatically think there must be an intelligent designer behind it. And so here we are, in our world, we have a conscience, we have an intelligence, we look around, we make observations, and we notice our universe. The times, the seasons, how it all fits together. And we could look at it and say, "It just so happens, by coincidence, just so happens, that the sun is 93 million miles away from the earth and the sun has a surface temperature of 12000 degrees Fahrenheit. It just so happens that we happen to be here. Now, if we were as close as Venus we would burn. If we were as far away as Mars, there'd be ice and snow even in the warmest regions of the earth. But it just so happens that we're 93 million miles away from a ball that's 12000 degrees Fahrenheit at its surface. It's neat that it happened that way. And it just so happens that this ball is spinning through space at a thousand miles per hour and it goes in circles, 365 and a third times a year as it makes its journey around the sun. It just so happens to do that which is great because if it was thirty times instead of 365 1/3 times you'd have days and nights ten times longer. And you'd have alternate freezing and burning episodes. It just so happens that the Earth is tilted 23 1/3 degrees on its axis giving us four seasons, it's marvelous how it just happened. And it just so happened that our atmosphere happened to be composed of a perfect combination of 79 to 20 oxygen to nitrogen with a one percent of variant gasses. Isn't that great? Because if it was 50/50 you'd light a match and _______, you don't have to worry about Iraq. Or any other country. Now we follow that reasoning, we think, "It didn't just so happen that way, it was just so designed that way." The thing represents a thought which represents a thinker behind it.
I've told you before but I've always loved what the astronomer Sir Fredrick Hoyle said that "the probability of spontaneous generation happening to a single bacterium is about the same probability that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard could assemble a 747 from the contents therein. It didn't just so happen, it reflects design. A watch speaks of a watchmaker. A book gives evidence to an author and a publisher. A painting speaks of an artist. And a universe, this intricately designed speaks of a designer.
Fourth, is your experience. Your experience of God. Now I will admit and I saved this for last, this is highly subjective. Your experience is subjective. Your experience can't be relied on all by itself. After all, there's a lot of people who have had some fantastic experiences, including being abducted by aliens. And I've met some who told me they've been abducted by aliens and I almost want to believe them, they're that weird. I think, "Okay, well that explains it." Or, they saw Jesus' face appear in a tortilla, or whatever it might be; if we experience the proof, it's random. But when subjective experience comes after all that we have just shared, it adds to the weight of it. It fortifies the objective argument. Example: If somebody comes to you and says, "I've got to tell you my testimony. I smeared a rotten banana all over my head and it changed my life. I have peace now, I have joy now, and I can talk like a monkey." Well, that's his experience, it's a valid experience. But you would have to ask two questions: Number one, is there anything objective that we can tie to that that's provable? And number two, how many people in the world, in history, have smeared rotten bananas on their head and walked away saying, "I have peace, joy and I can talk like a monkey." That's where the Christian experience comes in. It is unique. Scores of people for generations have had amazing testimonies that sound very similar. No matter what country you're from, what age you are, what background, what culture, I have received Jesus Christ and this is how he changed my life. We find that repeated throughout history. And our conclusion is they must be saved by the same God through the same Savior with the same grace, the same truth, the same gospel.
That's general revelation. I want you to turn now to Psalm 19 for just a moment and I've told you at the top of your outline that we'd have a few passages to look at. Psalm 19, what I like about this psalm is David outlines both general revelation as well as special revelation. "The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, night unto night reveals knowledge. There's no speech nor language where their voice is not heart, their line has gone through all the earth, their words to the end of the world. He has set a tabernacle for the sun which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices like a strong man to run his race." What a great poetic description. "It's rising is from one of heaven. It's circuit to the other end. There is nothing hidden from its heat." That's general revelation. That's half the Psalm. But now notice the difference. Notice the change. "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yeah, than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them your servant is warned and in keeping them there is great reward."
