Greetings to you, my friend! I’m Mack Lyon. The program is In Search of the Lord’s Way. On the death of an infant or some great tragedy such as the earthquake in Haiti, some good and honest people question the existence of God. Phil Sanders has prepared a message for us today in which he affirms simply “God Exists.” You will want to hear it so stay tuned.
Thank you, Mack. Hello, I’m Phil Sanders and this is In Search of the Lord’s Way, where we search the Scriptures as Mack Lyon says to find the Lord’s way to be saved and to live the Christian life. Oh, thanks for letting us into your busy life. We appreciate hearing from you that you are watching or listening; and we want to be a part of your life each week.
The first words in the Bible are: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Bible simply recognizes the existence of God; it never questions or feels the need to prove God exists. A recent Harris Poll released in December 2009 said that 82 percent of Americans believe there is a God. People have discussed whether there is a God since the beginning of time. For many people that question is answered: yes, there is a God! But others have a hard time working it all out in their minds.
They wonder how anyone can believe in a God whom they have never seen or heard. They figure that unless they can see Him or hear His voice, that He is just a figment of our imagination. But there are many real things, which we cannot see or feel. The fact is that God has not left himself without a witness. We can believe in God when we realize all the great things that He has done for us and has done for us in our universe.
When I go hunting for deer, I look for deer tracks. I may not see the deer, but I know there are deer in the area because of the tracks. In the same way, while we may not see God, we can know He exists by the tracks or evidences He has left us.
Well, this program is now in its thirtieth year, and Mack Lyon has been preaching the truth in love to all of us and offering the information on this program free. Now, if you would like a printed copy, a CD or tape of our study, mail your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083 or you can e-mail us at searchtv@searchtv.org. Or, if you like, why not call our toll-free telephone number. We will pay for the call. That number is 1-800-321-8633. We also stream this program on our website at www.searchtv.org.
Well, Ken Helterbrand’s going to lead us as we sing; and then we’ll read from Acts chapter 17, verses 24 to 28.
Our reading today comes from God’s Word and Paul’s marvelous message on Mars Hill, beginning at Acts 17, verse 24. “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our very being, as also some of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” That’s from Acts chapter 17. Let’s pray together. O Lord, may our love for You grow more and more. We know that You are higher than the heavens and a great and wonderful God; and You have made us with great care and, Father, we thank You. And now bless us, Father, as we continue our study. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
The first evidence of God is the universe itself. In Psalm 19, verses 1 and 2 David said, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, And night to night reveals knowledge.” Ah, anybody who has watched the moon and the stars realizes the beauty and precision of this universe. Each 24 hours the earth rotates on its axis; each 28 days the moon revolves around the earth; and each 365¼ days the earth revolves around the sun. Our solar system contains nine planets counting Pluto, 54 moons, and thousands of comets, asteroids and meteors.
And God keeps it all in such precise order that men could land on the moon and return to the earth as they did in 1969. Isaiah said, “Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power and not one of them is missing” (Isaiah 40 and verse 26). Oh, God cares for the whole universe, and He takes care of us.
God promised Noah, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8 and verse 22). God has kept that promise for thousands of years with faithfulness and precision. Not only can scientists predict the movement of every celestial body in our universe, but farmers know when to plant their seeds. Not only can we predict the seasons, but we also know when and what clothes to buy to prepare for the seasons.
The problem isn’t God failed to leave us a witness, but that man failed to pay attention. The Bible says in Romans 1, verses 18 to 23, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. And professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” One reason people doubt the true God is that they have been led to believe in what is falsely called God. In ancient times those gods were idols, the work of men’s hands. Today, there are still false gods proposed by religious men who ignore the God of the Bible. I tell you only a Supreme Being could make a universe and sustain it. Only an all-wise, all-powerful God could plan and keep the universe running so precisely.
