Why We Believe: Understanding the Rules of the Truth Game

The title or the topic of this morning's message is Why Do We Believe Understanding the rules of the Truth Game, and I want to introduce this scriptural topic. By referring back to my testimony, I think I've shared a little bit of my testimony and, previous sermons. But I want to share, just when I was a child, I remember being in Sunday school class. I didn't grow up in a Christian home, but I do remember going to church and being in a particular Sunday school class and hearing the teacher teach from the Bible.

And just the sense coming over my heart and mind that there is a God. God does exist and I, and I knew even as a small person, probably 7 years old, that I am accountable to Him. But as I grew up, like a lot of people, I began to realize the world out there, my own problem with sin, my own desire to do my own thing. And I can remember about the time of junior high school, I can remember just kicking a can down the street.

And saying to myself, trying to convince myself that there was no God, trying to rehearse reasons in my mind, speaking to myself, why I believe there was no God. And it gave me comfort actually over my just my person that if there was no God, then I was not accountable to anybody and I could do anything I wanted. And I remember particularly being in a 7th grade social studies class and my social studies teacher introducing to me for the first time just the religion of Hinduism.

And as we were reading and studying Hinduism, A warm sensation, I kid you not, a warm sensation came over my body.

And I just felt this peace that this was the answer to my problems. This was the answer to my God problem that made me feel guilty, my sin problem that made me feel guilty. There's something about Hinduism that really resonated in my heart. And I don't think it was the intention of my social studies teacher to bring about delusion or deceit into my life, but it was, the teaching of Hinduism in 7th grade that really began to make sense to me and to explain away what I was getting from my live-in babysitter at home who was trying to teach me the gospel.

And I share this just to introduce this topic. of just what is it That causes us to come to belief in God. Why did I have a belief in God when I was 6 or 7 and then I'm actually consciously working to get rid of that belief when I'm in junior high school? What is it about us that most people would even evolutionary scientists would agree?

That there's a natural tendency towards belief in God or a higher being from the time that we're very little. And one of the scientists I was reading about this week said that when he was 10 years old, he wrote on the wall next to his bed, I believe in God. And if God's not there, we're all in trouble. And later on in life decides we're all in trouble.

what is it? What are the mechanisms that bring us to a place where we believe in God? There's an article that came out in 2007 in The New York Times Magazine called Why Do We Believe How Evolutionary Science Explains Faith in God. Evolutionary science has a very different rationale for why I as a seven year old, expressed or felt belief in God.

This article basically summarizes that or asks the question, this is the main question the article is asking which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God, evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Those are the two possibilities according to evolutionary science. Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, says this, basically concludes that religion is nothing more than a useless, sometimes dangerous evolutionary accident, quote, religious behavior may be a misfiring.

Oh, thank you very much.

A misfiring, and unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity, which in other circumstances is or was useful. So there's some scientists that would say that That it's just, it's a misfiring of the genetic code that causes us to believe in God. But despite the debates within the field, evolutionary evolutionary theorists, here's what they all agree on is our capacity to believe and to believe in God is hardwired into our physiology because it was directly or indirectly associated with traits that helped our ancestors.

Adapt to their environment.

So there's something about believing in God, that actually helped our ancestors adapt. And through natural selection, a belief in God actually helped the species advance. A belief in God would help the species avoid danger. A belief in God would help the species find food.

A belief in God would cause people to be more con concerned about sexual relations and thus promoting the, the species and so on and so forth. So this would be the, some of the answers that evolutionary scientists would give. Tim Keller summarizes this article in his book, Reason for God. He says, evolutionists say that if God makes sense to us, it is not because he's really there.

It's only because that belief helped us survive. And so we are hardwired for it. So what's interesting is what evolutionists are saying in their philosophy and their development, their theory of belief, their theory of knowledge, is that it was actually a good thing for the human species to believe a lie. To believe delusion helps the species adapt.

It wasn't a belief in reality. It was actually a belief in delusion that helped the species move forward and adapt, and that's been passed down to our genes today. And so even though we all know from an evolutionary viewpoint God does not exist, God is irrational at the very least, people still believe in God. when they're very little, because that's hardwired into our DNA.

