Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, a master theologian, one of the greatest pastors in the history of the church, once said:
The proper study of the Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.1
From time immemorial the human race has been filled with questions about life, death, purpose, meaning, love, hate, good, and evil. But there are two great questions that must be answered before any other question is asked. Otherwise, every other question is meaningless, and in the end unanswerable.
The first question is: "Is there a God?" Or, to put it another way: "Is God created in the image of man, or is man created in the image of God?" That question determines whether life is an appointment or just an accident.
But even if that question is answered affirmatively, there is one other question that must be raised, or else we are really no better off. That question is: "If there is a God, has that God spoken and revealed himself in a way that we can understand and know Him?"
In other words, "Does God know me, and can I know God?" This series is entitled "The God You Can Know." This sermon is entitled "My God is Real." For I want to deal today with the basic question of the reality of God.
One day in a grade-school art class, a little boy was drawing a picture, and the curious teacher came by and said, "Johnny, what are you drawing?"
Johnny looked up from his half-finished master piece and said, "I'm drawing a picture of God."
The teacher said, "Now Johnny, no one knows what God looks like."
Johnny smiled and said, "They will when I'm finished."
Well, I pray that in what I am going to share with you in these next few messages will help all of us to know not only that God is real, but that God is a God we can know, we can love, and we can serve.
I find it fascinating that of the 41,173 verses in the Bible, one-half of one verse is given to the atheist. Of the 774,746 words in the Bible, eleven words are given to the atheist. But big things do come in small packages, and in this short statement and Psalm, we learn some great truths about the reality of God.
I. The Reality Of God Is Denied By The Foolish
"The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.'" (v.1a) Here we have what the atheist says about God—"There is no God." Then we have what God says about the atheist—"fool."
Now I find that very humorous that God is speaking about someone who doesn't even believe in him. I read about a child who was raised in an atheistic family. One day the little child said at the dinner table to his mother and daddy: "Do you think God knows we don't believe in Him?"
Almost as if he does not waste his breath, God just simply mutters "fool." This world is full of brilliant fools. There are PhD's in leading universities who can intellectually understand E = MC2, but spiritually they don't know their ABCs. They see a car and they believe in a manufacturer, they see a portrait and they believe in an artist, they see a book and they believe in an author; but they see a creation and refuse to believe in a Creator.
I heard about an atheist who was complaining to a fellow he worked with, and he said,
"You know the Christians have all the holidays. They have their Easter, they have their Christmas, we don't have any holidays. I think there ought to be a holiday for the atheists." The other man said, "Why don't you try April 1st?"
Now there are some who may think that a message like this is not very relevant either to the church or to society, for we know that only 4% of Americans say they do not believe in God, and probably 99.9% of the people who come to church say they do believe in God. But you are going to discover there are more foolish people here, and in America, than you might think.
You notice in v.1 the words "there is" are in italics. In the Hebrew text the words are not there. What the verse actually says is, "The fool has said in his heart, no God." This is the person who wants nothing to do with God at all. He has no use for God's person, God's principles, God's people, or God's purposes.
In effect, there are two types of atheists. There is the intellectual atheist, and there is the practical atheist. There is the person who believes there is no God; that is the intellectual atheist. But then there is the person who behaves as if there is no God; that is the practical atheist. There are far more practical atheists both in church and in America than you might even realize.
Obviously, God is right in calling the person who does not believe in Him foolish. But the most foolish person in the world is not the person who says he does not believe in God. The most foolish person in the world is the person who says he does believe in God, but then doesn't live like it.
Now we understand why God called such a person foolish. If a person knew there were no God, and said so, he would be wise and even courageous for telling the rest of us we were wrong.
If he did not know whether there was a God, and said so, he would at least be an honest skeptic.
If a person is convinced there is no God, when actually there is one, he would merely be mistaken.
But the reason God calls this person foolish is because deep down he knows there is a God, and yet chooses to believe and act as if there is none.2
You may not think you fall under the category of foolish, but let me give you some examples of practical atheism:
- The foolish person is the person who says he believes in God, but never prays to Him, lives for Him, or works for Him.
- The foolish person is the person who says he believes the Bible is the Word of God, but never reads it, nor obeys it.
- The foolish person is the person who says that hell and heaven are real, but never tells others how to make heaven or how to miss hell.
