Archives for October 2017

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Someone once asked George Washington Carver how he was able to do so much with the simple peanut.  He answered, “You know if you love something enough, it will give its secrets up to you!”  Today we are going to begin to discover the secrets of the amazing Holy Spirit!  And it all starts with a love relationship with Him!

Will the real Holy Spirit please stand up!  Just who is the Holy Spirit?  To most Christians, the Holy Spirit is something of a mystery.  Sure, we know He’s God, or so, we’ve been taught.  For the last two thousand years, Christians have steadfastly held to a precious truth called the Trinity; three persons, only one God. The Father is God, the Son is God and yes, the Holy Spirit is God. The Trinity depends upon the reality of the Holy Spirit.

Just who is the Holy Spirit? And does it matter? The Bible is very clear on the subject. Take 2 Corinthians 3:17 as an example; “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Nothing ambiguous about that!

The Word “Lord” in the New Testament is the equivalent of the Old Testament words Adonai (Lord) and Jehovah, or Yaweh! We could easily say, “Now Jehovah is the Spirit,” or “The Spirit is Jehovah,” just as easily as we say, “Jesus is Lord,” (Rom 10:9), and the Father is Lord; “I am the LORD, and there is no other, there is no God beside me!” (Isaiah 45:5)

The Holy Spirit is an amazing “person!”

The Amazing Holy Spirit is a person!  When I say person, I don’t mean human.  I mean that he is a living individual.  He has incredible thinking and creative powers.  He can love you like no one else.  And he is the most wise decision maker over.  He thinks, he feels and he acts, like any other individual.  Over and over, the Bible identifies Him in personal terms.  Listen to these powerful passages.

John 15:26; But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.

John 16:7-8, Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.  8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:

John 16: 13-14. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.  14 He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.

He speaks (1 Timothy 4:1), Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons,

He loves (Romans 15:30), Now I beg you, brethren, through the Lord Jesus Christ, and through the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in prayers to God for me.  Ro 5:5  the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit

He teaches (John 14:26), But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” 1 Cor 2:13, “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

The Holy Spirit does things only a person could do.

He can be lied to (Acts 5:3-4) But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself?  4 While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”

He can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30). And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

The Amazing Holy Spirit is God.

He is eternal (Hebrews 9:14). the eternal Spirit

He is everywhere (Omnipresent) (Psalm 139:7-10). Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? 8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. 9 If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me.

He knows “all things” (Omniscient) (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.  11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.  12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

He was involved in the creation process (Genesis 1:2). And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath [Spirit] of His mouth.”

The Holy Spirit is spoken of in intimate association with both the Father and the Son (Matthew 28:19.

Some passages in the Old Testament that are attributed to God are applied to the Spirit in the New Testament

Isaiah 6:8-10 with Acts 28:25-27

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” 9 And He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

“The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers,  26 saying, ‘Go to this people and say: “Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand; And seeing you will see, and not perceive;

Exodus 16:7 & Psalm 95:7-9 with Hebrews 3:7-9).

Then Moses and Aaron said to all the children of Israel, “At evening you shall know that the Lord has brought you out of the land of Egypt.  7 And in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord; for He hears your complaints against the Lord. But what are we, that you complain against us?”

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice, 8 Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. 10 Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’ 11 So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’”

The Amazing Holy Spirit lives inside us!

Now the good news; believers have The Spirit living inside us! We don’t have some impersonal life force, electrifying our insides… we don’t have an angel or even an extension of God’s invisible hand reaching out to us, we have God Himself living inside as our constant companion and guide. We have The Holy Spirit empowering, filling, convicting, gifting, transforming, empowering and renewing our lives. We have the Spirit!

“And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:16-18)

Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?  20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body[c] and in your spirit, which are God’s (1 Cor 6:19-20)

We are a holy temple! Inside us is the most incredible power of the universe! The God who made the stars, spoke the world into being, parted the Red Sea, walked on water and made the blind to see indwells every believer! What kind of man or woman are you going to be when that truth finally awakens you to its full potential? One day you will wake up, and with Paul you will shout, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!” (Phil 4:13) The Holy Spirit is our strengthener.  He enables us to do more than we can ask or think!

