This is a reasonable question. God’s view is that “anyone who comes to [God] must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him”(Heb. 11:6, NIV). Before we can approach God, we must believe that he exists. We Christians spend too little time helping people with something that God requires before we can even approach him. This is the existence of God.

What kinds of evidence would you accept?

I once lived in a house that had several mango trees in the yard. When the fruit was of reasonable size, each morning I could go to the tree and see that something had been destroying my fruit by eating bits and pieces out of the green and near-ripe fruit. I didn’t see the flying foxes, but I can infer their existence from the evidence.

It’s like that with God. There is evidence all around that shows his existence. It shouldn’t bother us that we cannot see him. I can’t see the wind. I can’t see your brain and you can’t see mine. Neither can I see the principle within me that gives me life. But I sure know the wind, my brain, and my life exist – from the evidence they produce.

We can see the effects of God around us if we care to notice. Let’s take a look at our universe. Examine the intricate design of a human eye. If this earth were orbiting closer to the sun, it would fry. If it were further away, it would freeze over.

Let’s look at some other evidence:

Consider the sun. It is monstrous when compared with the earth. It has a diameter of 864,400 miles and a volume that is over one million times that of earth. The surface of the sun has a temperature of 6,000 degrees C, but that rises to 14 million degrees C at its core. About 4 million tons of the mass of the sun is lost every second, but it is of such gigantic proportions that it has enough fuel for about another 5,000 million years.

But the sun is only an average-sized star in the Milky Way galaxy. This galaxy, shaped like a disc, is 621,000 million million miles in breadth. There are 100,000 million stars in this single galaxy. The nearest star in the Milky Way, Andromeda, is about 24 million million million miles away.

Doesn’t this boggle the mind? All of it is perfectly designed and holds together by something or someone.

Now consider the dimension of the universe in light years. Light travels at just over 186,282 miles per second, which means that light travels at about 5,878,000 million miles per year. At this phenomenal speed, how long would it take to reach the sun from earth? Eight minutes. The nearest group of stars in our galaxy, Magellanic Clouds, takes 170,000 light years of travel to reach them. It takes 2.2 million light years to reach the Andromeda Spiral.

We could go on and on about the time to reach Sirius, Polaris (North Star), and Ursa Major (Great Bear). But this is only in one galaxy. It is estimated that there are at least 100,000 million galaxies, and we haven’t discussed the size of stars.[1]

After considering these and other dimensions of our wondrous universe, British evangelist, John Blanchard, asked: “What exactly is it that we are seeing? How does it work? Has it always existed? If not, when and how did it come into being? Will it go on for ever? If not, when and how will it come to an end? Why is it there at all? Does it have any meaning or purpose?”[2]

If the known stars in the universe were divided among the present population of the world, one writer has suggested that each person would receive two trillion of them.[3] A trillion is 10 to the 9th power, or, one million millions.[4] There are so many stars in the universe that each person in the world could have two trillion of them. What an immense cosmos.

Examine the composition of just one cell of a human body.

“The DNA molecule inside each cell contains a three-billion letter software code capable of overseeing and regulating all the anatomy on display in Body Worlds [the human body]. Increasingly we are learning to read the code. But who wrote it? And why? Can anyone guide us in reading not only the microcode inside each cell but the macrocode governing the entire planet, the universe?”[5]

As I consider this information about the existence of the Creator God, a few passages of Scripture come to mind that confirm this kind of evidence. I’m thinking of . . .

Psalm 8:3-4:

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them? (TNIV)[6]

Psalm 19:1-6:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

² Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.

³ They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.

⁴ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,

⁵ which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

⁶ It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth (TNIV)

A verse from the NT confirms these passages from the Psalms: Romans 1:20: “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 people are without excuse” (TNIV).

Philip Yancey said: “In my lifetime, astronomers have ‘discovered’ seventy billion more galaxies, admitted they may have overlooked 96 percent of the makeup of the universe (’dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’), and adjusted the time of the Big Bang by four to five billion years.”[7]

Today I’ve given a couple pointers to the existence of God, but . . .

Who created God?

I’m convinced beyond reasonable doubt that God exists, but how can I come to know who created God?

So, who made God?[8] The simple answer is: Nobody made God. God has always existed. The only things that are created are things that had a beginning – like you, me and our universe. All of us and our universe need a maker, a creator. Since God did not need to be created, the question, “Who made God?” is meaningless because he is not a created being but is the eternal being who eternally existed before he created the universe.

To ask, “Who created God?” is as illogical as asking, “Who is the bachelor’s wife?”[9]

However, there are questions that remain for those of us who do a little thinking. You might be asking questions like these: [10]

• If the universe needs a cause, then why doesn’t God need a cause?
• If God doesn’t need a cause, why should the universe need a cause?

Please note that: “The word ’cause’ has several different meanings in philosophy. But in this article, I am referring to the efficient cause, the chief agent causing something to be made.”[11]

A logical answer should go like this:

1. Everything which has a beginning has a cause.

2. The universe has a beginning.

3. Therefore the universe has a cause.[12]

Its important to emphasise the words “which has a beginning.” Our universe requires a cause because it had a beginning. Everything that had a beginning is caused by something. God is not like the universe. He had no beginning and therefore doesn’t need a cause.

In Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which has a lot of experimental support, is “the geometric theory of gravitation that was published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravity in modern physics. It unifies special relativity and Newton’s law of universal gravitation, and describes gravity as a property of the geometry of space and time.”[13]

From this well established theory of Einstein’s, we can deduce that God, unlike the universe, had no beginning, so He doesn’t need a cause. Einstein’s theory of general relativity shows that time is linked to matter and space. So time itself would have begun along with matter and space.[14]

Thus, time, space and matter all had a beginning. The universe cannot be eternal.

God, by definition, is the creator of the entire universe, including time, space and matter. He cannot be limited by time. He created it. So, he had no beginning. There is an interesting verse in Isaiah 57:15a that confirms this: “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy. . .” (ESV).

Therefore, the eternal God does not have a cause.

It’s time to put on your thinking caps again. It’s a long while since I did science and I’m not a scientist. I did chemistry and physics in high school and a chemistry subject in my bachelor’s degree.

I want to introduce you to the term, “thermodynamics.” It is “a field of physical science that relates matter to energy. The principles of thermodynamics are regarded as inviolable and are applied constantly to engineering and the sciences, including origin science.”[15]

According to the first law of thermodynamics, “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.”[16] That really is a philosophical way of putting it. Since science is based on observation, the observational evidence for the first law of thermodynamics should read: “[As far as we have observed,] the amount of energy in the universe remains constant.”[17] i.e. scientists have not observed any new energy coming into existence or going out of existence.

