Dr Greg Bahnsen - The Christian Mission: God's Indisputable Existence (Part 1)

Hopefully that's giving you what you need over there. Okay, good. And let's begin this morning with the word of prayer. We do come into your holy presence, our Heavenly Father, acknowledging our unworthiness to stand before you. We would confess with the Psalmist that if you would mark iniquities, none of us could stand. We have in so many ways fallen short of your glory. In so many ways have not loved you with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind. We are not really worthy to be called your people. And yet by your grace, you have been willing to do that. And indeed, while we were yet in sin, to send your own son to die in our place and to give to us who were totally unable to do that which is right and to follow you hearts that are new again by the power of your Holy Spirit. And so we acknowledge this morning that we owe you everything. We owe you our lives. We owe you the joy of our salvation. We do pray that you would help us to please you in all that we do as we worship you today. We pray that you would give us faithfulness to your word and diligence in attending to it and to its duties. And you pray that you would give us a greater desire to testify to your glory, to speak to those who do not know you, do not acknowledge you. We pray that you would help us to be more apt at doing that as a result of our study this morning. Thank you for the opportunity of this study and ask that your blessing would be on us. In Jesus name. Amen. Well, as you've been told in the introductory remarks, I'd like to talk to you about the existence of God this morning. But more particularly, I'd like to talk to you about proving the existence of God. You know, it's one thing for a person to say he or she believes in in God and to try to live a life that demonstrates that. And it's another thing altogether to be able to show to someone else that God truly does exist. It would probably not be worth the Sunday school class to come to you this morning to try to encourage you to believe in God's existence. You wouldn't be here at church if you didn't believe in God's existence. That much can be taken for granted. But the question I have for you is whether you can prove that God exists. Now, if I were to come with my background in philosophy, I have a PhD in philosophy. And so now it's you and me. Let's argue about this and see if you could prove to me that God exists. I don't think many of you would be willing to bite at that. You wouldn't want to take that on, and that's understandable. You don't know me. You might be intimidated by that. What concerns me, however, is that God's people are often intimidated by before their neighbors, before those with whom they work, maybe within their own families, thinking, you know, when you believe in God, it's just a matter of making a commitment with your heart, having a certain feeling that there is a God, and being satisfied with that feeling. And if other people don't share that feeling, there's really nothing you can do about that. That is to say, we tend as Christians, I think, to be intimidated before the world and before the unbelievers about us. And so when I ask you, can you prove God's existence? You may incline to say, no, I don't think I can prove God's existence. That may be for the scholars, that may be for the people who study a lot, those who write books, those who do public debates. But I myself, I don't think I could prove God's existence to someone. And so now I've got the task in less than an hour here to try to convince you that you're not thinking correctly when you think that way, that as a matter of fact, you are able to prove God's existence, that the Bible sets before all of God's people the ability to do that and the encouragement that you should be making the effort to do so. I think that the main reason why people are intimidated and think that they can't prove the existence of God is because they don't understand what proof is all about. They don't understand the nature of man as the Bible portrays it. Nor do they understand how easy it is to give an argument in favor of the existence of God. So if we can go through those three things this morning, maybe I can encourage you in this regard that you might become more apt at defending the Christian faith and being willing to say that the existence of God is not just an emotional thing for you, but it's an intellectual matter as well, that you can show that he exists. First of all, I think we have the wrong idea of what it is to prove something. If I were to ask you if you have proved a certain premise to someone else, you would probably, first of all ask, did the person to whom I am speaking agree with me when we got done talking? That is to say, you would ask yourself, did I persuade this person? Now, if you did persuade this person, you'd Say, yes, I proved my point, and if you didn't persuade that person, you'd say, no, I didn't prove my point. Which is just to say we tend to think of proof and persuasion as being the same thing, and yet they are not the same thing at all. Let's imagine for a minute here that I'm able to persuade somebody to jump off a bridge and I've persuaded them that it isn't going to hurt them at all. They actually believe in their heart of hearts that jumping off this