He fills us!  He lives inside us.  Prayer is made possible by the Holy Spirit, that God’s work is accomplished as God pours out His Spirit.  According to 2 Cor 3:17-18 it is the Holy Spirit who changes us into Christ’s likeness.  It is the Holy Spirit that produces such incredible life changing qualities as love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness and self control (Gal 5:22)  When you know that you have been pulled from the pit, you cannot help but be grateful!

The Holy Spirit gives us liberty

2 Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

The Holy Spirit bears Witness with Our Spirit

Romans 8:16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,.

The Holy Spirit Prays for Us

Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us[b] with groanings which cannot be uttered. 27 Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

The Holy Spirit enables us to overcome all things. The Holy Spirit overcomes stagnation. resistance, desperate situations, the works of the flesh, the wilderness in human life, temptation, world history, decay, even death.

The story is told of a composer who had fallen on hard times.  He was almost bankrupt, he was weak and tired.  He returned one night to his room in a drab section of London.  There he found a manuscript with a request that he set the words to music.

As he read the words he discovered they were scripture.  He became so immersed in his task that he sometime forgot to eat and sleep.  One day he emerge with the great oratorio called “The Messiah!”

Later George Fredrick Handel told his friends that when he was composing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” it was as though he could hear the angels singing, and it was as though he was only writing down the music which the Holy Spirit put in his head.  Such is the amazing power of the Holy Spirit!

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In 2010, when being interviews by Parade Magazine, Sir Elton John made this comment about Jesus: “I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him.”[i]

B-b-b-Benny and the Jets!  Holy Cow!  Gad zukes man!  I THINK Sir Elton meant that to be a compliment, but somehow, unbeknownst to him, I think the pop icon did exactly the opposite!  And I’m not sure which is the biggest un-compliment of all; being “gay,” or being “super-intelligent?”

Calling the Prince of Peace “gay” places Jesus squarely in the camp of sinners like the rest of humanity… and that is just plain appalling theology.  It’s not even theology; it’s a corruption of the Scriptures and a complete re-reading of history.  But denigrating Jesus by assuming that He is nothing more than “super-intelligent” is to compare the Son of God to a super successful game-show contestant on Jeapordy:

“I’ll take ‘humanizing Jesus’ for $100, Alex.”

“Name the president who cut ‘diamonds from the dunghill,’ to create his own Bible, complete with nothing but the Words of Jesus?”

(Beep, beep, beep)  “Thomas Jefferson!”

Right.  That’s Double Jeopardy for sure!  There are so many contradictory portraits of Jesus available that the ordinary Christian cannot help but be confused. Nowadays the wildest speculations are eagerly aired on the Discovery Channel or published by “The Jesus Seminar” and obscure the genuine character of our Lord which is essential to Christian faith.

Was Jesus nothing more than a super-intelligent man, or was he the all-wise God?  In the past, theologians have framed this theological issue by explaining Jesus two natures as “the hypostatic union of the theoanthropic person.”  In laymen’s terms this means that Jesus two natures, divine and human, were combined in one person.

The book of Hebrews chapter one in an incredible commentary on just who Jesus is!  In this chapter Jesus is compared to the angels.  According to 1:4 he is better than angels.  In verse 5, He is a Son, angels aren’t.  In verse 6 Jesus is worshiped, angels are not.  In verse 7-8, Jesus is reigning with God, angels are simply his subjects.  In verse 10 Christ is the creator, and the angels?  They are the created.  So lets dig into this in a little more detail to see what we believe about the Son of God.

The Person and Work of Jesus 1-3

Verses 1-3 describe the words and works of Jesus Christ.

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

This is a sublime summary of our amazing savior.  Here is what we learn about Jesus:

He is God’s spokesman – “in these last days spoken to us by His Son”  When Jesus speaks, God speaks.

He is the heir of all things – He owns it all.

He made everything.

He is the brightness of God’s glory and the express  image of His person.  (3) This verse is designed to state the dignity and exalted rank of the Son of God.  Every word is employed with great importance.

GLORY:  The word “Glory” means, “splendor, honor excellence, perfection, praise!”  It is prefaced by the word “brightness,” the brightness of his glory!  It is used of a reflection.  Jesus reflects the Father’s glory!  God is light and Jesus is the Light of the world.  It is as though when you look at Jesus in the mirror, you see the incredible glory of the Father streaming back into the room.