This statement cannot affirm or deny that the universe was created. It simply states that, “as far as we can tell, the actual amount of energy that was created has remained constant since then.”[18]

That’s the first law of thermodynamics.

But there’s a second law of thermodynamics.

Are you ready to think a little more with me?

Remember the core of the first law of thermodynamics: “[As far as we have observed,] the amount of energy in the universe remains constant.”[19] i.e. scientists have not observed any new energy coming into existence or going out of existence

The second law of thermodynamics is another story. It can be stated this way:

“In a closed, isolated system, the amount of usable energy in the universe is decreasing.”[20] When I learned it back in my Grade 12 and university classes the term used was increase in entropy for decrease in useable energy.

Remember, the term is thermodynamics. By “dynamic” we mean that the amount of energy is being changed into unusable energy. This doesn’t conflict with the first law of thermodynamics, rather “it amplifies it.”[21]

Norman Geisler puts it this way: “If energy is constant, why do we keep needing more electricity? The answer is that entropy happens. The second law states that ‘overall things left to themselves tend to disorder.’ Overall, the amount of disorder is increasing. The entropy—that is, the disorder—of an isolated system can never decrease. When an isolated system achieves maximum entropy, it can no longer undergo change: It has reached equilibrium. We would say it has ‘run down.’”[22]

Put a cabbage in a closed system such as a glass house with no cracks and let it stay there for 6 months. What will happen to the cabbage? There will be an increase in entropy, or a decrease in energy. The cabbage will become putrid. Guaranteed. Think about this principle.

So, according to science, the second law of thermodynamics indicates that our universe is running down. If it is running down, it is running down from a higher position when it was created. It’s another way of showing that the universe cannot be eternal. It had a beginning; it had a cause and there is a decrease in useable energy.

But who is eternal and who caused the universe to come into existence. I put it to you that God Himself, the eternal one, created the universe. This is confirmed in the very first sentence of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1 NIV).

Here’s another searching question about God:

Since God is has always existed and was not created, what was he up to before the creation of the cosmos, the universe, the world?

One of the great Christian teachers of the fifth-century, St. Augustine of Hippo, had two answers to this question. One of them was humorous and the other was serious.

His humorous answer was: “God was spending his time preparing hell for people who ask questions like this!”

The serious answer was: “God didn’t have any time on his hands, since there was no time before time was created. Time began with creation. Before creation, time did not exist. So there was no time for God to have on his hands. The world did not begin by a creation in time but by a creation of time. But, you may think, if there was no time before time began, what was there? The answer is, eternity. God is eternal, and the only thing prior to time was eternity.”[23]

Our very question, what was God up to before the creation of the universe “implies that an infinitely perfect being like God could get bored. Boredom, however, is a sign of imperfection and dissatisfaction, and God is perfectly satisfied. Thus, there is no way God could be bored, even if he had long time periods on his hands. An infinitely creative mind can always find something interesting to do. Only finite minds [like yours and mine] that run out of interesting things to do get bored.”[24]

This is not the time or place to get into a discussion of the nature of the Christian God who has three persons, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, in perfect fellowship. There is no way that such a person could become bored or lonely. There would always be somebody with whom to communicate who would have “perfect understanding, love, and companionship. Boredom is impossible for such a being.”[25]

Conclusion

William MacDonald calculated this:

“If it cost a cent to travel 1,000 miles, a cruise to the moon would be $2.38. But if you wanted to go to the sun, the one-way ticket would cost $930. And a trip to the nearest star would be – hold onto your hat – $260 million. Yet a place in the heart of the One who made this vast universe is free, based on the priceless sacrifice of Christ. Have you reserved your place?

Wonder of wonders! Vast surprise!

Can bigger wonder be?

That He who built the starry skies

Once bled and died for me.“[26]

Imagine your 5-year-old.[27]

“Daddy,[28] who made me?”

“God made you, darling.”

“Well, Daddy, who made the sky and the trees?”

“God made the sky and the trees. God made everything.”

“Daddy, who made God?”

What a good question? “What do you say? Who made God? is a natural question for a child. If we teach our children that everything in the world is made from something else, where do we stop this line of reasoning? If everything has a maker, then who makes the maker? We find clues to the answer in God’s curious name for Himself, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’

“The simple answer (try explaining this to a child!) is that God does not require a cause. He causes all creatures to be, but He Himself is caused by no one. He makes all things move, but He Himself is moved by nothing.

“God exists by His own power. He alone is self-existent.”[29]

This is a summary of what I have been trying to communicate:

1. I have tried to show that the universe is not eternal. It had a beginning.

2. It is unreasonable to believe that something that had a being could begin to exist without a cause.

3. Therefore, the universe requires a cause as Genesis 1:1 and Romans 1:20 confirm.

· God, as creator of time, matter and energy, is outside of time. God has no beginning in time. He has always existed, so he doesn’t need a cause.

· The end of the story is that God was never created. He is eternal.

[1] This information is from John Blanchard, Does God Believe in Atheists? Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2000, pp.244-245.

[2] Ibid., p. 247.

[3] Ibid., pp. 245-246.

[4] A trillion is “a number represented as a 1 followed by twelve zeros (1,000,000,000,000) If you have a bucket that holds 100 thousand marbles, you would need 10,” available from: www.ncsu.edu/project/agronauts/workbooks/Mission_1_Glossary.doc [4 May 2009].

[5] Philip Yancey, Rumours of a Another World. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2003, p. 30.

[6] TNIV = Today’s New International Version, available from: http://www.tniv.info/bible/ [3 May 2009]. A hard copy of The TNIV Bible: Timeless Truth in Today’s Language (Today’s New International Version) 2005 is available from Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

[7] Yancey, pp. 29-30.

[8] With help from Norman Geisler, “Tough Questions about God,” ch. 1, pp. 23-32, in Ravi Zacharias & Norman Geisler (gen. ed.) 2003, Who Made God? And Answers to over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

[9] Ibid., p. 24.

[10] The following is based on Christian Answers, available from: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c039.html [4 May 2009].

[11] Endnote #1 in ibid.

[12] “Who created God?” Christian Answers, loc. cit.

[13] “General relativity,” Wikipedia, available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity [4 May 2009].

[14] “Who created God?” Christian Answers, loc. cit.

[15] Norman L. Geisler 1999, “Thermodynamics, Laws of,” in Norman L. Geisler 1999, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp.723-724.

[16] Geisler, “Tough questions about God,” p. 24.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.,

[19] Ibid.

