Advent Midweek December 18, 2019 Jesus is the Truth

Advent Midweek
Luke 1:1-4 & Isaiah 40:21-31
December 18, 2019

“Jesus is True Forever”

(Some basic arguments in this sermon are provided by J. Warner Wallace, and Greg Koukl.)

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Is science making us all smarter and making the Bible look a whole lot dumber? Is science proving the Bible wrong or proving it to be a bunch of myth or legend? That’s the view of many people today who don’t believe in God. They believe science is showing we don’t need God at all and that believing in Him is quite outdated.

Now what we must do first is ask, “What do we mean by science?” We must define our terms. That word science now carries along with it very large connotations. Very often the word science is seen as the opposite of faith. So science deals with the hard, true realities and faith deals with supernatural fantasies. Science is the real world and faith is the spiritual, fake world. Science is facts and faith is opinions. It gets to a point where I almost hesitate to use the word science at all because of all the extra baggage the word carries.

But all of that has been added to the word science. What does the word science itself actually mean? It comes from the Latin and it simply means “knowledge.” That’s all it means! So you tell me, is knowing things the opposite of faith? Of course not. Everybody knows things. You have to know something to have faith in something. So that’s our first point tonight—Science is simply knowledge.

Now a second point you should be aware of is the relationship between science (knowledge) and faith. We’ve been sold a lie about this. The lie is that as you do science and you come to know more and more and more—then faith gets less and less and less. So we’ve been told they have an inverse relationship. The more knowledge goes up means the more faith goes down. Or to say it a different way—the smarter you get the less you need faith.

Do you see how this is a problem? It means you have to be dumb to be a Christian. Because, obviously, the smarter you become the more you put faith aside. This looks like a pretty big selling point for science, right? It makes science look pretty anti-God, right? Too bad it’s a total lie.

The relationship between faith and science shouldn’t be inverse. It’s a direct relationship. The more you know about God’s creation, the more you believe and trust in the Creator. Christians are never afraid of science. We know that the more we know, the more we will come to believe and trust in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So the more you know the more you believe. This has been the case for a countless number of scientists throughout history and today who have been Christians.

Now I’m keeping it very simple tonight, of course. There are many other things we could talk about like people having a wrong definition of faith which muddies this water. Or we could talk about good science vs. bad science (and there’s a lot of bad science out there by both Christians and non-Christians). But tonight we’re just clearing up this relationship—more knowledge leads to more faith. It’s a direct relationship.

So we go to the Scriptures where this is very clear in Luke chapter 1 as he starts to write his Gospel account. Luke wasn’t afraid at all of science. Luke was a doctor and doctors are, of course, scientists in their own right. He wanted to know all that he could know about Jesus Christ. So he was also a scientist of Christ. And he did a careful search of all the facts related to Jesus and wrote what he calls “an orderly account” for his friend Theophilus.

So think of what Luke doesn’t say to Theophilus. He doesn’t say, “My dear friend, I don’t want you to know too much about Jesus because then you might not believe in Him. I don’t want you to go digging around too much about this Jesus because you might find out a bunch of lies about Him.” That’s ridiculous. He wants Theophilus to know all that he can because then his faith will be strong and he will have, in Luke’s words, “certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”

Science is simply knowledge, right? Did Jesus try to hide knowledge from anyone? Not at all. Now there were times where He told His disciples not to tell anyone about Him. But He had certain reasons in those instances. Otherwise He did His signs and miracles out in the open for all to see. He wanted people to know Him. And in knowing Him He wanted them to believe and put their trust in Him.

Think of the time when they lowered the paralyzed man through the roof right in front of Jesus. Jesus tells the man that his sins are forgiven. Everyone gets upset because only God can forgive sins and Jesus shouldn’t be saying that. So does Jesus say, “Well, you just have to trust Me”? No, He wants them to know. So He gives them a science lesson to increase their faith. The more they know the more they will believe in Him. So He heals the man’s legs right in front of everyone. He gives them knowledge so that they will believe and trust in Him.

Finally, Valerie and I watched a documentary the other night specifically on this topic of science vs. the Bible. They had all the smartest guys in the world from both sides weigh in on the topic. We didn’t learn all that much, to be honest. But one of the things that was carried out to supposedly show that the Christian faith wasn’t right was all the science and knowledge we now have about space. They said that our knowledge of space is now showing that the idea of God doesn’t make sense. Why would God create all of that wasted space up there just for one small planet of people? Why all those extra galaxies? Why all that extra space?

But isn’t it funny that God uses space all through the Old Testament to actually increase our faith in Him? He told Abraham to look at the stars. He told Job to look at the stars. He tells us in the Psalms to look at the heavens and behold the work of His hands. And in Isaiah 40, our first reading tonight, He says, “Do you not know? Do you not hear?…Have you  not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain…Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?…The Lord is the everlasting God.”

God doesn’t shy away from science. He tells us to do science. He gave us science. He wants us to explore His creation and know more about Him and believe in Him and trust Him more. Now science won’t give you faith. Of course not. As we said last week, faith only comes from the Holy Spirit. Science will never, ever be able to explain fully the mystery of the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—or the mystery of His love for us sinners that He gave His only Son to become man and suffer and die on a cross. Science will never explain that.

But the more you know about His creation, the more you know science, then the more you will believe and trust in that Triune God who has saved you.

So to summarize—science isn’t an enemy to faith. It’s a friend. Christians make very good scientists. The more we know and learn the more we come to fear, love, and trust the God who made the heavens and the earth.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.