Good morning!  Welcome to the Truth Project #4.  Today’s question: “Who is God?”   It’s going to take us all eternity to answer that question and then we’ll have just scratched the surface. Here’s today’s point… “How you answer that question depends upon your world view.”  

 

The Biblical world view says “God is the creator and sustainer of all that exists.” But there is another world view. One that begins with the premise that there is no God.  Carl Sagan put it this way, “The cosmos is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be.”

So where did the idea of God come from?  The Biblical world view testifies that the only way we know anything of God is because God has reveal himself to us.  He reveals himself through what he created, through the special revelation of His Word, the Bible, and through His Son.

 

I have a question for you this morning.  Are you ready?  Thinking caps on?

 

Did God create man in God’s image or did man create god in man’s image?  The Bible tells us clearly that God created the world and all that exists. Even though our bodies are made up on the dust of the earth, we are created in the image of God.  We are created for a purpose beyond ourselves. We are created to love and be loved. We are created for eternity.

 

But the Bible also says that we rejected the truth of God for a lie - actually a series of lies. The first one was that we didn’t need God. The second we could become like God.  The third lie is that the abundant life we seek only comes when we are liberated from God. The fourth that God doesn’t really exist anyway.  Do you see the inconsistency in these lies? Which lie is true?

 

They are all lies aren’t they? The truth is without God we are like a branch cut off from the vine. But here’s the problem, we live in a world surrounded by real enemies, spiritual powers and authorities the Apostle Paul says are maliciously evil out to deceive and destroy us. 

 

It’s not only their incredible ability to lie that trips us up; it’s the gullibility of our sinful nature. We want to believe that Satan’s lies are true.  Instead of laughing outrageously, we believe them! Why? Why are we so susceptible to evil? Where did these lies, this evil come from?

 

Although origin of evil is a mystery, the reality of evil is not.  The first manifestation of evil in Scripture appears when Lucifer, one the greatest and most beautiful of the angels, decides that he will “ascend” and become like the Most High.  He leads a mutiny against his creator. This is the same lie he used to deceive Adam and Eve. “You can become like the Most High, you don’t need God, you are god!”.

 

So this “created one” attempts to take the place of the Creator. Should sound familiar!  Lucifer led 1/3 of the angels in heaven in a mutinous revolt against God and those angels who remained true. They were thrown out of heaven to earth. CS Lewis postulates that they were contained within the atmosphere of earth.

 

These fallen angels, remember angels are created beings, became the demons and unholy spirits we read about in the Bible and experience today. Their purpose is to lie, deceive, and destroy people who are created in the image of God. They’re good at what they do. The only weapon we have against them is the truth of God’s word. The Bible is the sword of the spirit.

 

Paul wrote in 2 Cor 10:3-5 “The world is unprincipled. It's dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn't fight fair. But we don't live or fight our battles that way--never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren't for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.  2 Cor 10:3-5

 

Any attempt to answer the question “Who is God”  outside of God’s Word, the Bible, is futile and doomed to failure.  When we reject the revelation God has given us in his Word, the god we create will either be a demon or a warped reflection of ourselves, or some other created thing.

 

When we attempt to remove God or dismiss him as irrelevant, we will always end up with nothing – meaningless, purposeless, emptiness, and we can’t live that way. We have to create something to put in God’s place.

 

When we reject the truth of God, we always end up captive to a lie from which we cannot free ourselves. Paul puts it this way in Rom 1:25 “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised.” Rom 1:25  

 

Paul goes on to describe the hideous kinds of bondage, depravity, lostness, and misery that results from believing that lie and following that road. It seems so enticing, but it always ends in bondage and a pig pen of depravity.

Satan is not a creator but an imitator.  He imitates the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with an unholy trinity of money, sex, and power. When we elevate these things to the position of God we will find that the bitter fruit they bear is immorality, impurity, greed, corruption, idolatry, bondage, hatred, discord, rage, selfish ambition, abuse, envy, prejudice, addiction, wickedness and death. This is the fruit of the gods we create in our own image.

 

Last week I said that the world view that denies the existence or relevance of God has no way of identifying or even admitting to the reality of evil. This view seeks to rationalize evil away by denying it or by blaming somebody else for it– parents, culture, religion, politics.

 

The Apostle Paul knew about this stuff. He’d lived there. Even though he had been very religious, his life was filled with bitterness and rage. Then Jesus broke into his life and reconnected him to the vine. He wrote “the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”.   Listen up!

Who is God?  He’s the one who created you and has sustained you. He’s the one who sent his one and only Son to the cross so that your sins could be forgiven. He’s the one who calls you his treasured possession. Who numbers the hairs on your head. Who knows your name.

 

It’s all in his Word. Read it. Study it. Without it you are an easy mark for the enemy. His lies are so persistent, so deadly, so enticing. He begins by whispering - “You don’t need God, you can be your own God. God doesn’t exist, he was created by weak people because they weren’t strong enough to deal with the reality that there is no purpose to the world.  You are an accident, a freak of nature, stardust, and mud. Your life has no eternal meaning or significance and neither does the life of any one else. Every truth is the same, therefore there is no truth. Reality and illusion are the same, therefore there is no reality. There is nothing, you are nothing. You are illusion, life is illusion. Money, sex, and power is all there is, all there was, all there ever will be.  Exalt yourself while you can, get what you can, enjoy what you can, there is nothing else.”

 

What does it mean to have a Biblical world view? George Barna used these parameters. A  person with a Biblical world view believes that:

 

Barna found that only 9% of the people in his survey were able to agree with this list. Among those who claimed to be born again, still less than 20%.  It should not be surprising that we have a crisis of truth in our nation, we have a crisis of truth in the church. It should not be surprising that we have a moral and ethical crisis in our nation; we have a crisis in the church.

 

Among kids 18-23, Barna found that less than ½ of 1% had a Biblical world view.  A person’s world view is primarily shaped before a child reaches the age of 13 and it is parents, not youth groups who play the most important role. If parents don’t, the world will. Jesus came to bear witness to the truth that can set us free.  Parents, grandparents, if you are not growing in your faith and your understanding of God’s Word, you will have nothing to share.   Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father, except through me.”  Do we believe that?

 

We are surrounded by people, who are loved by God, created in God’s image, people for whom Christ died, who have been led into a world view that is a terrible lie. It is leading children and marriages, and cultures, and nations into death and destruction.

 

God cares, do we?  Are we willing to open our Bibles, read them, study them, engage our minds, and examine what we believe so that we will know how to defend the truth with power and clarity?  If not, we will have no light to bring to a darkened confused world.  AMEN