bridge is not going to bring any physical injury to them. And yet anybody who knows anything about the human body and most elementary principles of physics is going to tell you this is going to hurt this person a lot, might even kill them. Now, did I prove my point just because I persuaded this person to jump off the bridge and say, well, of course not. Because people can be persuaded in their heart of hearts that something is true and it's not true at all. And so persuasion is not the same as proof when it comes to believing something that is false. That's for sure. And let's turn the story around. What if someone were to come to you, has an advanced degree in atomic physics and presented some very highfaluting technical discussion and lecture on a subject, and anyone who knows the field realizes this person has really got it wired, he's right in what he is saying and he's proven every one of his points. But because you didn't understand what he was talking about, you're not persuaded at all. You have no idea what to think about this. Now, there you have a case where a person is not persuaded and yet we all know that the proof was there. And so sometimes you can persuade people and not have proof, and sometimes you can fail to persuade people and yet have proof. I'm only giving you these two stories so that you'll understand that there is a clear distinction between persuading an audience or persuading another hearer and proving your point. Now, who does the work of persuasion when it comes to acknowledging the existence of God according to the Bible? Am I able to persuade people to believe in God? No, I'm not at all. But you see those who have hearts that are turned against the Lord, those who want to suppress the truth and unrighteousness, those who are doing everything they can, as it were, to build a roof over their head so that they don't have to receive the revelation of God and they can escape from God, if that were possible. Those who have an axe to grind against God. Those who do not want to believe in God and will do everything they possibly can to avoid it are not going to necessarily be persuaded by anything I say. No matter how intelligent, no matter how cogent or solid my reasoning may be. I am not able to change a person's heart and you're not able to change a person's heart. And so you'll be relieved to know that the Lord doesn't expect you to change people's hearts because it's not within your power anyway. The power of persuasion is not ours. Now, I think you all know what I'm driving at here. The only one that can change a sinner's heart is the Holy Spirit. When God blesses our testimony and the Spirit uses the words that we have spoken to drive them home to the heart of men, and the Spirit gives a new heart that can respond to what's being heard, and the Spirit gives the spiritual ability to discern these things as being true and the willingness to confess that they are. So then a person will be persuaded. But until the Holy Spirit changes the heart of someone, you're not going to persuade them. And yet God calls you to the task of proving what you believe as a Christian. First Peter, the third chapter, verse 15. Be well known to you that the Apostle Peter says, we are to be prepared to give an answer to anyone who ask a reason for the hope that is in us. We're to be prepared to do that. We aren't supposed to be caught off guard when someone at work or someone in your family or your next door neighbor over a cup of coffee says, well, why do you believe that you go to church? Why do you believe? How can you believe in God? Look at the world around you. You've heard conversations like that. I'll bet you've had conversations like that. Were you prepared for conversations like that? The Bible says you should be. That if we're going to be good disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, we will prepare ourselves to answer when people want a reason for the hope that is in us, when they say, why do you have this kind of faith? You should be able to respond to them. And yet the Bible doesn't require you to go to college. The Bible doesn't require you to go to graduate school. The Bible doesn't require you to go to seminary or to write books or to engage in public debate. It doesn't require you to be what our culture sadly considers to be an intellectual. The Bible says every one of God's people, no matter where you are, in terms of your educational development. Every one of God's people is called upon to be ready to give an answer. And you know what the verse says. You're supposed to be able to give an answer to anyone who asks. To anyone. Any one of God's people is to be able to give an answer to anyone who asks them for a reason, for the hope that is in them. So that if you're talking to your friend at the store or your next door neighbor in your home, or if you're talking to the university professor in class, you are to be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks. And what you're prepared to give is not simply a testimony. Peter doesn't call on us to say, to tell people about how happy we are that we believe in God and that God has saved us. There's a place for testimony. There's no doubt about that. Giving glory to God. But this particular verse is not talking about that aspect of our Christian living and our communication with people. This