[20] Geisler, “Thermodynamics, Laws of,” p. 724.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Geisler, “Tough questions about God,” p. 28.

[24] Ibid., pp. 28-29.

[25] Ibid., p. 29.

[26] In “D.P’s Scrap Book,” New Life, 11th December 1997, p. 15.

[27] The following example is from R.C. Sproul 1987, One Holy Passion, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, p. 15.

[28] Sproul used “Mummy,” but I changed to “Daddy” because this message was originally presented at a men’s breakfast.

[29] Sproul, ibid.

Philosopher, Mortimer Adler: “More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.”[3]

A. Why we must start with the existence of God when witnessing to Aussies who do not believe in God.

1. The direct statement of the Bible:

“Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).

2. The Bible’s example of how to reach non-theists:

At the Areopagus (Mars Hill)–Acts 17:16-34, Paul used three principles for sharing the gospel with agnostics (those who did not know if God existed):

(a) Appeal to general revelation (e.g. creation) [vv. 22-29

• God is the Creator of the universe (v. 24);
• God is the Sustainer of life (vv. 25, 28a);
• God is the Ruler of the nations (vv. 26-27);
• God is the Father of human beings (vv. 28b-29);

(b) Argue the necessity of judgment [vv. 29-31a]

Judgment is an essential part of the gospel message.

• It will be universal (will judge the world – v. 31);

• The standard will be righteous (justice v. 31);

• It is definite judgment; the day has been set and the Judge has been appointed (v. 31);

• Christ’s resurrection is proof that He will be both Lord and Judge (v. 31).

(c) Announce the good news [v. 30, 31b]

Summary:

• There is the God;

• There is judgment;

• There is the Saviour.

John Stott wrote:

“Many people are rejecting our gospel today not because they perceive it to be false, but because they perceive it to be trivial. People are looking for an integrated world-view which makes sense of all their experience. We learn from Paul that we cannot preach the gospel of Jesus without the doctrine of God, or the cross without creation, or salvation without judgment. Today’s world needs a bigger gospel, the full gospel of Scripture, what Paul later in Ephesus was to call ‘the whole counsel of God’ (Acts 20:27, NEB, RSV).”[4]

B. What are some of the reasons people give for not believing in God?

• He’s just a figment of the imagination–he’s an invented fantasy.
• He’s a crutch.
• How could you possibly believe in an all-loving, all-powerful God with all the evil, illness and suffering in the world?
• Surely you can’t discount all the other great religions: Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Shintoism, Taoism, etc.?
• You can’t trust the Bible.
• We live in a modern, scientific age when there is no room for this nonsense about a God whom you can’t see. What you see it what you get.
• Evolution is a natural phenomenon, needing no room for a supreme being.
• Besides science and the Bible contradict.
• Jesus is just another guru.
• There are far too many hypocrites in the church. Why would I want to join them?
• To believe in God is irrational. I’m a reasonable human being. If you can’t prove it to me, I won’t believe in it. Christianity is unreasonable.
• Then there’s this gobble-dee-gook about miracles.
• I want no association with those holy-roller yahoos down the road.
• God is in the same category as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.
• I used to believe in those things but now I have grown out of them.

C. What are the practical implications?

1. What difference will it make in life if human beings regard themselves as in charge of their own lives and so in charge of the universe? Or, on the other hand, what if there is a Supreme Being whom we fear, love, is a power to be defied, or is the Lord to be obeyed?

If I am in charge:

• what happens when a loved one is murdered in cold blood?
• What about disasters like September 11? What about the tsunami in the Indian Ocean?
• What can I do about water in drought after the dams, barrages and wells have run dry?
• What can I do to stop the horrible crimes in my city or elsewhere in the world?
• Do I have the power to change a sexual abuser (perpetrator) into a law-abiding citizen?
• Who causes the tides to rise; plants to flower; whales to return to Hervey Bay and turtles to Mon Repos every year?
• What makes murder, stealing, lying, etc. wrong?

2. If we acknowledge a divine being/thing, does it matter:

• if the divine is just a concept of God (something in our head that is nothing more than an intellectual idea)?
• does it matter if the divine is just something for us to speculate or argue about in the smoko room, over a beer at the pub, or in university philosophy classes?
• does it matter if the divine is the living God whom people worship in all their acts of worship and who is the Creator and Boss of the universe?

D. People who reject God most often fall into two categories:

1. Atheists

Atheists believe that God does not exist.

Observations:

a. It is always more difficult to prove what is not than what is.

“Say, for example, I call downstairs to my wife in the morning telling her that I can’t find my socks. She says,

‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Was A Woman!’

‘They’re in the spare room.’

I look for a few moments then yell downstairs, ‘No they’re not!’

‘Yes they are,’ she replies.

“It’s much easier for her to prove her case. If she comes upstairs and finds them, she was right. Even if she can’t find them straight away, she may still be right if they are found later. To prove my case I have to search every inch of the room, leaving absolutely no space unexplored. She will only have been proved wrong when I have done all this.”[5]

Atheism is like that. It can only be proved true if every single piece of information in the whole universe is uncovered and all of it at the same time (just in case God hides from us in one place while we are looking in another). This is an impossible task.

Only the most arrogant human beings would claim to know everything. Yet without this knowledge, no atheist can say that he/she is absolutely sure that God does not exist.

The atheist can offer no leak-proof argument that God does not exist.

It’s a statement of faith supported by supposed philosophical arguments, personal experience, the informed opinion of experts, but in the end it falls flat because no absolute proof can be found.

So the statement, “There is no God,” has ‘UNPROVED’ written all over it.

b. Could you imagine living every day under the pressure of somebody finding evidence that God does exist and therefore foul up your entire way of living?

It’s a very insecure position. Like the socks, any moment could prove the wife right. I can only be right at the end of a long search.

George Bernard Shaw, an atheist and the mind behind My Fair Lady, illustrates just how insecure this position is:

“The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. I believed it once. In its name I helped destroy the faith of millions of worshippers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now they look at me andwitness the tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith.”[6]

c. Where’s the power?

Since when has atheism changed a drug addict into a decent, law-abiding member of society. How many hospitals, retirement villages, leprosariums, humanitarian projects have been founded and continue, based on atheistic ideals?

Atheism has no moral power to change lives.

2. Agnostics

An agnostic is unsure whether there is a God or not. Maybe, maybe not! Some get quite aggressive about it: “We can’t be certain about anything, so I won’t make a decision either way.” This person is an agnostic who will not budge.

The agnostic sits on the fence.