There's something about us that wants to survive, and a belief in this delusion called God helps us survive. this is We would call this, this is the evolutionists' theory of belief in God, or to use an academic term, this is their theistic epistemology. This is what an evolutionist. Derives its concept of belief in God from, of course, an evolutionary model.

Let me just define that term epistemology, because this is really what we're going to be talking about in the sermon. Epistemology can be defined as the study or theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge. Especially with reference to its limits and validity. So when we talk about things like how is it that any of us know anything, how do we gain knowledge, how do we come to a place where we say this is true, this is false, I believe this, that's all questions of epistemology.

And even if this is the first time you've ever heard the word epistemology, everybody in this room, every man, woman and child has an epistemology. You all have a theory of knowledge. And your theory of knowledge may be based on what the Bible says our epistemology should be based on, or your theory of knowledge may be a smorgasbord of all kinds of things. Maybe you're buying into the same rules of the game that an evolutionary scientist say are the rules of the game.

What are the rules of the game according to an evolutionary scientist? Well, first of all, one of their rules would say that first of all, it is irrational or unacceptable to accept theistic belief without sufficient or appropriate evidence or reason. If there's not sufficient or appropriate evidence or reason, then it's, then it is irrational to believe in God. Secondly, their role would go on to say, there is not sufficient appropriate evidence or reason for theistic belief.

Therefore, belief in God is irrational. What they don't tell you up front is this little underneath truth to the first point, the first part of their syllogism. And that is that any evidence that falls outside of the presuppositions of naturalism. And empiricism are excluded.

What does that mean? So anything that falls out of the doctrine of naturalism, that's the idea that everything in the universe needs to have a natural explanation. There are no spiritual explanations. If everything has a natural cause and a natural reason, they can't prove that.

That's a working assumption of evolution, naturalism. Another working assumption is empiricism, and that is the idea that we can use our senses to attain true knowledge my eyes, my ears, the sense of touch, smell, taste. This is how we attain true knowledge. If we can't sense it, if it does not come in through our senses, then it cannot, cannot be discerned to be true.

So if you don't play according to these rules, Then you cannot win the truth game, so to speak. I, as you're trying to dialogue with people that have been influenced or who live inside of the camp of evolutionary science, which by the way, is most people in our society today, right? This is what's being taught in our schools from kindergarten through, through college. This is what you're seeing in the movies, in the media, in, in, just daytime TV.

It's an assumed part of life. And if you don't play according to these rules, then you can't play the game. It's almost as if, people in our society are saying, let's sit down and let's, let's play a game of chess, but you can't have any pieces. OK, you can't have any pieces.

Well, I'll, I'll make my moves, but you can't have any pieces, or we're going to redefine the rules. You can't move diagonal, straight, forward, or left. And you can't go 121. OK, so there's, there's, there's certain rules have been established according to the evolutionary philosophy in the air today, and we're not allowed to play unless we play by those rules.

What I want to suggest in this morning's message is our rules of the truth game. Of necessity are completely different. Because the type of questions that we're trying to answer of necessity cannot be answered by naturalism. Everything has a natural explanation or empiricism.

Everything comes through our senses. The things of the spirit are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. So what rules should we follow to arrive at knowledge of the truth?

In other words, what is our epistemology as Christians, we want to approach the world from a Christian worldview. We don't want to assume that there's some neutral game playing between us and those that ascribe to evolutionary science. There really is no such thing as neutral ground. What we're proposing is that we understand that the rules of the game have to be played in a different way.

OK, and so we're going to talk about 5 different rules of this truth game, and this isn't a message so much I'm not preaching this message so that you can take these truths and now know how to go out and interact with your evolutionary friends. This message is really for us so that we understand how we ought to think. And how the game can or cannot be won if you and I think that we can go play by their rules and somehow convince people with absolute certainty by using the scientific method, using naturalism and empiricism, that the God of the Bible is God, you will lose.

Because it's an unfair game.

They're trying, they've already set up the rules to predetermine the answer. And we cannot play according to those rules. So what are the rules of the game according to a Christian worldview? Let's start with the first rule, and that is this the game maker makes the rules.

The game maker makes the rules. I'm going to be using the analogy here of a game to follow our little. metaphor to basically teach, this morning Christian worldview epistemology. The game maker makes the rules.

