The written evidence.

Videotapes, digital photography, and scrapbooks chronicle every nuance of a proud parent’s bundle of joy.  Text messages of my friend’s new puppy have been coming to my cell phone--each one a testament of how cute and tiny she is!  In case you haven’t noticed, we are a very visual people, with technology only speeding up our viewing pleasure.  Unfortunately,

  we do not have any pictures of God. 

When Jesus spoke the world into existence, no one captured it on film.  Think of it . . . from nothingness to shape, size, and dimension.  Wild.   However, God was there.  He saw it all, and said it was good . . . very good.

As we have seen, there is assurance that God exists in the Created order; it speaks loudly of a Creator.  Our second ‘proof’ of God’s existence is Jesus Christ – God Incarnate . . . when he came to earth, he revealed God to us. Friends, we can know so much about the existence of God—his nature and his character—through studying the life of Christ.

And finally, the truth of God has been made known to us through the written revelation of the Holy Scriptures.  We know about the beginning of things, because “In the beginning, God …” and it is described in his written Word.  I recently taught on the scope of Scripture--In your left hand. . . i#20F671—but besides the historical breadth of it, what else should we know?  Oh, there is so much!  It is the permanent address at which the voice of God may be found.  In fact, some thirty-eight hundred times the Bible declares, “God said,” or “Thus says the Lord.” 

Scripture mirrors the person of God.  In the Bible, we can learn of his character—his righteousness, justice, undying love, incomparable creativity, and wondrous beauty.  We can learn what the one true God is capable of—well at least as much as our finite minds are able to grasp—such that

>he is all-powerful,

>unlimited by time or space, (one day is a thousand years and a thousand years is as one day to the Lord),

>he is all-knowing, ever-present, and although

>his character does not change,

>his ways are inscrutable. 

>He can be wild, and even a little dangerous, which is why I think C.S. Lewis depicted him as Aslan, the grand lion, in his Narnia Chronicles.  

We can be certain of these things through reading the history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament—how God loved them, chased after them, taught them lessons, and always sought to redeem them.  Ultimately, Scripture reveals a God who loves us so much, he would give up what was closest to him, his Aslan, so that we might be with him forever.  What kind of God is this?  What kind of love is this?

So that we might know, he inspired men to write all these things down for us.  He used 40 different authors from all walks of life—kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, statesmen, scholars, etc., spanning 1600 years.  Consisting of sixty-six books, yet the Bible is uniquely one book, with no contradictions or inconsistencies.  It is one continuous fabric—one unfolding story, in which God reveals his existence to us. 

The beloved Scripture shows us the way we should go, and how to pursue God’s purposes for us; it instructs us in the ways of the third person of the trinity--the intimate, oft-mysterious Holy Spirit.  In its pages, we find peace, comfort, and solace.  How can all of these claims be so?  God gave us the answer to that as well: For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.*  I can testify that the Bible is alive—I can read a verse on a given day, and it ministers life to me—a verse I might have read 23 times before, not even stopping to consider it.  I truly love God’s Word.

As Winnie-the-Pooh told Piglet, “a rescue was being thought of”, so too God  told us through 60 major prophecies in the Old Testament of the Messiah that he would send to rescue his beloved.  Jesus Christ of Nazareth fulfilled every one of them—nothing short of divine inspiration could account for such a thing. 

The Word of God is yet another evidence of the existence of a loving God.

Christine

*Hebrews 4.12