Yourselves right now, because we’re not going to stand for it, because this is very, very important. Side comments, that’s expected. But if you’re having a conversation with your neighbors and you’re going to distract them from hearing evidence of God, that is not a good place that you want to be in. So please move yourself now or deal with the consequences of that. Sound good? Same page? Oh, you guys are not—sound good?
Yeah, you guys are on the same page. Okay, I’m very excited to talk to you guys about this. Let me get my stuff organized real quick. But what I would recommend, especially for this, is that you guys are taking notes. If you don’t have a note page to take notes on, can you please raise your hand? And could I get Parker to grab some note pages for you guys? Because we’re not going to be opening up the Bible a whole bunch, and instead what I want you guys to be doing is taking notes on what we’re looking at today. Because, like I said, this is something really important for us to understand, and I’m really excited to get into this with you guys.
Now, as one more little—as I try to sit in this chair—as one more little thing that I want to tell you guys: I brought some of my favorite books on this topic to show you guys. And obviously, these are some pretty big books, and I’m going to try to talk to you guys in 20 minutes what these books talk about in roughly a thousand pages. So we’re going to be going through this quickly. And what I aim to do—what I aim to do with you guys—is give you guys a little overview of this, equip you guys with some questions that you guys can ask when people ask you about your faith, some questions to ask back. That way you’ll be equipped to talk about evidence for God. And this way you’ll have five questions that you can move into your small groups with. And volunteers, I have sheets for you guys so you can ask these questions of your students.
So are you guys ready? You guys got note pages? I’m excited.
Okay, all right guys, well, let’s get into it. We have no time to waste. So we are continuing through our apologetics series, and today we’re talking about evidence for God. And what I want to help you guys do is to ask the right questions. What am I going to help you guys to do? To ask the right questions. Because apologetics, or defending your faith, is not just a one-sided thing. It’s not “give an answer” and then “oh, it’s said and done, the end.” Instead, it’s a conversation. And so I want to equip you guys with some of the right questions that you guys can ask in a conversation about your faith. The rest of the series has been giving you guys answers, and now I want to give you guys some questions. And I’m really excited.
As we’ve been looking at this apologetic series, we have been looking at 1 Peter 3:15, which says:
“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. And do this with gentleness and respect.”
That’s why we want to do this: so that we can gently and with respect for one another give a reason that we believe in God.
And this week we’re going to be talking about the evidence for God. So if you guys are taking notes—which I hope you are—please write down that this topic is going to be “Evidence for God.”
Now, when we’re talking about apologetics, it’s important to note that trust and faith are both a matter of the heart and a matter of the mind. Here, we’re going to be addressing some of the matters of the mind, talking about questions that people have about evidences for God. But also, faith is a matter of the heart.
In fact, when Paul talks about evidences for the faith in Romans chapter 1, he says this:
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth”—which means, get rid of the truth—”by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles.”
What Paul says right here is that God has made himself evident in the world. And then he says that people have rejected God and closed their eyes. And so when we read this and we look at this, we should expect that if we want to know God, we’ll be able to find him. And so I hope that you guys come to this wanting to know God and wanting to find God. And I hope that this answers some of your guys’ questions.
But a big question that we have about what Paul is saying here is—well, he says that God has made himself obvious. Is God obvious?
That’s what we’re going to be taking a look at. We’ll see a few things. Is God obvious? We’re going to talk about the creation and the creator. We’re going to talk about evidence against God. Yeah, you guys heard that—evidence against God. And we’re also going to talk briefly about what is right and what is wrong, and how that comes to play here.
But like what I showed you guys with these books—guys, this is a huge conversation. Apologetics is something that we go back and forth on, something that we have to talk about, because it’s not just a matter of the mind, a matter of asking a question and having that question answered. It’s also a matter of the heart, just like what Paul says.
And so I’m going to be giving you guys a disgustingly oversimplified view of this, all right? And my purpose here—what I’m trying to do—is get you guys to ask questions about this. So if you have questions about this stuff, ask someone.
What are you guys going to do if you have a question?
Ask someone.
Ask someone.
Again, this isn’t just “I’m saying this, you need to believe this.” This is opening up a conversation and giving you guys the tools to ask the right kinds of questions.
