1. Introduction

A lot of people base their belief systems around evidence, and when there is a lack of evidence, they choose not to believe in it. I know of people who will say to me that only if God gives them a sign, then only will they believe, or if God gives them a sign to do such and such a thing then only will they do it.
This becomes very conditional because it tells me that IF God gives them a sign and DOESN’T give them a sign the second time round that they will not believe again.

How many signs or evidence does one need to believe in God, and more so to believe in God consistently, unconditionally, not to expect from God, but to please God and to obey His commandments.

God loves us unconditionally.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes
in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. – John 3:15
Matthew 22:37

Jesus said to him, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, and with all your mind.” – Matthew 22:37

“If you love Me, keep My commandments. – John 14:15
How do we do all of this if we do not believe and do not have faith?

2. How does faith start?

Faith comes through hearing the Word. Romans 10:17 tells us.
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

We all have first heard the word of God. What each of us has chosen to do with it would
have been different. Some ignored it, some accepted it, some rejected it and they may
have been some who would say that I don’t believe in a God.
There may be some of the people that have attended these three days that are hearing it for
the first time.
The point is that hearing the word of God is the starting point of our faith in Jesus Christ
and to understand and believe in God’s plan of salvation for mankind.

What do we have faith in?

Some of you may turn around and say to me: “have faith in what exactly?”
This in an interesting question is: “Now that I have heard, who do I have faith in? Do I
have faith in God, do I have faith in Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Do I need to have faith in the bible (the actual book) or the words in the bible?
If I need to have faith in the words in the bible and they all are the same, then why are
there so many different churches? Which church do I need to belong to have this faith?
Let alone all the different religions out there, why all the churches do are believing in different
things and do different things.
These are valid questions, and they all have valid answers.
Yes, there are many churches that do very different things. But there is only One True
God, who tells us in the bible (the true word) how we are to conduct our lives and how
we are to worship Him.
But this requires study of His word and understanding of what God wants not what pleases
men or what men want to do.

3. How does the evidence support the faith we need to have?

Coming back to the evidence, and as the title of my lesson “Evidence vs Faith,” I want to spend some time talking about the evidence. I also want to demonstrate that Faith comes from the evidence so my title should have really been “Evidence and Faith”. Society has always put these two words to contend against each other and I want to demonstrate this morning that there is more than enough evidence to ensure faith in God.

A. The existence of God

I first want to consider the question of whether God exists. Unless we can be convinced that there is a God, it is pointless to talk about creation, the inspiration of the Bible, miracles, or the divinity of Christ. For faith to be valid and meaningful it must rest upon true and convincing evidence, honestly and fairly considered. To do justice to discussing the existence of God, creation, and so forth, we would require more than a few minutes, however, the aim of this lesson is to trigger the need to question and interrogate previous beliefs in the lack of God’s existence, the creation of the universe from a big bang and so forth. If we can take a few minutes to prove that there is merit to study this further and interrogate this further, then we have opened up our minds to the fact that there is an Almighty Supernatural Power that governs our existence and our fate.

Some possible views on the existence of God:

a) Atheism – denies the existence of God and the supernatural

b) Agnosticism – Does not believe the existence of God is capable of proof one way or the other. Basically claims not to know.

c) Deism – Acknowledges a supreme being but denies the bible a His revelation to man

d) Theism – There is one God, the creator of heaven and earth, the Father of our spirit, the source of righteousness and truth, and the object of our worship and reverence. The belief that God is:

The source of our life:

28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ – Acts 17:28

The Father of our Spirit:

9 Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? – Hebrews 12:9

The source of all truth:
John 17:17
17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.

Some pertinent thoughts:
The being and will of God are matters of Divine revelation
1 Corinthians 1:18-24
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who
are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”
20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God
made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world
through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the
message preached to save those who believe. 22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks
seek after wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to
the Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the
power of God and the wisdom of God.

The bible does not argue the existence of God. It is a fact recognized from its very first
verse.
Genesis 1:1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The obvious way to recognize the existence of God is by looking around us, nature, the
universe, it becomes more reasonable to believe in Him than not to.

Psalm 19:1
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.
19 The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.

Romans 1:18-22
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may
be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the
creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood

by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they
are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as
God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were
darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,

Thus we can see clearly from the scriptures that God does exist.

B. Creation of the universe

Another aspect for us to consider is the creation of the universe. Perhaps this will further
demonstrate the existence of God.
It is important to consider the historical, scientific, and biblical information available to
determine the origin of our universe and the origin of man.