What is David saying? David is saying this: General revelation is available to everyone. And it speaks of the glory of God and the existence of God. But it is not sufficient to get a person to know God. That's where special revelation comes in. And first on the list in special revelation you ought to write: Scripture. Scripture. That's the focus of the second half of the Psalm. And note the description of scripture: perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true and righteous sltogether. Here's his point: Nature can speak eloquently and powerfully to the existence and glory of a Creator. But if you want to know him you're going to need more than general revelation, you're going to need something special which is the law of the Lord, the scriptures, the written revelation, the self-disclosure of God. Why? Because though the heavens speak eloquently, they leave a lot out. The stars, the moon, the sun speaks of the glory of God, it doesn't tell you anything about the love of god, the sacrifice of God, the plan of God. And that's why you need special revelation: to fill in the blanks left out by general revelation. There's a lot the heavens don't tell you. If you want the full scoop, you've got to get it from the book, the Owner's Manual, the special revelation, the autobiography of God's work through history. That's why a person can never say something like this: "I don't need to go to church and read my Bible, man, I'm just going to go camping and commune with God. I'm going to eat granola and be one with nature because God is in nature." You can't do that. Well you can but you won't know the true God if you do. That comes through special revelation. Peter said that. Now Peter saw things you and I will never see. He stood on a mountaintop with a couple other disciples and he watched Jesus transfigured in miraculous bright light. He watched that. It was incredible. But listen to what he says. In II Peter the apostle writes, "We were eyewitnesses of his majesty. We heard the voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. But we have also a more sure word of prophecy." Did you get that? We saw, we heard, it was miraculous, but we have even something more sure than that. Even something better and surer than the visible revelation of the miraculous. We have the more sure word of prophecy, the word of God.
You know some people look at the Bible as an added bonus. "It's great, I'm glad you have that Bible. It's cool. Everybody should have one I believe. I think it's good to have in the courtroom, put your hand on, to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's great to lay on a coffee table to impress your pastor if he comes over. It's great to write funerals and births in and press flowers in and use as a doorstop. But that's not what Jesus said. He said, "Man shall not live by bread alone but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." That is special revelation. So, does God reveal himself, that he exists? Yes he does. Through Creation, through cause and effect, through our conscience, through our experience. But more specifically through scripture.
Number two, through Jesus Christ. It's one thing for God to send prophets to people throughout history and have them write down this incredible book: the Bible. But God went a step further. He wanted to show mankind what he was like, so he came in human flesh, in the form of God the Son.
And so John writes these words, John chapter 1 verse 8, "No one has seen God at any time but the only begotten Son (or as The New Living translation puts it, "The Son who is God himself.") who is in the bosom of the Father, he has unveiled him" (declared him, shown him off). Here's the point: Here we are on the earth. Picture it a box. Here we are on this little box, it's called the Earth. And the box has walls, time and space, so we're limited. Above us is God who is transcended. How is that which is transcended and unlimited going to communicate to people who are limited by time and space? Well he's going to speak his word to prophets, spokespeople, ambassadors, and they're going to write things down through history. But the final icing on the cake is when the Creator becomes someone small enough to crawl inside the box and say, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I've come to reveal the Father, his character, his purpose. So that if you've seen me, you know exactly what God is like." That's special revelation, very special. The scriptures, the word of God, Jesus Christ himself. And that is why Paul said, "Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God." The Greek word ikon, exact representation. So if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. You want to know how God feels about sin, read the words of Jesus. You want to see what God feels about adultery or divorce or cheating or stealing or love or peace, look at what Jesus said and did. He is the exact representation.
Third, is through feats of history. And by the way in the next few weeks we're going to look more at scripture and some of these things as we uncover the foundations of our faith. But a third form of special revelation are the miraculous things God did throughout history: the feats of history. A burning bush, that's special revelation. The contest on Mt. Carmel that Elijah had with the prophets of Baal, special revelation. David and Goliath. After all, didn't David come to that giant and say, "You come to me with a spear and a sword and a shield, I come to you in the name of the living God whom you have defied." And there was a special revelation that day to the Philistines as that giant fell backwards and his head was cut off. And all the Philistines fled and understood, "There's a God in Israel. Pharoah found out there was a God very specially. And wasn't he the one who asked, "Who is the Lord that I should obey him and let the children of Israel go?" Oh, you want to know? How would ten plagues do? Will that get the message across, Pharoah? It did. He found out very specially who God was.
