Introduction:
A. Don’t you just love the innocence of children?
1. Art Linkletter had a popular TV show for more than 20 years. One favorite feature of his show was a segment called “Kids Say the Darndest Things” in which he interviewed children.
2. Children often say the darndest things – sometimes they are just funny and at other times they are very insightful.
B. Here’s a few interesting things that kids have said about God.
1. Mary Farwell of Green Castle Missouri was listening one day to her 5 year old son, Matthew, as he played with his Speak and Spell™ computer.
a. Little Matthew was concentrating intensely, typing in words for the computer to say back to him.
b. Matthew typed in the word “God.”
c. To his surprise, the computer said, “Word not found.”
d. He tried again with the same reply.
e. Staring at the computer in disgust he declared: “Jesus is not going to like this!” (No, Jesus won’t be happy about that!)
2. One Sunday morning, while sitting next to her first grade daughter in church, Susan Wright noticed the little one looking at the open Bible in her lap.
a. In a low whisper, the little girl asked her mom, “Did God really write that?”
b. Susan quietly whispered back, “Yes He did.”
c. Looking down at her mother’s Bible again, the little girl said in amazement, “Wow! He really has neat handwriting!” (And that’s not even God’s best attribute!)
3. One day the young son of some atheists went to his parents and asked, “Do you think God knows that we don’t believe in Him?” (Yes, God certainly knows!)
C. Today I would like us to spend a little time talking about believing in God.
1. The critical question that I want to try to answer is this: Can reasonable people believe the things that are crucial to the Christian faith?
D. I want us to begin by looking at something that happened to a man named Thomas.
1. Thomas was one of the 12 apostles who was hand-picked to follow Jesus during His three year ministry.
2. Judas is the only other apostle who has been subjected to more criticism and unkind judgments than Thomas – and for obvious reasons, right?.
3. Though Thomas’ nickname was “Didymus,” which means “the twin,” many people know him as “Doubting Thomas.”
4. That name has stuck with him over the years because of his reaction to the first reports brought to him about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
5. Thomas insisted that he would have to have hard proof before he would believe in Jesus’ resurrection.
6. Thomas said to the other apostles, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
7. Because of that statement, Thomas has been criticized across the centuries and labeled “Doubting Thomas.”
E. I want to speak up on Thomas’ behalf, because I believe that in Thomas’ demand for proof, he is to be admired rather than ridiculed.
1. In fact, Jesus himself said in Matthew 24:26: “If they say to you, ‘There he is!’, don’t believe it.”
2. Was Jesus offended by Thomas’ reaction? Or was Jesus disappointed in Thomas? Not at all.
3. The Bible tells us: Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (Jn. 20:24-29)
F. Unfortunately far too many people believe too much on the basis of too little.
1. People put their trust in horoscopes, and Tarot cards, and they call 900 numbers to learn their futures.
2. Some have put their trust in the likes of David Koresh, self-proclaimed messiah from Waco, T.X. or Marshall Applewhite, who was the leader of the Heaven’s Gate religious group. He also was a self-proclaimed prophet and messiah, who led 38 people to commit suicide with him so they could hop a ride to paradise on a UFO in 1997.
G. Maybe you feel a little like Thomas – show me the evidence – let me see and touch God and then I’ll believe.
1. You might say, “Until I have that sort of evidence, then I just can’t believe.”
2. Fair enough, let’s talk evidence.
I. The Creation as Evidence
A. Let’s begin by stating that the existence of God is the most basic of all religious considerations.
1. If there is no God, then the Bible is worthless, Jesus Christ was a deceiver, and our soul is not immortal.
2. But if there is a God, our faith is not in vain and there is an eternal purpose for our lives on earth.
B. So can I prove that God exists?
1. Not the same way that I can prove that this Bible weighs 2 pounds, or that my van is blue, because God can’t be seen, heard, or touched with human senses.
2. We can’t see God with a microscope or a telescope.
C. But just because we cannot prove God’s existence with these kinds of examinations, doesn’t mean that there isn’t evidence.
1. I believe that there are proofs of God’s existence that we might call God’s fingerprints.
2. We are all aware that every human being has a unique swirl of lines on the tips of our fingers, and that our fingerprint pattern is not found on any other person on the face of this earth.
