Why is Your God the Right One?

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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April 3, 2013

00:00: All right, well, this is our after-school Bible study, and I do think that this topic is really important.
00:09: Whether you are an adult or a child, we all have people who ask us questions about our faith, and we have questions about our faith that we want to find the answers to.
00:22: You guys all gave me lists of questions that you had, questions that you asked, questions that people have asked you, and the things that you wanted to know about the Bible.
00:34: What was the very first question we dealt with last week, or two weeks ago, as you may remember? Yes, Courtney? How do you know that God exists? Okay, so the first question was, how do you know that God exists? Or, why do you believe that God exists? All right, we believe, remember? I'll let you guys go first.
00:56: What was the answer? Does anybody remember? Why do we believe God exists? Okay, it's difficult to believe that everything happened by accident, by chance.
01:12: What else? Nothing comes from nothing.
01:18: That is something we discussed.
01:19: Very good.
01:21: Yes, it is.
01:22: It is something we believe.
01:24: We cannot absolutely prove it, so it comes down in the end to faith.
01:30: All right, let me just give you a real quick synopsis of last time.
01:34: We believe that the order and complexity of the universe demands the existence of an intelligent and purposeful designer.
01:48: Okay? Let me put it in a different way, maybe like this.
01:52: If a painting is proof that there was a painter, and a building is proof that there was a builder, then we believe that, logically, creation is proof that there was a creator.
02:11: Everybody understand? So, we believe that creation itself gives evidence of a creator.
02:17: All right? So, the next logical question, if we've already answered the question, somebody asks you, why do you believe God exists? Well, I believe that creation is evidence of a creator.
02:28: Okay? Well, what's the next question? Well, if you believe God exists, how do you know that your God is the right one? Because that's a bigger step.
02:43: That's a more difficult step, and that's the step that people often have a hard time making.
02:49: A lot of people, even agnostics, will often say, well, I imagine something exists, I imagine there has to be some type of a supreme being, some type of a higher power, but we just don't know which one's right.
03:02: Why is it that you believe, oh, I don't know, that Jesus is the, that Christianity is the right religion, and that the father of Jesus Christ is the right God, why not believe in Allah, or why not believe in Buddha, or why not believe in some other religious systems, the many gods of Hinduism? Because really and truly, the very first thing that we did last time, when we asked the question, why do you believe in God, we gave the answer that creation is evidence of a creator, right? The only thing that that brings us to is something called deism.
03:44: Who wants to try to define deism? Okay, that's true.
03:52: It's a belief in a God who created.
03:55: What else does deism, what's some more about deism? Deists believe that God created the world, but that He is unknowable, that we don't know anything about Him, we don't know anything about this God who created the world.
04:15: Pretty much, yes, we have to admit that all of this order had to come from somewhere, but we don't know where, and we don't know why, and we don't know anything about it.
04:26: That's what a deist believes.
04:29: What are we called? We're not deists.
04:31: What are we? It sounds like deism, but it's, or theists, but it's, huh? Theists.
04:42: We are called theists.
04:46: A theist is different than a deist, because a theist believes that God is personal, and knowable, and that He has communicated with His creatures.
05:07: So, tell me the difference between deism and theist.
05:13: What's theist? God is unknowable.
05:24: He has not communicated.
05:27: Know what you're going to say.
05:29: Explain to me what theism is.
05:31: Do you know what deism is? God is unknowable and has not communicated.
05:34: What's theism? Absolutely.
05:44: He's knowable, and He has communicated.
05:48: That's the two big differences.
05:50: Deism says He's not knowable.
05:51: He hasn't communicated.
05:53: Theism believes He is knowable.
05:54: He has communicated.
05:55: So Christianity is obviously a theistic religion, because we believe that God has communicated to His creation.
06:06: Now, another big question.
06:07: Hopefully all of you will know the answer, but if you don't, it's okay.
06:11: How has God communicated to us? Carly had her hand up first.
06:26: Very good.
06:27: He communicated physically and audibly to certain people.
06:33: How does He communicate to us, though? Right now, today.
06:37: How does He communicate to us? John.
06:42: You're not John, because you're 18.
06:44: I'm sorry.
06:44: I know your name.
06:45: You have the same haircut now, so you're welcome.
06:49: What did you say? Burning Bush.