EXPRESS IMAGE:  The Greek word is one you will recognize:  “character” Our English word is simply a transliterated Greek word.  And it literally means the imprint, stamp or engraving, like those on a coin meant to be an exact resemblance of the bearer.  In other words, when we look at Abraham Lincoln on the Penney, that is what he supposedly looks like!  When you look at Jesus you see the spitting image of His Father!  The writer of Hebrews wanted to be clear.  Jesus and the Father are one!

We also learn from verse 3 that Jesus holds all things together.

He paid for our sins

He is sitting at the right hand of the Father.

That is a great summary, and we could spend a lot more time on these verses going deeper, but today, we are going for the big picture.  We are going for the whole chapter.

He is the begotten Son of God 4-5

4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. 5 For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You”?  And again: “I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son”?

Muslims say that God is above having a Son.  To say that God had a Son is a monstrous thing; at it the skies are ready to burst, the earth to split asunder, and the mountains to fall down in utter ruin that they should invoke a son for God.  [ii]

How could the Almighty have a son?  How is that evern possible?  Well if God is a Father, I suppose He is named so, because He had a Son.  And if God had a Son, what else would He have, certainly not a mere mortal.  If Dogs beget dogs; and cats have cats; and if humans are born to humans, if God were to beget a Son, he would of necessity be divine.

The Nicene Creed explains it this way, “[we believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”

In other words, although Jesus was a fully human person, he also was and is fully God. He is God; who was made flesh.

He is Worshiped as God

6 But when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says: “Let all the angels of God worship Him.”

For a Jewish writer to ascribe worship to Jesus Christ is unimaginable.  Deuteronomy 6:13 commands, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.”  Jesus Himself quoted that verse in the New Testament.  It is one of the Ten Commandments.  God and God alone is worthy of worship.  Angels are not.  Men are not.  Only God is.

But Jesus accepted the worship of men.  No wonder the Jews wanted to stone him!  No wonder it is so difficult for a Jew to accept Jesus.  But the writer of Hebrews claims that God the Father commanded the angels to worship Jesus!  If that truly happened, it is a certain proof that Jesus is God.

It just so happens that it did.  For there were shepherds abiding in the fields by night, and the glory of the Lord shown round about, and the heavenly host of angels worshiped and shouted, “Glory to God in the highest!”

He is enthroned as God 7-8

7 And of the angels He says: “Who makes His angels spirits And His ministers a flame of fire.” 8 But to the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom. 9 You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.”

The statement I want us to ponder is one which God the Father Himself composed about Jesus; “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever!”  God the Father called the Son, God! He led in the coronation of Jesus as the supreme ruler of the Kingdom!  A place reserved for God alone, because it is God alone who takes the throne!

He is the Eternal Creator God 10-12

10 And: “You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. 11 They will perish, but You remain; And they will all grow old like a garment; 12 Like a cloak You will fold them up, And they will be changed. But You are the same, And Your years will not fail.”

It was Jesus who laid the foundation of the earth!  It was Jesus who made the heavens as the work of his Hands.  Jesus is the creator!  All things were made by Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made.  He is before all things, and by Him, all things consist!

The world is coming to an end.  The universe is winding down.  All things are growing old.  Like a worn out coat, it will one day be cast aside.  There is coming a new heaven and new earth that will be need to be created by Jesus Christ for those who love Him and Serve him.

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. 2 Then I, John,[a] saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

5 Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me,[b] “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”

6 And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. 7 He who overcomes shall inherit all things] and I will be his God and he shall be My son. (Revelation 21: 1-7)

[i] http://www.news-record.com/blog/52992/entry/83049  http://www.parade.com/celebrity/celebrity-parade/2010/elton-john-web-exclusive.html

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_view_of_the_Trinity

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“Carl Sagan once told a parable of a man who comes to us and claims:  “There is a dragon in my garage.” Fascinating! We reply that we wish to see this dragon—let us set out at once for the garage!

“But wait,” the claimant says to us, “it is an invisible dragon.”

Now as Sagan points out, this doesn’t make the hypothesis unfalsifiable. Perhaps we can go to the garage, and although we see no dragon, we may hear heavy breathing; or perhaps footprints that mysteriously appear on the ground; and instruments show that something in the garage is consuming oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide.

