(All sermon notes are provided entirely from the outline provided by Rice Broocks for the God's Not Dead preaching series. If churches or ministries are interested in using these materials as a resource, visit godsnotdead.org to download content. God's Not Dead books and evangelistic materials are also made available on godsnotdead.org.)
KEY VERSE: Psalm 139:13-16
INTRO:
1) There is a skeptic in your future! You'll be amazed at who God leads into your life if you're prepared. Most of you believe in God, but have not been able to give the specific reasons for your faith to unbelievers. You KNOW God is real – but need to be able to SHOW that He's real.
2) Strengthen Your Foundations. We’re hoping to strengthen the foundations of your faith. Jesus said when storms come to the house with a weak or missing foundation, it will collapse. (Luke 6:46)
There may even be a skeptic growing up in your house.
Every day you hear about someone who used to be strong in faith walking away because of tragedy, calamity, disappointment or disillusionment.
The fact is: More people turn away from God because of emotional reasons than intellectual ones. They find the intellectual reasons after they decide to walk away from God.
3) Build Your Spiritual Immune System. There are specific attacks and arguments against God's existence that are strategies of the enemy to get you and your children to let go of your faith. This book and series “God’s Not Dead” addresses those arguments specifically. It's like a flu vaccine for a specific strain of the flu virus.
Also, by learning the evidence for God, you are bolstering your spiritual immune system. There is a danger that in ministering to people who are skeptics, that their ideas will end up negatively impacting you (like a ‘well’ person catching the flu from someone they are around).
4) Prepare you for the coming crisis. Crisis is coming to people and cities around you. We want to help people turn to God, not turn away from God!
Remember, the existence of evil isn’t evidence of God’s absence from the universe, but evidence of His absence from our lives.
So far we've talked about how real faith isn’t blind. We are to use our reason as a key part of our faith. All faith has reason and all reason has faith…they are inseparable. God has given us evidence for our faith—from the beginning of the Universe, to the reality of good and evil, to the historical proof of Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead.
This week we have one the most exciting topics in the series..
LIFE IS NO ACCIDENT
We’re going to look at 3 areas of evidence for this:
1) Scientific 2) Philosophical 3) Psychological
1. SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE: There is no greater impression of the human mind than the existence of design in nature. It is so overwhelmingly present, that skeptics try to tell us it is just an illusion!
QUOTE: “Biology is the study of living things that appears to be designed” - Richard Dawkins. Dawkins called it “the illusion of design.” (The reason they say that design is an illusion is because they have to.)
If something is designed, then there has to be a Designer.
So they (skeptics) ask “Who designed the Designer?” as if that question should end the debate. (pg. 100, GND)
Our response? No one designed the Designer. You don’t have to have an explanation for your explanation.
Dr. Daniel Came, an Oxford professor and atheist pointed out this fallacy in Dawkins’ thinking...
QUOTE: “Darwin maintains that we’re not justified in inferring a designer as the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe because the new problem surfaces; who designed the designer? This argument is as old as the hills and, as any reasonably competent first-year undergraduate could point out, is patently invalid. For an explanation to be successful we do not need an explanation of the explanation. One might as well say that evolution by natural selection explains nothing because it does nothing to explain why there were living organisms on earth in the first place; or that the big bang fails to explain the cosmic background radiation because the big bang is itself inexplicable.” (GND pg. 100)
So the evidence for God could be demonstrated if living organisms could be proven (beyond a reasonable doubt) to be designed intentionally and not the product of random processes.
That’s why macro-evolution (one species changing into another) has to be true in their eyes. If there isn’t a natural explanation for the obvious complexity and design in living things, then God or a Creator has to exist.
In Darwin’s day, the cell was seen as more or less a blob of protoplasm (goo). Today we can see that a cell is like a small city. The complexity and order of the systems that are functioning are staggering. You have everything from UPS trucks (delivery systems) carrying messages to and fro, to intricate factories and engines that make the cell function properly.
Then there is DNA…DNA is like the software that runs every living thing.