06:52: Burning Bush is how He communicated with Moses.
06:54: That is a form of communication.
06:55: But how does He communicate to us today? He communicates with us today through a medium which we call the Bible.
07:15: Right? That is how we believe that God communicates with us today.
07:21: But that doesn't answer the question.
07:24: That simply gets us to where we're going to start.
07:28: Because the question is, why do you believe your God is right? How do you know your God is right? How do you know He's the right one? Well, we say that we believe that God created the world.
07:43: We believe that God created the world and He is a personal God.
07:47: That He is a knowable God.
07:48: And that He has communicated with all of us.
07:52: And the question is, how has He communicated? Our answer is, how? He's communicated through the Bible.
08:02: But why do we believe that that is true? Why do we believe that God has communicated to us through the Bible? I'm going to give you three reasons.
08:12: If you're taking notes, put them in a pen and write these three things down.
08:24: Why do we believe that God has communicated to us through the Bible? Number one, the Bible answers the most profound questions of who we are, where we came from, where we're going.
09:02: Let me say that again.
09:03: The Bible answers the most profound questions of who we are, where we came from, where we're going, and why.
09:18: If you think about it, very few religious systems attempt to address those questions on a very meaningful basis.
09:37: For instance, let's take the second largest religion in the world right now is what? Islam, right? Muslims.
09:46: Islam is the second largest religion in the world.
09:49: Where does Islam get its creation narratives? From our Bible.
09:56: Where do they get their doctrine of man? Well, from the same book that we do, from our Bible.
10:04: Primarily, the teachings of where we came from, who we are as creations of God, all of these, they have to draw from our worldview.
10:19: They have to draw from our book.
10:22: This is why the Qur'an, which is the Islamic holy book, this is why the Qur'an actually addresses people of the book, us.
10:34: And it addresses the teachings of the Torah and the Injil.
10:39: That is the Old Testament, the New Testament, the law and the gospel.
10:43: Injil is Arabic for gospel.
10:47: We are the people of the Injil.
10:50: The Bible is one of the few religions that spawned from the Bible, Christianity and Judaism.
10:56: One of the few places where there has been an attempt to address the most profound questions.
11:03: Who we are, where are we going or where we came from, where we're going and why.
11:10: All right, that's number one.
11:13: Number two.
11:14: Why do we believe the Bible? Well, not just because it seeks to answer.
11:19: It answers the most profound questions.
11:21: But number two, it bears the marks of supernatural revelation.
11:29: It bears the marks of supernatural revelation.
11:42: What do I mean by that? Anyone want to take a stab at it? Yeah.
11:52: OK.
11:54: When I say supernatural, what do I mean? What does the word supernatural mean? It's simple.
12:03: I know you're probably thinking, well, it means super and natural, so it's supernatural.
12:07: Yeah, that's kind of it.
12:08: What does supernatural mean, actually? Huh? All right.
12:26: Supernatural means outside of that which happens naturally.
12:30: Supernatural means outside of that which happens naturally.
12:33: There are people who are called anti-supernaturalists.
12:38: Sounds like a big word, right? My master's thesis in school was, I'm trying to remember exactly how it was, the fault of uniformitarianism is the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism.
12:57: That was in the title of the paper.
12:59: I did that because I thought it was hilarious.
13:00: You use those many words and people wouldn't know what they mean.
13:04: But anti-supernaturalists, atheists are typically anti-supernaturalists.
13:08: They believe everything is natural.
13:10: Everything happens by natural occurrence, that there is no divine hand, that there's no God, that there's no divinity.
13:20: There's nothing that happens that cannot be explained naturally.
13:25: Right? So when we say the Bible bears the marks of supernatural revelation, what we mean is there are things in the Bible which indicate that it was given to us, it was revealed to us, revelation, it was revealed to us in a way that only it could be done by a supernatural being.
13:47: One of the things that we find in the Bible that is supernatural is prophecy.
13:55: You might want to put that down, prophecy.
13:59: The Bible says things will happen and then later those things are fulfilled.
14:09: We call that prophetic utterance.
14:12: When a prophet says this will happen and then that thing happens, that is a prophecy.
14:19: That's something only God can do.
14:21: You realize that no person can see the future, right? I mean, does anybody here believe in something like fortune tellers? Y'all with me? Hang with me.
