Great Sermons | 3. Why I Know There Is A God – B.R. Lakin (1901-1984)

Mercredi, 18 Février, 2015

Verse of the Day:

«En effet, j’ai l’assurance que ni la mort, ni la vie, ni les anges ni les dominations, ni le présent ni l’avenir, ni les puissances ni la hauteur, ni la profondeur, ni aucune autre créature ne pourra nous séparer de l’amour de Dieu manifeste en Jésus-Christ notre Seigneur. » Romains 8.38-39

Quote of the Day: “It is the heart that senses God, not reason.”—Blaise Pascal

«C’est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison. »—Blaise Pascal

French Fun Fact: In 1386, a pig was hung in France for the murder of a child. (confessedtravelholic.com)

What’s Really Going On Over Here:

Weather – Mostly cloud, Precip. 0%

Temperature – 39⁰F

News – France urges Jews to ignore Netanyahu's call (thelocal.fr)

More News – http://www.liberation.fr/monde,10

A Day In the Life:

Although I don’t have any recent adventures to share today, I would like to share with you something that’s been on my mind:

I am not religious. I hate religion. All the rituals required and the amount of stress that comes with believing the lie that our eternal future is dependent upon us is simply disconcerting. We're already too screwed up for heaven, but that's why we need Christ--a strong, ever-growing relationship with the Creator Himself, to be restored to its former glory of Eden when we finally arrive in Heaven. Christianity is not a religion; it is simply a name for those who have that relationship. There are no rituals, no work, no stress, no war, no literal self-sacrifice, no specific words to say, no special prayers, no specific times to fast, no specific times to confess; none of this is required for a Christian. As in any relationship, all that is required for its maintenance is love. Love those around us, and love our God. That's it. That's all my friends and I try to do. That's how you can tell if someone is a real Christian. And if anyone mistakenly construes this love as weak, point them to Jesus Christ, and what He went through on the cross to make this relationship possible.

Why I Know There Is A God

First of all I know it from the argument of creation. Look at all that you see now. From whence did it come? Life has never been generated from dead matter. From nothing, nothing can come. Suppose I take a bottle and pour out all the air and the water and the germs. I'd cork it up so nothing could get in it. From nothing, nothing could come. How would anything ever be in it? Since life has never been generated from dead matter we must explain from whence it all came.

All of man's rational thinking and philosophy will never give him a foundation on which he can stand and provide a reason for having any hope. I believe in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The Bible does not say,

"In the beginning God." The Bible says, "In the beginning God created." Why? Because God didn't have any beginning. He was the beginning of beginnings. There was a time when God was alone. There were no trees, no grass, no water, no foliage, no nothing, just God. Just God.  I believe only He knows what went on back there. He was there and had it put down in thisBook. Now a lot of these Atheists and so forth who weren't there are like the little boy who caught a bumblebee on his way to school. He put it in a bottle and stuffed it in his hip pocket. When he got to school he was wriggling around in his seat and the cork came out of the bottle. Then he really began to squirm about in his seat, and his teacher said, "Johnny, what are you doing?" He said, "There's something going on back there that you don't know about!" What I'm saying is, something went on back there that only God knows and only God could tell us.

Now secondly, I know there is a God because of imparted wisdom. The unbeliever doesn't call it imparted wisdom. He calls it inherited instinct. There is no such thing as instinct. In the fall of the year before the wind roars down over the Rockies and up around the Lakes, the geese and the ducks get together and form in companies. They fly south across Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and drop into the warm waters of the Gulf to bathe their breasts in warm water until spring. Then they turn and come back again. Who told those geese to go south in the winter and come north in the summer? Who told them to do that? You say that's instinct. Where'd you get that instinct, old goosey? Those geese had never made that trip before. Yet they take leave from up yonder in Canada and fly all the way to Florida, never missing a feeding ground. Now where did they get their navigating ability?