- The foolish person is the person who says they believe Sunday is the Lord's Day, and the church is the Lord's house, and then spend every Sunday at the lake, the golf course, or the swimming pool.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair, perhaps the leading atheist of her generation, once said: "I am an atheist not because I have searched behind every star, and looked under every rock, to prove there is no God. I am an atheist because I live my life as if there were no God."3
II. The Reality Of God Is Detested By The Filthy
First, the fool speaks about God, and then God speaks about the fool. "They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one." (v.3) The word corrupt in the Hebrew language literally means "soured milk." This is the person in whom the milk of character has curdled.
You will never understand atheism unless you realize it is not so much a mental problem as it is a moral problem. The atheist is not a person who cannot believe, it is a person who will not believe. He does not have a head problem, he has a heart problem.
"They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good." (v.1) God takes a spiritual x-ray of the heart of the unbeliever. Here is what he reveals: The reason why the atheist wants to deny God, is not because there is no evidence that God is a truth, the problem is God is a threat to those who want to be their own god. Atheism is not primarily an intellectual problem, it is primarily a spiritual problem.
Think about it in this way: Where there is no God there is no good, for as Jesus said to the rich young ruler: "Only God is good." If there is no God, and there is no good, then there is no judgment, and there is no hell. If there is no judgment and there is no hell, then you can live any way you choose without any repercussions or consequences.
Now we get to the root of the rejection of the atheist. Ps. 10:13 says, "Why do the wicked denounce God? He has said in his heart, ‘You will not require an account.'" If there is no God then Stalin can kill 20,000 Russians; Hitler can annihilate six million Jews and get away with it. It was the Russian philosopher, Dostoevski, who once wrote: "If God does not exist, then everything is permissible."4
William J. Murray is the son of the famous atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair. He was the chief plaintiff in the Supreme Court decision: Murray vs Curlett in which prayer and Bible reading were removed from public schools.
Thirty years after that decision, on June 17, 1993, William Murray, who since has given his life to Jesus Christ, told a crowd of almost 6,000 people this truth: "My family's rejection of God was not intellectual. We did not remove God from America's schools because of Separation of Church and State, we simply did not want to hear the Word of God because it was contrary to the lives we lived."5
The Scriptures tell us that there are three characteristics of anyone who denies the reality of God. First of all, the foolish are marked by ignorance. "The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God." (v.2)
Without God, there are two things you will never know: You will never know truly how to live, and you will never know truly how to die. Without God, you will never understand what is wrong with this world, nor how to make it right.
In that same address, William Murray went on to make this observation: "Look at the schools with God gone—now we have guns, rape, drugs, condoms, police patrols, metal detectors, violence, and Aids."6 Mark this truth down. You can get what you want without God, but you won't want what you got without God.
The foolish are marked by intolerance. "Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread?" (v.4) Not only does the unbeliever attack the person of God, he attacks the people of God. The bulls-eye on Satan's target in America is the "Religious Right." Secularists, humanists, materialists, and atheists absolutely hate the Religious Right. Do you know why? Because we are both religious and right.
The more you love God, the more this world will hate you. Jesus said in John 7:7, "The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil." He then went on to say in John 15:18, "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you."
Finally, the foolish are marked by indifference. "And do not call on the Lord." (v.4b) The reason why an atheist can't find God is the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman. They do not want to find God, because if they do it will change the way they live.
III. The Reality Of God Is Declared By The Facts
David never once tries to prove the existence of God. He merely assumes it. In v.2 he simply states, "the Lord looks down from heaven." In v.5 he simply says, "For God is with the generation of the righteous." In v.6 he says, "the Lord is his refuge." Well, is that a fair assumption? Does the evidence of this creation demand a Creator?
Well, I am going to allow a scientist to answer that question, who is not even a professing Christian. As a matter of fact, this scientist was an atheist. His name is Sir Fred Hoyle. He is a professor at Cambridge University and one of the leading astronomers and scientists of the Twentieth Century. He wanted to find out the probability of just one human cell coming into existence by chance.
To be fair, he even started his calculation with the supposed age of the universe—being fifteen to twenty billion years—rather than what many scientists believe to be the maximum age of the earth—4.5 billion years.
Hoyle worked with another world-famous mathematician and astrophysicist, Chandra Wickramasinghe, to calculate the probabilities. These two great mathematical minds came up with this number of years for just one simple cell to come into existence by chance: 1040,000 years.7
Now you may not know how large a number 1040,000 really is. So let me give you this perspective. A noted Swiss mathematician, Leconte DuNouy, said that any number in which the probabilities were greater than 1050 would simply never happen even cosmically.8
Now why did DuNouy choose that particular figure? Because if we counted all the electrons in this universe—which is the thing we have the most of in the universe—the number of electrons would come to 1052 power. That would be counting every electron in every planet in every sun in every galaxy. So he assumed that once something hit 1050, it simply was not going to happen.
