Transcript Based on the book by Leroy Brownlow Isaiah 1:18 “Let us reason together” Acts 17:2; 18:4,19; 24:25

Based on the book by Leroy Brownlow
Isaiah 1:18 “Let us reason together”
Acts 17:2; 18:4,19; 24:25
• We live in a time that is skeptical of the Bible and of the very
existence of God.
• Once, we could just refer to the Bible. Now we have to go even
further, to prove the Bible is the Word of God, and in the very
existence of God.
• We must be armed with the knowledge to show God exists.
• We must be armed with the knowledge to show that the Bible is
God’s Truth, His Word, which can be backed by history.
• We must engage our “gentile” world like Paul did in Acts 17:16-22
• We must be prepared to give an answer to our faith-1 Peter 3:15
• We must show that the Bible produces faith through facts-Hebrews
11:1
• This lesson is designed to arm us with the knowledge of God’s
existence. Future lessons will help to arm us to defend the Bible as
God’s Truth.
• For further research, I recommend getting “God, the Bible and
Common Sense – An Appeal to Reason”, which this lesson uses
many of the common sense arguments to prove the case for God.
 Basic breakdown of book:
 Common sense requires God
 The church makes sense
 The common sense biblical
 Gods’ plan of salvation is




account of creation
That God created man
makes sense
Christ’s coming to earth
makes sense
Common sense demands the
Bible
Common sense requires
right division of the Bible





sensible
The common sense of
Christian growth
Worship is sensible
Common sense at Random in
the scriptures
Gods’ appointment of death
is sensible
The judgment makes sense
When reading this book, you will see how each step builds on the others.
 We are going to take the first section and discuss how it makes
sense to believe God exists, and that all good things come from
him by looking at several things:
 Evidence of him is everywhere in creation, physical laws
 Basic logic that requires he exists simply from a “first cause”
analysis
 Then we’ll take a look at some of the popular arguments against
him, and how to de-bunk them with scripture and common
sense.
 Hebrews 3:4 says: For every house is built by some man; but he
that built all things is God.
 No house ever built itself. It makes sense that there is a builder
for every house & every thing we can observe.
 This same thought process extends to all of creation. All created
things imply there is a creator. All effects must first have a cause.
That is to say, everything that occurs is driven by something that
came before it. God tells us this through His Word: Ps 102:25, Is
40:21-22 & 44:24, John 1:1-3, Acts 17:24
 Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
 Even atheists (those who believe there is no god) agree that
something cannot come from nothing.
 The bible repeatedly says God created all that we know. Isaiah
42:5, Col. 1:16, Rom. 11:36, Job 38:4-11, 29-30, 31-33, Job 41:11
 There is no explanation of creation apart from God as a first
cause that stands the test of Common Sense.
 Consider this syllogism (major premise, minor premise, conclusion):
Something cannot come from nothing (premise)
But something is or does exist
Therefore, something always was.
 In terms of creation or creating life, that something is either
supernatural or lifeless matter. This is termed “first cause”. It existed
before life as we know it. The atheists and scientists who attempt to
prove creation apart from a first cause must assume lifeless matter.
 Despite many failures, Scientists are confident that something will
happen, and MUST happen because believing in God creating life is
“unacceptable.”
 It makes more sense to believe there is a God as the first cause for
creation rather than lifeless matter. For all of the experiments and
research that has been performed in this area, there are no
documented cases in which life has sprung from lifeless matter.
–None. –Ever. Col. 1:16-17 ..for by him all things were created.
 The atheist will push back the first cause from a primordial soup,
to clouds around a bunched up ball of gases to the big bang to a
super-compressed / extremely high density ball of lifeless
matter. At some point they must stop and admit they do not
know where this came from. This is the point of first cause that
cannot be explained apart from God.
 What takes more faith? To believe what is written in scripture
(always constant, always consistent, never changing), or to
believe the amazing and at times absurd accounts presented to
us by supposedly intelligent scientists. Note the scientific
explanations have changed thru the years regarding where the
first cause actually is, from the Steady State Theory to the Big
Bang Theory. They don’t really know…
 We must ask ourselves, is it easier to believe the complex and
changing theories presented by scientists, or believe Genesis 1:1?
Common sense says that when investigating a cause for an
unknown action, the theory that is the simplest is usually the
correct one. This is also a well known scientific principle. Why
would we not believe what God says?
 Consider this, if dead, lifeless matter somehow produced life;
how did it get moving? What was the catalyst that spurred it to
action? There would have been nothing to make it get started.
Again, we are forced to admit something else was there. Matter
has never moved of its own accord. Newton observed this in his
first law of motion.
