Word of Salvation – June 2018
B.C.2 – How We Know God
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp
Bible readings: Psalm 19, Romans 1:16-25
BC stands for Basic Christianity. What are the fundamentals of the faith?
BC also stands for Belgic Confession – a document in which the Christian church (in a time of great persecution) spelled out the basics of what she believes.
When Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep it needs to grasp again the basics of the faith and confess them in a world where the faith is increasingly under attack.
Those who drew up the BC declared that they were ready to obey the government in all lawful things, but that they would “offer their backs to stripes, their tongues to knives, their mouths to gags and their whole bodies to the fire” rather than deny the truth expressed in this confession.
Theme: The twofold source for the knowledge of God.
Introd: Last time we confessed together the most basic issue in religion.
“We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths
that there is a single and simple spiritual being whom we call God.”
The starting point of all true religion is to say: I believe in God!
To believe that with your heart… and to confess that with your mouth…
nothing is more fundamental than that. It’s the truth about God and it matters!
But that immediately raises a second issue.
By what authority do you believe that and confess that truth?
How do we even know this truth… that there is such a being whom we call ‘God’?
If you were to ask your neighbours you would get a variety of answers.
a] Some of them would argue that this belief in God has evolved over the centuries.
Religion is really nothing less than the result of man’s thinking about God.
Others might go a little further:
It is not only the result of our thinking about God; it’s also our experience of God.
So we know about God because we human beings
have together thought about God… and we claim to have experienced God.
b] Others say that knowledge of God comes naturally from deep within ourselves.
There is this idea that all of us are born with some knowledge of God.
Because doesn’t the Bible even teach that we have been made in God’s image?
So there is a God-shaped space in our lives.
All we have to do to know God is look deep within our own consciousness…
as we do that together as a Christian community we formulate our beliefs about God.
c] We actually have a better answer… the answer of The Belgic Confession:
Or more particularly, the answer of Psalm 19.
The answer is that you would never know God if God had not revealed Himself to you.
We know God only because of REVELATION.
God has, as it were, UNVEILED Himself.
The Christian faith is therefore a religion of REVELATION.
We know God ONLY because He has made Himself know to us.
Think about it! You and I cannot subject God to scientific analysis.
You cannot put God under a microscope. It’s impossible to put Him into a test-tube.
God just is not available in that way for our scrutiny and inspection.
Our puny minds would never be able to grasp the awesome reality of God.
Neither can our starting point ever be our consciousness or our experience of God.
I heard someone once go on and on about his personal experience of God.
It was bizarre. The more he talked the more glad I was not to have had the experience.
It isn’t safe to make our experience the starting point for our faith in God.
God can only be known because He chooses to make Himself known.
And apart from that fact there just is no true knowledge of God.
God speaks… and as He speaks to reveal Himself we must listen… and listen carefully.
Psalm 19 tells us that God reveals Himself in two ways. He can be known from two sources.
A] GENERAL REVELATION – The creation and preservation of the universe.
- First of all Psalm 19:1-6 tells us God is known THROUGH HIS CREATED ORDER.
We know God thru the way in which He made the world and cares for it.
<<< READ PSALM 19:1,2. >>>
Here the psalmist reminds us that God is revealing Himself in the world around us.
Creation… or nature… is a very important source of knowledge.
As David says: Knowledge of God is displayed in the heavens. <<< READ VERSE 2 >>>.
So Scripture is telling us that we know God thru the world in which we live.
There is a beautiful imagery here.
David says: There is this silent speech of creation…
It utters not a single word – and yet it is heard in every language on earth.
World-wide there is not a nation where the voice of creation cannot be heard.
We see God’s greatness in the delicate beauty of an opening flower bud.
We witness His wisdom in the miracle of a new baby’s birth.
We admire God’s glory in a sunset sky with its wonderful transforming colours.
The beauty of the forest with its amazing variety of plant and animal life shows us God.
Today I could make an almost endless list of ways in which we see God’s hand in creation.
As the B.C. says: It is truly a “most beautiful book” in which God is revealed to us.
So – knowledge of God comes to us thru a process of discovery of nature.
We watch God’s finger tracing the orbits of the planets and stars, the solar system and galaxies.
If this is true then shouldn’t we as Christians take time out to smell the roses?
Because by smelling the roses are we not getting to know our God better?