The game maker, of course, is God. To establish a Christian epistemology, we start with God Himself. And so let me flesh this out a little bit. We start with God Himself understanding that the God who is this game maker is an independent God.

He is an independent God. Turn to Psalm 90 2. What do we mean that God is independent? There's, there's an idea, a subcurrent to the modern way of attaining truth through our evolutionary approach to attaining truth that assumes that we are independent thinkers, that somehow we independently can observe the universe, and if we can or cannot discover things that determines reality or truth.

We start with the concept that the only independent being in the universe is God Himself, and we are all derivative creatures. We're all dependent. We are creatures. We have been created by a Creator, and he is the only one who is independent.

Psalm 90:2 says this, before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. God is God, whether you and I exist or not. God is God whether there's a mountain, a sky, or a moon. If every man, woman, and child rejected a belief in Almighty God, it would not cause him to go out of existence.

God would still be there. When God came to create the universe, he did not have to study physics. When God created time, he did not have to study anything about time, space, and matter. He created time.

He created space. He created matter. In Job 38, he says to Job, verse 4, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements? Surely. And so a Christian epistemology, a worldview, a Christian worldview starts with the fact that we have an independent God who does not need any of us to believe in Him. He's not threatened by Richard Dawkins.

He's not threatened when people say that God is a delusion. Because God is, no matter what anybody says. And this independent God always had creation in his mind. And at a point in time, once he created time, he created the universe.

Genesis, Genesis 1, we say, we see in the beginning, God. There's no attempt by Moses to try to give a rationale, to try to give a empirical proof for God, in the beginning, God. In the beginning, God said, Let there be light. He was, he is, he creates the universe, he creates in the 1st 5 days, and then on day 6, he creates man, and he creates man in his image.

Chapter 1, verse 27 says, so God created man in His image, in the image of God, He created him, male and female, he created them. And as we see the chapter unfold in chapter 2 and chapter 3, a part of that image involves the fact that while we know that God is a God who knows himself and is a God of knowledge and communication and communicates within himself, and God creates us to be communicative beings. And with the ability to communicate and to receive true knowledge. So God creates Adam and Eve, and then what does he do right away?

He begins to use language to speak information into them. He begins to use language. He says, Now I want you to go and have dominion. I want you to multiply.

I want you to have dominion. I'm going to plant a garden over here. I want you to, I'm going to put you over here and I want you to keep this garden, Adam and Eve. I want you to get together and have children.

And there's probably many other things that aren't even recorded on the pages of scripture where God is using language as He's walking with Adam. Imagine this, walking with Adam in the cool of the of the day. And just communicating truth to Adam. But does this mean that Adam suddenly achieves infinite knowledge?

No, Adams, he's a finite being, but he's receiving true knowledge from the infinite. And the infinite being has made us in such a way to where we can hear and understand and believe truth who is God. And Adam and Eve, they're walking throughout the garden. And they've been given this capacity to know and to know God.

And God also creates them with a A capacity just to receive knowledge about Himself, and there's two different ways as we look at the rest of Scripture. There's two different ways that God communicates knowledge of Himself to mankind. The first way is through general revelation. If you have your Bible, turn to Romans 1 chapter, Romans 1:19.

God communicates information about Himself in a nonverbal way. We see in Romans 1:19 Paul says, because what may be known, OK, this is epistemology, what may be known of God is manifest, made known in them. How? For God has shown it to them.

God has through general revelation, made a knowledge of Himself in our own beings in the very constitution of who we are from a Christian worldview, why did I say at 7, I believe in God? Because God put his knowledge in my heart. He put that in me. Why did this evolutionary science, scientist write, I believe that God exists on his wall.

Because God puts that in us. There's a clue of God within our being. And then it goes on in verse 20, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, these clues are clearly seen. Being understood by the things that are made, even as eternal power, God had so that they are without excuse.

We call this general revelation because God has put in us and in nature general clues about his existence and who he is, not specific information, but general clues that we know that there's a God, we know he exists. In ourselves and when we look out at the majesty of nature, the order of the universe, it rings forth within our being that there is a God. This is general revelation. But God also communicates, and we can see this in Psalm 19 and other places, that the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, that God has also given us special revelation.