verse is saying we are to be prepared to give an answer to. To give a reason for the hope that is in us. We're supposed to be able to argue with people. Now, please don't be scared off by the use of the word argue, because in common English parlance, we use the term argue when we really mean to contend or to be contentious. You know, when we talk about arguing with people, we're talking about, you know, the volume going up and the intensity getting a bit greater and maybe some feelings being hurt and some sharp things being said. When that happens, we say, boy, they were really arguing with each other. Well, you know what? From a standpoint of philosophy, it may be that they weren't arguing with each other at all. As a matter of fact, they weren't exchanging evidence that was to be weighed on the basis of the merit of the case and conclusions drawn from the evidence and all. They were just kind of picking at each other. That is what we would call being contentious. And the Bible has no room for people being contentious. It tells us that the Lord's servant is to be gentle toward all and apt to teach, gently instructing those who contradict. And so I'm not calling on you to argue with people in the sense of being kind of down, being harsh, being hard on people. I don't want you to be contentious, but I do want you to understand that the Bible asks you to do more than just say, jesus has satisfied me in my heart of hearts that I feel happy to be a Christian. I wish you would consider becoming A Christian as well. You are to be able to give a reason to any man who asks you for the hope that is in you. So here Peter says, and remember, Peter was no great scholar. He wasn't like the Apostle Paul. He hadn't studied at the feet of Gamaliel. He didn't have all these credentials. What was Peter? He was a fisherman, all right. He was part of the, part of the working class. He's the one who tells you you are to be prepared. You are to be able to give a reason to anyone who asks you about the hope that is in you. So let me begin by encouraging you to understand that the word of God, by requiring you to do so, also tells you you are able to do so. God calls on you to do this and the assumption is you are able to do it. You're able to do it without spending a lot of time and a lot of books and going to school and so forth. So if we understand what proof is and don't confuse it with persuasion, we understand that God's word says that all of God's people are able and are responsible to give a reason for the hope that is in them. I hope that when you leave class today you'll be a little closer to being persuaded here. I'm trying to change your hearts a bit here. I hope that the Holy Spirit uses my words to encourage you that you can indeed prove God's existence. But now in order to prove God's existence, we also need to know something about the people with whom we're speaking. You need to know something about the unbeliever that is your next door neighbor or that is one of your family members or the person you work with. If you don't understand what the Bible says about the unbeliever, then you're going to make the task of proving God's existence to that person much harder for yourself. Now here's what I think. We often think about unbelievers and we're wrong. But we often think that unbelievers are perfectly open minded people. We often think that unbelievers would believe in God if they really could. And what has happened is that the evidence for God is so ambiguous and so unclear, so iffy if you will, that the unbeliever can kind of be excused for not coming to the conclusion that there's a God. We hear unbelievers make what appears to be a very strong case against the existence of God. I think the most common argument that is given against the existence of God, it's not the only one, but the most common one you hear in the world is, how can you believe in God when you see all these terrible things around us? How can you believe in God? I have a sister whose daughter was killed in an automobile accident, her life snuffed out. And people will say, how could a good and loving God allow something like that to happen? We think of the terrible things that take place at times of war. We think of some of the notorious criminals that you hear about on the 6 o' clock news that do the most despicable, ugly things to their victims and so forth. We think about people who are liars and cheats. We think about natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes and all the rest. We think about cancer and disease. We think about heartbreak. We think about people who wrong one another. We think about those who are so sad that they commit suicide. We think about all these miserable things in the world and we say, how can there be a God? And so our view of the unbeliever is, you know, he or she is in a pretty good position. You know, they have a lot of right to be wondering about if there is a God. They really want to believe in God. They're searching for God, but the evidence just isn't very clear. In fact, there seems to be so much evidence against the existence of God that what can you do? You know, the best you can do again is give your testimony, say that Jesus has satisfied you in your heart of hearts, and you hope that they'll listen to you. Now, this may surprise you, but what I have just been describing