Now that is 1050, not 1040,000.How big is 1040,000? Well, take all of the electrons in this universe—1052 —and multiply it times 10, making 1053. Multiply this by 10, making 1054. Keep multiplying this way until you have reached 1040,000. It's beyond our abilities to even imagine.
Hoyle came to the conclusion that evolution cannot explain the source of life, and said that for any kind of life to exist anywhere in the universe, it must be by the hand of an eternally existent being of infinite power, and because of his study, Hoyle, the atheist, became a believer in God.9
The problem with the atheist is not with his faith, the problem is with the facts. He may not lack confidence, but he does lack the evidence. As you will see further along in our study of God, he is declared by the facts.
IV. The Reality Of God Is Discerned By The Faithful
"For God is with the generation of the righteous." (v.5b) God is not seen primarily by the eyes in our head, but rather by the eyes in our heart. Verse 1 tells us the unbeliever does not see God, but verse 2 tells us why, because he does not seek God. You can see the power of God by the eyes on your face, but you can only see the person of God by the eyes in your heart. The reality of God is only truly known by faith.
Now that should not bother you. Don't let these pseudo intellectuals and some scientists ridicule you because you live by faith. The fact is, they do too.
Dr. Robert Jastrow, a well known geologist, astronomer, physicist, and at best, agnostic, made a very telling admission about what he believed:
Perhaps the appearance of life on the Earth is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their choices are limited. Either life was created on the earth by the will of a being outside the grasp of scientific understanding, or it evolved on our planet spontaneously, through chemical reactions occurring in non-living matter lying on the surface of the planet.
The first theory places the question of the origin of life beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. It is a statement of faith and the power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science.
The second theory is also an act of faith. The act of faith consists in assuming that the scientific view of the origin of life is correct without having concrete evidence to support that belief.10
A professor with a Purdue University system, educated at Oxford, with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, once admitted to his class the following truth about his own atheism:
Even as the evangelical Christian accepts God by faith, I reject the idea of God by faith. I cannot reject God by reason alone, for there is too much evidence of his existence. By faith I am an atheist.
That's why we read in verse 1 "the fool has said in his heart (not his head), there is no God."
It is true that when it comes to God in His reality, we walk by faith and not by sight. But that's all right, because "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Heb. 11:1) I can say, without shame, I would rather live by faith than to die in doubt.
W. O. Saunders, an atheist, once wrote these words in the American Magazine. They will break your heart, but they illustrate the truth of this message:
I would like to introduce you to one of the lonesome and unhappiest individuals on earth. I am talking about the man who does not believe in God. I can introduce you to such a man because I myself am one, and introducing myself you shall have an introduction to the agnostic or skeptic in your own neighborhood, for he is everywhere in the land. You will be surprised to learn that the agnostic envies your faith in God, your subtle belief in a heaven after life, and your blessed assurance that you will meet with your loved ones in an after life where there will be neither sadness nor pain. He would give anything to be able to embrace that faith and be comforted by it. For him there is only the grave and the persistence of matter…
The agnostic may face life with a smile and a heroic attitude. He may put on a brave front, but he is not happy. He stands in awe and reverence before the vastness and majesty of the universe, knowing not whence he came nor why. He is appalled at the stupendousness of space and the infinitude of time, humiliated by the infinite smallness of himself, cognizant of his own frailty, weakness, and brevity. Certainly he sometimes yearns for a staff on which to lean. He, too, carries a cross. For him, this earth is but a tricky raft, a drift in the unfathomable waters of eternity, with no horizon in sight. His heart aches for every precious life upon the raft—drifting, drifting, drifting, whither no one knows.11
I believe in God. But more than that, I know God through Jesus Christ His Son, and I can say today, beyond any shadow of any doubt, my God is real.
1 Ron Dunn, The Faith Crisis, p. 109.
2 James Montgomery Boice, Psalms-Vol. 1, pp. 114-115.
3 Derrick Johnson, Easy Doesn't Do It, p. 61.
4 Cited by Erwin Lutzer, Exploding the Myths that Could Destroy America, p. 20.
5 National & International Religious Report, June 28, 1993.
6 Ibid.
7 Luther D. Sunderland, Darwyn's Ignigma: Fossils and Other Problems (San Diego: Master Books, 1984), 58-59.
8 Ibid, p.130.
9 Kennedy, Skeptics, p. 64.
10 George Wald, "The Origin of Life," Scientific America, August 1954, 46.
11 Cited by James D. Kennedy, Why I Believe, pp. 47-48.