Word of Salvation – Vol. 40 No.27 – July 1995
How Do We Know God?
Sermon by Rev R M Brenton on Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 2
Scripture Readings: Acts 17:24-28; Hebrews 1:1-3
BY WHAT MEANS IS GOD MADE KNOWN TO US?
We know Him by two means:
First: by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small are as so many characters leading us to see clearly the invisible things of God, even His everlasting power and divinity, as the Apostle Paul says, All things which are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse.
Second: He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for this life, to His glory and our salvation.
[Biblical references (as they appear in the Message); Acts 17:24-28; Romans 1:19-20; Acts 14:17; Romans 2:4; Psalm 104:24-25; Hebrews 1:1-3; John 1:14-18; John 1:5.]
My Brothers and Sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Suppose somebody says to you: You really believe in God? How can you possibly believe in God? You can’t even begin to prove God exists. At best you can only imagine it. Yet, you talk and act like you actually know Him. Are you out of your mind?
What will you say in response to that? Why do you – deep down in the heart of your being – believe in God? Why do you confess Him to be your Lord and Saviour?
Our Belgic Confession of Faith gives us the words to say so that we can answer for the faith that we have. Article 2 of our Confession is especially helpful for those times when professing atheists tell us that our faith is groundless because there is no God to believe in; and when agnostics tell us that we are fools to devote our hearts to God because nobody can know God – even if He does exist. Our Confession helps us to tell the truth about God and why we believe in Him.
The reason we believe in God is not because we have discovered His existence somewhere in our mundane world, or because our minds have conceived rational proofs of His existence, but because God Himself comes to us and is made known to us. That’s right. We believe in God because God reveals, discloses, opens Himself to us.
So, the best answer you can give to the God-deniers and God-doubters is that God is real because He makes Himself known. How does God make Himself known? He makes Himself known first of all by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe; and second by His holy and divine Word.
1. The first means God uses to make Himself known is by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe.
The universe is the diversified world we see and sense round about us. The earth on which we live and everything in it is the part of the universe we are most familiar with. Yet, for all our sight-seeing and all our learning about life on this planet, we actually see and understand very little of the whole universe that is out there. Our small world is simply one planet in one average-sized solar system, and there happen to be more solar systems than we can count in the Milky Way galaxy alone; and who knows how many galaxies in outer space.
The vastness of outer-space boggles the mind! Expert mathematicians who command legions of numbers can barely approximate its dimensions. Dare we mention inner-space, the microscopic x-ray world under the skin. Here, too, science finds a world of diversity that is wonderfully knit together as if by some master plan. All of this world’s diversity is so arranged that we see order in the way one thing relates to everything else. It looks like everything is in place and has its part to play in some kind of plan, for we hear rhythm and harmony, we feel the ebb and the flow, we see the cause and the effect.
In the process of sowing and reaping we recognise God’s providence. In the usually predictable laws of nature we discern God’s government over the earth, and His preservation. This is the kind of world we live in. God’s world! A world of diversity wonderfully held together. Diversity in unity: a universe. Yes, a universe! We recognise a universe all around us because what is out there and in here is God-governed, God-preserved, and God-provided for. In this universe God is made known to us.
Look at it this way. The universe which you see with your very eyes is like an elegant book in which all creatures great and small resemble letters or words. When you look at all the creatures that are in the world, both living and non-living, you have before you the characters of Creation’s Story. The presence of all these characters makes you wonder about how they came to be in the first place. Where did all these characters come from? How did they get here? Who is responsible for this world and all the creatures in it? There has to be an author: someone with the knowledge and the power to make the world and fill it with all kinds of creatures – us included.
People can tell just by looking at the many different creatures that the universe has an author. People know this because the creatures they see are as striking as characters or letters of a book. The question is: Can people read what the letters say? What do people understand the author of creation to be saying?
To read a book you have to know what the letters are. You have to know your ABCs. And you have to learn which letters go together to make words. The letters A, C, and T combine in different ways. One common way is C-A-T. C-A-T spells cat. The combination C-A-T always spells cat. So that is how you must read it.
In some books you can find the word cat. Most likely the word cat will be a part of a sentence made up of other words along with the word cat. Like this one: “Tell that Cat in the Hat you do not want to play.” That is a sentence with the word cat in it. But that sentence is just one line in a whole story, the story of The Cat in the Hat. The point I want to make is that once you know your ABCs and how they combine in different ways to make words, you are ready to learn how to read. You might want to begin by reading the story of The Cat in the Hat.