In California there is a spider about the size of a shoe button. He builds his nest inside an empty clam shell or oyster shell. Before he does that he lifts that shell from 6 to 12 inches above the ground. For that little spider to lift that oyster shell which is many, many times his own weight requires an engineering feat equal to the building of the pyramids of Egypt. How does he do it? He goes up and puts on a thread, comes down and hooks it on the shell, goes up and hooks another, comes down and hooks it on the other side. That thread is moist and when it dries it contracts. And he keeps putting them on until he can finally lift it. Where did he learn how to do that? Some say that's instinct. He learned it from his mommy and poppy spider. Where did they learn it? Listen old smarty. The first spider that ever did that didn't have to sit down and figure it out for himself. It's imparted wisdom. That's the reason I know that there is a God.

The third reason I know there is a God is because of fulfilled prophecy. Every religion has its bible, but this Bible is the only one that has a word of prophecy in it. Why? Because the authors of all those other books knew that if they inserted a word of prophecy and it failed, their book would be discredited. But God's Word, with daring boldness, tells us what will happen upon this earth to men, nations, and individuals, sometimes thousands of years in the future. Who could write a Book like that? Only God.

I can take the prophecies concerning Jesus Christ alone and prove to any thinking man that there must be a God. First of all He said He shall be born in Bethlehem of Judea. Not just in Bethlehem, not just in Judea, but Bethlehem of Judea, and thank God He was. He said He shall be born of a virgin. Thank God He was. He said they would gamble upon His garments. They did. He said they would pluck out His beard. They did. He said they would crucify Him and they did. He said He would make His death with the wicked and His burial with the rich. He died between two thieves and He was buried in Joseph's new tomb. He said you'll put Me to death but I'll rise again. That's right. You can't kill Me but I'll give up My life anyway and I'll rise again on the third day. Don't let anybody fool you. This is the Book that will stand the test.

There's another reason I know there is a God. That is, He answers prayer. Have you ever gone into an automaton? That's a restaurant that looks like a post office. You don't see waitresses or cooks or anything. One day I went in one in New York. You drop in a quarter-out comes a cup of coffee, or mashed potatoes and gravy. I didn't see a soul around, but I had sense enough to know that there was somebody back there passing that stuff out. For 60 years I've walked up to the open windows of heaven and I've asked for things and I've had them passed out to me as real as mashed potatoes and gravy. I know there is a God because He answers prayer. "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God" (Ps. 14:1). I'm asking God to let me live a few more years because I believe I have a message for the people who do not believe there is a God.

There is one final reason I know there is a God. All of man's rational thinking and philosophy will never give him a foundation on which he can stand and provide a reason for having any hope. The only foundation is the revelation God gives of Himself in this Book. It alone stands against the winds of criticism. The man that does not confess the Christ that this Bible presents stands without any hope.

A fellow said, "I don't know whether to believe Christ was God, because He went to sleep on a boat, like a man would sleep." Was He merely human because He wept, because He got hungry, because He died? Listen, if He was just human that night out yonder on that little boat when He went to sleep, He was God when He stilled the waves. If He was human when He got hungry, He was God when He took a little boy's lunch and fed 5,000 people with it. If He was human when He wept, He was God when he burst the grave of Lazarus open like a chestnut burr and caused him to come out alive. If He was human when He died upon a cross, He was declared to be the Son of God with power, by His Resurrection from the dead. You can trust Him, my friend.

My dad and mother pillowed their heads upon that hope and passed peacefully into another world. The man who denies it stands without any hope in this world and in the world to come. He has no hope of meeting with his loved ones who have gone or who may go. Buried out yonder lies my boy on a little hillside in West Virginia, in a grave, waiting for the resurrection. One day I believe he will come forth from the grave and I'll see him again. Don't take that hope away from me, Mr. Modernist or Mr. Evolutionist. God hangs a rainbow of hope around the shimmering shoulders of the storm of my bereavement. He is that hope and without Him there is no hope of pardon in the eternal world.

Why do I believe there is a God, my friend? Because only He makes any sense out of this old world. Only He brings meaning to living, the hope of pardon, and a place in heaven.

 (The above indented information is a direct quote from the sermon, which can be found in its entirety here.)

What Made It Great?

Technically, in this plane of existence it is impossible to fully prove the existence of God. But there is a lot that points pretty clearly in His direction. This sermon was great because Lakin used personal experience – which cannot be disputed, as well as observable facts and anomalies and mysteries throughout our observable world and universe. His reasons were not all of the same stock, so that each one could equally affect different members of the audience and even the same audience member in different ways.