for you for the last few minutes is not at all the biblical conception of the unbeliever. You see, we have misread the situation. We've misread our audience. We don't know the person we're talking to in a biblical way if we think that's the situation. Let me describe for you what the Bible says about the unbeliever when it comes to these matters. Turn in your Bibles to Romans the first chapter. In Romans 1, Paul describes the unbelieving world, the Gentile world of his day, and of course of our day as well. And he says in verse 18 that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth by means of unrighteousness, because that which is known of God is manifest in them, for God manifested it unto them, for the invisible things of him, since the creation of the world are clearly seen being perceived through the Things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity, so that they may be without excuse, because knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasoning and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And Paul goes on to describe the foolishness of his day and of our day as well. But let's just take this much of God's word for consideration. Now what would the Bible tell you about this unbeliever who is challenging the existence of God? First of all, is the unbeliever completely open minded, if you will, neutral toward the subject and just waiting for the evidence to come and persuade him or her that there is a God? Is the unbeliever really open to the evidence, open minded, fair minded, being neutral in their approach? Well, Paul tells us that God is wrathful and he reveals his wrath from heaven against the ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Suppress the truth and unrighteousness. They push it down. I often use the analogy of a person you may have, you know, during the summer you go to a pool party and there'll be a volleyball or beach ball there in the pool. And somebody will then play this game of pushing in under the water. And everyone wants to know, where's the ball? They're suppressing the ball under the water so that no one can deal with it. And the Bible says unbelievers are doing that with what they know about God. They know about God. Paul will go on to say that God has clearly manifested himself to the unbeliever, that he has done the task of showing himself. And it's so clear that they know the truth. And then what they do is they suppress it. They push the volleyball under the water, they hide it from themselves. To be a little more technical about this, they deceive themselves about the existence of God. Now that's the biblical picture of the unbeliever. Not someone who is fair minded, open minded, looking for the truth wherever it may be. You have somebody who has the truth, knows that there is a God, knows the living and true God, but then does everything he or she can to not have to deal with that, to push it out of sight, to suppress it and not deal with it. In verse 19 Paul says, Because that which is known of God is manifest in them, because God's the one who did the manifesting. In verse 20 we read that the invisible things of God from the created order itself are clearly seen. He doesn't say ambiguously seen. Remember in the picture that I painted a few moments ago we have the unbeliever open mindedly looking at the evidence and saying, well, you know, it's not really clear here. It is perfectly clear. God has made it perfectly clear from the created order itself. And at the end of verse 20 we read that God has made this so clear that they are without excuse. You need to get very clear in your own mind on the fact that unbelievers do not have a good reason for not believing in God. You know, they may spout off about the evil in the world and how that can't be the case. If there was really a God. They may have this, that and the other argument against the existence of God. But the Bible says they're without excuse, that it's all a matter of rationalization and suppressing the truth and not thinking clearly. And they don't want to think clearly. Those of you who have ever taught school will be more sympathetic to me in what I'm going to say here than those of you who haven't. But if you have children at home, I think you'll be somewhat sympathetic to this too. But we especially see it in school children. We see the ability for them to purposely not understand something. You know what I'm talking about. The child who doesn't want to understand, who wants to be stubborn, who'd rather be out on the playground than here having this math lesson. And you say, now listen little Johnny, you can understand this. Now just follow what the teacher's doing on the board. I don't want to, I'd rather be playing. And then if you get them to stop talking that way so they're respectful, then of course they don't pay attention. And then even if they do know how to do it, they don't want to do their homework or they won't do it in class, they won't perform for you. And you know, children can be like that. Do you think when people grow up they get rid of that ability? Not at all. People have the ability to choose not to understand something even though they understand it very well. Now if you see that in your day to day experience, that's easy to understand in our natural human experience with other human beings. And how much more