So, we have general revelation. We have special revelation. General revelation being Creation, conscience, cause and effect, experience. Special revelation being the Bible, the scripture, Jesus Christ, feats of history. There's a third and this is where we bring it to a close. It's the revelation of God practically. Practically. Let's come out of the universe for a moment, and get back down to Earth. Let's leave theology and philosophy for a moment and get down to where we live: Practicality. If God exists what are you doing about him? If there is a God, how are you responding to him? What will your response be? Now if Freud and Foyerbach and Marx and these guys are correct and we're alone in the universe then we have to say, "What's the point?" and get hopeless. But if they're wrong and the Bible is right, and if what are consciences and cause and effect and Creation tell us about God, we better do something. We better respond to this revelation. After all, doesn't the Bible say, "It is appointed unto man to die once and after this the judgment." So if there's a God and if one day I'm going to face that God, what am I going to do about that? That becomes the pre-eminent question on a personal level.
George Bernard Shaw crystallized it beautifully when he said, "The statistics on death are quite impressive. For every one out of one person dies. But after this the judgment." So, the first step is to believe in God's existence based upon general and special revelation to make it a personal revelation. That's the meaning of the text we started with back in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 6, "Without faith it's impossible to please him for he who comes to God must believe that he is (or he exists, that he really is there) and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him."
So take the step, the step of responding to God's revelation. Not just saying, "Well I'd like to discuss this more philosophically." That's easy to do, you can put god at a distance. "I just want to wrestle with this on a theological, philosophical level, arm's length." You don't graduate from Bible study until you meet the author. You don't graduate from science until you meet the Creator. And the proper response to general and special revelation isn't "to become a theologian and an observer" but a worshipper, one who submits to the living God. God's revelation must be experienced personally.'
I want to close with this, Psalm 38, "Oh taste and see that the Lord is good." Think about that as you close the book: "Taste and see that the Lord is good."
There was an antagonist who stood in front of a group at a university, gee isn't that odd? And he was saying, "God doesn't exist," going through all of his little arguments, denouncing Christianity and he challenged the audience. He said, "If anyone can prove that I'm wrong, I want him to come to this platform." He stood there proudly, it was an embarrassed silence. "Come one, can't anybody prove I'm wrong?" Just then an elderly gentleman stood up and walked forward, everybody knew who he was, he was a venerable man in the local church but he used to be a town drunk. And he came up well-dressed and he stood at the platform,, at the base. And the speaker said, "Well what's your proof?" The man didn't say a word. He took out an orange and he started peeling it slowly, not saying anything. The speaker got irritated. "What proof do you have that I am wrong?" And the man said as he peeled the orange and he put a segment in his mouth, "How did this orange just taste?" "Well how would I know? I didn't eat it." "Ah, exactly my point," he said, "that's what I found out about Jesus Christ, I have tasted what he has offered me and I have found by experience that what he has to offer is very very good." "There is no God." Well have you tried him? "I don't believe in Jesus." Well, have you ever investigated him? And then once investigating him and seeing his revelation inviting him in to see if he'll change your life? It's one thing to come up with all of your arguments and put God at an arm's length. That's the easiest crutch in the world. But once you, if you are an honest agnostic and I find there are very few who will look at the compelling evidence when it's there, to take that step of "I believe that he is and I will seek him." Because if you do he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
Heavenly Father, you've been gracious to reveal yourself to us in so many different ways. Just the world that you have made is not by coincidence, it's by design, it's cause and effect. The witness in our conscience. The experience that Christians have had through history that are so close to their brothers and sisters' experiences. Added to that, the special revelation of Jesus himself, of the word of God, fulfilled prophecy therein and so many other things. But Lord that final step of waying, "Hmm you revealed yourself in the skies and in the scriptures. Lord, would you reveal yourself in my life now? That's the step, practical revelation. Lord, you've done that for so many of us. We rejoice because you're still revealing yourself to us, it's quite exciting. But there still might be some who are wandering and searching. "Is there anybody up there?" Lord, I pray that you would reveal yourself to them.
Taste and see that the Lord is good, experience him. A subjective experience to be sure but it's tied to an objective irrefutable reality: taste and see that the Lord is good, that he will change your life.