How Do We Know There Is a God?

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See, hang with me here. I know I’m kind of heavy on data, but listen, because we’re a church called to change the world. Remember Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church, the Gates of Hell will not prevail against it.” See, come on church, we are to transform culture we’re to be salt and light we’re to get into the lives of people and do that messy time consuming, often inconvenient work of building relationships, and loving people, and reaching out to those that are farthest away from God. I mean, we’re called to go into this world and be Jesus to tons of people. But we’re not really getting that done nowadays, why is that? Well, let me say this, in Islam, there’s a concept called the Shahada. Anybody ever heard of that? Shahada. It’s a statement of some words, who knows what the Shahada is? Very famous statement that all Muslims have to repeat. And in many Arab country, they will hold us over to your throat if you don’t repeat it. Yes, sir.

Right. Very good, sir. There’s no God, but Allah Muhammad is his prophet. That is the Shahada. Now, to recite those mere words means to submit. I debated a Muslim Imam after 9/11, I was on Salem Radio and we were talking about belief and I asked on live radio, we were on Salem Radio to recite the Shahada. I said, “Do you have to mean it?” And I said, “Do you have to be sincere?” and he thought for a minute, we were in the middle of an on air radio debate. And he said, “No, because by having recited it, you have submitted to the truth of Islam.” I was like, “Oh, so I just became a Muslim just by reciting those words”. And I said, “For the record listeners, I did not become a Muslim.” So by their definition, you by reciting the Shahada, you just became a Muslim.

Don’t do that, by the way. At any rate. All right, listen, to say that you can recite words and you don’t even have to mean it. We have a lot of people that I’ll meet folks on a plane and they’ll say, “Oh Alex McFarland, I saw your book or I saw you on television.” I’m like, okay, “Are you a Christian?” “Oh yeah.” “You know it.” “Where do you go to church?” “Well, I don’t know. We don’t go to church.” “How’s your family?” “Well, to be honest, I’m on my third marriage.” “Are your kids walking with the Lord?” “Well, no, my son’s an agnostic. My daughter, she’s living with a guy.” I’ve heard that a thousand times. Here’s the thing I’ll say, “Well, so wait a minute. You’re not in church. You’re not in the word. You’re not in prayer. You’re not bearing fruit. Your family’s a disaster.”

“You really don’t bear any of the marks of a disciple. How do you know you’re a Christian?” “Well, I was at summer camp about 25 years ago and I went forward and I recited the sinner’s prayer.” Now, now just don’t leave me, hang on. Romans 10:13 says “Whoever calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved.” John 6:37 says “The one who comes to me, I will not reject.” I believe that you turn to Christ and he forgives you. You pray, “Lord, save me.” Look, there’s Christian birth, that’s a one time event. There’s Christian growth. That’s a lifelong adventure. But I think in the American church, we’ve almost got our evangelical Shahada. And I want to tell you Christianity, that once was a call to follow Jesus and to lay down your life and to die, and to become a disciple, and to give God your heart, to give God your time, to give God your treasure and your resources, to give God your brain, and to attend to the life of the mind, and to imbibe God’s truth and be continually transformed.

Listen, in so much of American life, rather than making disciples, we’ve merely had converts that recited a paragraph of words. And we go to an altar, “Jesus saved me”, but we barely even think about what we’re praying and we don’t really mean it. And folks, we’re called not just to be converts who recited some sentences, but disciples who every day, we wake up and we say, “Private McFarland reporting for duty, Lord.” Now you don’t say that. You don’t say that, because that would be weird if your name is not McFarland, but we need to be disciples. Francis Schaeffer said that the world is dying because Christians are living, we need to die. Paul said, “I die daily, disciples are to do that.” Now, how do we know there’s a God? That’s one of the common objections generally. And specifically Psalm 19 says that the heavens and earth bear witness to the glory of God, heavens and earth in a general sense, creation and conscience show us that there’s a God in a special vivid graphic sense.

God has also revealed himself scripture and savior. I would say my dear friends, brothers and sisters, that these four lines of evidence are best understood in terms of there being a God creation, conscience, scripture savior, it’s just intuitive that there’s got to be a creator, an all powerful being. It was my privilege in 2001 to take my first trip to Africa and we flew into Zambia, Lusaka, the capital. Drove a hundred miles into the Bush country for 21 days, we’re out there in Africa. And it was like mud huts, grassroots, classic. And it was a blessing. And we saw many, many people accept Christ. And we had Bible training for a lot of African and Zambian Christian leaders. So we’re in this village checking out and I hear this clang, clang, clang. Now I’m talking to a group of Zambian soccer players in a field.

And it was amazing. We took a high school soccer coach and part of a soccer team, American kids that had played soccer for much of their life, and they played soccer with the Zambian young people. And we got to share the gospel. It was really wonderful. But so this man comes up and he’s got a cow on a rope and the bell around the cow’s neck got my attention. And I’m thinking, “Wow, this guy’s like taking a cow on a leash walking his cow.” Anyway, so through the interpreter, he’s saying that he walked over a day. He heard there were missionaries from America and he wanted to meet them. And he had to bring his cow. Because if he had left it back in the village, it might have gotten stolen. Anyway, he’s gesturing to the sky. I said, “What did he say?”

My interpreter, a wonderful guy named Alba Timba, he, listen. He says, he knows there’s a God, because all of this had to come from somewhere. He says he doesn’t know where to take it from there. African man says, “I know there’s a God. All of this had to come from somewhere, but I don’t know where to take it from there.” Somebody translate that for me, what just was communicated? What’s that?

Psalms 19:1.

Psalms 19:1, which says…

Beautiful brother, what’s your name?

Scott.

Scott’s absolutely right. Psalm 19, heavens declared the glory of God. The heavens bear witness cry out proclaim, it’s like a billboard. There was some creator, creation had to have a creator. And I was in Africa and when I’ve been at universities and I would quote Psalm 19 or I would talk about natural law, they would say, “Well, that’s just very theoretical.” No, I saw it as in Zambia, the guy goes, “There has to be a God. All of this had to come from somewhere.” And I nearly got a lump in my throat and got emotional. I mean he said, but he doesn’t know where to take it from there.

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