can you believe Paul when he says that's the problem with all unbelievers. They understand about God's existence. They have the ability to see things correctly, but they refuse to do so, they don't want to do so, and so they are without excuse. And verse 21 is a real important verse for our consideration this morning. Because knowing God, they glorified him not as God, and neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasoning. And their senseless heart was darkened. Paul describes them here as knowing God. You'll forgive me if I take just a moment to tell you what the Greek is for that. Nantes Tantean. Paul says Nantes means knowing. The reason why I want you to understand the Greek here is because Paul does not say Nantes theon, which would be a way of saying knowing God or a God in Greek. It's very explicit. He puts the definite article in there. Knowing the God, they became foolish in their reasoning. They don't simply know that there's some kind of supernatural force somewhere, something that goes beyond our human experience, something that's greater than the universe, some vague idea of a God somewhere, somehow, sometime. He says, they know the living and true God. They know Jehovah. They know God as he really is. They know his everlasting divinity, they know his attributes. They know him so well that God holds them accountable for not worshiping him as they should. And knowing God, they do not glorify him as God. They don't give thanks, but become vain in their reasoning. Verse 22 reinforces that. Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools. Let's take the example of the person who says, how can you believe in God when you see all these wicked, terrible things happening in the world? You might think, well, boy, the only way I'd be able to answer that is if I could figure out why God allowed so and so to die of cancer. If I could give some reason for why there was this automobile accident, or why there is war, why this volcano destroyed this village or something, if God could tell me what it is, that then I could offer that to the unbeliever and I could show that, you see, God knew what he was doing. But that's not the way to go on that at all. When someone suggests that God has allowed some wicked, evil, horrible, ugly thing to happen in this world, the first thing we should be asking ourselves is how do we know it's so horrible? How do we know that that's really ugly, this person tortured another person, or that it's evil that so and so murdered his next door neighbor. How do we know that any of those things should be looked upon in a negative way? Well, the only way in which we could say that those are bad things to take place is if we had a standard to evaluate them by if There were no standards of good and evil in this world, then you couldn't call anything evil, could you? If no one had ever heard of or had any concept of a yardstick or a ruler, if we had no measuring device at all, it wouldn't make any sense to say that's 11 inches from the wall. To say that something's 11 inches from the wall presupposes, already assumes that there's a standard by which you can measure. And so when the unbeliever looks at the world and you think, well, this person's being open minded and just struggling with the evidence and says that's a terribly wicked thing that just took place. How could God allow that? There must not be a God. What you should be asking yourself is how can you call that wicked if there is no God? It's just because there is a God that there's an absolute standard of right and wrong, an absolute standard of good and evil, an absolute standard of what is beautiful and what is ugly. An absolute standard of what is just and what is not just. If you throw God out of the picture, if you don't take God into account in your thinking, then then you have no basis to call anything good or evil because there is no standard left. It's just everybody's individual desire and feeling. And as the old song in the 60s said, becomes different strokes for different folks at that point. And there are some people in this world who like to torture little children. And there are some people in this world who like to be mean to their neighbors. And on and on and on the story goes. And you can't say that your desires and your likes are better than theirs if you throw God out of the picture. There is no absolute standard of judgment. There's no yardstick, if you will, to say that this is really so far off the mark of what is truly just or beautiful or good or fair. And so the interesting thing is at the very point where the unbeliever is arguing against the existence of God, the unbeliever must be assuming the existence of, of God to make their argument clear. Let me say that again because that's really the turning point in today's lesson. That's what I want you to understand before you leave today. When unbelievers argue against the existence of God, their very arguments assume that God exists in order to make sense of them. Isn't that strange, that ironic? You don't have that when you have people arguing about who's going to win this year's World Series. You don't have that when you have people arguing about socio political situations in the world, you don't have that. When you have people arguing about what kind of apple is best for making apple pie. Just about all the