You will like the story about The Cat in the Hat. Right away you will want to know who in the world wrote that silly story. By asking that question you are actually wondering who took the ABCs and made up the words that go to this story. And who put this word here and that word there and arranged all the sentences just so in order to make The Cat in the Hat the story that it is?
Who is the author? You don’t suppose that the ABCs fell out of the sky and landed on the page just so quite by accident, do you? Did someone just type letters of the alphabet on page after page until he had 64 pages full of letters, and did those letters just happen to arrange themselves in the right combinations so that certain words were formed, and did these words flow in just the right order so that the story of The Cat in the Hat got told? Of course not! Things like that don’t happen. Never in a million years.
Maybe I should tell you what did happen. A man who called himself Dr Seuss had an idea for a story. He thought about it for a long time. Then he made up the story in his mind. Then he figured out the best way to tell it. He had to decide which words to use, and where to use them, and how to arrange them just right.
It took Dr Seuss a whole year to write The Cat in the Hat. The story was such a success that Dr Seuss decided to keep on writing his stories. My favourite is Green Eggs and Ham. “I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam I Am. You do not like them, so you say. Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say!”
I challenge you to take any book by Dr Seuss and read me just two lines. Sometimes two words will do. Don’t tell me that you’re reading from Dr Seuss. Just read to me. I can tell you at once that Dr Seuss is the author. I can tell by the words he uses and the way he puts words together and mixes them around. His name doesn’t even have to be on the cover of the book for me to tell who wrote it. The book speaks for itself. If I read, “From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere!” I don’t have to ask twice who wrote that line. That line is in character with Dr Seuss. He is the author of stories that read like that.
So the universe round about us is like a book in which all creatures great and small are as so many characters or letters. Like the letters of Dr Seuss, the characters of the creation have been so ordered and arranged as to read a certain way and tell a certain story. People who pay attention when they read the creation will learn something about the author. If people are honest, they must admit that the universe cannot have just any old author because any old author cannot write Creation’s Story. But a particular author can. An author who has everlasting power and divinity! Creation’s Story is so awesome and immense that only an author who has such qualities is capable of writing it. No one else could possibly do it.
Which is why we confess that God’s signature – His alone – graces the Book of Creation. His hand – His alone – writes Creation’s Story. We say this even though we do not see God with our own eyes. We see traces of God in the world round about us. We call all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small His handiwork because through these creatures God displays His everlasting power and makes His presence felt. The form, the complexity, the diversity, the colouring, the imagination all point to God as the Maker of heaven and earth and all that is in them.
To deny God as the author of the Book of Creation flies in the face of more evidence than we have for Dr Seuss being the author of The Cat in the Hat. Dr Seuss lived a full human life in which he wrote many children’s books in his own peculiar style. Then he died and passed from the scene.
Let us suppose that 200 years from now someone discovers an unsigned, unpublished story that resembles the stories of Dr Seuss. Someone will ecstatically shout, “See here! We have found an original Seuss!” Someone else may step forward and argue that the story sounds like a Seuss but that it is not really a Seuss because it is the writing of one of Seuss’s disciples: one who knew Seuss from the inside out and learned to write stories in the very same style. As unique as Dr Seuss is, it is nevertheless within the realm of possibility that someone else will copy his handiwork and write books in his style.
But not so with God! Nobody can copy God’s signature and reproduce His handiwork. Nobody can make one glorious sunrise after another, or one breathing baby after another, or paint a field of wild flowers in brilliant colours. Nobody can write and illustrate like God does the Book of Creation! And no author is so in-touch with his subject as God is with His subject.
God, you see, has an eternal life-line with every one of His creatures. Listen to these words of a sermon by the Apostle Paul (recorded in Acts 17:24-25). “God gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him, and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being. In fact, we are his offspring!”
We people, the chief characters of God’s Creation Story, are oh-so-close to God and so very-connected to Him. We spring from Him and we draw our life from Him. If this is true, how can we not credit God as the author of Creation’s Story?
In another place (Romans 1:19-20) Paul adds this: “What may be known about God is plain to people. God has made it plain. 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.”
Even though no one can see God, everyone sees proofs of God’s power and feels His divine presence. This is the truth. Therefore, anyone who denies God’s existence is without excuse. For God constantly proves Himself to every person. He does this by impressing people with the many fine characters of Creation’s Story. But God proves Himself more by ingraining in the heart of every person the knowledge of Himself. You are a religious person because God constantly relates to you at the root of your being. And not just you, but everyone.
