Faith and Science Final Part

Announcements

Camp: Need to know by Sunday if you’re going to camp

VBS Need your help, let me know if you want to help

Next week we’re starting a new series going through the book of James. I’ll explain more at the end of this.

Church wide things going on: We’ll be doing Gospel to Every Home, so we’ll need your help (Explain it)

We’re also doing who is your 1. (Explain it)

Timeline for the coming months. We’ll kick summer off the end of May

June we won’t have anything because of VBS and camps

July we’ll have summer fun, straight water games.

prayer request:

Final Lesson in the series

So we’re coming to an end of this series. We’ve talked about a few different things. We discussed the Bible’s version of creation and compared it to the Big Bang Theory. We discussed dinosaurs and fossils which can give validation to a flood. We talked about other areas where the Bible and Science agree on, such as the stars, the importance of the moon, how the earth hangs by itself.

A lot of the things we discussed Science and the Bible agree. Some things we discussed Science doesn’t want to agree, but they have some evidence that backs up what the Bible says, even though they don’t really want to admit it.

Also, make sure you remember, the point of this series was to not convince you either way, but to give you tools to defend the Christian faith when necessary. So we got two things we are going to discuss tonight, the first being morals and the second being Jesus Himself. These two aren’t really science connected, but they are still two important things to look at and be able to know how to defend your faith.

Our verse for tonight is John 1:1-5 It states

So the first thing we are going to discuss is morals

What are morals? How do you define morals?

morals is defined as: a lesson, especially one concerning what is right or prudent, that can be derived from a story, a piece of information, or an experience.

In other words, its how we look at the world.

It’s how we determine what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.

For example: if you walk up and kill someone for no reason, that is wrong. It’s murder. We can all agree to that correct?

Now let’s look at a different scenario, someone walks up to someone else with a gun and tries to kill them, but the other person has a gun of their own and in self defence, kills the person who tried to kill them. This case, in a normal mind, is viewed as justifiable and isn’t considered wrong.

Same thing can be said for other situations. We consider a mass killing of innocent people something evil, but we look at someone feeding a large homeless population as something good.

So the next question is where do morals come from?

This goes back to Evolution of sorts, but some people believe that morals have just come to be over time, ingrained in our DNA based solely on emotions.

In other words, over time, we as humans have learned that if someone takes something of mine that makes me sad and mad, so taking something else that doesn’t belong to you is bad.

One major issue with this thinking is, emotions change. Think about it for a second. Look at the story of Robin hood. What did he do?

He stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

He stole something that wasn’t his, but he did it for what one could consider a “good cause.”

Now emotionally, if I was the rich guy that had money stolen, my emotion would be that’s wrong, and I would be mad.

Now if I was the poor person, I wouldn’t necessarily be mad that I recieved the stolen money, I could then justify well Robin Hood helped me out and took money from someone that has enough money as it is. So I’m okay with that.

So our emotions can changed based on the situation and how we view the situation. However, this perspective also kinda points towards the Bible being true as well.

There are multiple verses in the Bible that warn us about being selfish.

Philippians 2:4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others

2 Timothy 3:2-4 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

This is just a couple of verses. It’s our own human nature to be concerned only about our self, and therefore it would be very difficult for our own emotions to control where morals come from.

Another view of where morals come from, and this is where I agree that it does, is morals come from God.

God is Good in all things. Going back to Genesis, when God created everything, He stated it was Good.

We know that God is good, because instead of just throwing us away, He sent Jesus to be our sacrifice so we can have a way for our sins to be payed for.

Since God is good, and again in Genesis, He created man in His image, He created us to be good just like Him. So our morals come from the beginning.

Sin entered the world and the connection to God was cut, but our knowledge of God is still there.

part of the knowledge comes through our morals

God also sent down a bunch of laws for His people to show how to be Holy like God.

There are 10 that kinda stand out more than others. The first four are about God but the last 6 are dealing with each other.

Almost all the laws, like I said almost there are exceptions, have some form of root in the last 6 commandments in some way. Don’t murder, don’t lie, don’t steal.

If you’re not honest with the police during an investigation, they can charge you with perjury, which falls back to don’t lie.