other arguments we see in the world don't have that feature. But when it comes to God, that is always the case. The argument itself is an evidence of the existence of God. You need to be aware of that, that when someone argues with you, and remember, argue here doesn't mean you know you're going at each other hammer and tong. But when someone exchanges points of view and information to try to prove a point one way or another, that the very process of argument takes for granted that there is a God. Not only that there is a God, but the living and true God of the Scriptures is the only God with whom we have to do. Now if you can catch on to that, then you'll be far down the road toward understanding how you can present an argument to anyone, a reason to anyone who asks you about the hope that is in you, that you can be prepared to do that and you can be prepared without having to pick up a lot of books or go to school and so forth. Now if you're inclined to read the books and go to school, God bless you, that's fine. That's going to just sharpen your tools and enable you to do it better. But that is not necessary for any of you. I hope all of you at this point can understand that when someone complains that there's an evil thing in this world, and so since there's some evil thing in this world, there can't be a God. You can turn that right around and say you couldn't call that evil if there wasn't a God. Now the Bible tells us that God has made himself so perfectly clear to to the unbeliever that they are without excuse and they become foolish in their reasoning that they will not submit to the truth of Scripture, the truth of God's revelation of himself, that's all about them. Please don't look upon the person with whom you're arguing then as open minded, glad to find the evidence wherever it may be found. Searching after God. But it's just such a hard thing that you can't prove it. You know what Paul says about the unbeliever? The third chapter of Romans, quoting the 14th Psalm, he says, none seek after God, not one seeks after God. That seems funny to us because while it's true that there are many people who live their lives for all the gusto they can get. You know, you only go around once in life, so, you know, you live for the weekend, you live for partying, you live for drinking, carousing. There are a lot of people where you'd say, yeah, they don't. They don't seem to be seeking after. They seem to be seeking after pleasure and after their own desires and so forth. And yet you also read of people or, you know, people that look like they want to be religious. You know, they read about these things, they'll go and consider this religion and that religion and so forth. It seems like they're seeking after God. There seem to be a lot of sincere religious people around the world. You know, that may be Hindus or Muslims or Buddhists or what have you. And how can Paul say they're not seeking after God? You see, one of the best ways to not come into contact with the living and true God is to create a different God, an idol that will take the place of God. So then you can convince yourself that you're really a good person. You are quote, unquote religious, and yet you've been inoculated against ever having to deal with your maker. If Paul. In fact, when Paul saw people engaging in idolatry and so forth, he did not commend it as religious. When he was in Athens, for instance, and he saw all the idolatry there and began to preach against it, he said, I notice that you are very superstitious people. You think this is religious, but it's not. And you are so ignorant, you confess you're ignorance. You even worship an unknown God. But I'm here to tell you about this God that you say you don't know. You see, when people look outwardly religious, they are using that outward religiosity as a way of not having to come into genuine contact with something that could be very horrifying to them, and that's the living and true God. So Paul tells us, no man is seeking after God. You mustn't assume that the person to whom you're speaking sincerely wants to find that truth. And it's just for lack of evidence that they don't believe in God. The evidence is all around them. God has made it clear to them, and yet they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Now, I'm going to contrast two different ways of proving God's existence to you finally in our Sunday school lesson today and try to again show you what is necessary in order to drive home the word of God about God's existence. If people already know God and yet they're fighting against it, they're trying to suppress it, you're going to talk to them and in a much different way than if they are neutral and open minded and are just looking for the evidence. So many of our evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ, I think have this naive view of the unbeliever, that they have a pretty good reason for not believing in God. So all we can do is testify to them and pray and hope that they'll listen to some probable evidence that there is a God. The Bible has a completely different picture. Now if you think that the unbeliever is open minded, I think you would use an argument like this. It's what's called the cosmological argument for God's existence. The most popular argument for God's existence that you read of in the books, in the