Special revelation is the fact that God communicates verbally, particular pieces of information to us, like in the garden, multiply and have dominion. But also, it, it was special revelation was required for Adam and Eve to know which tree was the tree they should not eat. You realize that there's nothing in the book of Genesis that indicates that Adam and Eve were walking along, and they see all these beautiful trees, and all of a sudden they see this spooky tree that looks like it's out of a horror film.

Whoa, don't go near that one.

No, everything God created had this look of goodness to it. But there was one tree that God said, don't go near that one. It required special revelation. God had to verbally say, Don't touch that tree.

That's the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And so once they received that special revelation, that language communication from God, they knew the truth. That's the tree we're not to touch. Of every other tree we can touch, and God wants us to work in the garden.

He wants us to multiply. He wants us to have dominion. He wants us to enjoy his glory, and all the other things that aren't even recorded in the Book of Genesis that God would have communicated via special revelation to Adam and Eve. And then later on in the Bible we see God communing information, communicating information through His prophets, through the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, right through the apostles down to this day where we have the Bible in our hands, we have special revelation from God that gives us the rules that the game maker has created.

And so it's the game maker who makes the rules. This is what for our day is like the inside of the top box, right? You open up your monopoly. I don't know a lot of times they give the booklets these days, but in the old days you opened up the game and there's all the rules right on the inside of the top, right?

And you try to sit down and read those rules and you make sure you're playing the game right. God has given us the rules of the game, the truth game right here in the Bible, and if we follow those rules, then we have a good idea of coming to the truth. But there's a problem. And the problem is really our second rule.

That God tells us in His word, and that is The players have not followed the rules of the game maker. We're all players in this game. Everybody who's made in his image, which is everybody on the planet who's ever existed, we're all players in this truth game, but we have not followed the rules. God has laid out the rules.

He laid them out clearly in the garden, and we have not followed these rules. Adam and Eve did not follow the rules in the garden of the fall. They decided, well, God has said this is truth. We're going to listen to our enemy, who says he's challenging the truth, rather than believing God's view of truth, we will touch, we will taste, we will see for ourselves if God is true.

We will use empiricism outside of God, we will become the self and center of truth. And empiricism, apart from God leads to the fall. Empiricism with no God leads to delusion. Not only that, but the Since the fall, we've all been involved in not just passively searching for truth, Not just passively, mistakenly moving away from truth.

The Bible indicates that you and I have been active in our suppression of the truth. Look what it says in Romans chapter 1 again, back to Romans 1:18. You and I are not just like, wow, boy, I really wish I could know the truth before we come to know Christ. The truth is, according to the Game Maker 118, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and righteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

The natural state of the human heart is we push down the truth. It's like this volleyball in the swimming pool. We're trying to push it down. And we are active in pushing it down.

I'm walking along the street, kicking a can, talking to myself, telling myself there is no God. There is no God. And then my social studies teachers give me reasons to disbelieve the God of the Bible, who I know is true. But I'm feeling warm and I'm feeling peaceful because this is what, this is what I want.

I don't want truth. I want to suppress the truth. But then beyond that, if we're going to understand from a Christian worldview what our epistemology ought to be, what is our theory of truth and knowledge and belief is there's a role to be played by the devil. There is role playing here, no pun intended, of the devil.

Genesis 3, we have the devil involved, who is the tempter of Adam and Eve. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. This is something that evolutionary scientists cannot account for merely through empiricism. And through The scientific method.

That the game maker who has set up the rules has also told us that there is an enemy that we need to be aware of. 2 Corinthians 4:3 and following says this. Paul says, But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. Whose minds the god of this age, that's the devil, has blinded.

who do not believe lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. So you have this active being in the universe, who is blinding the minds of people, so that they would be veiled to the gospel and would not believe. This is what from a as I began to read the Bible later. I began to realize this is part of what was going on in my own heart.

I was suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, but I wasn't by myself. The devil was active in blinding me and trying to prevent me from seeing the truth, and he used many different ways, one of which was just a very innocent lesson in my 7th grade social studies class on Hinduism. He's using things to blind me to the truth. Look at 11:14 in the same book, 2 Corinthians 11:14, we see, for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

The devil is about his business, not making it very clear that he's lying. He's actually trying to give people the idea that they're believing true things. I've never, I have not met very many evolutionary theorists or scientists that buy into the full anti-theistic evolutionary approach that say, Hey, I'm believing a lie. They believe that they are following truth.

