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| Rev. Brian Wilkie |
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, June 4th, 2017:
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Broadcast Notes:
Good Morning! I'm your host
today, Brian Wilkie of St. Andrew's Christian Church in Rockland. As we begin today, my prayer is that The Good
News of the Lord Jesus Christ would encourage and strengthen you today!
I gratefully acknowledge today's Sponsor, Lanark Baptist Church for their financial support today. We hope that all our listeners find a good biblical church in which to worship, grow in faith, encourage others and serve the Lord. Thank you Lanark Baptist Church for your partnership in the Gospel. |
Reasons to Believe
Today my scripture and my theme has to do with reasons to believe:
Reasons to believe the gospel. I’m going to read from the opening of the letter
of Paul to the Romans. Romans chapter 1 beginning at verse 16 where Paul
writes,
Romans 1:16–23
16 I am not ashamed of the gospel,
because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes:
first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness
from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just
as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
God’s Wrath Against Mankind
18 The wrath of God is being revealed
from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the
truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to
them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the
world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been
clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without
excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they
neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became
futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be
wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Paul goes on to speak about the state of humanity apart from the gospel
and through the book of Romans describes the Gospel in glorious terms and
answers so many questions we have about the way that God has redeemed us
through Jesus Christ. So we’ll get a further look at Paul's words here in a few
moments, but first I’d like you to hear the words of our Lord, in the prayer
that he taught, and today it’s going to be presented as sung my Glen Campbell,
from his album The Inspirational Collection. This is "the Lord’s
Prayer."
The theme of my message today is going to be about reasons to believe,
but I’m sure near the beginning of the scripture, it’s easy to get struck by
the words “ the wrath” of God. That phrase is a very important phrase to Paul,
to the scriptures and to the gospel. But it needs to be understood very clearly
that Paul writes the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all the
godlessness and wickedness. The godlessness and wickedness of people. His wrath
is not against people, but against sin. Against the evil which is being done
and the reason that Paul describes this reaction of God, is because people
persist in acting against God’s purposes, even though Paul says there’s ample
evidence that God has a good and gracious purpose. These days we might question
Paul's assumption if we’ve been listening to a lot of the dialog that goes on
in the media around us and in the world around us, where faith is treated as
something that is sort of randomly chosen. People believe what they’re going to
believe and it’s not based on reasons, or based on evidence, but in fact, Paul
precisely describes a faith which is based on evidence. Based on reasons to
believe. And he starts with the root being the evidence that comes from
creation. He looks at the way that God has made the world and says, surely it’s
evident to all people that there is a creator. Surely it’s evident that God’s
power and divine nature have been revealed in the glory and greatness of the
universe that he has created.
This is, to the ancient peoples, obvious. They believed that God created
things. That there was a God. Now they may not have believed in the God of
Israel. They may have believed in an idol that they had made, so instead of
glorifying the God who made all things, they created their own gods, and gave
them credit for the things that God had done. But they knew they weren’t here
by chance. They knew that they were overseen by a divine power. Now that should be obvious, Paul says, and yet today it may not seem
obvious to you at all. For if you’ve been listening to much of the dialogue
about science and about evolution and about cosmology, you may think that
science has made it difficult to assert that God is a creator. That the
universe required a creator. Well good
news.... the more that science is learning about the universe in which we live,
the more that we discover there’s good reason to believe that God is behind the
creation of the universe.
I’ve been reading, recently, a very good book and if you want to write
down the name of the author, his name is Eric
Metaxas and his name will be in the transcript on the website when this
program has been broadcast. The book by Eric Metaxas is called Miracles. And it simply describes what
miracles are, How they happen, and how they can change your life.
I’ve been very intrigued by some of the early chapters that talk about
the arguments from cosmology; From the study of the stars and the whole history
of the universe that shows how highly improbable it is that the universe exists
by some chance. In fact scientists know very well that the universe is not self
explanatory. There is nothing explained, in fact, as an older philosopher once
said, science doesn’t explain anything about the universe, it simply describes
it. It describes how gravity effects objects as they move through space. But it
is unable to tell us what exactly gravity is and explain the existence of
gravity. We can describe further the particles and the fields that cause
different forces to exist, but it doesn’t explain how these laws of nature came
into being, or how matter, which according to the laws of nature can neither be
created nor destroyed, how that matter came into being in the first place. And
so, just through various scientific studies, it’s been discovered that the
universe is extraordinarily finely tuned. That the way that matter interacts,
and the laws that govern their interaction, means that any slight deviation from
those principals would mean that nothing at all would exist. And certainly,
once the universe exists, that if things weren’t very carefully tuned in the
universe, there would be no planets to support life. There would be no
opportunity for life to come into being. It’s worth reading further about this, and many authors are writing
very good scientific accounts of how incredible the creation that God has made
is. And how creation begs us to ask the question –Who caused this to come into
being?
Do some looking into that . Erick Metaxas, or Hugh Ross, or any number
of other authors that are doing great studies in this.
I was surprised and delighted to find that one of the great atheists of
my early philosophical studies, Anthony Flew, when he looked at the complexity
of the universe and the new things that science was finding out about it, he
admitted that he had to abandon his atheism and accept that something (and
perhaps he hadn’t come to the place where he accepted that it was the God who
in Christ reconciled the world to himself) But he knew that something, someone
had to have created this universe.