This means that you and everyone else is bound to give an account to the God who made us. There is no escaping God. God is always in our face. He testifies to us. “He has not left Himself without a testimony. He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in season. He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy” (Acts 14:17). Such “kindness” is shown “to lead you to repentance” – that is, to bring you to the turning point of facing up to God and confessing Him as Lord.
You must acknowledge the one only God as Lord. We should all acknowledge Him because He has made Himself known to us by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe. In all of this we read Him. We recognise His signature. We confess Him as the author. “How many are your works, O Lord. In wisdom you made them all. The earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24-25).
[Let us sing our Confession as we praise the Lord: BoW 368]
2. The second means God uses to make Himself known is His holy and divine Word.
In God’s Word, which we call The Bible, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us, as far as is necessary for us to know Him in this life, to His glory and our salvation.
What is God’s Word? It is God’s message to His people and to all of creation. God spoke His message first of all through the mouths of prophets and apostles. They were his mouth-pieces or messengers. God’s last word – His word of accomplishment and fulfilment – was spoken by a Son, God’s only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ (as Hebrews 1:1-3 asserts).
God’s second Book (Creation being His first) is a must read because it is bursting with Kingdom power and glory. The Spirit of the New Creation is alive in this book. All who believe the message are born anew, revived from eternal death, filled with God’s glory. I call it the Book of Salvation because it is vital for our healing from sin’s disease. Our entire well-being depends on the remedy this book gives, namely, a Saviour who is able to save to the uttermost.
Furthermore, in this book God reveals Himself in His Son. He comes to us in person, as one of us, in order to lift us up from the pit of sin’s misery and to bring heaven’s glory down to us. Why? So that we might once more live at peace with God, each other, and all of creation.
The Bible tells us of God’s Word taking on our humanity and living among us in the person of Jesus. Those who see Jesus behold the glory of God filled with grace and truth (John 1:14-18).
God’s Word really came to life in a personal way in God’s Son. In the flesh of Jesus, God more clearly, more completely made Himself known not just to convince people that He exists, but to save people from their sins and give them a share in His eternal life.
Jesus said, “When someone believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When someone looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in the darkness” (John 12:44-46). Jesus is God-in-person making Himself known to you for His glory and your salvation. That is why you must believe in Jesus. Jesus is God’s light. Unless you come into the light of Jesus you will never know God as He necessarily must be known. God is glorified in the light of Jesus. And sinful people like you and me are saved in the light of Jesus. Therefore, God’s second Book is a must read. Until you read it you remain in the dark. Until you read Jesus you will never know a living union, a soul-nourishing relation with the one only God.
By promoting God’s second Book I am in no way down-playing His first Book. Creation’s Story is an elegant masterpiece, a classic worthy of readership. But sin has marred the beauty of Creation and corrupted its purity. That same sin has made us so blind that we do not read Creation aright.
Nearly everyone can see the sunrise and smell the roses. Brilliant scientists bring creation’s secrets to light. People everywhere are face to face with the works of God. Everyone is reading Creation’s Story, looking for meaning and insight. But how many, after reading Creation, are willing to praise the real author by saying, “How many are your works, Oh God. All your works praise you because you made them for your glory!”
You don’t hear people talking like that, do you? Not many do. Even people who admire the Creation and find it too wonderful for words will not even whisper God’s name in praise. They don’t want to live by the truth that God is over all, in all, and through all. So they repress the truth and refuse to thank God for every good thing. This is how sin-blinded people behave. They refuse to draw the right conclusions from the Creation. And they fail to give God glory for His wonderful works.
Sin-blind people need to be saved from the darkness that fills their spirits. They need to walk in the light of God’s Holy Word. John Calvin said that without the eye glasses of God’s Word one cannot read the Book of Creation. We need God’s true light before our eyes in order to read all things right and relate them back to the real author. Our sinful darkness must be overcome by Heaven’s glory light. That’s the only light that can overcome our sin-blindness.
As John 1:5 puts it, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness is unable to swallow it up.” This means, that the true light overcomes the darkness of this world’s sin. The true light, our Lord Jesus, cures our sin-blindness so that we can see both clearly and truly. Jesus makes us able, not only to read, but to recognise the real author and give Him the credit for all of His works. On top of that, Jesus helps us to direct all of our thinking and knowing to the great author of all things.
So, next time someone tells you that you’re out of your mind for believing in God, what are you going to say? Maybe you should say, “If you could only see what I see, you would see God, too. You would praise Him for all His wonderful works. Why don’t you try these glasses on for size?” And then hand him an open Bible – the testimony of God’s One and Only in whom God makes Himself more fully known – and show him and tell him the truth. That’s how we know God!
Amen.