Let’s first examine the limits of science when considering the creation of the universe.

• Men of science are not in a position to say authoritatively how the universe came into being and how life on earth began.
  • There is no way for the methodology of science, which is the examination of things as they now function, to determine absolutely how they began.
  • Scientists cannot speak with the same authority about how the universe began as they can about how it presently functions:
    • Scientific observations began long after the creation of the universe
    • Scientists can only offer hypothesis and intelligent guesses.

The methodology of science is a very robust process that states that all theories or
hypotheses must be proven through experiments and tests to be an accepted principle
and eventually an accepted fact.

Let us apply this method to the various theories of the creation of the universe that men
have proposed:

• Nebular theory. This theory proposes that there was a blob of matter spinning in space. This mass contracted and rotated faster, throwing off hunks of matter that became creation.

• Planetessimal _theory. According to this theory, two stars collided, their gravitational fields pulling off hunks of matter that became the cosmos.

• Continuous generation theory. This theory states that matter is continuously being created at some point in the cosmos at the present time.

• Quasi-Statal theory. This says there was no beginning to the creation. Matter has always existed and has only undergone changes from one form to another

• Big Bang theory. Scientists who forward this theory state that there was a huge explosion somewhere in space.

Let’s also add this in there:
• God. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

All of the above theories, but One, either fail to answer the question or do not stand up in the light of the proven facts.

• Nebular theory. It does not answer the question, “By what process, in the beginning, was matter created from nothing?” This theory says there was a blob of spinning matter. Where did it come from?

• Planetessimal theory. This does not answer the question. Where did the stars come from?

• Continuous Generation theory. By what process is matter being created?

• Quasi-statal theory. Is it possible for matter to have always existed? No. The physics law of entropy does not allow for such a view. Entropy is defined as the degradation of matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity. This means that energy is being used but is not remade.

• Big bang theory. It does not answer the question, what blows up?

Conclusions drawn:
When you apply the scientific method to the question, “How was matter created from nothing?”, there is only one possible answer that can stand in the face of scientific fact.

• A spiritual (non-physical) being, God, was responsible for creation:
  • In the beginning, a non-physical force, God, created matter from nothing.
  • An all-powerful God would not be limited by space, time, or the amount of matter He could create.

C. Evolution

Now that we have demonstrated the existence of God and that He created the universe, let us consider for a moment man.
There are many theories demonstrating that mankind has evolved from some other form of life. The dating of archaeological finds are also not accurate claiming that some have lived 500,000 years ago.

Yet, historical records of man only goes back to about 5000 to 7000 BC. The first cities we know anything about date to around 5000 BC, Jericho being the oldest.

There is much evidence for the relative recency of man:

• The first writings did not appear until about 3200 BC. Hieroglyphics (Egyptians) was first, then cuneiform (Sumerians), and syllabic writing
• Man learned to write in a period of 1000 to 1500 years.

Evolution: the hypothesis of the theory that all life on earth originated from non-living matter and that all forms of life on the earth today came from some original form of life by a connected series of changes, which at every point were only natural, and are therefore explainable by Science.

There are many holes in the theory of evolution that demonstrates or rather prove that these are man-made theories. To summarise the difficulties with the theory of evolution:

• It is an unproven theory
  • It neither science, nor scientific
  • It makes basic assumptions which cannot be proven. There is no evidence to support that those assumptions are true
• It does not account for the origin of man
  • If all of the accounts of development within various species are granted, that still does not explain the origin or life.
  • Life comes from life – a scientific fact. If life did not originate from a Creative God then dead matter produced it. Such can never be proven.

• Two-thirds of the so-called “evolutionary chain” is missing
  • The phase “missing link”, Anthony Standen said in Science is a Sacred Cow, “It is a most misleading phrase because it suggests that only one link is missing. It would be more accurate to say that the greater part of the entire chain is missing, so much that it is not entirely a certain whether there is a chain at all” (p. 106).
  • Evolutionists state that there has been life on the Earth for two or even three billion years, yet they admit that the earliest fossil record is only half a billion years old. Hence, by their own admission at least two-thirds of the whole theoretical chain is devoid of proof.

• It fails to account for the characteristics man possesses which are completely unknown to animals. Man has:
  • The capacity for rational thought
  • A sense of morals
  • An aesthetic nature
  • An inherent leaning towards religion
  • A conscience
• All its proofs have fallen by the wayside of true scientific progress

Then we have:
Genesis 1:26-27
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over
all[a] the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created
man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created
them.