So with that, I’m very excited to get into it. Let’s take a look at our first thing: creation and creator.
Now, like what I said, I’m condensing a lot of stuff into not a lot of time. So please lock in and try to follow along.
There is something known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument. And those are really big words, and you don’t need to remember those words. But when I try to break this down, it might be kind of confusing. But check this out:
Up here we see: nothing can’t do anything. If there’s nothing, that nothing can’t do anything, right? Because it’s nothing—it doesn’t exist. If something doesn’t exist, what can it do? A whole bunch of nothing, because it doesn’t exist.
The universe began as nothing. Do you guys know that the universe had a beginning? Do you guys know that? Oh gosh, the universe had a beginning. And because the universe had a beginning, it went from nothing to something. The universe can’t start itself. And so, the Kalam Cosmological Argument says that something outside of the universe had to start the universe.
Well, that’s really weird. If the universe started as nothing and then came to be something, well, it can’t start itself if it doesn’t exist yet. And so, this clever argument says that if the universe started as nothing and then went to something, something outside of the universe had to start it. And that’s a really crazy, crazy thing to say.
On our next slide, we see the actual argument of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which says:
- Everything that begins has a cause outside of itself to make it begin.
- The universe had a beginning.
- Therefore, the universe had to have something outside of itself to cause it to exist.
And we as Christians understand that to be God. And what you get when you look at this argument is something that looks a lot like God.
Our first thing is: Is God obvious? Well, we see that the universe itself has to have something outside of it to start the universe off. So the question is—the first question I want to equip you guys with—is:
What started the universe?
And as a side note, if you’re thinking that it’s the Big Bang, I think you’re confusing what I’m saying. In the Big Bang, the universe still existed in a tiny, tiny little point—like the little point of a pen. So in the Big Bang, all the matter was still there in a very fine point, and then it exploded to what we see now.
But the question is not asking, “Oh, well how did it go from small to big?” What the question is asking is, how did nothing turn into something? Because the Big Bang doesn’t explain how nothing turned into something.
That’s the first question: What started the universe?
Our second question is—or sorry, our second thing is that we’re going to look at some evidence against God. And what this is known as—what I’m going to talk about—is called weak and strong scientism.
And again, lots of you guys don’t need to know what these words mean, but if you want to look into them, these are what the words are: weak and strong scientism.
What weak and strong scientism is, is it says that science is the only legitimate or the only way to find truth. And when I say science, I mean understanding, testing, and recreating predictable events.
Something that is very common in our atheist culture is scientism—saying that science is the only way, or the top way, to find actual truth in the world.
And so, people who believe in scientism will say, “Well, science has disproven God because you can’t prove God using science. You can’t prove God by trying to understand, test, and recreate a predictable event.”
And so they say, “Science has disproven God, and therefore, since science has disproven God, whatever started the universe can’t be God.”
But I’d like to push back against that.
On our next slide we see that science doesn’t rule out God, because science can only understand things that we can reproduce and redo. Science only tells you how something works, not why it began to work in the first place.
For example, when I say that science has disproven God, one of the common things that atheists will say—and when I say that, I’m specifically talking about naturalist humanist atheists—and again, you guys don’t need to know that term—but what they’ll often say is that evolution, or the idea that all animals have come from one, or all life has come from one ancient ancestor, well that rules out the need for God.
Because if all these animals came from the same proto-animal, well there’s no need for God to create all these different things.
And so people will say that science has disproven God and that we no longer have a need for God. But that’s not correct at all.
Evolution, if it were true, only talks about how things could have happened, but not why they happened.
And then lastly, when people who subscribe to scientism say that whatever started the universe can’t be God because science has ruled out God, and science is the way that you find truth, I’d like to push back against that too. Because philosophy instead is the study of the big “why” questions that science can’t answer.
You can’t test the big “why” questions of life, like:
- Why are we here?
- Why is there a universe at all?
And so the question I’d like to propose to you guys is: if somebody writes you a letter, what do you think matters more—the way that they wrote it, or why they wrote it? What do you guys think? The way they wrote it, or why they wrote the letter?
Probably why they wrote the letter.
