PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

-Why do you believe in Jesus as the Savior of the world? Have you ever given thought to reasons or rationale for believing in Him, and believing that we have a rational faith that makes sense of the world and our lives? 

-Dr. Groothius in Seminary: “the defence of Christianity is objectively true, compellingly rational, and pertinent to the whole of life. I have dedicated my entire adult life to that defending that claim.”

-Because Christianity is defensible, it gives us a reason to have hope when the world around us is full of chaos.

-Hopelessness is seen all around us today, deaths of despair, upcoming generation despondent about climate change, wars taking place in Europe for the first time since WW2, friendship is on the decline

-When do you tend to feel hopeless about the world around us? When you feel that way, do you take your thoughts to God, or do you start to complain about how unfair life is and either ignore or blame God for your current state of affairs?

-When I feel that way, I need to go back and remind myself why things are this way, remind myself who God is, and ultimately speak the truth to myself!

READ/PRAY

1. The Unbelief of the Fool (1-4)

-Not something you should run around referring to people as! Hebrew has a few words that we translate as fool, and all of them refer to something that is morally inferior, not intellectually inferior.

-Not saying this person is dumb, instead they’re refusing to acknowledge that there is a moral standard they aren’t matching up to, which the rest of the verse goes on to talk about

-However, there is a base level that true intellectual pursuit can’t be found apart from God. If the pursuit of intelligence is meant to lead to the discover of the truth, and the source of everything (including truth) is God Himself, how can someone legitimately pursue intelligence apart from God? While the Hebrew denotes moral inferiority, I don’t think this leaves out intellectual inferiority. But how can this be, when some of the “smartest” people in the world are avowed atheists?

-One of the things that has fascinated me in the past is the entire University system was initially conceived as centering around theology, which was referred to as the “queen of the sciences” Theology was the centering point around which everything else flowed, hence a uni (1) versity

-Paul picks up on and expands this idea in Rom 1:22-23: 

-Mere intellectual pursuit isn’t enough! It will point to, reveal, demonstrate God, but just pursuing more smarts is a pointless aim unless it finds it’s fulfilment in the worship of God, talked about this idea in the Spring when we looked at the image of God. We, as sinners, participate in the great exchange, where instead of worshipping the Creator God, we worship the creation, that is God’s definition of foolishness!

-Now, notice where the fool says this: in his heart, Lit. “No God”

-He has convinced himself (or herself), that’s where Romans says this is self-deception. In Ecclesiastes we’re reminded that God has placed eternity in our hearts, which is where humans have an innate desire for something more or bigger than themselves. 

-If you haven’t heard/read the statistics, the biggest growth in religion is “nones” (not nuns), but what’s fascinating is if you dig a little further into the research, something like 40% of the self-identified “nones” believe in the God of the Bible. So they’re refusing to identify with a specific religious identity, but they still believe in God. How have we gotten to the point of separating these 2 things out? I don’t get how you believe the God of the Bible, but you’re not a Christian.

-When I was in college, it was really cool to say “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.” I get what you’re trying to say, but it’s more accurate to say it’s a religion AND a relationship! I heard a story onetime of a professor who has a sign that he brings to every class, on one side is the phrase “I don’t know” on the other side is the phrase “both/and”

-I even saw this week, Chris Pratt (Star Lord, Jurassic Park, Parks & Rec) clarified that he’s not a religious person because religion is all about oppression, but he is a Christian.

-Part of the challenge is you can’t learn these things the natural way we learn, just studying more or reading more or being taught more, the Bible says apart from a transformed heart, these things will continue to appear foolish to people.

–1 Cor. 2:14 these things are spiritually discerned, AKA you can’t figure out who God is just by looking at the world He made. It points to Him, but it doesn’t contain Him, He is not constrained by or the same as His creation. 

-Then look at what this denial about God leads to: corruption and abominable deeds.

-A well-known picture of this is seen in the book many of you have heard about or read: the Lord of the flies. A group of young boys escape England during a war but the plane carrying them crashes on an uninhabited island where their attempts to govern themselves lead to death, destruction and chaos. That’s a great picture of what happens apart from God sovereignly guiding things – who cares what God says if I’m my own god? That’s where this next verse is so funny!

-The Lord looks down.

-How do you look at an ant? Sitting in our driveway, oh weird! Look at them all!

-One of the fascinating things throughout the Bible is how God responds to those who think of themselves as being something great. In Gen. 11:5, the Tower of Babel, they planned to build a tower so high it would reach to the heavens and make them gods: “The Lord came down”, Nebuchadnezzar in Dan. 4, Psalm 2 the kings of the land make themselves great and God laughs!

-Atheists act as if they’re the intellectual gods, they have arrived, have all the answers, and God both intellectually and literally has to look down, and what does he see?

-A lack of understanding, corruption, no one doing any good, not even one.

-It makes me think of another story in Genesis where Abraham is let in on a secret by the Lord to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah where his nephew Lot lived. 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, 10. This is literally why God sent Jesus, because there is no one who does good.

-That’s the argument Paul makes in Rom. 3:10-12. None of us are off the hook! We either deep down in our hearts believe there is no God, or we act as if there is no God and refuse to admit that we need Him. That’s where David will go on:

-No knowledge

-Claiming knowledge, they refuse to follow knowledge by not calling on the Maker of everything they study. Again, they are acting or assuming superiority to God, this is where atheism is so dangerous! 

-So how do you think God should respond?

• God’s Response (5-7)

-Lit. “They feared a fear”

-Despite not acknowledging him, they live in fear, think of how difficult it would be to live without certainty, what reason or purpose would there be to live if there wasn’t an end goal to live for? As you talk to people and ask them how certain they are about their beliefs, if you keep pushing don’t get you to a low-level sense of fear about everything? How many of us can guarantee anything? 