I've met some very, very sincere people that think that this is really, this is really true. This is the way the universe is to be explained. And they're, they're, they seem to be sincere, they seem to be trying to discern truth. And yet we see from the Bible, that there is an active person called the devil, that is helping blind people.

And this all settles down to this, this final conviction that the condition of all the natural players is that they cannot know the truth. Look at back at 1 Corinthians chapter 2. This is probably the most important passage. That, that we'll look at today and we'll come back to it in fact.

1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14. This is the sad reality of this truth game. That the natural man does not receive the things of the spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him.

Nor can he know them. That means he's unable. Because they are spiritually discerned. Think about that.

The natural man, that's you and me before Christ, that's you and me before the Holy Spirit shows up. The natural man is all those who do not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, We do not receive the Spirit of God, the things of the Spirit of God, they're foolishness to us. I remember sitting around the table making fun of a Sunday school teacher when I was 11.

Sitting around with my buddies and just, just laughing and laughing at the Sunday school teacher because he wore a suit and a tie and he put hairspray in his hair. And we're just like laughing and laughing at things that he did and taught. It's foolishness, foolishness, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. It's foolishness.

What you and I believe is foolishness. The sad reality is, nor can he know them. I could not know the truth because these things had to be a work of the Spirit. I could not come to the truth through sense experience.

I could not come to the truth through the scientific method. The only way I could come to spiritual truth is through a spiritual means. There's a third rule that the rule makers laid out for us. And that is, is, is the game master has shown us how to win.

if you're playing the game of chess, you have like novice chess players like me. You have a little bit more advanced chess players like my son Joshua, right? And then you can have chess masters, right, people that they just, they're just masters of this game, and they can teach other people, how to go. They've already blazed the trail.

It's not uncommon, for people to go and buy a brand new video game, right? And there'll be people that will get that video game and they'll complete the game and then they'll become. Like, basically, the master that everybody else can call upon. They've already blazed the trail, they already know, like, here's where you go, here's how you don't, you don't do it.

And I don't, I don't play. A lot of the video games of today, so I'm not real familiar with all the Halo and other things that you guys play. but my day it was Pac-Man, right? Pac-Man, I, I do play, Nintendo baseball once in a while, but, Pac-Man, you could, there's somebody who already had gone through the Apple pattern, right?

Apple first, Apple, second Apple, and if you studied them or if you watched what they were doing, you could figure it out, and I was able to get, I don't know, maybe 1/3 of the way through that game, not because I was smart, but because I watched masters do it and I just memorized their little pattern going through Pac-Man, same thing with Donkey Kong or whatever. if anybody even knows what that is anymore. but the game master in this case in the truth game, the game master is Jesus Christ Jesus Christ is the one in, in John 14:6 says, I am the way, the truth and the life.

He is the standard of truth.

He came as a man. And God becoming man and live truth throughout his lifetime, and put truth on display. So that if we would believe in him, we would know the truth and be able to apprehend the truth. Turn to John 18, very interesting conversation that Christ has with Pilate before his death.

18 verse 37. Pilate, therefore said to him, Are you the king then? Jesus answered, You say rightly that I am the king. For this cause, I was born for this cause, I've come into the world.

Why? That I should bear witness to the truth. Why did Jesus come into the world? He's given witness to the truth.

God Himself. And everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. Let's reverse that. Whoever does not hear my voice is not of the truth.

How do truth? You gotta hear from Christ first. You gotta know Jesus, the game master, otherwise, you don't get in on truth. Because you're made in the image of God, yeah, you can know 1 + 1 equals 2.

You may know various facts about the universe because you're still made in the image and God is pleased to allow you to attain a certain amount of facts and reality. But to know the true import of those facts and to know anything of eternal significance, you've got to hear from Christ, otherwise you're outside of truth. You don't get into the truth, and probably one of the saddest statements in the New Testament is what Pilate says next. Pilate said, What is truth?