Another evidence of God’s existence is the human body. The body is such a complicated and well-designed creation that no rational person can argue it happened by accident. In each of the 60 trillion cells, yes trillion cells, in your body is an amazing and complicated DNA molecule, a code which is detailed with billions of bits of information about you. You as a person can be distinguished from all the other six billion living people by that DNA code in just one cell of your body.
Your finger prints are unlike any other person’s prints. Your dental design is also unique to you along with eye patterns and many other things. Your body is very detailed, and every cell cries out that you were designed, not an accident. The Bible says in Psalm 139:14 and 15, “I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.” That phrase, “depths of the earth,” is actually an idiom referring to a woman’s womb. The psalmist is actually describing the development of the human body.
Could it be an accident that you have eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell, and a tongue to taste? Is it an accident that your hand was designed with four fingers and a thumb, so that you can grasp things and do a multitude of tasks? Is it an accident that your legs have feet at the bottom designed for walking and running? Now next time you watch a running back catch a football and dodge tacklers to make that first down, tell me that all his natural talents and skills are just an accident. Is it an accident that your skin can measure heat and cold, can sense pressure, and can feel pain? Did you know that your skin has millions of neural sensors? How did they get there? It seems far more reasonable to believe God designed them than to suggest that they came by accident. God is able to take the 206 bones and more than 600 muscles and put them together to make you able to move, to walk, to hug, to bend, to work, to lift, to climb, to dig, to sit, to lie down, to rise up, and to run. An accident? No!
Your heart beats 100,000 times per day to bring oxygen and nourishment to every cell in your body. Each day the heart pumps as much as 1800 gallons through a pipeline of arteries and veins (if laid end to end) that would stretch between 60 and 100,000 miles. Those veins feed every cell and completes its cycle every 20 seconds for a lifetime. Amazing—your body is truly amazing! Engineers designed the water pipeline of your city to fill the needs of its citizens. We all admit that. Doesn’t it just make sense to say the blood pipelines within our bodies are also designed by a supreme designer, and that’s God.
A third evidence pointing to God is the consciousness of people. You have a mind, a spirit, or a soul. You make plans, make decisions, and follow your dreams. You are not a machine that simply does what it is told. You have free will and can choose what you want and decide to do. Now, a tree is alive, but a tree can’t make decisions. There is something in you as a living being, a person, that other living things do not possess. You have a free will. You also have a conscience, which sometimes rebukes you and sometimes applauds your actions. We are all free moral beings. We have a sense of right and wrong that monitors us and helps us to make decisions about the behavior of others even. The only thing that accounts for our ability to choose and our moral nature is that we were created by a person who possessed those characteristics. Moral character doesn’t come from an accident or out of a rock. Morality is a spiritual matter and must come from a spiritual source.
And even people who never heard of the Ten Commandments know it is wrong to steal, to murder, and to commit adultery, and to bear false witness. They know it because God has given us this moral sense. Even the person who hasn’t darkened a church door in decades has drawn some moral boundaries that he or she won’t cross. Because you are a moral being, you have to deal with your behavior. Your conscience demands it. Your conscience is like a whole jury room. It is the prosecutor and the defender, the judge and the jury, the witnesses and the defendant. David spoke of the guilt that he faced after he sinned in Psalm 32 and verse 3 and 4, “When I kept silent about my sin,” he says, “my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; and my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.”
Well, David saw the need to confess his sins to God; and David said, “Well, I will confess my transgressions to the LORD; And You (that is God) forgave the guilt of my sin.” I tell you life without God is not really possible. Even the most hardened atheist can hardly get beyond the notion of God. He may deny there is a God, but he can’t get away from him and from longing for him. Augustine in the opening paragraph of his great book, The Confessions, said about God, “You awaken us to delight in Your praise; for You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in You.” People who dismiss God, ignore God, or deny there is a God find life empty and futile. If you throw God out of your life, you throw out the one who created you and gives you purpose.