-Guy from high school who said he’d just wait until he’s on his deathbed to hurry up and say a prayer and then be fine, but what if that’s not how he dies?

-Story from Spurgeon about atheist, ship going down, stabbed in town, writes about “religious experiences”

-If the fools are opposed to God, who does God side with? 2 words used to describe them here: righteous and poor. Those are the ones that God will be a refuge for

-Jesus says something similar in the beatitudes: Matt. 5:3 poor in Spirit will have the kingdom of heaven. This is the paradox of the way God has ordered the world. It doesn’t make sense to the natural mind, it contradicts the way our flesh thinks we should operate and behave. 

-Think of some of the other things Jesus said: first shall be last, whoever wants to be greatest must become the least, you’re blessed when you’re persecuted. Do any of those things sound like the way the world should work?

-If we want trust success and true flourishing, it means that we must acknowledge that God is God and we are not! It means we need to come to the end of ourselves, admit that we too often try to live as fools and instead become fools to the world.

-It is by being worldly foolish that God will serve as our refuge

-We don’t often need a refuge today, our world is at times far too safe! Everywhere we go we’re in a refuge: car, house, work. It wasn’t always like that, and any travel often meant you were dependent on someone else’s hospitality to act as a refuge for you. When we come to God as our refuge, we are completely safe, and nothing, not even the most formidable army in the world can fight against God. So we need to trust Him!

-That’s where David ends this prayer in vs. 7:

-Salvation

-Notice the certainty of this salvation, not if, when. Micah reminded us last week that we can and should turn to God in the midst of our struggles and pain because we know that God will restore our fortunes. It’s not if, it’s when! So if you are struggling, if you are hurting, bring it to God and trust that God will restore your fortunes. HOWEVER, it might not be on this side of heaven. God doesn’t guarantee us health and wealth here, but when we’re with Him, all those things that are broken are done.

-Spurgeon: “On earth are atheists many, in hell there is not any.”

-God has revealed himself in creation, but God most manifestly shows Himself in the cross. The real crux of apologetics has to answer: what do you do with Jesus?

-No serious historical scholar doubts that there was a Jesus who made some pretty big waves in the first century. The only question becomes, how do you respond to Jesus, and where do you find out more about Him?

• Are You a Fool?

– Or maybe another way to ask this question is who views you as a fool, God or the world? Or perhaps even if you’re not a practicing atheist, are you a practical atheist, living and operating as if God doesn’t exist and you don’t need Him?

-I’ve been getting some interesting apologetic questions since I moved here, and wanted to just give you all a really brief introduction to some of these questions to help you begin to understand why we can and should believe in Christianity as reliable and defensible as the one true faith in the world. 2 parts: first the existence of God, second the existence and purpose of Jesus. 

-Doubt is the natural state, it’s completely normal to have doubts and questions about God, but don’t just stop there! Since God is the source of all truth, He stand up to your scrutiny, and believe it or not, there are answers to every question I’ve ever had, heard, been asked, or read about whether or not God is real and can exist. Church, we don’t need to view faith and science or faith and reason as opposed to each other! The creation points to God! We can learn about God from both science and faith! We need more Christians who take seriously the Bible and seriously their scientific pursuit! 

-Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology (171-172) summarizes the 4 primary arguments for the existence of God: cosmological, teleological, ontological, moral.

-1. Cosmological. Nothing exists by itself. Everything that exists is dependent on something else to be. If everything in the universe must have a cause, then the universe itself must have a cause. I remember learning about the big bang in middle school, and then joking that I believed in the big bang: God said it and bang there it was! But God could have used a “big bang” as His chosen means of creating the universe! I’ll leave it at that, if you want to talk further about that, or want more resources about that email me!

-2. Teleological this is taken from the Greek word “telos” which means purpose. Think of all the incredible ways we see the purpose around us. The moon creates tides and rhythms, our planet is the perfect distance away from the sun to provide life giving nutrients, the water cycles reproduces itself to give us what we need. The best example I’ve heard of this argument is like a watch (old school watch, not like my fancy new Apple Watch!) If you were to stumble across a watch would you be amazed at what the ocean created by the waves pounding against the sand, or would you think someone dropped their watch? Think of all the various components that make up our bodies, do you think it was a complete accident?

-3. Ontological this one gets to some of the intellectual discussions people like to have. Has been a philosophical conversation since the 11^th Century. Asks the question: what is the greatest being that can possibly be imagined? Then, if you can come up with that being, to exist is greater than not existing, so intellectually you’re at God! If you want to dig further, again email me!

-4. Moral: why do we have things that are considered good and bad? Is it just cultural? Is is just upbringing? This argument says what justification can there be for there being morality in the world? Why is Mother Theresa lauded as an example to the world, while Adolf Hitler conjures up hatred and anger? 

-Liar, lunatic, Lord, legend.

CS Lewis on Jesus:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

-Maybe all these ideas came about after Jesus lived, and then became a legend like King Arthur. 

-More than I have time for, but this is where it’s worth to note all the historical evidence we have for the validity of the NT

–Lewis again: “Now, as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don’t work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so. Apart from bits of the Platonic dialogues, there is no conversation that I know of in ancient literature like the Fourth Gospel. There is nothing, even in modern literature, until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence.”

-We can believe that Christianity is objectively true, compellingly rational, and pertinent to the whole of life

-Study these things, but also share your story of what God has done in your life. Even if someone doesn’t believe the apologetic arguments, they can’t argue with a changed life, so refuse to live like an atheist and demonstrate that you believe in God, it will transform every aspect of your life