“Imagine for a moment that you are drowning at sea and two boats arrive to rescue you. they arrive just as you are going down for the third time. You know that one of the boats has a bomb on it and will be blown up within minutes, but you don’t know which boat. Because you know only one of the boats can be trusted, you choose to stay in the ’safety’ of the water. Sure enough, one of the boats sinks like a stone and the other sails off into the safety of a harbour. You drown! You were so right about only one boat being safe, but so wrong about your decision to stay in the water. Dead wrong! At least on the boat you had a fifty/fifty chance of success.”[7]

The agnostic is like that. He ignores the only two options: there is a God or there is not a God. So he always makes the wrong choice.

For people who want moral help, the atheist can say, “Forget it. Stand on your dig and get on with life.” The Christian says the loving, caring God is available now. But for the agnostic, there is only scepticism, confusion and doubt.

At some point in your looking for answers, not knowing is a reasonable place to be for a short time, but its a nightmare to live in.

E. Some Sign Posts to God’s Existence[8]

There are very few things in life that are as certain as 1+1=2. I know my wife loves me because she says so and does loving things to and with me, but I do not have a fool proof way of knowing she absolutely loves me. But I have the kind of proof needed in court, proof beyond reasonable doubt. That’s the kind of proof we need for life.

That’s all we need to know that God exists. God has left sign posts all over the world.

1. Order & design in the universe

If the earth were closer to the sun we would be fried; if further away we would freeze to death.

Think of life itself. Plants give off oxygen that human beings need. Human beings breathe out carbon dioxide that plants need.

Just think of the wonder of what happens when a woman’s egg (ovum) joins with man’s sperm. From that joining comes legs, hair, skin, blood, brain, heart and other organs of the body. Have you ever thought of the complexity of the human eye?

Chance seems a shoddy way to explain it. God’s designer label is spread out across the universe.

“Sir Isaac Newton, one of the great scientists of the seventeenth century, once built a model of the solar system to help him in his studies. One of his atheistic scientist friends came to see him one day and asked who made the model. ‘Nobody!’ Newton replied. When the scientist accused him of being ridiculous, Newton explained that if no one had a problem in realizing that a model needed a maker, why as it such a problem when confronted with the real universe?”[9]

2. Our desires

We get hungry, thirsty and cold. Even a deep search among primitive tribes in the jungle reveals that there is a belief in some kind of God or gods. We have a deep desire for worship.

In spite of Communists banning it, atheists rejecting it, dictators abusing it, intellectuals scoffing at it, and governments suppressing it–it is still there. As maths whiz and philosopher, Pascal, put it back in the 17th century: There’s a God-shaped vacuum in every one of us.

3. We know right from wrong

Don’t we agree that murder, rape, stealing, telling lies, greed, selfishness, and mugging are wrong?

Our daily talk gives it away: “How could he do such a thing to an innocent child?” Why is there such an outcry against juvenile vandalism and graffiti? When teenagers abuse their parents, why the protest?

When a father sexually abuses his 8-year-old, why the fuss if there is no God?

If the atheist is correct and there is nobody we are responsible to, why should we care about values? As Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, said: “If God is dead everything is permitted.”[10]

“In other words, if there is no transcendent standard of the good, then there can ultimately be no way to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, and there can be no saints or sinners, no good men or bad men. If God is dead, ethics is impossible.”[11]

Where do these moral values come from?

4. The purpose of life

What are we on earth for? We have deep needs for purpose. If there is no God, the universe is just a huge accident. Our life is a fluke.

The average atheist lives life without an awareness of the awful consequences of atheism. Living life without purpose drives many people to suicide.

I find that this is the fundamental problem for our youth who are committing suicide. Hopelessness is what dominates their lives. Mum and Dad are splitting up. They go to school, TAFE, university and there still might not be a job for them — on the dole for the rest of their lives. So they get into drugs, sex and thrash music. Nothing worth living for, except this moment. Life is without purpose. Hopeless.

This is the problem in Russia today–hopelessness.

I ask you: What answers can you give that will stop Australia from becoming another Bosnia? What will stop another Hitler from arising on the world stage?

As Ravi Zacharias puts it: “It is evident that life without God is not working. The question really should be, What is going to keep the whole world from becoming another Bosnia?”[12]

5. Somebody made the universe

Everything that is an effect was caused by something. Nothing just happens. We are forced to ask: who or what started the universe in the beginning? Chance or luck cause nothing. They are just a description when we don’t have any other answer.

The other alternative is that God started it. This world is here because God exists and he made it.

6. Many people have met Him

Millions of person have met God and have a personal relationship with Him. They may be doctors or brickies, tribes people from Africa or sophisticated university intellectuals. He has changed crooks into law-abiding citizens. He specialises in taking rebels and making them submit to him. It is very difficult to write all of these people off as fanatics or cranks.

7. Meet Jesus Christ

He said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). God has come to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. He lived among us. We know what God is like by seeing Jesus in action–healing, compassion on the destitute, chastising the religious self-righteous, and offering salvation to all by dying as a common criminal for the sins of the world.

I visited a prison and met a prisoner who had a reputation of being the “religious” one in the group.  He openly quoted Scripture.  When I spoke with him he told me that he had committed his life to Jesus Christ as Lord since he came to prison.  He is openly sharing Christ with all the prisoners he meets.  He told me of how his wicked life was turned around when he met Jesus Christ personally.

[2]In Paul Little, Know What You Believe. Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1970, p. 25.

[3]Mortimer Adler, Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutching, vol. 2. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952, p. 561. Quoted in Paul Little, Know Why You Believe. Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1987, p. 21.

[4]John R.W. Stott, The Message of Acts (The Bible Speaks Today). Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1990, p. 290.

[5]Stephen Gaukroger, It Makes Sense. London: Scripture Union, 1989, p. 8.

[6]G. B. Shaw, Too True to be Good. Constable & Co. Quoted in Gaukroger, p. 9.

[7]Gaukroger, p. 11.

[8]Adapted from Gaukroger, 12 ff.

[9]Gaukroger, p. 13.

[10]In The Brothers Karamazov (1880), quoted in James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1988, p.118.

[11]Sire, p. 118.

[12]Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994, 51.

As a prerequisite to understanding my evangelical Christian worldview, I ask you to read my three part series, Can you trust the Bible? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Other questions are answered at:

Problems with Jesus,

Facts about hell,

Why the need for apologetics?

Religion and beliefs

Problems with the Trinity

Q.8  But, hold on. . . they [most Christians] thought they could solve the problem of their celestial mathematics, stating that one plus one plus one is NOT three, but one!

