"The Pitiful Fool"

“The Pitiful Fool”

September 1, 2013

Psalm 19:1-4

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”

Romans 1:18-22

“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. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God 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.”

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine who receives the sermons I send out asked me if I could send him one of my sermons for a friend of his who is a “true non-believer.” I sent him a sermon and a Bible Study, but I wasn’t really happy with what I sent. His friend is a very intelligent, scientific kind of guy.

As I thought about Chris and his friend, some thoughts came to mind. I want to share them with you today. My hope is that they will encourage and build your faith and also that this information may be helpful for you to use with your friends. Of course, I want it to bring glory to our great God and Creator, too.

In our Scripture the Word boldly declares, “The heavens declare the glory of God!” And they DO! A few hundred years ago some of the greatest scientific minds in the world at that time set out to count the stars. Man has probably always been doing that. Laying on a grassy hillside or up on a mountain top, gazing up at the milky way and all the galaxies, some ambition shepherd or hunter probably did his best to count them. Well, our early scientists did their best. They came up with a couple of thousand. A hundred years later some other brainiacs tried again. They doubled that count. Now with our sophisticated instruments that count has gone from thousands to sextillions. A sextillion is a one followed by 21 zeros. The internet says there are 300 sextillion stars. To gaze up at the stars is overwhelming to us. And the more we learn about the stars the more evidence we find of God.

I remember in college I came across the “cosmological evidence of God.” I loved it. Simply put it says that the universe is made up of matter and motion. Matter is in a state of entropy. It is always in a state of falling apart. (Second law of thermodynamics). Matter cannot be created from nothing because it is a proven law that matter is in a state of degeneration. If you throw out a box of puzzle pieces on a boat speeding across the lake – will it tend to come together or continue to fall apart. We all know it will just be a big mess.

It also says that motion always has to have a starter. An explosion to propel the bullet; a muscle to move the arm. The universe in motion had to have had Someone to set it in motion.

Of course I am simplifying things quite a bit. But you get the picture. The heavens declare the glory of God. Not only that, our Scripture in Romans tells us that God made Himself plain to see in the creation. He isn’t hiding from us. He has made Himself obvious. His divine nature, even His divine attributes are clearly seen – if you want to see them. But there’s the rub. Some don’t want to see. Granted, many people are simply ignorant of God. I know I was before I came to Christ. I just didn’t think about Him. He didn’t cross my mind. I was too busy doing my own thing and going my own way.

Some people who do not see God simply are not looking. They are ignorant. If you show them the plain facts; if you show them the evidence; if you reveal truth to them – they will accept and believe in God. They are just ignorant and if you give them some knowledge they will be able to see and believe. We all have an intuition – an inbred knowledge of God we are born with. Only about ten percent of people say they are atheist. Most people believe.