Romans 2:14 says For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

In other words, the Jews understood what God’s law was, like the 10 Commandments, but the Gentiles did not. By Gentiles I mean everyone who was not Jewish. But they already had an understanding of what the law was, and just because they followed some of the law didn’t mean they would be saved.

They had morals, they knew it was wrong to kill someone else, or to steal from someone else, but yet they didn’t know who God really was.

We are all imprinted with the law of God when we’re born, but our sinful nature takes over and we willfully disobey God

When we do something wrong, we know it’s wrong, even if we know we’ll get away with it, we know it’s wrong. Doesn’t matter if you’re a believer or not a believer, when we do something wrong, we know it.

Romans 2:1 Says Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you the judge, practice the very same things.

Another way of saying this, is we have no excuse to do wrong, because we know it’s wrong and when we judge someone else we’re being a hypocrite because we’ve done wrong too.

God has placed our morals in our hearts to convict us of what is right and what is wrong and it’s there to show us that we’re in need of a Saviour, which brings up the next thing I wanted to discuss, Jesus.

Some people will say that Jesus isn’t real, that He’s just a made up character in an old book and there is no other proof that He existed.

Those people would be wrong.

The Bible is obviously the most common document that says that Jesus was a real person.

One reason we can say the Bible is real in regards to Jesus is the amount of witnesses and the way things were written.

Luke for example, was a person contracted out to do research on Jesus. He interviewed witnesses and the book of Luke is his testimony of what he had discovered to be true.

The other books were written by the apostles who had direct contact with Jesus.

How can we trust these apostles that they didn’t make up this whole thing?

Let me ask you, would you die for a lie? Let’s say you made up a story completely, made thousands of people follow you, made tons of people mad. Those people you made mad, they threatened to arrest you and throw you in the worst jail possible. Would you still stick with that lie?

What if they started beating you? Would you still stick to that lie or would you rather not be beaten?

What if they held a gun to your head and said tell me this is a lie or you will die. Would you tell them the truth if it was all made up or if it was true, would you stick with it?

Every one of the apostles were killed for their faith. I personally would never die for a lie, I would only be willing to die for what is right and what is true.

What about outside of the Bible, there should be sources of Jesus in them right?

Well there is. The first comes 93 AD which is roughly 60 years after Jesus was killed on the cross.

Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote a history of Judaism.

He had two written accounts of Jesus and one, talking about James said “James the brother of Jesus “the so-called Christ”

In other Jewish writing, Jesus was addressed, but only to the point of saying that He was an illegitimate Son of Mary and nothing but a sorcerer.

About 20 years later, a Roman politicians Pliny and Tacitus, who held some of the highest offices of state at the beginning of the second century AD. From Tacitus we learn that Jesus was executed while Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect in charge of Judaea (AD26-36) and Tiberius was emperor (AD14-37) – reports that fit with the timeframe of the gospels. Pliny contributes the information that, where he was governor in northern Turkey, Christians worshipped Christ as a god. Neither of them liked Christians – Pliny writes of their “pig-headed obstinacy” and Tacitus calls their religion a destructive superstition.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter what others think about or say who they think Jesus is. It’s entirely up to you.

When we look at the morals the Bible puts out, or the laws that God has said, one will clearly see that each person has violated that law in so way.

We’ve all lied, we’ve all cheated, we’ve all stolen something, we’ve all looked at someone and either said it or thought it that they hated another person.

If someone comes in and steals something, we want that person caught and punished for their crimes. Well we all deserve punishment for the crimes we’ve committed against God. We’ll never be able to pay our debt to God for all the wrong that we’ve done. So God had a plan.

Jesus is the one that came, and took that punishment for us. He lived a perfect life died on the cross and rose from the dead three days later.

All to be that way for us to pay for our debts. When we placed our faith and trust in Christ, when we admit to God we are sinners, we have done wrong, believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord, we are saved.

I don’t know what everyone’s spiritual condition is, but if you haven’t accepted Christ, what’s holding you back? I would love to talk to you and walk through whatever questions that you may have one on one and not in a group setting. I want each of you to have that relationship with Christ

Let’s pray.