Let’s admit up front that the doctrine of the Trinity “is difficult and perplexing to us” (Sproul 1995, p. 35).  Another has said that “no man can fully explain the Trinity. . . the Trinity is still largely incomprehensible to the mind of man” (Martin 1980, p. 25).

The word, Trinity, does not appear in the Bible.

It comes from the Latin word trinitas, which means ‘threeness.’  But even though the word is not in the Bible, the trinitarian idea is there, and it is most important…  In the minds of some, the difficulty of understanding how God can be both one and three is reason enough to reject the doctrine outright (Boice 1986, p. 109).

Christianity does not teach the absurd notion about God that 1+1+1=1, which an unbeliever described as “celestial mathematics.”  That is a false equation because the term, Trinity, describes a relationship, NOT of three Gods, but of one God in three persons.  It is NOT tritheism (three beings who are God). Trinity is an effort to define God in all his fullness, in terms of his unity and diversity.

Historically, it has been described as one in essence and three in person.  “Though the formula is mysterious and even paradoxical, it is in no way contradictory” (Sproul 1986, p. 35).  Essence is used to describe God’s being, while the diversity is to express the Godhead in terms of person.

God’s unity is affirmed in Deut. 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”  God’s diversity is declared in Gen. 1:26, “Then God said, ‘let us make man in our image, in our likeness…”  After the sin of Adam, “The Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us…” (Gen. 3:22).  Concerning the tower of Babel, God said, “Come, let us go down and confuse their language…” (Gen. 11:7, emphasis added).

The OT prophets later confirmed this mysterious relationship within the Deity.  In telling of his call to the office of a prophet, Isaiah tells of how God asked, “. . . And who will go for us?” (Isa. 6:8, emphasis added).  The use of the plural, “us” and “our,” must be noted.  It is a significant issue.

God could have been talking to himself (even Jewish commentators reject that interpretation), to the angels, or to other Persons who are not identified.  He was not talking to angels because the next verse (Gen. 1:27) gives the context.  While referring to the creation of human beings, the Bible declares, “So God created man in his own image.”  Human beings were not created in the image of angels, but in God’s image.  So the Father, in Gen. 1:26 is addressing His Son and the Holy Spirit.

This diversity in the Godhead is clearly identified in Matt. 28:19, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name (singular) of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”

Historically, the heresy of modalism has attempted to deny the distinction of persons in the Godhead, claiming that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are just different ways in which God expresses himself.  On the other hand, tritheism, another heresy, has tried to affirm that there are three beings that together make up God.

All persons in the Godhead have all the attributes of deity.

There is also a distinction in the work done by each member of the Trinity.  The work of salvation is in one sense common to all three persons of the Trinity.  Yet in the manner of activity, there are differing operations assumed by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The Father initiates creation and redemption; the Son redeems the creation; and the Holy Spirit regenerates and sanctifies, applying redemption to believers (Sproul 1986, pp. 35-36).

The Trinity does not refer to parts of God.  It cannot be associated with the roles of God.  All analogies break down.  We can speak of water as being liquid, steam and ice, but all being water.  To speak of one man as father, son and husband does not capture the full mystery of the nature of God.  R.C. Sproul has rightly summarised:

The doctrine of the Trinity does not fully explain the mysterious character of God.  Rather, it sets the boundaries outside of which we must not step.  It defines the limits of our finite reflection.  It demands that we be faithful to the biblical revelation that in one sense God is one and in a different sense He is three (1986, p. 36).

God tells us why we cannot adequately express or explain certain dimensions of His nature: “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.  ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8-9).

References

Boice, J. M. 1986, Foundations of the Christian Faith, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois.

Martin, W. 1980, Essential Christianity, Regal Books, Ventura, California.

Sproul, R.C. 1992, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois.

At a Christian Witness Ministries‘ outreach men’s breakfast, I spoke on the topic, “Can you believe in God after September 11 and the tsunami? Which ‘monster’ created evil?” At question time, a thoughtful Christian asked: “How does your view of the creation of evil line up with God who said in Isaiah, ‘I created evil.’” My response was inadequate, so I have investigated further. The following is my understanding of this verse from Isaiah.

Isaiah 45:7 in the KJV states, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”

In the NIV it reads: “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.”

In the ESV, the translation is: “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things.”

The NASB translation is: “The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.”

Here is the contrast:

• “I make peace, and I create evil” (KJV);
• “I bring prosperity and create disaster” (NIV);
• “I make well-being and create calamity” (ESV);
• “Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does these” (NASB).

Does God, the Lord, create moral evil, i.e. does God create sin, or does he create calamity or disaster? There is quite a difference in the meaning. If God creates all the evil in the world, from the beginning of time until the end of this world, what kind of a God is he? If he creates calamities or disasters what kind of God is he?

The word translated “evil” or “disaster/calamity” is the Hebrew, ra. It is true that the word can be used to refer to natural disasters or calamities. It is a very common word for evil as a general description in the OT. The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in Gen. 2:9 uses this word, as is the evil of the people that brought the judgment of Noah’s flood (Gen. 6:5). The evil of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen. 13:13 uses this word (Grudem 1994, p. 326 n7).

Ps. 34:14 reads, “Turn away from evil and do good.” There’s that word, ra, again. We read of it again in Isa. 59:7, speaking of those whose “feet run to evil.” You can read it also in other passages in Isaiah (see Isa. 47:10, 11; 56:2; 57:1; 59:15; 65:12; 66:4)

There are many other OT passages that use ra to refer to moral evil (i.e. sin) and to disaster/calamity. How do we know how to translate? The context will tell us. Does God create evil/sin, or does God create disaster?

• As Gordon Lewis and Bruce Demarest put it: “Isaiah does not teach the blasphemous idea that the Lord creates sin!” (1987, p. 312). If we look to the context of Isa. 45:7, this is what we find:

Isa.45:11, “Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel.” He is the God of holiness. So, God could not be the creator of sin. Sin is incompatible with God’s holiness.

• Isaiah predicted that sudden disaster would come to Babylon: “But evil shall come upon you, which you will not know how to charm away; disaster shall fall upon you, for which you will not be able to atone; and ruin shall come upon you suddenly, of which you know nothing” Isa 47:11 (ESV).

You can read a similar emphasis in Amos 3:6, which the KJV translates as: “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD has not done it?” The NIV translates as: “When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?”

It is only when there is judgment for sin that the prophets write as in Isa 45:7, “I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things” (NIV). “Like a just judge, God decrees punishment for sin but he does not decree acts of sin” (Lewis and Demarest 1987, p. 312).

Remember Jonah who was thrown overboard by men on that ship travelling to Tarshish? “Then they [the men on the boat] took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm” (Jonah 1:15, NIV).