As you have heard us say, and have read, in the book, the information in the human genome is too staggering to have developed by chance. It’s like getting a pocket text 3 billion letters long.
Then comes the question of where did life come from? Evolution only tells you what happens after you get life—no one knows where the first living cell came from.
Two atheists wrote a book they called “Evolution from Space.” They said the probability of life starting itself was 1 chance in 1040.000.
That’s the same probability they say that a tornado could blow through a junkyard and throw up the debris and it fall to the ground and piece together a 747 airplane, full of gas, ready to fly.
Their response has become a standard atheist response when faced with such overwhelming evidence for design: “Maybe it came from aliens.”
Notice what Dawkins says on camera when interviewed by Ben Stein in the movie “Expelled”: (There’s a great clip from YOU TUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoncJBrrdQ8)
You can see that any explanation other than God is acceptable.
The resounding testimony of the design of living things is that, “we are fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Because life is most certainly designed, then logically, there must be a Designer.
2. PHILOSOPHICAL EVIDENCE:
This leads to the philosophical evidence for life having meaning and purpose.
This is a vital area of knowledge. Radical skeptics try to say that science can answer every question...but science can’t answer the most important questions: Why are we here? Why do we exist? That’s why philosophy is a vital branch of learning.
For you see if there is no God, then life can have no ultimate meaning and purpose. How could it? If we came into existence for no reason and we are headed for an oblivion where there is no purpose, then how could this existence of ours having any real meaning?
QUOTE: “Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous- indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.” - Richard Dawkins (pg. 118, GND)
Yet we know life has meaning and purpose. It is seen in not only the order and complexity of living things but in the fact that everything that exists seems to have been made for a purpose. Purpose fills our existence—whether the eye to see or the ear to hear…the fish to swim or the bird to fly.
Skeptics have pointed to things like the appendix as evidence that there are things about our existence that don’t seem to be needed, therefore it’s evidence for a poor design. But the more we learn, we are finding out that things like the appendix actually have a purpose after all. (It has a large part to play in our immune system.)
Here is the logical thinking process: • If there is no God, then there is no ultimate purpose or meaning in life. • There is purpose and meaning in life. • Therefore…God exists.
3. PSYCHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE:
The final area of evidence for the reality of purpose and meaning in life—pointing to God—lies inside of us as humans.
QUOTE: Harvard evolutionist Stephen J. Gould said: “Wind life’s tape back and you will never get human life again.” (pg. 126, GND)
QUOTE: Lawrence Krauss who Dawkins hailed as the “Darwin of Physics” wrote: “We constitute a 1% bit of pollution in the Universe...we are completely irrelevant.” (pg. 114, GND)
Deep inside we know that we are not merely freaks of nature as evolutionary dogma suggests. We also know that we as humans are not just another animal. In the atheistic world view, when you’re dead, you’re dead.
Is that really true? Is this the only life there is?
If that was the case, why should anyone be asked to sacrifice the only life there is for anything or anyone else? Every funeral becomes almost a cruel joke.
The Bible tells us we are made in the image of God. When we lose our sense of purpose and significance, not only can we expect a cloud of despair to settle over our souls, but also one that will settle over the nation.
VERSE: Ephesians 2:12 “Remember when you were strangers to the covenants of promise...without hope and without God in world.”
CLOSING STORY from Rice Broocks:
“Lessons from an atheist funeral”
This past week, my friend Pastor Dale Evrist conducted a funeral of a life long atheist in California. The family who were not believers, still wanted Dale to do the funeral. A life of ignoring God, was suddenly forgotten when they faced the finality of death. Dale said that he was open with the people and said, “This man was not a believer, but I am. I’m here to offer you the hope that belief in God gives us…that life doesn’t end at the grave.”
No one was offended. In fact they came up to him and thanked him for being there.
Is this the only life?
The answer to that question should define your beliefs and your focus in life. I am asking you to recognizing the fact that this life is an amazing gift. God has designed and fashioned you to make a unique impact while you are here on this earth.
Don’t waste any more time listening to the voices telling you otherwise.
Second City Church- God's Not Dead Sermon Series 2015