3. We leave minute traces of oil in the pattern of these swirls on everything we touch.
4. The crime shows and court shows we watch on TV often use fingerprint evidence to convict a person or solve a crime.
5. And It doesn’t just work on TV shows, it works in real life!
6. These fingerprints of ours are proof of where we have been and what we have touched.
D. I want to suggest that God has left His fingerprints all over this world and this universe.
1. Look at what Paul wrote in Romans 1: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress 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. (Rom. 1:18-20)
2. This passage tells us that God’s existence can be known through His creation and His fingerprints that are all over it.
3. We need to realize that God’s fingerprints on creation are sufficient to prove His existence, but they are not coercive – it does not remove all doubt.
4. Let me give you a couple of arguments from creation that help me believe in the existence of God.
E. The first argument is: The Argument from Existence (sometimes called the cosmological argument).
1. Let’s begin with an analogy: Suppose you were walking in the forest one day when you happen upon a campsite.
2. There is a tent, hot coffee on the fire, and other evidences of human presence.
3. As you look around, you don’t see anyone. You call loudly, but no one responds.
4. It is in the nature of our human thought process to assume that this camping site belongs to someone who has been present before we arrived.
5. I doubt that any of us would say: “Well, fancy this! What a stroke of luck, what a coincidence that I would come upon a site so perfectly suited to my needs.”
6. We would not conclude that the site didn’t belong to someone, nor that it came from nowhere.
7. Here’s another interesting thought: by investigating the camp, looking at clothes drying on a line, looking in the tent at the number of sleeping bags, looking at the footprints in the dirt, we would be able to know something about the number of persons, their genders, age, and even what they have been doing, and where they have gone.
8. We humans have come upon a campsite in the cosmos – the planet earth is here and it’s habitable – and it suits us perfectly.
9. So we begin looking around for clues that might offer us a reasonable account of who made it, why it was made, and what that maker is like.
10. The writer of Hebrews says: “For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.” (Heb. 3:4)
F. A second argument is: The Argument from Design ( sometimes called the teleological argument).
1. Let’s begin with another analogy: Suppose I show you a car – here’s a nice one. Notice that it has four tires, and interior with leather seats, and nice sound system, two doors and windows. Under the hood is a powerful engine and outside is a shiny paint job.
2. You ask me where it came from and I tell you, “People think that General Motors built it, but I have my own explanation. Nobody designed or manufactured this car – it came out of the Onondaga County garbage dump. One night during an electrical storm, some pieces of metal, plastic, rubber and glass were hit by lightening. The parts and pieces were changed and molded together, and when the storm was over, this car had evolved and was just sitting there.”
3. Now if I honestly believed that, you’d probably be calling the men in white coats to take me away and lock me up, right?
4. Yet that’s not a bit more unreasonable than the person who looks around and says that this world just happened to fall into place.
5. The design of an automobile is nothing when compared to the universe!
6. The complexity in design of anything points to the intelligence and power of the designer.
7. The universe is filled with intelligent design. Look at the stars, the earth, nature, and our own bodies.
8. King David of the Old Testament wrote: The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands…There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. (Ps. 19:1,3)
9. Speaking of Jesus, Paul wrote: For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.” (Col. 1:16)
10. The creation itself is powerful evidence that God the creator exists.
II. The Bible as Evidence
A. Let’s go back to the encounter between Thomas and Jesus that we discussed earlier.
1. Do you remember how it ended?
2. Thomas was invited to see and touch Jesus – his doubts were banished and his faith soared.
3. “My Lord and my God!” he exclaimed.
4. Jesus’ response to Thomas’ confession is interesting: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (Jn. 20:29)
5. The apostle John added his own footnote at that point.
6. After affirming that the life of Jesus was filled with other events and signs that were not recorded in this gospel, John wrote: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.” (Jn. 20:31)
7. All people who have lived in the generations after Jesus have had to depend on the Scriptures to lead them to faith. “These are written…that you might believe!”
B. There is no book that has been subjected to the rigorous scrutiny of its friends and, at the same time, to the contemptuous attacks of its enemies, as the Bible.
1. It was once quite fashionable to attack the Bible for its alleged historical blunders and scientific errors.
2. But there has been a radical-about face concerning attacks on the Bible in the last 50 or 60 years.
3. That’s due, in large part, to the evidence that archaeology has been able to uncover in recent years.
4. No single science has done as much as archaeology to confirm the reliability of the Bible.
5. Archaeologists have discovered people, events and whole civilizations which were previously unknown to historians except for references to them made in the Bible.
C. The French non-believer Voltaire once boasted that it had taken twelve men to set up Christianity, but he would show that a single man was enough to overthrow it.