However, five verses later, in Jonah 2:3, Jonah is praying to God, “You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me” (NIV).

How is it that the men on the boat threw Jonah overboard and that God hurled Jonah into the deep? The Bible can affirm that men did it and that it was God in action. God brought about his plan by using the men on the boat. In a way that we don’t quite understand, “God caused [the men] to make a willing choice to do what they did” (Grudem 1994, p. 326).

Alec Motyer observes:

“Prosperity … disaster: the older, literal rendering ‘peace … evil’ caused unnecessary difficulties. Can the Lord ‘create evil’? Out of about 640 occurrences of the word ra’, which range in meaning from a ‘nasty’ taste to a full moral evil, there are about 275 cases where it refers to trouble or calamity. Each case must be judged by its context and NIV has done so correctly here. Cyrus was ‘bad news’ to the kings he conquered and the cities he overthrew. But Isaiah’s (and the Bible’s) view of divine providence is rigorous – and for that reason full of comfort. Sinful minds want the comfort of a sovereign God but jib at saying with Job (2:10), ‘Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble (ra)?’ (1999, p. 287).

How does this relate to Isa. 45:7? God used people in Jonah’s day to perform an evil action. In Isaiah’s day, God brought disaster on Babylon through the use of human means.

God does not create all of the sinful evil in the world, but God does bring disaster or calamity as his judgment. It was God who created “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:9).

Notes:

[1] Spencer is a counselling manager and doctoral student in theology, based in Hervey Bay, Qld., Australia. He may be contacted at: PO Box 3107, Hervey Bay 4655, Australia.

References:

Wayne Grudem 1994, Systematic Theology, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest 1987, Integrative Theology, vol. 1, Academie Books (Zondervan Publishing House), Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Alec Motyer 1999, Isaiah (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries), Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England.

Jonathan Edwards’ Enfield sermon ["Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"] pictured sinners held over the blazing abyss of hell in the hands of a wrathful deity who at any moment was likely to let go, and so terrific was that discourse in its delivery that women fainted and strong men clung in agony to the pillars of the church. [Fosdick stated], Obviously, we do not believe in that kind of God any more, and as always in reaction we swing to the opposite extreme, so in the theology of these recent years we have taught a very mild, [benign] sort of deity. . . Indeed, the god of the new theology [he was speaking of liberalism] has not seemed to care acutely, about sin; certainly he has not been warranted to punish heavily; he has been an indulgent parent and when we have sinned, a polite “Excuse me” has seemed more than adequate to make amends (Fosdick 1922, pp. 173-174).

Fosdick was right on target with some of that content. He saw that liberalism leads to an anaemic, warped view of God – but he continued to promote liberal Christianity.

One of today’s most influential evangelical expositors of the Word of God, John MacArthur Jr. responded to Fosdick’s comments. MacArthur said: “The simple fact is that we cannot appreciate God’s love until we have learned to fear Him. We cannot know His love apart from some knowledge of His wrath. We cannot study the kindness of God without also encountering His severity. And if the church of our generations does not regain a healthy balance soon, the rich biblical truth of divine love is likely to be obscured behind what is essentially a liberal, humanistic concept” (MacArthur Jr. 2008].

Please think on this with me : Is what you believe about God the most important thing about you! Yes or No?

With the emergence of the seeker-sensitive approach in many churches, there is a dumbing down of a thorough understanding of the nature of God. There is an upsurge in interest in the love of God and self-esteem, but what about such doctrines as hell, the anger of God, and the fear God?

The title of my article is, “God says you receive blessings through the fear of God.” It is straight from the Bible: “Blessed are those who fear the LORD” (Psalm 112:1 TNIV).

There’s a word that appears at least 49 times in the Book of Psalms ¹, especially throughout the O.T., but also in the N.T. that helps to define true believers and their relationship with God.²

It’s a view of God that is a long way from our lips today in the church. This hardly goes along with rock and roll Christianity that wants to draw in outsiders with a softly, softly kind of Christianity. We may want to turn our backs on this kind of God and run from him. But this is at the core of true Christianity.

Psalm 112 begins with, “Praise the Lord. Blessed are those who fear the LORD” (TNIV). For what are we to praise the Lord? This should be the true state of every Christian believer.

I. THE STATE OF THE TRUE BELIEVER (Ps. 112:1)

” Blessed are those who fear the LORD”. The truly godly person is one who fears the Lord. This is a radically different relationship than God being your daddy or mate. Some people have told me that when we pray to Abba Father, we are praying to one who is like a daddy or mate.

If you are ever going to be blessed, you must be one who fears the Lord.

A. What does it mean to “fear the Lord.”

Some of the old time theologians used to speak of the “terror of the Lord.” (Baxter 1863, p. 188)^. However, the King James Version and the modern versions I checked (NIV, NASB, RSV, NRSV, and ESV) speak of blessings coming to those who fear the Lord.

When we want to understand any biblical teaching, we need to compare Scripture with Scripture. This is a basic rule of biblical interpretation. Many of us get into trouble with interpretation when we take just one verse in isolation.

So, what does it mean to “fear the Lord.” Let’s look at . . .

1. Isaiah 8:13

“The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread” (NIV).

When we fear people it is very different from the fear of Jehovah.

When we fear people, wefear their power to hurt us:

• hurt our reputation,

• damage our property,

• hurt those we love,

• hurt us physically if they are more powerful,

• we may fear the power of the government over us to tax us, punish us when we break the law, take away our freedom, etc.

On the human level, we may have sound reasons for a healthy fear of people and government

Jesus said to Pilate: “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:10).

Human beings are absolutely powerless against God. God can shatter any plans they have against you. God could strike them dead at any moment.

Fear of human beings may cause us to do many things, even ungodly things.

The fear of human beings is condemned in Scripture.³ Just one example, I Peter 3:13-16: “Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. `Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened. But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. “

Let’s return to Isa. 8:13, “The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy.” In contrast to the fear of human beings, the fear of God, according to Isa. 8:13, is based on two convictions:

Firstly, He is “the Lord Almighty.” We fear him because of his power.

Never forget this: Human beings can only injure you as far as temporal things are concerned. The most human beings can do to you is “kill your body.” God’s powers go beyond the grave.

As Jesus put it: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28).

We fear him because of his might.

Secondly, Isa. 8:13 emphasises

• We fear God because of His absolute holiness.

“The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy.”

a. What does “holy” mean? (based on Sproul 1992, chs. 16, 17)

We mostly think of the purity and righteousness of God, but that is not the primary meaning of holiness. It is more than a moral or ethical quality.

b. Holy has two distinct meanings:

1. Its primary meaning is: “apartness” or “otherness.”

“Holy” comes from an old word that meant “to cut” or “to separate.” To put it into contemporary language, we could say He is “a cut above something.”