We ought to spend time in the quietness of the bush.
Or take a long walk out along some surf-swept beach.
Or stand out under the star spangled sky on a clear, dark night – away from city lights.
Because all of nature cries out to us that we have a wonderful and amazing God.
Surely we’re the poorer for it if we are so busy that we never take time to see God in creation.
Even if that is only in our own gardens watching the seeds sprout and the flowers bloom.
By doing that we are listing to the silent speech of nature telling us about our Maker God.
- Let’s ask then: what is it that we can learn about God from creation?
We could list many things that we learn about God simply by observing the world in which we live.
Let me suggest a few things.
We learn from creation that God is a God of infinite WISDOM.
We see that in the whole structure of creation… the finely tuned ecological balance.
There is an intricate interdependence of plant and animal life.
Think of a fruit tree in Spring… covered with blossom.
Yet all those promising blooms will never ever turn to fruit by themselves.
It takes the bee to come along, searching for honey.
And as it hunts its own food it dusts pollen from one flower to another.
The bee needs the tree and the tree needs the bee.
To say that this is just an accident of evolution is madness.
It is evidence of WISDOM, the wisdom of our Creator God. [Or: water and ice illus.]
In the created order around us we see the POWER of God.
Think of the awesome energy released by a force 8 earthquake.
The power of tidal waves and gale-force winds in cyclones and hurricanes.
The amazing energy that is there… waiting to be unleashed… in a tiny atom of plutonium.
In all those things we see God’s awesome power.
We learn from nature that God is a God of infinite VARIETY AND BEAUTY.
There are literally millions of varieties of plant and insect life.
Among all the billions of people on this planet, no two people are exactly identical.
We’re told that there are not even two snowflakes exactly the same.
That’s mind-boggling. Our God is a God of endless variety
We could even think of God’s judgment revealed in creation.
Think of the devastation and death He brings about in a flood or cyclone.
Often we’ve seen the horrors of ongoing drought that kills plants and animals.
Flood and fire, drought and plague – God has used them all to judge the earth.
And He still comes with His judgments today in disease and calamity.
We learn a great deal about God by simply observing creation.
Paul speaks of that in Romans 1:20
Ever since creation God’s eternal power and divine nature
have been clearly seen – being understood from what has been made.
Last time we confessed about God (in B.C. article 1) that this God is invisible.
Yet now we are saying that this invisible God becomes visible in creation.
The God we cannot see is seen in the works He has created.
That has led someone to say that the world is a MIRROR reflecting its Maker.
God has – as it were – left His fingerprints on all the works of His hands.
- However we have a major and serious problem at this point.
YOU look at creation and you respond: “O Lord, my God! How Great Thou Art!”
YOU admire the smell of a rose or the beauty of a sunset and you thank God for it.
But your neighbour next door looks at the same stars… the same forest… the same flowers.
And his response is quite different.
He says with a measure of awe: “Amazing isn’t it, how all this came about by chance?”
Is creation really such a clear revelation of God?
Of course we would never say that only CHRISTIANS see God revealed in creation.
Many non-Christian people do too.
And even many people who are not at all religious…
feel very close to God in creation’s awesome splendour.
They feel God’s presence in the Daintree forests (Milford Sound) and the Franklin River Gorge.
But… and this is the problem… while they feel close to God in nature…
they do not really know this God in Jesus Christ as we do.
How effective then is this “elegant book” in which God is revealed?
How clearly do all creatures great and small point us to God the Creator?
Paul gives us the answer to that in Romans 1.
He tells us that it is clear enough to leave people without excuse.
No one will ever be able to say, “But I didn’t have the opportunity to know God.”
On Judgment day I cannot complain “God never saw fit to reveal Himself to me!”
<<< READ ROMANS 1:19,20 >>>
The world is a mirror in which we see God.
Okay – that mirror is dirtied and distorted by the fallenness of creation.
But is clear enough to leave us without excuse.
Every flower, every sunset screams out to us: THERE IS A GOD IN HEAVEN…!
B] SPECIAL REVELATION – God’s holy and divine Word.
- To fully solve this problem we have to look at the second means by which we know God.
He has revealed Himself to us in yet another way – and that is thru Scripture.
There is also the written WORD OF GOD.
Psalm 19 speaks of that too in vss 7-11.