The word of God shows that the only rationale for the creation of man was the doing of an all-powerful God.

D. The inspiration of the bible (Accuracy of the scriptures)

I have had many discussions with people who claim that the bible was written by men so
how can we say that it is true?
Well, I say to them that they are right. The bible was written by men, but these men were
inspired by God and wrote down exactly what God wanted them to write, without errors
or mistakes, yet with their own personalities in evidence.
The original manuscripts these men have penned of the scriptures were inspired and fully
authoritative for they came as the Holy Spirit guided these men to write.

2 Peter 1:20-21
20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21 for
prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God[b] spoke as they
were moved by the Holy Spirit.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete,
thoroughly equipped for every good work.

INSPIRATION OF GOD, INSPIRED OF GOD
theopneustos (θεόπνευστος, 2315), “inspired by God” (Theos, “God,” pneo, “to
breathe”), is used in 2 Tim. 3:16, of the Scriptures as distinct from non-inspired
writings. Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale, and the Great Bible have the rendering “inspired
of God.”

1 Corinthians 2:12-13
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.
13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the
Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

Areas of Supporting Evidence:

• The scriptures claim inspiration
  • There is infallibility about its writings
  • Although written by unlearned men (fishermen, farmers, tax-collectors, etc) they were written with supreme confidence.
  • They announce they are revealing God’s message with no embarrassment or acknowledgement
  • 1 Corinthians 14:37
  • the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord.

• The brevity (conciseness) of the entire books. It is a book that says so much by saying so little.
• The unity of the scriptures:
  • Written by approximately 40 men over a period of some 1600 years.
  • They are written in perfect unity, each book complimenting the others.
• Fulfilled prophecies
  • PROPHECY, PROPHESY, PROPHESYING
  • A. Noun.
  • propheteia (προφητεία, 4394) signifies “the speaking forth of the mind and counsel
  • of God” (pro, “forth,” phemi, “to speak”: see prophet); in the NT it is used (a) of the
  • gift, e.g., Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:10; 13:2; (b) either of the exercise of the gift or of that
  • which is “prophesied,” e.g., Matt. 13:14; 1 Cor. 13:8; 14:6, 22 and 1 Thess. 5:20,
  • “prophesying (s)”; 1 Tim. 1:18; 4:14; 2 Pet. 1:20, 21; Rev. 1:3; 11:6; 19:10; 22:7, 10, 18,
  • 19.
  • “Though much of OT prophecy was purely predictive, see Micah 5:2, e.g., and cf. John
  • 11:51, prophecy is not necessarily, nor even primarily, fore-telling. It is the
  • declaration of that which cannot be known by natural means, Matt. 26:68, it is the
  • forth-telling of the will of God, whether with reference to the past, the present, or
  • the future, see Gen. 20:7; Deut. 18:18; Rev. 10:11; 11:3….
• Prophecies can only come from the omniscience of God, because it declares future events that requires the knowledge of innumerable contingencies of human affairs. Hence by its very nature a prophecy must be a divine revelation.
• There are numerous examples of prophecies being foretold and fulfilled. Many of these are confirmed through circular history.
• In Ezekiel 26 and 27, the destruction of Tyre was given in detail (592 – 50 BC). Ezekiel as a captive in Babylon made some very specific predictions about the destruction of Tyre.
• Sometime after defeating the Persians in a battle in 333BC, Alexander III in a southern campaign demolished old Tyre an used the materials and dirt to build a causeway to the new city which had been built out in the water. This fulfilled Ezekiel 26:4 – And they shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her and make her like the top of a rock.

• After a long siege, the island city was destroyed and the materials cast into the sea. This fulfilled Ezekiel 26:12 – They will plunder your riches and pillage your merchandise; they will break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses; they will lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water.
• Eighteen years after Alexander’s defeat of Tyre on the island, Antigonus laid siege to the city and again destroyed it.
• The Muslims were next to win and occupy it for a time but were defeated by the Roman Crusaders.
• Still later, the Muslims again retook the utterly destroyed the city with a vengeance. This fulfilled Ezekiel 26:3 – “Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: ‘Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come up against you, as the sea causes its waves to come up.

• Today, Tyre is literally a place for local fisherman to spread their nets to dry. The commercial seaport of ancient Tyre has never been rebuilt. Ezekiel 26:5 – It shall be a place for spreading nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken,’ says the Lord GOD; ‘it shall become plunder for the nations.