When we say that God is holy we are saying, by nature, there is a profound difference between God and all creatures. We undestand . . .

(a)  God’s transcendent majesty;

(b)   His absolute superiority;

(c)  Therefore, He is worthy of our:

• Honour

• reverence or fear

• adoration

• worship

He is completely “other.” He is different from us in his glory–radically different. R. C. Sproul put it beautifully:

“When the Bible calls God holy it means primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us. To be holy is to be `other,’ to be different in a special way” (1985, pp. 54-55).

When the angels were calling to one another in Isa. 6:3, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory,” they were not saying primarily “pure, pure, pure is the Lord Almighty,” but “wholly other, transcendent One, absolutely superior, is the Lord Almighty.”

1. The secondary meaning of holy relates to God’s pure and righteous actions.

God does do what is correct. He never does what is wrong. He doesn’t have a sinful nature to tempt him to evil. God always acts in a righteous way because his nature is holy. We find that difficult to comprehend–somebody who is absolutely just and correct in everything he does. But that’s our God.

Thanks to God revealing himself through the Bible, we know and can say that:

• internally (by nature), God is righteous. Therefore,

• externally, his actions are righteous.

Because God is holy, He is both great and good. There is no evil mixed with His goodness.

Why then, according to Isa. 8:13 are we to “fear” or “dread” this Lord?

This is the God of the universe who reveals Himself through the Bible and through creation. The Scriptures tell us this about God:

• “How awesome is the Lord Most High, the great King over all the earth” (Ps. 47:2).

Politicians may legislate the killing of human beings through voluntary, active euthanasia, through abortion, but it is the Lord Most High who is King over all the earth. He is the one who judges individuals and nations. Australians may think they can thumb their noses at almighty God, but God’s law is absolute. We are finally accountable to this awesome God. The superior, transcendent One.

When the Israelites were driving out the Canaanites from the Promised Land, the Bible says:

• “Do not be terrified by them, for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God” (Deut. 7:21);

• Again in Deuteronomy: “The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow. . . Fear the Lord your God and serve Him” (Deut. 10:17-20).

What does it mean to fear God? Let’s compare another Scripture! Job gives us a summary of what it means to fear the Lord:

2. Job 23:13-17 (READ)

This is the One whom he fears:

a. “He stands alone” (v. 13, NIV)

“He is unique” (NASB). Literally: “For he is in one” (Spence & Exell n.d., p. 397). It speaks of the unity of God, the One true God. As Deut. 6:4 puts it: “Hear. O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Job does not have to answer to many gods, just the One true God. Thanks to later revelation we know that this one God is in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each of whom are God. Not polytheism (many gods) as in Mormonism (Wright n.d.).⁴ The three persons in the one Godhead act totally in one accord. They are one.

He not only stands alone, but:

b. “Who can oppose him?” (Job 23:13)

Literally, “who can turn him?” As James 1:17 says of God the Father “who does not change like shifting shadows.”

For Job, there was the realisation that nothing could change God’s resolve to treat Job the way God did by afflicting him. We need to understand this. The Almighty God we serve is, as B. B. Warfied put it, “a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth; incomparable in all that He is” (Warfield 1970). This means that God’s laws for us, this world, including the ungodly, never, ever change.

No matter how much the leaders and ordinary people of this country thumb their noses at God, scoff at His laws, this world is heading towards God’s conclusion, based on His unchanging person.

Sinners don’t get away with their sin.

Nations that reject God’s laws will suffer the consequences.

God’s Law is king. It is a foolish government that wants to establish laws that contradict the law of God. God’s law will always be king. We, personally, and nations, are accountable to God. We may not see the consequences in this life. But God’s unchanging consequences will be experienced.

There is no circumstance anywhere in the world or in your life or mine that can affect this absolutely perfect God. He is “the same yesterday, and today and forever.”

I ask you: “Who can oppose him?” NOBODY!

To Job, God emphasises it:

c. “He does whatever he pleases” (v. 13)

Literally: “And his soul desires, and he does.” (Warfield 1970, p. 398). This sounds rather harsh, but God does what is absolutely best for this world and us. There is no favouritism with him. He always acts according to his perfect righteous nature.

Surely we see this all around us in the moral world. God has told us that sexual relations are reserved for marriage. People reject that and we have sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, devastating our world.

God says it is one man for one woman for life in the covenant of marriage. We break it and we are reaping the consequences of shattered relationships, adults and children who are full of hate and are devastated.

God does whatever he pleases, but it is totally good, holy and just. We must understand what this meant in Job’s life in Job 1:8:

• There is no one on earth like Job;

• He is blameless and upright;

• He is a man who fears God and shuns evil.

God gave Satan permission to:

• slaughter Job’s servants;

• his animals were destroyed;

• his sons and daughters were all killed;

• ["in all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing" (1:22).]

But there is more:

• “Satan… afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head” (2:7).

• Then Job’s “wife said to him, `Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!’” (2:9). Imagine a wife like that! “Curse God and die.” But there is still more.

• His three friends then came to try to comfort him, but they wanted to blame him for bringing this on himself.

• But in the end, Job 42:10 & 12 states: “The Lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before… The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first.”

But God made it very clear to Job that God does whatever God pleases in Job’s life. By application, whatever takes place in our lives is what God has sovereignly ordered for us in his goodness, holiness and righteousness.

I trust that you can conclude with Job at the end of his life. He says to the Lord, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted” (42:2).

1. Job 23:14

“He carries out his decree against me, and many such plans he still has in store.”

That is: God will do what he has planned for Job. From the human perspective, it does not look very nice. But this is God’s perfect will for Job. Perhaps Job was thinking that God had many more doses of affliction for him.

What is Job’s response to this God?

e. Job 23: 15-17

• “I am terrified before him”;

• “I fear him”;

• “God has made [his] heart faint”;

• “The Almighty has terrified [him]“;

This last verb, “terrified” (”dismayed”, NASB) is a very strong one and means that God “has filled [Job] with horror and consternation.” (Spence & Exell n.d. Vol. 7, p. 393).

The thought of an all-powerful God who does not change, and puts into action what he decrees against Job, caused Job to have inward fear, confusion, terror, dismay.

The effect on Job as he meditated on God’s character as an all-wise, irresistibly powerful, moral Governor, who does whatever he pleases according to His will, is not something that people think very seriously about these days.