Confirming that he had not heard from Christ. Here he is over in this intellectual camp as it was in his day, it's, real popular in academic circles just to ask questions, just piloted, what is truth? As if there is no answer. Christ has just told him the answer.

There's truth standing right before him. And yet he sends them off to be crucified. There's truth standing right before the Sadducees and the Pharisees and all of the people. And yet they're crying out, Crucify him, crucify the truth.

One of the things that that proves is that people can come face to face with truth. They could see truth and handle truth. They handled Christ, they saw Christ, they saw his life lived out, they saw him do miracles. And yet the the natural state will be to suppress the truth and to kill it.

That's what people do with truth. If we think that we're going to convince people by empiricism, guess what, it failed. Jesus Christ was there in the flesh. And empiricism failed.

They crucified truth. 4th, That leaves us without a lot of hope. Most of us without, without any movement on God's part, we're in the place of Pilate, we're sitting around saying, What is truth? I want to do my own thing.

What is truth? I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk around and ask questions and look smart. But the game master Jesus Christ has given us support. He's given us support.

And that support is called the Holy Spirit. Turn back to 1 Corinthians, again, 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Again, this is the crux passage of this whole concept, I think, you could just study 1 Corinthians 2 and develop a pretty thorough epistemology, a Christian epistemology. 1 Corinthians 2:4 and following.

Paul says, in my speech and my preaching, we're not with persuasive words of human wisdom. It could have come with persuasive words of human wisdom, but he didn't. But in a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, why? That your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Verse 6, however, we speak wisdom, a wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing, but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery. The hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages of for our glory. There's wisdom out there. Paul says, that is hidden.

But God chooses to reveal it. He reveals it in the Gospel, verse 8, which none of the rulers of this age knew, for if they had known it, they would have not have crucified the Lord of glory. Notice verse 9, but as it is written, Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. In that one verse Paul quoting that particular passage, we see empiricism slammed to the ground.

We see rationalism slammed to the ground. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard. The things we're talking about cannot be perceived merely through the eye or the ear. Nor entered the heart of man.

That's our mind. It's not just we can't just rationalize about it. This is God coming and He's prepared things for those that love Him. So how do we gain this knowledge?

Is it irrational? Do we have to throw away our senses? Does God want us to throw away our minds and we all become irrational fetus? We're just saying, Oh, I believe, and there's no reason to believe.

No, that's not the message of the Bible at all. The message of the Bible is if Our minds and senses are engaged by the Holy Spirit, we can have true sense and true rationality. Notice what he goes on to say verse 10, but God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. Why the Spirit?

For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the Spirit of the man which is in him. Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. No one knows the things of God, except the what?

Spirit of God. You and I cannot know the things of God merely through the senses. You and I cannot know the things of God merely through rationality. Through the scientific method.

It is through the Spirit of God. No one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Verse 12, that would be a bummer if you didn't have verse 12. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

Why do we know that there's a God? Why do we know that he exists and that he has come and revealed Himself to Jesus Christ? Because he has freely given them to us through His Spirit. Verse 13, these things, we also speak, not in words which man wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches comparing spiritual things with spiritual words.

And in verse 14 again, but the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. The foolishness to him. He cannot know them because they are spiritually judged. Christ has given us His Holy Spirit.

And if we are regenerated, if we come to be born again, if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and then we're dwelt by the Holy Spirit, we now have the ability to begin to view the world as it actually is, to do as Cornelius Van Til talks about, we begin to think God's thoughts after Him. We now have the mind of Christ. What happens is, is without the Holy Spirit, we're walking around and we're trying to interpret the world, but we've got the wrong grid. We're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

We're actually actively trying to give explanations that are totally anti-truth. Then the Holy Spirit awakens, wakes, awakens us, and now we're given new glasses, and now we begin to view the world and we say, wow, I see why there's order in the universe. That's because God created an incredible universe. I see why there's chaos in the universe because God has revealed that there was a fall.

And now we have terrible consequences of the fall. And I see now that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and revealed truth, so that I could believe and be saved. And he's reaching out to me so that I can know truth. Without the proper glasses, we wouldn't discern any of that.

We would look out at this world and say, Oh, it's just an accident. It's just an accident. And any belief in the game maker is delusion. That's what people come to.