literature that deals with this and what you see in many debates between believers and unbelievers is the idea that, well, everything has a cause and therefore the world is a whole, must have a cause. And isn't that what we call God? God is the Creator, he's the cause of the world. So what we do is we reason back from what we know in our own experience. Believers and unbelievers understand that there's a cause effect, machinery, if you will, in this universe. And then we reason back to what is the cause of the whole machine itself. And that's what we call God. I'll bet all of you in one form or another have heard that kind of argument for God's example. There must be a God, because where did this world come from? That's the argument from causation. And many of my Christian brothers would think that's a pretty good argument to use. And I didn't come here this morning to have you believe me just on my say so or my credentials. But I hope that you will believe me on this matter that I've done a lot of reading on that. I've got a PhD in Philosophy and I can assure you that unbelievers can answer that argument like that. It is not hard at all. I bet you can too, if I just guide you a little bit. Let's stop and think about this for a minute. The argument from causation says that every event has something that caused it. Everything that happens, everything that is here has something that caused it. And therefore this entire world must have cause. Well, let's take some examples. I'll just take three. You all know about Peach Pie and you all know about automobiles and you all know about people. You know that peach pies and automobiles and people don't just spring into existence like that. Poof. There it is. Peach pie. Poop. You got a Ford automobile in your driveway. Poof. You got another baby in your family. You know better than that. Where do babies come from? Well, in order to have a baby, you have to have a mom and a dad, right? But you can't have a mom and dad unless the mom had a mom and a dad and the dad had a mom and a dad. So now you got a whole bunch of causes back there. But it turns out that the grandparents had to have their parents, too. And back and back. You see where I'm going? Here we go all the way back. There's got to be some beginning of the human race, right? Now, I don't happen to be an evolutionist. I think the all the evidence points away from evolution, both biblical and extra biblical. But you either believe at that point that someone brought the first parents into existence, or if you're an evolutionist, even that goes back further. Cause and effect, Cause and effect, Cause and effect. All right, now when we get all the way back there, let's just say there's a first cause for people. I'm not going to say what it is, but let's just say it's the first cause for people. Come on back over here. Now, take that Ford automobile. That Ford automobile didn't just appear in your driveway. Where did it come from? Well, you went to the dealer, right? You bought it at the dealership, but the dealer got it from Detroit. People in Detroit didn't have these things just popping out of nowhere either. You know, they had to go to the factory. And in the factory you had someone who put together all these parts. And before that, someone made the parts and on and on and on and on and on. And so now when we get all the way back to the beginning and whoever made the minerals and so forth that finally go into steel and so forth and so on, you've got, if you will, the first cause for Ford automobiles. And now let's come back up here and just do this one more time. You got this peach pie sitting on your table. Where'd that peach pie come from? Obviously it came from peaches and other things as well. Where those peaches come from? They came from a tree. Where'd that tree come from? Someone had to plant the seed. Someone had to water it and tend it and so forth. Where'd that seed come from? Well, that came from another peach which goes back to another tree, and on and on and on and on. So eventually we work all the way back. We had the first cause of peaches or peach pies all the way back. And now here's the question. You've all followed this very easily, but you say, here's the $64,000 question. Do you have any assurance that the first cause of Ford automobiles and the first cause of people and the first cause of peach pies is the same? Do you have any reason to believe that these lines of causation that spread all the way back to the beginning somewhere always come together into one creator for everything that happened? Well, you don't have any reason to believe that at all. This argument from causation, if it proves anything, proves that there is a whole multiplicity of first causes, right? You say, well, where did all those first causes come from? You can't ask that question because they're first causes. So the question is, is there one first cause or are there many first causes? And when our Christian brothers try to argue from causation in that way, the unbelieving world, if it stops and thinks about it, will not have any trouble saying, well, that doesn't prove that there's a God, just proves that there's a whole bunch of first causes. But the situation's even worse. Let's kind of, we're going to give them a buy on that. You know, we're going to kind of forget that they got this huge logical