When you guys—if you guys ever were so kind to write me a letter—I would not be wondering, “Oh my goodness, I wonder what kind of pencil that is. I wonder what exact type of paper that is. What kind of handstrokes did they have to do to make this letter?” No one’s going to be wondering about that, because how this letter came about is not nearly as important as why the person is writing the letter.
When you look at that letter, you want to know what their heart is behind it and why it came about—not just how. And that why is philosophy. It’s the study of the “why” questions in life.
So I would strongly push back against people who say that science has ruled out God, because science doesn’t answer the big “why” questions. Science may explain how things came about, but that doesn’t rule out God. I’d like to look at why someone wrote the letter and what the meaning is from that letter. I don’t care so much about the pencil being used.
How the universe came about is fun to study, but why the universe came about is far more important—and science can’t answer why the universe came about.
Lastly, I’d like to look at right and wrong, or in other words, the argument from morality. Again, if you guys want to look this up, this is known as the argument from morality. And we want to look at: where do rights and wrongs come from?
I want you guys to imagine there’s this car, okay? It’s got maybe 20 puppies in it. Pretty good, right? You like that?
How would you guys feel—do you think it’s right or wrong—if someone steals this car and murders all the puppies in there?
What do you guys think about that?
Now let me ask you another question:
Do you think that really is wrong, or is it just your opinion?
It’s whatever you—you guys think it is truly wrong?
Okay, well, let’s take a look.
Right and wrong seem obvious to us. If someone steals a car full of puppies and murders them all, it’s obviously wrong. But if you’re an atheist and you throw away God, that’s only your opinion. Morality has no basis if you do not have this outside judge to impose that on creation.
Morality has no basis in atheism. It’s only people’s opinions. And so if your opinion is that murdering puppies is wrong, and it’s someone else’s opinion that they really love doing that, then if there’s no outside judge, those two things are totally equally valid—because there’s no one to decide between you.
But instead, if you follow God, right and wrong comes from God. He is the judge, and He says what is right and wrong. He imposes morality on creation.
And so the question is: Are rights and wrongs real, or are they just your opinion? Because you only get true right and wrong in theism, which is the belief that there is a God. In atheism, which is the belief that there is no God, you only have opinions of different people—you don’t actually have a true right and wrong.
So what we just looked at is this:
- The universe needs a creator outside of itself.
- Science, contrary to popular belief, does not disprove God.
- You can’t have morals without God.
And so if you think that you can have morals without God, I would challenge you—good luck living a consistent life as an atheist where all ideas about morality are equal, because there is no God to impose that morality on creation.
I’d like to close this out with something.
How many of you guys are in seventh grade in here? Seventh graders, raise your hand. Okay, perfect. You guys can put that down now.
Thinking back—it’s a little bit foggy—but I’m pretty sure this was for my seventh grade Living Museum project. And what that was, is that I had to study someone in about the second half of the year. Had to go through math and science and history and all that stuff. I had to study someone, find out their life, and become them for this Living Museum.
And the person that I became was this man named Blaise Pascal. This was a really famous mathematician back in the day—really, really smart guy. And he was also a Christian. And so he gave one of the greatest arguments for following God that I have been able to stick to in my life. And it’s this thing right here.
What we have is known as Pascal’s Wager, or in other words:
“What if I’m wrong?”
Pascal’s Wager—or in other words, the question of: “What if I’m wrong?”
If I’m a Christian and I follow God, what happens if I’m wrong?
And if I’m an atheist and I don’t follow God, what happens if I’m wrong?
This is for people who are confused between being Christians and being atheists. If you’re not sure which direction you should be going in—whether you should go all-out for God, or if you’re like, “I’m not so sure, maybe evolution’s true, maybe God’s not real”—if you’re not sure, it makes far, far more sense to commit your life to God, and here’s why:
Because if God isn’t real, and you die, what happens?
Well, if atheism is true and God’s not real, and you die, you just stop thinking, you stop existing. That’s it. That’s all that happens—you stop thinking, you stop existing. Nothing.
So, if I follow God with my whole life and it turns out that this was all a sham, well, I would die just like everyone else, and I’ll never even know.
And if I don’t follow God and He’s not real—great. Well, same thing. I die just like everyone else. It’s just blackness—like we have down here.