And David tells us how perfect this second revelation of God is.
And he tells us just HOW it does help us know God.
<<< READ PSALM 19:7/11 >>>
If we compare these two means thru which God makes Himself known
then we would have to say with the words of our Belgic Confession:
that the divine and holy Word of God reveals God MORE CLEARLY AND FULLY.
You and I may never play down the importance of knowing God thru nature.
But we must also say that Scripture is the superior means of knowing God.
The reason is that there is a limit to what we can know about God thru creation.
All praise to those who seek God in nature! Let there be more of it!
But there are some things you will never learn about God by contemplating the wilderness.
There are limits to knowing God by gazing at the stars through a telescope.
You can spend an eternity studying all the intricacies of the world around us.
You can even be filled with awe at the wonder and mystery of it all.
Yet in three very important areas nature is unable to let you know about God.
In three specific ways creation is most inadequate in giving us knowledge of God.
FIRST of all you cannot know God’s holiness from the world around you;
Nor your own sinfulness in contrast to the utter holiness of the Creator.
You will never see that by admiring the beauty of a rose.
Admittedly we can see the result of sin in nature… but it cannot teach about sin and holiness.
SECONDLY creation cannot tell you about the doing and the dying of Jesus.
You cannot learn about His sacrificial death on the cross by studying the insect world.
Nor can you know about the empty tomb by peering at an amoeba through a microscope.
If you want to know that God has a Christ-shaped solution for our sin you need the Bible.
THIRDLY we cannot know from the realm of nature that this God wants us to serve Him.
The guidelines for living a life of gratitude are found in the Word of God alone.
This is why I have a problem with Christians who say they don’t need to go to church…
who believe they can just as well worship God on a Sunday in nature.
Nature cannot enrich your life with the gospel of Jesus.
Here Psalm 19 gives us a beautiful balance.
It is great to spend time in nature and be awestruck by God’s majesty and glory.
But it is even more important for us to know that Word of God.
And to be taught from that Word.
For it is the law of God that is perfect.
And ultimately we must look to that Word – and not to nature – to revive our souls.
- So we have these two books in which God is revealed to us.
God makes Himself known through two means: Nature and Scripture.
But repeatedly the priority is placed on Scripture.
There God is revealed “more clearly and fully”.
In fact these two ways of knowing God are related to each other in an interesting way.
We need the Scriptures to tell us who this God of creation is.
The God we meet in nature is described most fully for us in the Bible you hold in your hand.
John Calvin put it this way:
The Scriptures are like a set of spectacles
that enable us to see God’s work in creation more clearly.
IOW – The Bible is the visual aid
– through which we know the God of creation most fully.
– the spectacles thru which we see that this world is indeed our Father’s world.
For example, we need the Word of God in Genesis 1 and 2…
and in other texts such as Psalm 19:8
to tell us about this God whose finger-prints we see in the stars.
So today I certainly want to encourage you to look at creation and the world around you.
See God’s hand in the stars and clouds… in the oceans and forests.
Marvel at His handiwork!
Stand in awe of His greatness!
But let me especially encourage you to devote yourself to the Scriptures.
Because only from the Bible will you know, that this God who made it all, loves you.
Loved you enough to send His Son to save you and this whole lost creation.
It’s good that today many people begin to see thru the emptiness of materialism.
There is a new interest in spirituality.
It’s great that many are trying to rediscover and know God thru nature.
But it is tragic when that does not drive them to the Word of God.
Only there do we find the fullest… the most complete revelation of God.
Only in its pages do we know God most fully – as He has come to us in Jesus.
- I want to conclude by highlighting briefly the adequacy of Scripture.
I want to stress that this second means of knowing God, the written Word of God is totally sufficient.
Of course we know that there is far more to God than what He has revealed to us.
There are dimensions to God and His glory that we will never know in this life.
But what we can know about Him from His Word is enough.
And it is sufficient for anything that we may need in this life.
All that we need to know about God to live to His glory is fully revealed there.
It especially reveals to us all that we need to know for our salvation.
Because Scripture take us where a (Milford Sound/Daintree Forest) trip can never take us.
It takes us to a manger, to a cross, and to an empty tomb.
And when you know God in that way…
then you need to ask for nothing more…
absolutely nothing more because you have all you need to live to God’s praise.
Amen!