What we're talking about this morning is what some theologians call neumatological certainty. How is it that we come to know for sure, anything of a spiritual nature? The only way that you and I can know with certainty is through the Holy Spirit. Numa means spirit.

Because we're talking about things that are outside of the sense experience, I can't prove them to you using the scientific method, but I can direct you and show you that there are good reasons to believe in God. There is good reason to have a rational faith. But the Holy Spirit is the only one that can convince you or I of the absolute truth. To define this term, the heart, which includes the mind, is moved, opened, and enlightened and turned to obedience and faith by the Holy Spirit.

That's a summary of what 1 Corinthians 2 is about. You and I come to certainty as the Holy Spirit convinces us of the truth. As we read the Bible, read the Bible, and the Lord convinces us of the truth of Scripture. I don't know if if I'm sure many of you have had this experience.

I remember reading the Bible because my live-in babysitter made me read the Bible. And I didn't want to read the Bible. And I didn't believe most of what was in the Bible at different days. It just depended.

One day I did believe it, the next day I didn't believe it, and so on. Then all of a sudden, I began to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and one day as a 14 year old, I'm jumping up and down on my bed because I'm excited about something I read in the book of Acts. Jumping up and down in my bed. I'm not doing that because my live-in babysitter made made me do that.

My parents didn't make me do that. My parents didn't even know the Lord. My parents thought I'd flipped my lid. At one point I thinking I was in some cult or something because I actually was reading the words of this book and started to believe it and put it into practice.

Why did this stuff begin to happen to me? Why was I like one day kicking a can saying there is no God and boy I want to be a Hindu. To now I believe in the Bible and I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'll tell you how it didn't happen.

It didn't happen because I was rich and wealthy enough to fly all over the world and study every single major religion and every single philosophy, and one by one, I crossed them all out until with all of my wisdom and all of my riches, I finally came to the point that Christianity is the only logical choice. If that's the way people get saved, then Christianity would only be for the rich and the intelligent. But God has a better plan. He turns foolishness upon its head.

What the world calls foolishness, God calls wisdom. And he's created a gospel where very unstudied and poor people can read a simple book and come to belief in Almighty God. And rich wealthy academic people in their high conflutin offices don't know Christ and are believing foolishness. God turns it all upside down.

And it's a beautiful thing the way he does it, the way he reach, reaches out to the poor and the despised. Imagine if salvation could only be accomplished if you had researched every single belief system and then one by one xed them out. What would that say about the vast majority of the people on the planet? They would be hopeless and lost.

God has not done it that way. But he can bring us to numatological certainty. A little child can read John 3:16 and say, I believe in Jesus. I believe in Jesus.

He's, here's the final rule that we're going to talk about. Oh, what, let me, let me just give this one caveat. When we say that as Christians, we have received the Holy Spirit. Now we come to numatological certainty.

What we are not saying is now all Christians are intelligent and everybody else are idiots. No, no. We have by God's grace received the Holy Spirit, so that we can now discern saving truth, a portion of truth. And there's still so much more that we're trying to learn in this body while we're still hampered by sin, and still hampered by selfishness and still hampered by the devil.

And, and what, there's a lot of, I don't want to be offensive, but I've met a lot of Christians that are a lot stupider, if that's a word. than nonbelievers. I've met a lot of intelligent nonbelievers, and I've met a lot of unintelligent Christians. I've met a lot of moral unbelievers, and I've met some pretty immoral Christians.

That's not the issue on the page of Scripture. The issue is not that we are more mighty and we are more intelligent, and we are more worthy. No, it's God in His grace has chosen to come and open us up to truth, and now we in humility can go and share that truth as one beggar trying to show another beggar where to find bread. We need to have great compassion that the people that are in these institutions that are buying into the evolutionary viewpoint, they've been bound by the devil.

If we're seeing it from a Christian worldview, well that should give us great compassion to want to see them loosed. Not speak with them with disdain. Final point. While we've been talking about this in the terms of a game, the reality is there are real winners and real losers.

Look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. This is, these are not just word games. We're not just having a little debate for information. What we're talking about is the eternal destiny of souls.