 “A body in motion remains in motion unless it is acted on by an
external force. If the body is at rest it remains at rest unless acted
upon by an external force.”
 Note, we are back to having to explain where first cause is…
 The book “Evolution and Animal Life” by Jordan and Kellogg,
page 41 states “All life comes from life. The biologist cannot
admit spontaneous generation in the face of the scientific
evidence he has.” Lyman Kellog was a noted entomologist and
biologist and wrote this in 1907 in his work to defend some of the
weak points of Darwin’s theory of evolution. ---Sort of ironic that
we use it today to help make the case for the existence of God.
The writer is quoting the scientific Law of Biogenesis, which has
been proven over and over again.
 There is no scientific way to account for life without a pre-
existing or beginning life.
 Psalms 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament
(expanse) shows his handiwork. Rom. 1:20 For since the creation of the
world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the
things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that
they are without excuse.
 Consider the stars. With the aid of a high powered telescope there are
roughly 100,000,000 (one hundred million) stars visible on a clear
night. The Hubble telescope has revealed billions upon billions more
within over 100 billion galaxies. Did this all spring from a supercompressed ball of very high density matter that just exploded?
 Does this even make sense to anyone? What if I told you that the
Brenham phone book being published was the result of an explosion in
a newspaper and ink factories?
 Doesn’t it make more sense to say that God created this just as David
stated in Psalms 19 or that Paul did in Romans 1? Doesn’t it show the
power of God to have created all this?
 Consider the grouping of the stars. Job 38:31-33. They are not
just randomly scattered about. They hang in an ordered set of
groups called galaxies, clusters and constellations. Was this just
an accident? Did it just happen? The odds of this actually
occurring by chance are astounding.
 Take the alphabet. A-Z, 26 letters all in a particular order. If I
took 26 little plastic letters –all the letters of the alphabet and
threw them up in the air, what are the odds that they would land
on the ground in the order we know them in (a,b,c,d,e,f,g….z)?
 This could occur once for every 500… million… million… million
times I threw them in the air.
 For every 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 throws it would happen
only once (1). The odds are then 1 in 4E26 (400 million…
million… million… million). But at this point, who cares. The
point is it is a really big number and it doesn’t matter anymore.
The number is an impossibility as defined by the Law of
Probability.
 Now apply this logic to the ordered groupings of the one
hundred million stars that we can see and more, and you begin
to see an impossible picture. This was no accident. “…he that
built all things is God.” It makes sense to believe that God hung
them there. It is simply easier to digest.
 Let’s look at the law of gravity. Gravitation exits. We have lived
with it all our lives. Not one scientist past or present can explain
why it exits.
 If this is a constant known law throughout the entire universe,
why can no one explain where it comes from, why it behaves the
way that it does, what causes it?
 We can describe how it works by observation (32 feet / second /
second, moon’s gravity is 1/6th that of earth’s and so on), but no
one can explain why it is there. Does it make sense that some
being / creator put it there because it makes the rest of his
design work better?
 Orbital mechanics are based on this. The earth orbits the sun. The
moon orbits the earth, etc. This law is what made the Apollo moon
shots possible, and what keeps the International Space Station from
wandering off or crashing down. We use it all the time, but we cannot
explain what causes it or why it exists.
 The scriptures attribute this to God: II Pet 3:7 But the heavens and the
earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store. There simply
is no other explanation of why gravity exists.
 There are MANY more things we can use to explain that God must
exist, including other Laws of Physics, the fine tuning of the forces of
Nature, and very existence of life itself. What has been discussed
should be enough.
 Now let’s look at some common arguments for the case that God
is not real.
 If God is real and religion came from him, why are there so many
different religions?
 Eccl 7:29 “God hath made man upright; but they have sought out
many inventions”.
 Consider; man is a free moral entity. He can make a choice. Gen.
3:6-7 In religion, that choice has been to consistently corrupt
what was made perfect on the first Pentecost after the crucifixion
of Christ.
 From then on, the religions have been splitting, and multiplying
because of man’s choices.
 This does not come from God, but from man.
 There are about 21 major world religions today. About 1
billion people do not profess belief in any religion.
1. Christianity 2.1 billion
2. Islam 1.3 billion
3. Secular/Irreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism 900 million
5. Chinese traditional religion 394 million
6. Buddhism 376 million (see also buddhism by country)
7. Primal indigenous 300 million
8. African traditional and diasporic 100 million
9. Sikhism 23 million
10. Juche 19 million
 11. Spiritism 15 million
12. Judaism 14 million
13. Bahá'í Faith 7 million
14. Jainism 4.2 million
15. Shinto 4 million
16. Cao Dai 4 million
17. Zoroastrianism 2.6 million
18. Tenrikyo 2 million
19. Neopaganism 1 million
20. Unitarian Universalism 800,000
21. Rastafari movement 600,000
 Source(s):
 wikipedia
 Just as an aside, let’s do some numbers:
say there’s around 4
million people in Houston.
