Sermon Tone Analysis

! Does God exist?

Does God exist?

This is at least the fifth time that I’ve taught this lesson on the infallibility of the word and every time I prepared I always thought I was missing something by not addressing this question: Does God Exist?

The assumption I make is that everyone believes there is a God and the next step is to answer how does God reveal Himself?

Today, I want to do things a little different and equip you with a few arguments to confirm God’s existence.

I am not doing this to prove to you that He exist, but more so that you will have some ammunition in your witnessing arsenal.

In other words, this teaching isn’t on His existence but I believe that this does go hand in hand with the rest of what I want to share with you today.

So, I will hit some highlights on a few arguments, and I will leave it up to you to do further reading and prayer to make these a part of your tool bag.

! Ontological Argument

This argument got its start during the 17th century by a fellow named Rene Descartes.

He is considered to be the Father of Modern philosophy.

His argument goes something like this.

I am an imperfect being, but within me I have an idea of a perfect being.

How can I an imperfect being have a notion of perfection if there isn’t a perfect being giving me the notion of perfection?

–Today, this argument doesn’t hold much sway, but nonetheless it does get us thinking beyond ourselves.

*Anthropological Argument* (or also called the moral argument)

This argument poses the question of right and wrong.

How does man have a sense of what is morally right or desirable?

Where does man get this sense of good and evil?

–This is a little better than the Ontological because it does get us evaluating moral absolutes and their origin.

! Philosophical Argument

The philosophical argument begins to address a question every body asks at some point.

Why am I here?

For what purpose was I born?

And secondly, the world, the world seems to have a purpose who or what gave the world purpose?

There is nothing here by random chance.

Everything from the Rain Cycle to the Circle of Life to Atomic Theory seems to have a purpose.

– This is getting a little closer to home with most people, but is still subjective.

! Cause and Effect

This argument is probably my favorite because it is least subjective than the other three we mentioned.

Cause and Effect simply reminds us that no matter where we look there is a law of nature called cause and effect.

You do X and you can expect Y. Scientist call this “Causality”.

You may be familiar with Newton’s 3 laws of Motion.

This is the foundation for the Cause and Effect argument for God’s existence.

It goes like this.

If the world we live in today is an effect of a cause what was the cause… and you take it back to the very first cause.

Some may say the first cause was “Big Bang” but since we are using scientific language lets stay scientific.

The law of thermodynamics clearly states and has been proven oh since the beginning of time that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

So in the big bang theory, you still haven’t gotten to the original causal point for the energy.

But, when one examines this evidence including the existence of God then this for me explains the reason there are natural laws and the “effect” of creation was in harmony with the laws of causality and thermodynamics.

*He exists, how will he tell us?

Revelation*

Now that we know God exists, we will start calling Him by name, YHWH.

YHWH reveals himself to us in two distinct manners.

The first is called General Revelation and the other Special Revelation.

! General Revelation

Ps 19:1-6 tells us that the heavens declare Yahweh’s glory

Acts 14:17 Paul tells us that the seasons are a witness of YHWH

Rom 1:18-20 “What can be known about God is evident among them”

*20*     From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made.

As a result, people are without excuse.[1]

! Special Revelation

Special Revelation is what the bible reveals about Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This is where we will spend the rest of the class, understanding the medium and mode in which YHWH reveals Himself: specifically the Bible.

In our day, TRUTH has become a relative term.

We hear things like “Truth in Advertising” and immediately one is faced with the realization that sometimes there are “different versions” of the same truth.

Many people in a spiritual sense might even believe that all religions hold the same “Truths” by saying or believing all roads, or paths lead to heaven or God.

Meaning they believe that their judgment in the afterlife is based solely on their core beliefs and how well they lived up to their own standards.

In a book called A Survey of Bible Doctrine, Ryrie states that “Everyone has a basis of authority which becomes a base of operations for his thinking or doing” Basically, what you hold as your core belief will become your standard of truth and everything about you is based on that standard or as he called it “*basis of authority*”.

Every man, woman and child is a theologian.

Some of us are more trained or well versed than others, but we all have a core belief about God.

In Yahweh’s eyes, truth is not relative, nor is it subjective.

Yeshua told his disciples that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life and no man can see the Father except by Him.

This one statement declares ONE WAY, ONE TRUTH and ONE LIFE.

Truth defined in Greek means “Unveiled Reality” those things that are in accord with what really happens, facts that correspond to reality whether historical or eternal.

Matt 16:17 – Yeshua revealed by Father

Luke 2:26 – Yeshua revealed by Holy Spirit

1 John 1:2, 3:5, 3:8, 4:9 – Yeshua revealed to disciples

 

There is only ONE Reality and it’s not from our perception by Yahweh’s!

!

How did Yahweh make His Revelation?

How can we know God- Yahweh unless He reveals Himself to us? Lets look at 1 John 1:1-4.

This passage tells us that Yeshua Ho Mashiach (Hebrew transliteration for Jesus the Messiah) existed from the beginning yet was experienced by the disciples’ senses.

He was real.

Secondly, that the Word of Life was revealed by many and testified by others.

Thirdly (the Key) Father, Yahweh unveiled the reality of the Word of Life who is His Son Yeshua.

And finally, John and others write and tell others about this revelation or unveiling.

Now notice the language.

Yeshua is called the Word of Life.

Where are words kept as a matter of record?

In writings, correct?

And we just said in verse 4 that John and others wrote about Yahweh’s revelation.

So lets talk about those writings as we call them the Bible.

! Divine Authorship?

First of all, the Bible isn’t the only book to claim Divine Authorship or to claim to be a revelation of God.

But let’s understand that any book that claims these things need to be tested.

I am going to assume that a perfect being namely God would reveal Himself that there would be some method for us who aren’t perfect to know and distinguish His TRUTH revelation from the counterfeits.

There should be some obvious tests for us to determine a book of this uniqueness, which has Divine Authorship and Divine Revelation.

I like to call this uniqueness God’s Fingerprint.

I wont argue that there are nuggets of truth in other religious documents such as the Koran or the Vedas or the Illiad and Odyssey.

But the reality is that the truths in these are tangled with an abundance of error and inaccuracies.

I know what you’re thinking; critics claim the bible has its share of error and inaccuracies!

And if you give me time I will cover these later and show you its one thing to make a claim of error and inaccuracies and yet another to prove it.

Lets examine two books along with the Bible that also claim Divine Authorship: The Koran and the Book of Mormon.

These two books are reported penned by a single individual.

Muhammad is credited with the Koran and Joseph Smith for the Book of Mormon.

Both The Koran and The Book of Mormon are rife with historical inconsistencies and inaccuracies.

The Koran, which claims to be dictated from co-eternal being changes view points from heavenly to earthly.

An individual named Zaid Ibn Thabit under the guidance of Muhommed’s father-in-law compiled the Koran.

Later in 650 AD a group of Arabs compiled a “unified” version of the Koran and destroyed all variant copies.

Take note that the winds of time didn’t engulf the variant copies, but were initially annihilated.