But now suppose that we say to the claimant, “Okay, we’ll visit the garage and see if we can hear heavy breathing,” and the claimant quickly says no, it’s an inaudible dragon.”

We propose to measure carbon dioxide in the air, and the claimant says the dragon does not breathe. We propose to toss a bag of flour into the air to see if it outlines an invisible dragon, and the claimant immediately says, “The dragon is permeable to flour.”

To secularists, God is the dragon; invisible, inaudible, and non-existent.   They say that he is un-provable because he does not exist.  Today in our series called, “We Believe” in God, we are going to discuss – What do you say to the person who does not believe in the existence of God?

The book of Romans has some very straight forward things to say to the world of skeptics, agnostics and atheists.  And the point of this passage is to point out the obvious: Yes Virginia, there is a God.  I want to take you through the conversation that Paul had with the imaginary atheist of his day, in a question and answer format.  We will ask and answer 5 questions that Atheists ask.  And by the time we are finished, I hope you’ll be soundly convinced that there is evidence for the existence of God.

1. Why don’t atheists believe in God?

I did quite a bit of reading this last week, and watched a number of videos from Atheists.  Here is what I found.  There is a wide variety of reasons that skeptics give for disbelief.  They rank God up there with fairy tales and unicorns.  They struggle with the injustice of the universe that God would correct if there was a God.  They complain about the many supposed contradictions in the Bible.

But one thing I heard over and over was that the burden of proof was on the believer, because, they say, there is a complete lack of evidence for the existence of God.  So they say it is up to us to convince them of the evidence.

The Bible gives a completely different reason why people don’t believe in God.  In verse 18 it claims that it is because of the “ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”  While skeptics may give many reasons for unbelief, the underlying motive is that they want to live how they want to live, and they don’t want some real or imaginary god telling them what to do!  This is a universal problem.  Neither men, women or children want to submit to God.  We are rebels at heart who bristle against anyone who dares to challenge us to tell us what to do.

Romans 1:18 claims that even though they know deep down inside that God exists, they purposefully suppress the truth.  Not only do they not like the truth, they suppress it in order to convince others that religion is nothing more than an imaginary fairy tale.

2. Where should I look to find the evidence?

Verse 19 says that, “what may be known of God is manifest.”  Manifest is a word which means really “obvious, something clearly seen, easily observed, universally known.”

If you want to know where the evidence for the existence of God is, just look around.  Evidence abounds everywhere you look.  It is in a child’s smile, in a starry sky, in a mountain stream, in your DNA and fingerprints.  It is in the sunshine as well as in a thunder storm.  The existence of God is staring out at us from every atom in the universe.  It has become so ordinary and everyday that for those who fail to look, they cannot see it.

But let’s just say that that your Atheist friend suggests that believing in God is like believing in leprechauns.  Don’t buy it for an instant.  Believing in leprechauns is unjustifiable.  They are based on fabricated tales told to children.  But Believing in God is like believing in atoms.  Why do you believe in protons and neutrons?  Have you ever seen one?  I have not.  But you believe in them?  How did you come to that conclusion?  You followed the evidence of what you can see to believe the existence of something you cannot see.

Here is my proposal to you:  I challenge you to look closely at everything in life, and if you do, you will discover evidence of a loving God who is there.  Ask God, “Please show yourself to me.”

3. Why doesn’t God just show me he exists?

He has!  Verse 19 concludes, “God has shown it to them!”  Now I told you that evidence for the existence of God is universally available and knowable by anyone who wants to see.  So now I’m going to get specific about where you can find it.

The first place to look is internally.  Eccl 3:11 states that God has put eternity in our hearts.  We cannot escape God, because we have a God consciousness stamped in our hearts.  Augustine said that there is a God shaped vacuum inside every man, and that man is restless until he finds his rest in God.  Man can intellectually argue God away, but he cannot crush the consciousness of God in his own heart.

Marilyn Adamson writes, “I was an atheist at one time. And like many atheists, the issue of people believing in God bothered me greatly. What is it about atheists that we would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that we don’t believe even exists?! What causes us to do that? When I was an atheist, I attributed my intentions as caring for those poor, delusional people…to help them realize their hope was completely ill-founded.