2 Thessalonians 2, it's a future looking passage, but it has lots of application for the present. We see Paul says in verse 9, the coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. There's a group of people in the future, there's a group of people today that do not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved.

And so there's this unrighteous deception coming through the Antichrist.

They're believing it. And then God says, OK, that's what you want. You don't want the truth. Fine.

Verse 11, for this reason, God will send them strong delusion so that they should believe the lie. That they all might be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. God says, You don't want to play the game according to my rules. Boom.

Here's your own game. Go play it. Go play your evolutionary game. Go play your little game that says, OK, this is all a fantasy.

This is all just part of an adaptation. Go play that game. That's a sad, sad statement. But verse 13, but we are bound to give thanks to God, always for you Thessalonians, brethren, beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through the sanctification.

Listen to this, by the Spirit, and belief in the truth. It's the spirit and belief in the truth to which he called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what's at stake here. There are real winners.

There are real losers. And you want to be on the winning side. God has revealed to everybody in this room a knowledge of Himself, both in general revelation, and today, at least in special revelation. And now you have to decide whether you're going to suppress that truth and unrighteousness, or whether you're going to submit to the movement of the Holy Spirit who wants to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

Are you going to allow the Holy Spirit to regenerate you if you're not saved this morning, and give you a true knowledge of God Almighty? And reject this false so-called knowledge of the world. I'll show you where false, Charles Darwin had an interesting insight. He knew where his teaching was leading.

Listen to this quote. The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind. which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals are of any value or at all trustworthy. You see what he's saying there?

If I really believe, and he really did, that my mind is just a product of adaptation from lower animals. And as later evolutionists have argued, which we talked about earlier in this message, really a belief in God is a delusion that has helped us adapt. Do you understand that belief in God is a delusion that helps us pass on our genes to the next generation. Then can we trust anything our senses tell us?

And if we can't trust anything our senses tell us, why should we believe anything any evolutionist says? Because they can't trust their own senses. See what they're doing, what evolutionary. epistemology does is it borrows from the Christian worldview, and it wants to try to play chess using our pieces, pieces like logical consistency, rationality.

Morality. Evolution wants to take and play with our pieces but pretend like they can do that without a God. But what a lot of philosophers are realizing is you can't play that game. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Evolutionary epistemology ultimately, ultimately leads to, I don't know anything. I can't know anything. And so therefore what are we doing? We're just playing a game.

Charles Darwin was beginning to see that. Well, we need to end here. There's other things that we could talk about. Hopefully, you'll be able to talk about some of those things in your care group this afternoon.

Let's have our ushers come forward and as they do, just by way of application, I think. I think it's important for us first of all as Christians to make sure that we understand the game that people want us to play but don't just play it according to their rules if there's as if there's neutral ground. We need to understand what's really going on behind the scenes. we need to understand what's going on in our own families.

As I'm trying to talk to my kids as they're growing up about the Lord, it's not as simple as me just imparting to them the right information and they're going to believe it. I need to be in prayer. I need to be praying that the Holy Spirit falls on my children so they can believe the things that I believe. They're not just going to believe the things I believe because they're going to say, Oh, Dad's smart, so I'm going to believe those things.

They've got a heart that wants to suppress the truth and the righteous. They've got a devil who's working against them. They've got a worldview all around them that's saying, No, no, no, no, no, this is delusion. And so I need to pray and pray and pray that the Holy Spirit opens up the hearts of my children.

We need to pray that the Holy Spirit opens up the hearts of believers here are people that don't know Christ in our own midst, as we share with our family and so on. Let's pray. Lord, we ask that you would receive this offering for your glory and that you would use it to cause the gospel to go out, this church to flourish, its missionaries to prosper. We pray, Father, that You would help us to not be proud as if we have somehow attained this truth by our own reasoning and Logic, but we only have come to it because you have had mercy and grace upon us, who were once suppressing the truth and unrighteousness and bound by the devil.

And yet you have freed us and you have sent Christ into this world to set the pace for us, and you have given us your spirit to awaken us to reality. Help us to be very humble in our, as, as we hold the truth, recognizing that we have not attained total truth yet. There are many ways in which we can still be deceived, either by sin or by carnality, help us to always be dependent upon you, your word, and our brothers and sisters. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray all God's people said, Amen.