09.10.07
Shorter Catechism on God (1): God is …
Read: Hebrews 11:1-6
Perhaps the most vexed question of our generation is that concerning the existence of God. Atheism – the belief that there is no God - has become fashionable. Now I would hope that none of us here are atheists – wouldn’t it be strange to find atheists in a prayer meeting, praying to a God they don’t think exists. But, what really do we know about God? Are we able to rationally set out what we believe concerning what God is and what God is like?
In the late 1640’s, the finest theologians in Britain thought long and hard about this question and finally they came up with an answer – an answer we find in response to question 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
Q. What is God?
A. God is a Spirit – infinite, eternal and unchangeable – in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.
Over the next few Wednesday evenings, I want to go through this description of God, and I want to do it in the same way we looked through the book of James – in 15 minute studies. Tonight, I want to study the first two words of this answer – God is. I want us to turn what we find out about God each week into prayer – tonight, to use God’s existence as a focus for prayer. I want therefore to look at three things under the heading of God is. First, God is presupposed; secondly, God is real and lastly, God is there.
[A] God is … Presupposed
You might expect me to begin by trying to prove the existence of God. But that’s not where the Bible or our catechisms begin. They do not begin with complicated arguments for the existence of God – rather they just work from the presupposition that He does exist. For example, the Bible’s first words are ‘in the beginning God’ – no proof there, just solid pre-supposition. The Shorter Catechism begins by asking, “what is man’s chief end? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.” No proof is given, just pre-supposition. The Bible and the historical Christian faith pre-suppose God exists and works forward from there.
But does that not mean that we are biased and we aren’t coming to the table with neutral minds? It does, but the truth is that everybody comes to the table biased – the notion of an unbiased, completely neutral person is a modernist fallacy. Everybody has their own inbuilt assumptions and pre-suppositions. The question we have to ask is this: what group of assumptions and pre-suppositions make most sense – does coming to the table with an atheistic agenda take account of the universe’s spiritual, artistic and moral emphases? It doesn’t because it can’t. Only by pre-supposing the existence of God can one make the most sense of the Universe as we understand it.
The other problem here is that of knowability. How can we know that there is God? The truth is that we only know there is a God because that God has chosen to reveal Himself, and certain things about Himself, to us. If He had chosen not to reveal Himself, then we would know nothing about Him. Where does He reveal Himself? In two things: first, in the Universe in which we live. Romans 1:20 tells us that “for since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen.” Everyone knows intuitively that there is a God. But secondly, God reveals Himself in the Bible which we read. After reflecting on how God reveals Himself in nature, in Psalm 19:6 King David writes, “the law of the Lord is perfect”. Or again, in 2 Timothy 3:15 Paul says to Timothy, “from a child you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation.” Everyone knows that there is a God, but only the Bible is able to tell us how we are to be saved, because the Bible tells us about Jesus.
[B] God is … Real
Given that all men know God exists and that the Bible nor our catechisms and creeds make any effort to prove His existence, is there any point in trying to prove to other people that He exists? I believe there is – but not for the reason you might think. There are two avenues which we can go down in attempting to prove the existence of God.
1. Proving God’s Existence from Nature – these arguments boil down to two basic types – the first type is to ask the question, where does matter come from, or in other words, where does everything we see with our eyes come from? Why is our universe the way it is? It surely does not come from nothing, but it would seem, according to modern science, not to have come from something either. The second type, which I believe is more convincing is to ask the question, where do morals come from, or in other words, who says what is right and wrong? Why is it wrong to murder someone?
Now we have to be very careful with these arguments because if poorly presented, they can do more harm than good and whilst they may prove the existence of a God, they do not necessarily prove the existence of the Christian God. But be that as it may, using them carefully and sparingly with your non-Christian friends can make them ask questions and move them one step away from atheism, towards Christianity.
2. Proving God’s Existence from Jesus – I very rarely use arguments from nature, but what I do use are arguments based upon the life, death and particularly the resurrection of Jesus. We know Jesus existed, we know He died, and we know He rose from the dead – these things are historical facts. And if Jesus rose from the dead then this at the very least proves the existence of the supernatural, and at the very most proves that everything Jesus said about Himself and about God is absolutely true. God really does exist and all because Jesus rose from the dead – and everything we know about God comes through Jesus.
I have sometimes used this argument with non-Christians, but most often I have used this argument with myself. I have, as most Christians do, gone through periods of atheistic doubt, when I have doubted that there was a God at all. I have, in bouts of deep melancholy, wondered if everything I believe is a fantasy. But then I remember that Jesus died and rose again – that’s fact – and therefore God is. God is real, and you cannot run away from that fact without running away from the universe in which you live, yourself or the principles of logic. Yes, we presuppose that God is, but that is a far better presupposition than the alternative.
[C] God is … There
The last two points have been fairly technical, but its ground we have to cover. But now I want to conclude by applying this greatest of all truths – that God is. What impact should this remarkable statement have upon our lives? I believe it should impact five areas:
1. Beliefs – if God exists, then we aren’t free to believe what we like about Him. Just like I exist, and therefore if you want to get to know me, you have to know me, not just to imagine what I am like. And in the Bible God has told us everything we need to know about Himself – if we choose not to believe what He has told us about Himself there, but choose to believe what Mystic Meg tells us, or the local Mullah tells us, then whatever it is you are getting to know, it’s not the one true and living God. God is, and He has told us what He is like in His Word – this surely then must affect what we believe.
2. Behaviour – the Puritan Stephen Charnock wrote a huge tome entitled, “Discourses on the Existence and Attributes of God” – a dense book, but one which I will be quoting from in the next few weeks. He writes, “all sin is founded in a secret atheism.” If God is, then that must affect our behaviour – to know that He is aware of everything that we are doing and thinking. To sin is to wish God were not watching – in fact, to wish that God did not exist that He might see us and punish us for it.
3. Purpose – we so often feel, and the modern church all too often encourages us to believe, that God exists to make us happy, as if to say, God exists for me. But by contrast, because God is, and God is the ultimate reality, dependant upon no-one and nothing for His existence, He doesn’t need us and He certainly doesn’t exist just to make us happy. Rather, as the first answer to the Catechism reminds us – we exist to glorify Him and to enjoy Him for ever.
4. Comfort – what a comfort it is to know that the universe is not a chaotic system with no-one in charge. When the boat is in a storm, it is of the greatest of comforts to the crew and passengers to know that there is an experienced captain at the helm. All of us go through hard and difficult times – what a comfort it is to know that despite everything around us, God is the ultimate reality – the rock to which we can anchor our tired lives; the helmsman directing the course of history; the shoulder on which we can cry.
5. Prayer – is it a futile thing to pray? It would be if there were no God – for to whom would we be praying? But because God is, we can have confidence that our prayers are being heard and answered. The ultimate mark of a practical atheist is prayerlessness. If we really believed that God is, our days would be filled with prayer and our prayer meetings would be filled. So we can pray for our illnesses to be healed because we believe God is; we can pray for our missionaries because God is.
God is … it is the greatest fact of all history. How important it is for us to know, understand and apply this in our day to day lives. I pray that as we go through this study together, you would come not just to know more about God, but that you may come to know God better. AMEN