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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text promotes sound doctrine while exposing the faulty. Here's your host, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you Becky. This week we finished off Romans chapter 1 looking at verses 18 -32 and we saw 5 things that can clearly be observed in all that has been made. We can know God's wrath. We can see His wrath being played out every single day.
We know God's eternal power and divine nature as it says in verse 20. We know what's natural and we know what's contrary to nature. And we know that the wages of sin is death. When we violate God's law, we know that the wages for that is our destruction.
Those are the 4 things that we focused on. I never got to number 5, but we're going to actually talk about number 5 next week. The fifth thing that we can know by all that has been made, we can know God's word is true.
We do know God's word is true. If God spoke all things into existence, we know that His word still governs us even now. I'm going to play a what video here and then take a question from a listener. Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
You know what? We agree. Though not in a way that an atheist might think, if it could be said that an atheist thinks. The burden of proof is more on an atheist to show there is no creator than it is on the Christian to prove that there is.
Why? Because all human beings inherently understand design. This is referred to as empirical adequacy. Pick any object and you inherently know it was created. But no atheist will ever be able to refer to anything coming into existence without cause or creator.
Even if he were to cook up some example of random processes, he runs into what is called the implied creator paradox because he had to create his example of non-creation. The statement made earlier about how atheists don't think, we aren't trying to be derogatory, we're simply following their logic.
If we're nothing but the result of accidental processes, then human beings are just walking sacks of chemicals. And chemicals cannot reason. They only react. That's a pretty good description of some atheists.
Romans 1, 19 -21, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. There's no reason to have to prove God's existence because everyone inherently knows.
God is real and his word is true. All of the evidence is already there when we understand the text. This question comes from Chase in Minnesota. He writes in and says, I have a friend who is not a Christian.
He self-identifies as an atheist, but he's not closed to having conversations about God. I've been giving him a lot of evidences for the existence of God, but someone else recently told me that I shouldn't be doing that.
And what I should be doing is presuppositional apologetics. What is that? And is it wrong to try and prove to someone that God is real? Thanks for your question, Chase. Presuppositional apologetics is basically this.
It's presupposing that a person already knows that God is real and a person already inherently understands that God is true. Therefore, there's no reason to have to prove to them that God is real or prove to them that the Bible is true.
I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree with that approach. Now I generally take that approach. Like when you share the gospel with somebody, that's what you should do. Share the gospel, not feel like that you have to prove that God is real first and then they have to accept that God is real for you to then share with them the gospel because they've been given over to a debased mind.
They've been worshiping the creature rather than the creator. And so, as it says in 2 Timothy 2 25, they have been ensnared by the devil and are being used by him as an instrument for Satan. Now, you're not supposed to tell the person that that's just for you to understand.
So you are supposed to correct your opponents with gentleness, as it says in the verses before that, and God may grant them repentance. And you do that with the gospel. It's perfectly OK for you to give them evidences of God's existence.
But no matter what you say, no matter what apology, apologetic argument you give, get to the gospel because that's the part that is the power of salvation for everyone who believes, as it says in Romans 1 16.
So don't ever feel like that you have to prove something first before you can give the gospel. Always give the gospel, give your evidences. That's totally fine. If you've done some research and you got some good arguments to present, present those arguments, but always get to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
If you want to submit a question to When We Understand the Text, the address is very simple, whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .tt .com. Thanks for listening!