14:34: I'm not going to take much longer, I promise.
14:36: Hang with me.
14:37: Does anybody here believe in fortune tellers? Psychics? No, don't give me that Sean Spencer stuff.
14:44: No, no, no.
14:45: He's just observing.
14:46: He's hyper-observing.
14:47: All right, no.
14:48: We don't believe that somebody can tell the future, right? But we believe that prophets spoke prophetic utterances that they told what was going to happen in the future.
15:00: Why do we believe that? Because we believe it was God speaking through them.
15:05: Thus, it was a supernatural revelation, right? When we read in the Bible, in the Old Testament, that a prophet is going to rise up among the Jewish people, that he is going to be killed for the sins of the people, that he is going to be pierced in his hands and in his feet, that his clothes are going to be taken from him, and that the soldiers are going to literally cast lots to see who gets his clothes, that he is going to die, be buried, and be resurrected, that he's going to be born in Bethlehem, but that he's going to be called a Nazarene.
15:49: Who am I talking about? Jesus Christ, right? The Messianic prophecies.
15:54: There are over 100 individual Messianic prophecies, prophecies about the Messiah or about Jesus, from the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the person of Jesus.
16:06: So we say that is an example of a supernatural revelation that couldn't have happened by man.
16:13: Man can't see the future.
16:15: Only God knows the future, so only God can give prophecy, right? So that's part and parcel of why we believe the Bible is true.
16:25: It bears the marks of supernatural revelation in prophecy.
16:30: It also bears the marks of supernatural revelation in consistency.
16:34: That word is spelled C-O-N-S-I-S-T-E-N-C-Y.
16:49: I need a spell checker on the board.
16:52: So we said first in prophecy, also in consistency.
16:59: Why? Think of this.
17:03: How long was the Bible written from beginning to end? How many years did it take to write the whole Bible? 1,500 years, start to finish.
17:16: Over 1,500 years, start to finish.
17:20: Okay? It was written by how many authors? Over 40.
17:30: Over 40 authors.
17:32: 1,500 years, over 40 authors.
17:35: It was written in how many languages? This one you all might know.
17:38: How many languages are in the Bible? Close.
17:43: It's actually three.
17:45: But I give people a pass.
17:47: It's really Hebrew and Greek.
17:49: There is some Aramaic in the book of Daniel.
17:53: Aramaic is a Hebrew dialect.
17:56: So, yeah.
17:57: And there's some Aramaic in the New Testament too.
17:59: You ever read in the New Testament, like when Jesus said to the little girl, Tabula cumi, little girl arise? That's Arabic, which they're translating into Greek, which we then translate into English.
18:09: It's really, really weird.
18:10: But there's a little bit of Aramaic in there.
18:14: So, we say it's over three languages.
18:16: Written over 1,500 years.
18:20: Written 40 different authors.
18:23: Three languages.
18:24: But yet, it maintains a consistent message from beginning to end.
18:31: Let me ask you a question.
18:33: If you were to get 40 people in this room, and you were to ask them one question, 40 different people from different backgrounds, different walks of life, different churches, maybe 40 pastors, and you ask them all a question about God, what's a chance that they're all going to agree? It's not going to happen.
18:56: But we have a book written by over 40 people, written over a period of 1,500 years, three languages, and yet it says the same message from start to finish.
19:07: That's what we call divine consistency.
19:10: There's a divine consistency as well as the prophecy.
19:14: So, the Bible bears the marks.
19:18: It bears the marks of supernatural revelation.
19:24: So, again, the first reason why we believe the Bible is it answers the most profound questions of who we are, where we came from, where we're going, and why.
19:35: Number two, it bears the marks of supernatural revelation.
19:38: Number three, let's number three.
19:41: It was confirmed by Jesus.
19:46: It was confirmed by Jesus, and if you want to put a little extra, who we also believe to be divine.
19:57: It was confirmed by Jesus, who we also believe to be divine.
20:02: Now, some people would claim that an appeal to Jesus is circular logic, because they would say, well, if you use Jesus to validate the Bible, but you find out Jesus from the Bible, that's circular in nature, that's circular logic.
20:21: However, it's not circular logic, and this is why.
20:25: The story of Jesus has extra-biblical attestation.