Man asks the question, “Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? And what will happen to me at death?” You have likely asked those questions yourself. Now, for the sake of discussion, let’s suppose there is no God. Who are you? Why, you are an accident, a freak of nature. Where did you come from? You can’t honestly say, because you don’t know. You may suppose that you came from the primordial soup and are the natural result of evolutionary change, but so what? What makes you of any value more than a rock or a snake or a hummingbird? Why are you here? You see, that’s the stumper. You have no reason to exist; there is no scheme of things in a godless world.
If there is no God, then trying to find a rational reason for existence is impossible. We are only accidents in a meaningless world. And when we ask, “What will happen to me when I die?” there’s no answer. If God doesn’t exist, the time will come when I will not exist. I came from nothing and will return there. If, however, there is a God, what a difference that makes! We know who we are as humans, because we were created in God’s image. The twenty-four elders who sang praise to God in Revelation 4, verse 11 said, “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”
We are God’s creatures, made in His image; and we are not accidents or freaks of nature. We are not the pathetic joke of the universe, cursed with knowing our lives are meaningless. Rather, we have a Father in Heaven, who calls us His children. We have a Father who loves and cares for us and is preparing a place for us. So when we ask, “Why am I here?” we have an answer. We are here because God willed us to be; and we aren’t accidents; God made us intentionally. And if I ask the question, “Where am I going?” I have an answer. The Lord Jesus is preparing a place for me. He promised in John 14, verse 1, “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, and believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; and if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”
God wants me to live in His house as His child forever and ever; and He will one day give me a new, eternal home. The place He is preparing is a place of utter joy and peace. There won’t be any wars there, no hatred, no divisions, no sin, no corruption. God will wipe away every tear, and we’ll live forever in Heaven; and that’s the goal of every person who knows and loves God! I hope it’s yours. Let’s pray. O Lord, may our love for You grow more and more, knowing that You are real and that You have loved and prepared for us in every way. Bless us now, Father. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
God really exists! The wise person takes that fact to heart. Since God exists, we are accountable to Him. Now, unfortunately some people reject God, ignore Him, or neglect Him. They live life on their own terms and act as if they had no responsibility before the God of Heaven. What should God do with people who have no need or use for Him, who live their lives in rebellion to Him? God wants to be their friend and their God, but they have no room for Him in their hearts. God knocks, but they don’t answer. What does God do? With a broken heart He leaves them alone and gives them up, because that’s what they told Him they wanted. He doesn’t want to give them up, but He won’t force a person to believe. If you’re not willing to live with God in your life, then you’ll live alone without God and without hope. You may be physically alive, but you’ll be spiritually empty and dead. Don’t choose that. There’s no future in shutting God out of your life.
To open the door to the Lord, believe in Him with all your heart and soul, repent of every sin, confess the name of Jesus Christ, and be baptized or immersed in water for the forgiveness of your sins. Why in baptism, He’ll wash you clean from every sin in the blood of Jesus. He’ll cause you to be born again as His child, free from sin, and a part of his kingdom the church. You’ll have His love, His grace, His blessing, and His promises. Baptism is the beginning of life that begins on earth but continues forever in heaven. God will prepare a place for you in heaven, because you’ve chosen to live for Him and to serve Him always. My friend, you will never regret putting your faith in Christ Jesus. So do it today!
We hope you have benefited from today’s study. Now, if you want a free printed copy, a CD, or tape of this message about God’s existence, mail your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083 or you can e-mail us at searchtv@searchtv.org.
Or, you can call the Search office toll-free; it’s at 1-800-321-8633. Now, our programs appear on our website at www.searchtv.org. You can access them or download them in a printed form, audio, or video format. We also now offer free study sheets to go along with each of our programs. You can download these free, fill them out as you listen to the program. You can get them at our website or you can call our office and request them. Now, these sheets will help you study God’s Word with us.
Please visit one of the churches of Christ in the area that’s served by this station or network. The churches of Christ love guests, and you’ll be glad that you went by and met with them. Mack and I will be back next week, Lord willing. So keep searching God’s Word with us; tell a friend about this program and invite them to watch. God bless you and we love you from all of us at In Search of the Lord’s Way.
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