Trinity
THE TRUTH IS GOD MADE EVERYTHING
Psalm 121:2

Try this little experiment: walk down the street and ask ten strangers how life could be better. Many of them would probably say that they wanted more money, so consider that a dodge. Our problem is not poverty. This country has huge reserves of silver and gold, on every corner there is a bank, and they’re so anxious to give you a loan that they call you. My friends, we are not poor. Our society’s fundamental failure is that it tries to run the world without God. That leads to chaos, but how can people help it if they’re taught from the time they’re small that people are a chance occurrence in an accidental environment? At some level of school you get a teacher who has great confidence in man’s ability to solve all problems. The following year you get a different teacher who tells you we’re all pawns in mass movements that are beyond control. Is that confusing? Of course it is! Are we in charge or are we not? If you want the truth, begin with Him who is the truth. God is the central fact of all genuine science. Yes, you heard me correctly. God’s existence is a scientific fact. All honest inquiry leads unmistakably to Him. If we ignore Him or deny Him we are left with partial knowledge that cannot be integrated, a puzzle we can never put together.

This morning on every continent, in hundreds of languages, Christians are confessing the Apostles’ Creed. The traditional words – I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. Every Christian can make this statement, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Evangelical, or Pentecostal. We stand on common ground as we look to our Creator. We confess with absolute certainty that God is the author who writes our stories, every detail and turn of the plot. When we are willing, He uses our efforts. When we are not, He overrules us. Sometimes He even waits to see what we will do, choosing not to know our response until we commit to it. The Psalmist who lifts his eyes to the hills is really looking beyond the hills to heaven. He affirms his confidence by stating that the Lord, Jehovah, made the world. He made it the way it is – although at first our species was not fallen. All the best scientists today join with the Psalmist in affirming that God made the world.

Our spiritually dead society has decreed that children ought to learn an alternative doctrine concerning our origin. This alternative is contemptibly asinine because it denies the scientific fact of God’s existence, which it cannot see because it closes one eye all the time. The limitations of methodological naturalism are completely arbitrary, but they blind the investigator to half of reality. As a result, our society sees all of life as chance. No other people in history has ever had such a low opinion of itself. They all see themselves as resulting from a plan. There are some who want to have it both ways. They are willing to believe that the Force exists, but it is neither personal nor intentional, and has no interest in morality. So God is demoted to a factor in a physics problem, and man is demoted to an animal. Now we do share some features with other living beings. God had some excellent ideas which were worth repeating, so that He didn’t have to re-invent organic life with every species. There is no reason why similarities could not be part of His plan. In fact, today we even know something about His technique – how He uses desoxyribosenucleic acid to carry out His command at creation to be fruitful and multiply, each species reproducing itself after its kind.

Materialism is so silly. Why would anyone want to believe it? Not because of any intellectual reasons. People flee from the doctrine of creation because of their extreme discomfort at being accountable to the Creator. Consider your ear, or your dog’s for that matter. There are twenty working parts in it that cooperate so that a creature with a brain can hear. Doesn’t that tell you that Somebody planned it? Every ear loudly praises its Creator. But if the most powerful Person in the universe has moral demands, then there will be judgment. From this our society flees. There are even churches today which do not mention the Creator. That is sad. God grant that the Church become more aggressive in showing how the secularists live in denial, how their wish that God might go away has replaced reality in their lives.

But we must look at ourselves, too. We are also accountable to God, therefore we must now speak of grace. Time after time societies have denied Biblical teachings, but God has always vindicated His truth. In time, He will vindicate it against our godless culture. Meanwhile we are to be witnesses, to speak the truth in love. We can do no less because God spoke the truth in love to us. In many various ways He spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but when the right time came He spoke to us by a Son, who shines with His glory, who is the Image of the invisible God, preserving and sustaining everything with His Word. We normally associate preserving and sustaining with God the Father. That’s fine, but in their works toward man, all three persons work together. All are from eternity and endure to eternity, but only the Son was incarnate, that is, became man. He became an historical individual, Jesus of Nazareth. He showed supreme love by dying for the fallen human race, and supreme righteousness by rising again and ascending to the right hand of the Father.

Secular materialists may hate the doctrine of creation, but the devil hates the doctrine of redemption, and will do what he can to destroy it. So he keeps the materialist in his denial, because that keeps him from hearing the Gospel. God made His way of salvation amazingly simple! Hear the crucified Savior say “It is finished.” By that He means your redemption, your forgiveness, your peace with God, all soon verified by His resurrection. The devil doesn’t want that story told, so he distracts us into every conceivable direction, so long as we do not look to the cross. His substitutes for the Gospel are just as silly as his substitutes for creation. But we stand with the Psalmist and lift up our eyes to the hills, to one hill in particular. We need to look to Calvary where God poured out His grace. Our help is in Jesus, who not only made heaven and earth. Not only preserves and sustains all things, but promises us the hope of heaven.

You and I did not occur by chance. Everything about us resulted from God’s eternal plan. Whether your birth, the way you look and act, or your eternal destiny, you are part of a comprehensive plan designed by God’s wisdom, power, and above all His love. That came from the Holy Triune God. We need not be afraid of Him. We need not think up improbable stories to support denial of his existence. We need to take the lead in speaking His truth in love. AMEN.