I am convinced that we don’t understand our weakness and insufficiency until we truly have contact with God. Until we begin to understand God as he is.

When faced with God’s holiness, Isaiah saw himself: “Woe is me!” he cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isa. 6:5).

When Job contemplated God, he said, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job. 42:6).

Since this is the true fear of God by one who is godly, what should the fear be for those who are rebels against God, those who have no peace with God, and on whom the wrath of God will be poured out in hell forever and ever?

Paul, the apostle, saw this very clearly when he said in 2 Cor. 5:11, “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.”

Many Christian people are puzzled. They don’t understand why, in God’s sovereignty, they receive difficulties, affliction, even death, from God. Why are they treated with such severity?

Most of us have never experienced what Job went through. But he came through it with a fresh understanding of who God is. Too often our knowledge of God’s plan is imperfect. Our understanding of God is deficient. This causes us to think that God is against us. Like Job we don’t have genuine trust in God.

Rather than impeach God’s unchanging love towards his faithful followers and charge God with being an enemy of believers, we need to understand the nature of God.

Let me touch on two other Scriptures, briefly, to help us get a handle on what it means to “fear the Lord.”

3. Psalm 111:10

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (same as Prov. 9:10; similar to Prov. 1:7, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”)

How can the “fear of the Lord” be the beginning of “wisdom” or “knowledge.”

Does this mean that if you study science, agriculture, medicine, teaching, without a knowledge of God, you do not have any knowledge? That’s certainly not what it states.

It means that “the initial step or starting-point” for anybody who wants to gain true wisdom is the “fear of the Lord.” No matter what human knowledge you attain, if you do not have the knowledge of God as your foundation, your framework is faulty. If you want to advance in knowledge and wisdom, you must have a holy fear of God (Spence & Exell n.d., vol. 9, pp. 5-6).

One other verse gives us another view of what it means to fear the Lord.

4. Proverbs 8:13

“To fear the Lord is to hate evil.” This is the reverse side of what I’ve been saying. When you know that your sin is forgiven, you can truly hate evil.

Prov. 8:13 tells what evil the true believer is to hate: “pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.”

Since God is holy, to reverentially fear Him means that we adore God’s character, his goodness. It should be natural then that we revolt against that which is opposite to God—evil.

When we fear God, we need to hunger and thirst after his righteousness. We must have a passion to be Christ-like in our thoughts, actions and attitudes towards people.

This makes evil look hideous, detestable, abhorrent. We must resist any evil desires or actions. We must loathe evil from the bottom of our hearts.

Yes, we practise morality because we fear God the Judge who will punish us for doing wrong. But it is far more than that. We love goodness and hate evil for God’s sake.

B. SUMMARY

What is the fear of the Lord? Caleb Rosado summarises it precisely:

“It means . . . to quake or tremble in the presence of a Being so holy, so morally superior, so removed from evil, that in his presence, human boasting, human pride, human arrogance vanish as we bow in speechless humility, reverence, and adoration of the One beyond understanding” (1994, p. 24).

II. APPLICATION

How can we learn to fear God?\

a. Firstly, Seek him.

It will not fall into your lap. It comes through perseverance and diligence in prayer in his presence..

Ps. 27:8, “My heart says of you, `Seek his face! Your face, Lord, I will seek.”

Ps. 105:4, “Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.”

If you will seek God,

b. Secondly, He will teach you to fear him.

Ps. 34:9 & 11, “Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing. . . Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”

God teaches us to fear Him through his Word and in prayer.

If you will feed your mind on who God is and his past dealings with the people of God through the Scriptures, you will learn how to fear the Lord. You will quickly see how Jehovah blessed the obedient.

We read in Deut. 31:12-13: “Assemble the people—men, women and children, and the aliens living in your towns—so they can listen and learn to fear the LORD your God and follow carefully all the words of this law. Their children, who do not know this law, must hear it and learn to fear the LORD your God as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

By application, we must teach the people, adults and children, to fear the Lord our God and to put into action his words. How do you come to fear the Lord?

Seek Him and He will teach you.

Finally,

c. Psalm 86:11

“Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”

You must want to seek God with “an undivided heart.” Believers, if you truly want to fear God, you have to seek him with all your heart. Wholeheartedly! No distractions.

God does not give his fear to those who are spiritually lazy.

The fear of the Lord was the secret of the early church.

When Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead in judgment because

they lied to God (they trampled on the holy), Acts 5:11 says, “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.”

The contemporary, user-friendly, meeting felt-needs, church seems to be the opposite of one that fears the Lord. John MacArthur says that today’s church wants to “portray [God] as fun, jovial, easygoing, lenient, and even permissive. . . Sinners hear nothing of divine wrath” (MacArthur 1993, p. 63).

Is it going to take a modern day Ananias and Sapphira to get the church back to an awesome fear of God?

God promises blessings on Christian believers through fearing God. Will you seek Him for this holy fear of God? God promises blessings through fearing!

^References:

Baxter, R. 1863 (reprinted 1981)The Practical Works of Richard Baxter: SelectTreatises. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, reprinted 1981 (from 1863 edition).

Fosdick, H. E. 1922, Christianity and Progress, Revell, New York, (emphasisadded), in John MacArthur Jr., “The Goodness and the Severity of God,” Bible Bulletin Board, available from: http://www.biblebb.com/files/mac/love.htm [7 January 2008].

Fosdick, H. E. 2008, “Harry Emerson Foscick”, Wikipedia, available from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Emerson_Fosdick [10 January 2008].

MacArthur Jr. J. F. 1993,, Ashamed of the Gospel. Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books.

MacArthur Jr., J. 2008, “The Goodness and the Severity of God,” Bible BulletinBoard, available from: http://www.biblebb.com/files/mac/love.htm [7 January 2008].

Rosado, C 1994, “America the Brutal,” Christianity Today, August 15, p. 24.

Spence, H. D. M. & Exell (eds.), n.d.,Pulpit Commentary, Vol. 7. Grand Rapids,Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Sproul, R. C. 1985, The Holiness of God. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Sproul, R. C. 1992, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith. Wheaton, Illinois: TyndaleHouse Publishers, Inc.

Warfield, B. B. 1970 (ed. John E. Meeter), “A Brief and Untechnical Statement of the Reformed Faith,” available from: http://www.reformed.org/calvinism/index.html?mainframe=/calvinism/warfield_reformed_theology.html [10 January 2009].

Wright, D. A. n.d., “Mormonism: Monotheistic or Polytheistic?” Sword & Spirit,available from: http://www.swordandspirit.com/LIBRARY/texts/mono_poly.php [10 January 2008].

Notes: