Hard Questions: Nay sayers?

Today, we are going to look at a couple of questions of nay sayers, or people who say that God does not exist or the Bible is disproved for one reason or another. These types of questions can be uncomfortable for us because we do not feel like we have sufficient evidence to refute their claims.

In the last 150 years, no single area has provided a jumping off point for turning away from God or saying no to God like the realm of science. There has been a dramatic push to take God out of public education, in part, under the guise of the “impartiality” of science.

Scientific investigation, by definition, is “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”  So what does the Bible say about the physical and natural world?

Hard Questions: God’s Goodness

Welcome! Today we continue our series on hard questions. Last week we talked about God’s power, and we addressed the question of why, despite an all-powerful God, there is suffering and evil in the world. We also briefly talked about how to respond to those who suffer. This week we are going to focus on God’s goodness, and we will look at several questions that often are borne out of doubting the goodness of God.

Is God really good? (I realize there is a bit of a play on words here, with that word “really.”)

This is a common point of attack used by atheists and others who question or reject Christianity. Often the question has the form “How can a loving God…” followed by whatever particular charge is made against the claim that God is good.

Hard Questions: God's Power

Welcome! Today we continue our series on hard questions. Last week we talked about how we know that Christianity is true (the Holy Spirit) and how we show that Christianity is true focusing on why it is plausible that there is a Creator, and if there is a Creator, why it is plausible that He would communicate to us through something like our Bible. We then talked about reasons to believe the Bible. I don’t think I said this last week, but I want to emphasize that when you talk with unbelieving friends, a huge goal and prayer should be that they actually get into reading the Bible – with you, without you, in a group, whatever, but that they read it. It is when they read that the Holy Spirit can powerfully speak into their hearts, convicting them of sin and convincing them of the reality of what they are reading.

This week’s message is entitled God’s Power, and next week’s is God’s Goodness. These topics are very much interrelated; many, many hard questions boil down to arguing that if God is all powerful, He isn’t all good, and if instead He is all good, He must not be all powerful. Because the topics are linked, these messages are very much linked as well; we will deal both with God’s power and God’s goodness this week and next. To begin, I want to start with the question of God’s power straight up.

Hard Questions: The Bible

Welcome! Today we begin a new series – the topic is hard questions. We will start with a question so big that at first glance most people don’t know where even to begin. Here is the question:

How do you know that Christianity is true?

The first thing to think about, and apologist Dr. William Lane Craig has pointed this out, is that there is a profound difference between knowing Christianity to be true and showing it to be true. The most important reasons a believer has for knowing that the Bible is true may be totally inadequate, even frustrating or “useless,” to an unbeliever.

What Will God Find?

2 Cor. 12:11-13:14Welcome! Today we come to the end of our series on 2 Corinthians. We started way back in March, and I thought it would be good today to split the message into two halves. In the first half, we will simply review some of the themes we have seen in this book. This list is by no means comprehensive, by no means complete. In fact, it is very biased – it is a list of some of the things that have struck me the most as we have progressed through the book. In the second half of the message, we will look at today’s passage and see how Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, wraps up this powerful letter to the Corinthians. And so, here are the twelve things that have most struck me in this letter. I would encourage you to write these down, and to put a star beside any that seem to really speak to you at this point in your life. Our past messages are online, so if you want more details about one of these, or you were out of town for some of them, know that they are available.