• Ezekiel 26:14 – I will make you like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets, and you shall never be rebuilt, for I the LORD have spoken,’ says the Lord GOD.
• This is but one example and there are many more that is a means of establishing the credibility of the Bible.

Scientific foreknowledge

There are many facts stated in the bible that science has discovered or proved much later on in mankind’s existence.

• Job 26:7: The earth hangs upon nothing
• Isaiah 40:22: Roundness of the earth
• Leviticus 13:45: Isolation of transmissible diseases.
• Leviticus 14:1-6: Wash in running water.
• Deuteronomy 23:12-13: Disposal of human excrement.
• Genesis 17:12: Instruction to circumcise on the 8th day after birth. The blood clotting vitamin K2 in the blood was not manufactured in a baby’s intestinal tract in normal amounts until the 5th to 7th day after birth. The second element necessary for blood clotting is prothrombin. The presence of this element decreases in an infant for the first 3 days of its life, then suddenly spurts to its maximum level on the 8th day, after which it settles to its normal level for the rest of the child’s life.

There are many more examples, medically, scientifically that has only been found out or proved by men in recent year, but this was already known in the words in the bible.

E. Jesus Christ is the Lord!

Let us consider probability for a moment. Simply put, the probability is the measure of the likelihood that an event would occur. I want to demonstrate something. We spoke of the destruction of the City of Tyre, however, there were numerous other cities that could be cited about which series of prophecies
to the minute detail were fulfilled.

• City of Samaria – Hosea 13, Micah 1 – Estimated fulfilment by chance: 1 in 40,000
• Cities of Gaza & Ashkelon – Amos 1, Jeremiah 47, Zephaniah – 1 in 12,000
• Kingdom of Edom and its capitol, Petra – Isaiah 34, Jeremiah 49, Ezekiel 25 & 35– 1 in 10,000

We have not even considered the greatest, oldest, and most detailed of all Bible prophecies, those that pertain to the birth, life, death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

In 1956 a book was written about the grand prophecies regarding the Lord Jesus Christ.
It contained the following challenge to the world.

“We Challenge the world – $1,000 Reward offered!”
We hereby challenge the world with this double challenge, and we will give $1,000 reward
to anyone proving either of these two propositions:
(1) Show that there is another book that the Bible in the literature of the world that
contains prophecies about a coming Messiah, similar to those in the Bible, and after
a lapse of 400 years gives evidence of its definite fulfilment, in twenty or more
details.
(2) Produce any “Christ”, living or dead (other than Jesus of Nazareth) who can fulfil
even half of the predictions concerning the Messiah that we give the bible. We
would ask of any who claims or who claimed to be the true “Messiah”.

To date, this reward has not been claimed.

Jesus Christ has fulfilled over 300 Old Testament prophecies and someone has calculated the probability of that happening by chance as being 1 chance in 8,400 followed by 129 zeros.
If you are scientifically and mathematically minded and want evidence, then prove that these events didn’t happen, rather than we prove that it did happen.

4. Conclusion

We have provided sufficient evidence to show the existence of God, that He created the
universe and man.
We have shown that the word of God is true and accurate and we have shown that it is
impossible for Jesus not to have existed, and not to have fulfilled the prophecies.
The bible is proof of God’s perfect plan, His son’s death
on the cross for mankind, so that mankind, His creation, can spend eternity with Him in
Heaven.
If all the evidence support that the bible is truth and the word of God, how much more so
for us to believe in his Son, and He will return again as He said He will.
Hearing the word brings faith, and we learn in Hebrews 11:1-3

Faith is the belief in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and in God’s promise to mankind.
Hebrews 11:1-3
11 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For
by it the elders obtained a good testimony.
3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the
things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

We have faith in the existence of God, there is evidence to support it. I also have faith
that he will come again to receive His people.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul, the apostle wrote:
Romans 8:24-25
24 For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still
hope for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with
perseverance.

We do not see heaven, but we have faith that it is there. With faith comes love. We
keep God’s commandments because we love him, and in doing so we lead a life on this
earth to please God.
Hebrews 11:6 tells that faith is necessary to please God.

Hebrews 11:6
6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe
that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

After Jesus’ resurrection, he went back to his disciples. Thomas doubted that it was Jesus
Christ as they had all witnessed His death on the cross.
Thomas said: “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the
print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
Jesus said to him:
“Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into
My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed.
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:29

We are the ones who have not seen, yet we believe. This is what faith is based on – the
evidence of things not seen.
We have seen briefly the evidence. Mankind chooses evidence over faith, but we have
seen that the evidence supports our faith.