Scripture
Hebrews 11:6a
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is.
Observation
Absolutely nothing from men can please God apart from faith. The first step of faith is simply to believe that He is. This Enoch did. God is pleased with those who believe in Him, even with the first step of believing that He exists. This belief alone is certainly not enough to save a person, but if it is a sincere conviction and is followed up, it will lead to full faith. Mere recognition of a deity of some sort—the "ground of being," the "man upstairs," IS not the object of belief in mind here. Only belief in the existence of the true God, the God of Scripture, counts.
We cannot know God by sight.
- "No man has seen God at any time," Jesus said (John 1:18).
Nor can we know God by reason. Two chapters of the book of Job (38-39) are devoted to God's forceful and colorful illustrations of how man cannot even fathom the operations of nature. How much less can we understand God Himself by our own observations and reasonings.
God gives much evidence of His existence, but it is not the kind of evidence that men often are looking for. He cannot be proved by science, for example. Yet many things learned from science give evidence of His existence.
The law of cause and effect, for example, holds that for every cause there must be an effect. If you keep pushing further and further back for causes, eventually you will end up with an uncaused cause. The only uncaused cause is God. This is the argument used previously by the writer of Hebrews:
- "For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God" (3:4).
According to the law of entropy, the universe is running down. If it is running down, then it is not self-sustaining. If it is not self-sustaining, then it had to have a beginning. If it had a beginning, someone had to begin it, and we are back to the uncaused cause. There must be a first cause, for which only God qualifies.
The law of design also indicates that God is. We learn from science that water has a high specific heat, which is absolutely essential to stabilize chemical reactions within the human body. If water had a low specific heat, we would boil over with the least activity. Without this property of water, human and most animal life would hardly be possible.
The ocean is the world's thermostat. It takes a large loss of heat for water to go from liquid to ice, and a large intake of heat for water to become steam. The oceans are a cushion against the heat of the sun and the freezing blasts of winter. Unless the temperatures of the earth's surface were modulated by the ocean and kept within certain limits, we would either be cooked to death or frozen to death. How could such intricate, exacting, and absolutely necessary design come about by accident? It demands a designer.
Even the size of the earth gives evidence of design. If it were much smaller, there would be no atmosphere to sustain life. Earth would then be like our moon or Mars. On the other hand, if it were much larger, the atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, as do Jupiter and Saturn, which also prevents life. The earth's distance from the sun is absolutely right. Even a small change would make it too hot or too cold. The tilt of the earth's axis ensures the seasons. And so it goes.
Science cannot prove God, but it gives overwhelming evidence of a master designer and sustainer, which roles could only be filled by God.
Like science, reason cannot prove God. But also like science, it gives a great deal of evidence for Him. Man himself is personal, conscious, rational, creative, volitional. It is inconceivable that he could have become so by accident or that his Creator could be anything
less
than personal, conscious, rational, creative, and volitional. To think that personal, thinking, decision-making man somehow could have developed from slime to amoeba and on up the evolutionary chain does not make sense.
By faith Enoch believed God is.
Understanding
What is God saying to me?
We all come to God in different ways…some people simply believe that God exists and that He is the Creator, the One without beginning or end. Others must use the rationalization of science as given in the law of cause and effect, entropy or design. But at the end of the day the first step into relationship and intimacy God requires faith – science cannot prove God exists, it just gives us evidence that there are some things that only God can do – but the truth is that you and I must come to the place where we must simply believe that God is. He is the Beginning and the End, He is the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, He is the only True and Living God who is eternal – without beginning or end.
Faith is propositional and relational – we must believe these propositions about God and then we must act in the reality of it and come into relationship with God who desires to have relationship with us.
Life Application
What will I do about it?
God today, I am not looking at promises that you gave me and deciding to have faith to walk them out, today I am simply living in the fact that God is!
God is Creator and Ruler of all. A God without beginning and end. A God who desires a relationship with me and who makes a way for me to have that relationship with Him. Today I celebrate that God is for me not against me. God is my Father and my Friend. God is a very present help in times of trouble. God is my Redeemer and Savior.
You finish this statement. God is...
- Pastor Gary
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