It’s my hope that if you pick up the book by Eric Metaxas or even other
similar books like the book titled Miracles by C.S. Lewis, that you will find
great reasons to understand that the creator is evident in his creation . But
what Paul describes in the book of Romans is a group of people who have turned
away from the idea that God in his eternal power and divine nature, they turned
away from that God and they’ve gone other ways, and they have become foolish,
Paul's says, and blinded to the reality. This is not a blindness that needs to
be permanent. This is not an ignorance that needs to be willful. Sometimes
people don’t believe something because they don’t want to believe it, but even
when we don’t want to believe something, if there is enough reason to change
our minds, we might grudgingly change our minds about it. In fact that’s what
happened to the author I mentioned earlier, C.S. Lewis when he was confronted
by a friend with an account of the truth of the gospel and he pondered it, and
he investigated it and he looked into it, and he says that on a train as he
traveled from one city in Britain to another, somewhere along the way, he grudgingly
accepted that Jesus Christ was Lord, and that God was God.
So it’s wonderful that with reasons to believe, we can come to see God
in his is reality and be redeemed by him and restored by him to our original
purposes. In fact if you’ve been to the theaters lately, I hope you’ve seen the
Case for Christ, a movie about the conversion of Lee Stroebel. It’s a wonderful
book which documents his studies, His investigations as a journalist, into this
strange idea of Christianity. At least it appeared strange to him when his wife
became a Christian, and he wanted to convince her that this couldn’t be true,
and he did his investigations and was grudgingly, eventually coming to the
point where he had to accept that the story of Jesus’ resurrection was not some
myth, but was in fact a very supportable claim to truth. Eventually, as he
embraced the truth of God, he came to great joy in knowing that he was loved
and forgiven by his God. This is a great story and it’s told very well through
the movie as well.
So there are many places that you can turn to, to encourage you in your
faith and see that there are good reasons to believe. But perhaps you believe
already and what you need is to be able to express to people as Paul says, the
reason for the hope that is in you . Well, let's take a look at that in more
depth, but first let’s listen to Mark Schultz as he sings a very familiar hymn,
about God reaching out in his love. Amazing Grace. And this is from Mark’s
album Hymns.
In the letters to the Romans, Paul begins by speaking about the
arguments from creation. That people ought to notice that there is a god. But
creation itself doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about God. Creation
as a miracle of God’s handiwork does speak about God. And God through all his miracles,
does speak to people about who he is. Not merely doing miracles to solve this
problem or that problem. Not merely doing miracles to show off, but acting in
the world to speak to you and me about his great love. His great purposes. And
His great salvation in Jesus Christ. And the miracles that happened in
scripture are miracles given to the people of Israel for the whole earth, so
that when we look at how God has been faithful to Israel, we can understand
that he is a faithful God. That if we turn to him in confession, and in faith,
he will be faithful and just and forgive us our sins and grant to us eternal
life through his son, Jesus Christ.
We see that through the testimony that God has given about himself in
the scriptures. When he accompanied the words of Jesus, which spoke about Gods
love, with the acts of healing and deliverance and the miracles of his power
over nature, he demonstrated through that evidence, to the disciples, that here
was not a mere prophet. Here was not just a kindly teacher. Here was not just a
human wise man or philosopher, but here was Gods own Son. Even speaking
miraculously at Jesus’ baptism and at his transfiguration, saying to the
disciples, “This is My Son, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him “Jesus
was given all these signs to point to the truth of the salvation that would
come through him. And throughout scriptures we see other signs given to the
apostles so that others could know that the words they were speaking were true.
And even today we still see the evidence in God's love in the miracles he works
in our own lives. It’s worth many, many more messages to talk about why not all
prayers are answered. But praise be to God for the prayers that are answered.
Praise be to God even when someone else’s prayers are answered and we're given
hope that the God who saw their need also sees us and whether he heals us or
sustains us, whether he delivers us in this life or into the next, we know that
we have a God that greatly loves us, and that is doing all things for our good.
There's good reason to believe in Jesus. Maybe you need to share your reasons
with others, so they can believe as well. Maybe you can tell others how good
God has been to you, and in turn be encouraged by their testimony. It is part
of our life as a church and part of our ministry here at Good News in the
Morning, to be able to draw people to this wonderful good news and show them
why they can believe and trust and hope in Jesus Christ.
Let’s now turn to him in prayer:
Almighty God,
help us to believe. Help us to understand and to examine and think upon the
many things you have done to show us your goodness. Lord, turn us from darkness
to light. Help us to see in this light all your glory. We ask this in Jesus’
name. Amen
In a few moments after the announcer speaks his concluding words, I do
want us to end our time together with a song that celebrates what our maker can
do in every one who asks. This creator, who has given us Jesus as our Savior,
calls us to cry to him what this song expresses. This song is called Create In
Me a Clean Heart, and it’s sung by the Rend Collective...from an album
wonderfully titled The Art of Celebration.
Rev. Brian Wilkie
St. Andrew's Christian Community,
Rockland, Ontario
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To
listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:
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