If God isn’t real, and I follow Him—it doesn’t matter. I die just like everyone else.
But I want to look at the top here, and this is what Pascal’s Wager is:
If God’s not real, well, our lives don’t matter anyway because we’re going to die and we’re just going to stop thinking, and that’s going to be the end.
But check out that top: If God is real, if this whole Christianity thing is even a possibility, what are we risking?
If it’s even at all possible that there is a God who’s created this universe, it makes far, far more sense to follow Him.
Because if you’re torn between the two, you’re not just torn between two things that are like, “Oh, I don’t know if 2 + 2 is five or four—it doesn’t really matter.” No.
What you hold in your hands—the decision between “I’m not sure if I should follow God or not”—is the decision between heaven and hell forever.
What we have here is that if God is real and I follow Him, that’s eternity for me with God. That is a seriously good consequence to following God.
And you know what? If I follow God and this is all a sham? Oh well. I die just like everyone else. I’ll never even know.
But if we reject God, and when we die we face the judgment seat of God, and we realize—oh—just like what Paul was saying, “Because I wanted to be selfish and go my own way, I’ve pushed away God”—now what do you have to deal with for the rest of time?
Eternity away from God.
And that is a serious, serious consequence.
If God isn’t real, none of us will even know.
But if He is, there are serious, serious eternal consequences at stake here.
So if you’re not sure, it makes far more sense to go all in for God, to go all in for Jesus, because the stakes are so, so serious.
So what I’d like to ask you guys is:
If there is even a chance that God is real, it’s time to take that seriously and follow Him.
Because here’s the question:
What if you’re wrong?
If you’re in here and you’re a Christian, and you’re wrong, you’ll never even know. You’ll close your eyes in death and you’ll just stop existing—same as everyone else.
But if you’re in here and you’re skeptical about God, and you close your eyes having rejected God all your life—like what Paul says here—you will know.
And that is not something that I want to gamble with—my eternity.
We need to be sold out for God, because the consequence is so much greater for us that way.
So those are the questions I want us to reflect on in our smaller groups. We’re going to have one more song of worship, and then these are the five questions I want to equip you guys with as you go out throughout your weeks, throughout your months, and as you talk to people about your faith.
Here are the questions that are incredibly important:
- Where is your heart?
Do you want a relationship with God?
If you knew God was real for sure, would you want a relationship with Him, or do you just not care? - What started the universe?
If something outside of the universe had to start it, what was that thing? - What matters more: how something came about, or why that thing is happening?
What’s going on behind the scenes for it?
Because how it came about is science, but why those things came about—those big why questions in life—are philosophy. And I think that makes much more sense to invest our time in. - What happens if you’re wrong?
If you’re in this room and you’re a Christian and you’re wrong, you’ll never know—just like the rest of the people.
But if you’re in this room, you’re not sure, and you go toward atheism—what if you’re wrong?
That’s a question that we need to sit with, because the answer to that question determines the final one: - What will you see in eternity?
I want to be with Jesus for eternity.
And if there’s a chance of that, I want to follow that.
And I hope you guys want to follow that too.
So I’m going to pray for us. Worship team’s going to come back up here. And guys, we need to take this seriously.
Because Pascal here—he was a very wise man. And if there’s a chance that God is real, we need to spend everything in our power pursuing Him, having relationship with Him.
So let’s do that together. And let’s do that worshiping and thanking Him for the opportunity that He has made in Jesus to do that.
So let’s pray, and then our worship team is going to take it from here.
Jesus, we thank You so much for this time.
I thank You, God, that You have blessed us with this time—just another day that we can come together, talk about You, want to commit our lives to You.
God, please concrete these questions in our heart:
- Where we are
- Who started it
- What matters more
- What happens if we’re wrong
- And what we will see for eternity
Please stir in our hearts to want to see You for eternity.
God, that if there’s even a chance that You’re listening to us, that we would pursue You with all of ourselves, because it makes so much more sense.
God, I thank You for this time. Please help us to be sold out for You.
Help us to answer these questions in our lives and to ask these questions of those around us.
To take this seriously.
God, we thank You so much for this time.
In Jesus’s name we pray,
Amen. Amen.
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