1. He said that in a hundred years the Bible would be a forgotten book.
2. However, 50 years after his death in 1778, the Geneva Bible Society used his own printing press to print stacks and stacks of Bibles.
3. 200 years after his death, his books sold for 11 cents, while the British government paid the Soviet government a half a million dollars for Codex Sinaiticus – an ancient copy of the Bible.
D. Here’s an excerpt from Josh McDowell’s book Evidence That Demands A Verdict: Infidels for eighteen hundred years have been refuting and overthrowing this book, and yet it stands today as solid as a rock. It’s circulation increases, and it is more loved and cherished and read today than ever before. Infidels, with all their assaults, make about as much impression on this book as a man with a tack hammer would on the Pyramids of Egypt. When the French monarch proposed the persecution of the Christians in his dominion, an old statesman and warrior said to him, “Sire, the church of God is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.” So the hammers of infidels have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and the anvil still endures. If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago.
E. The Bible is anything but an archaic millstone around the necks of modern people.
1. It is the rock-solid foundation on which faith is built.
2. It is an absolutely reliable source of information about the most important person and issue in human history – Jesus Christ and the salvation that comes through him alone.
F. The route to faith for all of us who are far removed in time and distance from the things Thomas experienced is necessarily different.
1. Our proofs for Jesus’ resurrection, for example, will obviously not be the same ones Thomas was given.
2. But we need to be reminded that no figure of history – whether Socrates, Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, or Jesus – none of them are available for immediate sensory experiences through sight, sound or touch.
3. All of them have to be authenticated to us indirectly through history, archaeology, and documentation.
4. When held to the strictest standards of historical evidence – standards much higher than the ones applied to the ancient Pharaohs or Alexander the Great or George Washington – we have more confirmed evidence about Jesus’ life history, and resurrection than practically any other event in history.
5. It is on the basis of these many lines of proof – not some blind leap of faith or irrational sentimentality – that I stake my life in the here and now, and my destiny for all eternity.
6. On the basis of that same evidence, I do not hesitate to invite all others to place their faith in God, in the Bible, and in God’s one and only Son, Jesus Christ.
7. So much more could be said at this point about the vast number of copies of the Bible we have, the accuracy of the transmission of the Bible, or of the fulfillment of biblical prophesy as proof of the Bible’s authenticity.
Conclusion:
A. But let me add one final peace of evidence that there is a God, that the Bible is His word, and that salvation is in Jesus Christ his Son – that piece of evidence is the millions of people whose lives have been changed by their faith in Jesus.
B. For example, when the American army stormed across Okinawa in 1945, soldiers found villages of unbelievable poverty, ignorance, and filth.
1. But Shimabuke, a small obscure community, was different.
2. Homes and streets were clean, the villagers poised and cultured, enjoying a high level of health, happiness, intelligence and prosperity.
3. Why was Shimabuke different?
4. Thirty years previously an American Christian missionary on his way to Japan had stopped there. Before he moved on he made two converts and left a Bible.
5. From that day the people of Shimabuke had seen no other missionary, had no other visit with any Christian person or group.
6. But in those 30 years the inhabitants had made the Bible come alive. The two converts had taught the villagers its truth until every one became a Christian.
7. Then came the American army.
8. Clarence Hall, a war correspondent wrote the following: "I strolled through Shimabuke one day with a tough old Army sergeant. As we walked he turned to me and whispered hoarsely. ‘So this is what comes out of only a Bible and a couple of old guys who wanted to live like Jesus!', Then, with a glance at a shell-hole, he murmured, ‘Maybe we're using the wrong kind of weapons.’ ”
9. Time had dimmed the Shimabukans' memory of that missionary; neither Kina nor Nakamura could recall his name.
10. They did remember his parting statement, it was: “Study this Book well. It will give you strong faith in the creator God. And when your faith in God is strong, everything is strong.”
C. I hope and pray that you will believe in God the creator.
1. I hope and pray that you will believe that the Bible is God’s Word.
2. I hope and pray that you will believe that Jesus is the Son of God – the Messiah, our Savior and Lord.
3. And that by believing you may have life in his name.
4. There is enough evidence for reasonable people to believe the things that are crucial to the Christian faith.
5. Remember: when your faith in God is strong, everything is strong!
Resources:
Can We Trust the Bible? Sermon by Randy Croft, SermonCentral.com
Faith That Doesn’t Have to Touch, Sermon by Alan Smith, SermonCentral.com