problem. They create too many first causes by this argument. We're just going to pretend that isn't true. We're going to say, okay, you've proved a first cause, just a first cause. We'll forget the first. There's many. But we'll call it a first cause. The next question is going to be, is that first cause supernatural or is that first cause natural? Do we have any logical basis for looking at what happens in the natural world and concluding something about what takes place outside the natural world? Again, you don't have to be some world class philosopher to see the problem in that. If someone comes and tries to explain to you in the greatest of detail how an automobile works, would you then draw conclusions about the human body? If you knew everything about the functioning of an automobile, would that make you a brain surgeon? No, because everything about automobiles, if you knew everything about automobiles, would still just be everything about automobiles. It wouldn't make you competent in something that is outside of the realm of automobiles. And likewise, even if we understood from the study of the natural world completely about this causal chain going back to a beginning first cause. There would be no logical basis for us to say that the first cause goes outside of the natural world to a supernatural being that we call God. That is to say, the unbeliever is going to tell you if he or she thinks about it, well then this first cause is a natural first cause. Now I know you're probably thinking, now wait a minute, a natural first cause. A natural first cause would have to have a cause too, because everything has to have a cause. And so if you got a natural first cause, then that first cause has got to have a cause. Well then it's no longer a first cause, is it? And if the natural first cause has to have a cause because everything that exists has got to come from somewhere, that's really your point. Then we can turn around and say to the Christian arguing this way, well, even if you say that God created the natural world world where God come from, and at that point, you see, the Christian can't say, no, wait a minute, God's the first cause. So you can't ask that question. Because when the unbeliever tried to do that, we said, oh no, no, everything that exists has got to have a cause. So there can't be a natural first cause. You have to come up with better than that. And now the unbelievers can turn around and use the same logic with you, okay, now you've got a supernatural first cause. Where that supernatural first cause come from? You can't say, oh, can't play by those rules. Those are the rules you've been playing by. And so here you have the believer who's trying to prove God's existence to this allegedly neutral, open minded person, just looking for the evidence. And we present this argument about causation and it doesn't take us anywhere. It doesn't prove anything like the God of scripture. It doesn't prove a God that's supernatural, much less one God. And so we might tend to think, well then I guess we can't really prove God's existence from causation, can we? Before we close here, let me suggest if we go back and look at this notion of causation, you can prove God's existence from causation, but it's not going to be that kind of argument. Let's just ask what does it mean to talk about causation? A few minutes ago when I was responding to the unbeliever who says there can't be a God because there's evil in the world. I called on you to ask the unbeliever to look into what is presupposed by calling something evil. If you call something evil, you must have a standard by which you call it evil. And therefore if you don't have a theistic, if you don't have a Christian way of looking at reality, then you have no way of saying that this is evil and that isn't evil. That's the same technique we're going to use when it comes to causation. When people believe that there is a causal nexus in this world, that one event is caused by another event and that first one was caused by caused by a previous one, and so forth. When people believe that there's this cause, effect, chain in this world, we need to ask them on what basis they can believe that? How is it they could look at reality and think there is any such thing as causation? And the answer you're going to get is, well, in the past I've seen that that's true. In the past I have noticed that one thing leads to another and that gives me a basis for predicting how things are going to take place. If you get up in the middle of the night and you stub your toe, I can assure you that you will have learned a lesson that you will try to apply in the future. Isn't that right? None of us are so silly as to think that after we've injured ourselves by stubbing our toe that maybe the next time we do this is going to be just a wonderful pleasant experience. Because after all, you never know. Is the future going to be like the past? Well, well again we're chuckling because we all know better than that. We know that we expect the future to be like the past. So stubbing your toe hurts on Tuesday, it's probably not going to feel good on Wednesday. Now we do that in day to day affairs. We think that way and that you subdued our hearts and enlightened our eyes that we might know the truth. And we praise you that you are just such a sovereign and gracious.