 There are about 250 Christians at the Fry Road Church in Katy.
Let’s be generous and say there are 15 sound churches in the
Houston and surrounding area for a total of 3750 people. Let’s
round the number to make the math easy and let’s use 4000
Christians in a city of 4 million.
 1/10th of 1 percent of the population of Houston is Christian…
 That’s a very small percentage. Matt. 7: 21-24 is demonstrated
here.
 I don’t believe in a God I cannot see.
 This is inconsistent from the outset.
 Do you see pain? Love? Hate?
 We can certainly see the results and effects of them, but we
cannot actually see these things.
 Do we not believe in these? The atheist would be forced to say
he does not based on this logic. How about an energized
electrical wire?
 Do we believe in electricity? We can’t see it, but the effects are
amazing if we touch a hot wire.
 How about the wind? Can we see it? No, but we can see the
effects the wind causes.
 I won’t believe in a God whose existence cannot be proven by
science.
 Based on the previous examples, we need God to prove the
validity of science, not the other way around, but let’s humor this
position for a bit.
 The scientific method relies on proposing a premise, forming a
theory and then gathering evidence to prove that theory based
on OBSERVATIONS.
 Premise: we and everything around us exist. (this is a little silly,
but it serves the point here)
 Theory: all things that exist were created by God.
 Observations: stars, gravity, trees, sky, earth, living creatures,
life itself, a baby being born.
 Do all of the observations fit the theory proposed? Are there any
that do not? Can we come up with anything that was not created
by God? --Even one will disprove our theory. Col. 1:16 says no.
 Consider another competing theory: All things that exist were
random and brought into being by some non-living thing.
 Do observations support this theory? I think we have covered
this pretty thoroughly. Common Sense in action here…
 Another valid point is that NO ONE can be proven to be who
they say they are using just Science, not even the atheist. The
Historic/Evidence Method used by historians, lawyers, and
archeologists can prove the existence of a historic figure.
Abraham Lincoln’s body can only be described by science alone
as a human body. To figure out the body is Abraham Lincoln, one
needs the Historic Method. The Biblical record of witnesses
prove the existence of God.
 If there is a God, why does he permit war and natural disasters?
 He does not permit them, but rather they are a result of man’s
actions and choices.
 Recall what he said about creation after each aspect was brought
into being… God said it was good. Gen. 1:31
 It went down hill after man began making choices to disobey
God’s law. War’s and natural disasters are not caused by God,
and to say that they are is inconsistent with the nature of God.
He only wants what is best for his people. II Pet. 3: 9, the whole
chapter of Luke 15. They are a direct result of man’s disregard of
God’s law beginning with Adam and Eve in the garden so long
ago.
 God uses these events man brought about to teach us valuable
lessons.
 Conclusion: why it makes sense to believe there is a God.
 1. Facts are facts. Anyone can doubt them, but that doesn’t make
them untrue.
 Just like telling a lie over and over again doesn’t make it the truth,
and arguing louder doesn’t make your point any clearer.
 What we do with the facts determines the conclusions we make.
If we believe them and use common sense, we can only come to
the conclusion that God exists. Consider the parable of the
sower (Matt. 13: 3-9) Same seed, the Word, 4 different results.
 No other conclusion makes sense.
 2. The underlying reason for atheism (a belief that there is
no God) is not a lack of evidence (for it is all around), but
rather a self centered desire for pre-eminence.
 This position (atheism) is not supported by a common
sense approach to facts that are obviously clear.
 3. It makes more sense to believe the historical account of
creation than to put your trust in a series of disjointed,
contradictory, implausible theories for our existence apart
from God. In fact it takes less faith to believe God exists
than to believe he does not. Even scientists declare their
faith in something-
“We do not know how exactly it happened. Yes, at some point one must
have faith.”-Professor Holman
 Common sense in action confirms God’s existence.
 We can see how common sense proves that God is, and
is a rewarder of those that seek Him-Hebrews 11:6
 By what process do we seek Him? The Lord Jesus tells
us.
 1. Hear-Mt 13:23
2. Believe-Mk 1:15
3. Repent-Lk 13:3
4. Confess-Mt. 10:32
5. Be Baptized-Mk 16:16
Once we enter His service, The scriptures tell us what to do
once we slip from the path Christ has set for us:
Repent & Pray Acts 8:22, II Cor 7:10, Js. 5:15,16