To be honest, I also had another motive. As I challenged those who believed in God, I was deeply curious to see if they could convince me otherwise. Part of my quest was to become free from the question of God. If I could conclusively prove to believers that they were wrong, then the issue is off the table, and I would be free to go about my life.  I didn’t realize that the reason the topic of God weighed so heavily on my mind, was because God was pressing the issue. I have come to find out that God wants to be known.[i]

author Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, “I had a notion that somehow, besides questing, I was being pursued.”

C.S. Lewis said he remembered, “…night after night, feeling whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.”[ii]

• Philosophers agree that a transcendent Law Giver is the only plausible explanation for an objective moral standard. So, ask yourself if you believe in right and wrong and then ask yourself why. Who gave you your conscience? Why does it exist?
• People of every race, creed, color, and culture, both men and women, young and old, wise and foolish, from the educated to the ignorant, claim to have personally experienced something of the supernatural. So what are we supposed to do with these prodigious accounts of divine healing, answered prayer, and other miraculous phenomena? Ignorance and imagination may have played a part to be sure, but is there something more?[iii]

Man has the uneasy feeling that we are not alone.  Man in the depths of his heart knows there is a God.

4. Just what is this evidence you speak of?

Verse 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…”

Very simply, creation points to the creator.  The Bible states, “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 display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world” (Psalm 19:1-4). Looking at the stars, understanding the vastness of the universe, observing the wonders of nature, seeing the beauty of a sunset—all of these things point to a Creator God.

Abraham Lincoln said, “I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth (with all of its evils) and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.

Here are some truths that creation teaches us.

• Discoveries in astronomy have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe did, in fact, have a beginning at a single moment of creation. The universe burst into being in one moment.  They call it, “the Big Bang.”  We call it Creation.  Because we know that every Big Bang requires a Big Banger!
• Advances in molecular biology have revealed vast amounts of information encoded in each and every living cell, and molecular biologists have discovered thousands upon thousands of exquisitely designed machines at the molecular level. Information of this complexity requires intelligence and design requires a designer.
• Biochemists and mathematicians have calculated the odds against life arising from non-life naturally via unintelligent processes. The odds are so astronomical they are impossible. In fact, scientists aren’t even sure if life could have evolved with some intelligent processes guiding them.
• The universe is ordered by natural laws. Where did these laws come from?[iv]

The human body is an absolute marvel.  Take the eye for instance.  Our eyes are inset, so as to protect them.  The eyelid defends the eye from injury, wipes it, keeping it moisturized and clear, and closes in sleep.  Its vision is sharper than a camera, and has never been replaced by a newer model.  The ear is an acoustic marvel.  We can hear some 15,000 tones.  Not only is the ear for hearing, but it controls equilibrium as well.  Stretched over our body is skin, so tough as to endure a shocking amount of use and punishment, and yet so sensitive as to detect texture and temperature of most anything it contacts.  Then there is the heart.  It has its own nervous system that operates independently so that if all other nerves were severed, the heart would keep beating.  It beats some 20,000 times a day, 40 million beats per year, and over 2 billion times in a lifetime.  Most without maintenance, without rest or repair.  Even man’s best engines cannot match that.  Then there is the mouth, what can we say about that.  Some of us can talk for hours on end without so much as a single breath.  Only God could have created such an intricate and amazing creation.

God’s invisible attributes are clearly detailed in creation.  God’s eternal power and Godhead are clearly understood by what he has made

A revolutionary once boasted to a peasant, “We are going to pull down all that reminds you of God.”  Said the peasant dryly, “Citizen, pull down the stars then!”

5. What if Still I don’t believe?

You are in trouble.  Look at the last four words of verse 20, “they are without excuse.”  You are without excuse.  Facts are stubborn things and whatever our wishes may be, they cannot alter the state of facts or history.  You may wish pigs to fly, or monkeys to be men, but wishing doesn’t make it so.

The Bible says that in the long run, we must accept by faith the fact that God exists: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). If God so desired, He could simply get on TV and prove to the whole world that He exists. But even then, many would not believe.  Even if one cam back from the dead, they will not believe.

“Jesus told Thomas, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believe’” (John 20:29).

[i] https://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html

[ii] https://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html

[iii] http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/does-god-exist-c.htm

[iv] http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/does-god-exist-c.htm