20:29: There is other literature outside of Scripture which gives us information about His life and ministry.
20:36: The Bible tells us the most of what we know about Jesus, but we do know this.
20:41: Even if the Bible didn't exist, we would still know that Jesus existed.
20:46: Everybody agree? Even if the Bible didn't exist, the historic person of Jesus Christ, the information about Him is also contained in other historical records.
20:55: Furthermore, history records this.
20:59: Many of the people that saw Jesus alive during His ministry, and after His death, also testified about their beliefs in Him, and many of them, there is record of them having died for their faith in Him.
21:19: In fact, many in the early church died martyrs' deaths because they believed in Him.
21:27: So, if someone says, well, why do you believe the Bible? My answer, first and foremost, is I believe in Jesus.
21:35: I believe that what the Bible says about Jesus is true.
21:39: And Jesus believed that the Bible was true.
21:42: Thus, there is my answer.
21:44: It is the resurrection which confirms the divinity of Christ, because without it, Christianity would not exist.
21:52: But with it, we have the confirmation that everything Jesus said was true, and thus the God of Christianity is the Creator of the world.
21:58: So, let's put it down to short.
22:01: We got the other one down to short.
22:02: We went through a long lesson last time.
22:04: But what was the short answer? Somebody says, why do you believe in God? Because we believe that creation demands a Creator.
22:10: Right? That's the short version of everything we learned.
22:13: Today, let's give a short version.
22:16: Why do you believe your God is the right one? Here's the simple answer.
22:21: We believe in the historic reality of Jesus, in His death, burial, and resurrection, which confirms to us that what He said about God is true.
22:32: We believe in the historic reality of Jesus, in His death, burial, and resurrection, and that confirms what He said about God.
22:46: So, ultimately, our entire faith is wrapped up in the person of Jesus.
22:54: That's why we're called what? Say it loud.
22:58: Say it proudly.
22:59: I'll get the guitar with you.
23:01: I'm a thief.
23:01: I'm a C.H.
23:03: Do it and say it again.
23:06: I'm a C.H.
23:07: I'm a C.H.
23:09: I'm a C.H.
23:10: I'm a C.H.
23:10: Don't pass his daughter's spelling question wrong.
23:16: You didn't before.
23:17: You may have did it then.
23:18: I am a Christian because I believe in the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
23:27: Right? Now, I want to end with a discussion question.
23:34: In the 15th chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church, what we call First Corinthians, in the 15th chapter of First Corinthians, Paul says these words.
23:49: He says, If Christ is not raised, we of all men are most to be pitied.
24:02: How many of you have ever heard that? Well, if you're here Sunday, you heard it because I preach Sunday.
24:07: Let's do it again.
24:09: The Apostle Paul said, If Christ is not raised and we of all men are most to be pitied.
24:16: What do you think he means by that? Go ahead, Courtney.
24:29: OK, if you are a martyr and you're believing in Christ and he didn't exist, then you died for nothing.
24:36: That's one.
24:37: What else? The point that the Apostle Paul is making, and that hits part of it, the point is this.
24:50: Our entire faith is wrapped up in the resurrection of Christ.
24:57: If Christ raised from the dead, then everything he said was true, and thus he deserves our faith and our following.
25:07: But if Christ did not raise from the dead, then really we are most of all men worthy of being pitied.
25:19: Why? Because wouldn't it be pitiful to believe in something and to live for something that wasn't real? Wouldn't it be pitiful to believe and live for something that wasn't true? Right? So if somebody asks me, Why do you believe that your God is the right God? I tell them because I believe in the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
25:44: I believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
25:47: I don't just believe that in my heart.
25:50: I believe it literally happened.
25:53: If it didn't happen, I'm worthy of pity because I've committed my life to it.
26:00: But if it did, then everything that Jesus taught, everything that Jesus said, and everything that he did was true.
26:15: So our entire faith is wrapped up in who? Jesus.
26:19: And that's why we're called.
26:24: All right.
26:25: Well, that answers the first two questions.
26:28: Hopefully that was helpful to you.
26:30: And hopefully this recording will be helpful to those who were playing hooky today because we've got quite a few out.
26:37: All right.
26:38: Well, we will end with prayer.
26:40: And we didn't do our prayer request earlier.
26:42: So let me stop the recording and we will have our prayer requests.