Why is there something rather than nothing? Why isn't the entire universe just empty space or black hole with nothing at all in it?
Well the answer to that question should be so simple. In the beginning God. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind on this Saturday. I'm Nathan W. Bingham.
We're returning today to RC Sproll's series Moses and the Burning Bush. Before we get to it, don't forget that if you'd like this series on DVD, along with its companion book, We'll send you both when you donate today in support of Renewing Your Mind at renewingyourmind.org. You can also find a link in the comment of today's YouTube video.
Well there on Mount Horeb, God declared his name to be, I am who I am. That might sound like a strange name. But that name points to the fact that everything begins and ends with God. Here's Doctor Sprawl. We're going to continue with our study of.
The experience of Moses in the Midianite wilderness when he encountered. God in the burning bush. and God revealed himself in an extraordinary way to him. We've already seen some of the implications Of what God had revealed to Moses in that brief conversation. But I want to explore further in this session The significance of the name by which God reveals Himself.
when he calls himself simply I am who I am.
So let's look back at that portion of the text. where in chapter three of Exodus Verse thirteen Moses said to God, Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel, and say to them The God of your fathers has sent me to you And they say to me, What is his name? What Shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am Who I am. And he said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am.
has sent me to you. Moreover, God said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel. The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. has sent me to you This is my name. Forever.
And this is my memorial name. To all Generations.
Now some critics when they read this account And see that Moses asks God to give him his name. And God responds in this very strange and mysterious way By saying I am Who I am.
Some of the critics say that what God is doing here is basically. refusing to reveal his name. Saying it's none of your business what my name is. I am who I am, and we're just going to let it go at that. But I think that the context in which God Calls himself I am who I am.
For birds. That critical interpretation because God makes it clear that He's not refusing. To reveal his name. But that he is giving a name, his name To Moses, which name? is to be his name Forever for all generations And his memorial name.
And we saw early on In our studies of this incident, that in Hebrew categories in the Old Testament, that the names of people are given to reveal something About who they were. Even Moses was given the name Moses because he was drawn out of the water. We remember that Jacob became Israel because he wrestled with God and struggle. And so throughout the scriptures. We see the names of individuals.
telling us something significant, about there being or their character. And there is nowhere in sacred scripture where that is more profoundly true Then here. When God reveals Himself in this extraordinary manner, by saying I Mm. Who I And before I look at this, any further. Let me ask this simple question.
Why? Do you worship God? Why? Do you Give to him. Of reverence and a sense of adoration.
That differs from any Esteem. That you give to anything in the created world. You know, it's easy for us. To love God to be grateful to God And to worship God. Because of all of the wonderful things he's done.
In history And in our own history, for ourselves. But I don't think the Christian rises. to true worship. Until the Christian begins. to worship God not for what he has done.
But for who he is. In His transcendent majesty. When we realize, as the theologians of the past have said, that God. is the Most Perfect. being I quibble a little bit with that definition because Really, perfection does not admit to degrees.
But the church fathers wanted to get our attention with this intentional. redundancy to say he's the most perfect being lest we underestimate The significance of gods Perfection. All that he is. all of his attributes His omniscience. is omnipresence His eternality.
His simplicity All of the attributes that attend our understanding of God are without blemish. Without any mixture. Of Imperfection. And so let's ask the question now. That was the oldest question that scientists and philosophers asked in antiquity.
It's a most provocative question. and yet in its expression It is rather simple anyone can grasp it. The question is this. Why? Is there something?
Rather than nothing. Why Does anything exist in this universe? You know, the psalmist without understanding the immensities of the galaxies and the billions of stars. That we hear about from the astronomers today, just in his naked observation of the world around him, looked to the stars and said. And when I look at the stars and the moon and all that you have made, I'm forced to ask the question.
What is man? That thou art mindful of him even from. The perspective of ancient man, the immensity of the universe seemed to overwhelm him and made him feel. utterly insignificant. in the light of the vastness.
Of reality as we perceive it. And of course, when David uttered those words. He hadn't a clue. to the extent of the universe even as we don't really have any Grasp of the significance of it, we're forced to ask the question: why? Why this universe?
Why is there something? Rather than nothing. Why isn't The entire universe just empty space or black hole with nothing at all in it.
Well, the answer to that question really is easy. And it should be so simple.
So manifest. that it should never incite any kind of debate or argument. And that answer is found. In the very first verse. of the Bible.
Where we read. In the beginning God Let me just start there. In the beginning. God And then it goes on. Created the heaven and the earth.
So what's being Positive in the opening statement of sacred scripture, the first thing it's telling us is this. There was a beginning. There was a time when all of these stars. All of the trees, all the fish, all of the animals, all of the people. Didn't exist at all.
Everything in the universe. Has a beginning. It starts at a particular moment in space and time. And before that, All that existed. In reality was God.
Not nothing. But God, because at the very beginning... There was God. And the beginning came To pass. Because this God who doesn't have a beginning This God who is eternal.
Created everything that is in this world.
Now you hear all the time about the inquiries and the debates about The origins of the universe. And we hear frequently about the Big Bang theory. Of cosmogony, of how the universe came to be, and just a simple recapitulation of it tells us that. At one point in time. No pun intended.
All matter. all energy in this Vast universe. was compressed Enter this. Finally. Infinitesimal What's called point?
of singularity. And this point of singularity was totally organized. In this Compressed. Reality For eternity. And for eternity past It obeyed.
Methodically. The law of inertia. The law of inertia says that those things which are at rest tend to remain at rest. Until acted upon or unless acted upon by an outside force. And those things that are in motion.
tend to remain in motion Unless acted upon by an outside force, but the secularists at this point Says we have a Origin of the universe that defies the law of inertia because for all eternity this point of singularity stayed in this organized state without an iota of mutation or change. And then one Thursday afternoon at three fifteen. Boom. It exploded. And the repercussions of that explosion are still being searched in the vastness of the universe as the present universe seems to be expanding from that original.
Explosion. At one point I was in conversation. With Carl Sagan. about this. And he said, we can go back to the first nanosecond before the Big Bang, all that way back.
And I said, and why do you stop there? He said.
Well, we don't feel the need to go back before that. I said, there's no question that screams louder than that need to go back there. If you're a scientist, for goodness sake. You have to ask the question. Why the Big Bang?
How the big bang. What was before the Big Bang? But what was before the Big Bang? Was A manifestation of the verb. Two.
B Our language cannot function. Without this simple Verb To be. That verb which is in the middle. of the name of God. God does not say To Moses.
Here's what my name is. My name is. Once upon a time I was.
Now I am. And I'm still going to be around tomorrow. because I have a future. That's not how he introduces himself. But he introduces himself in terms of the eternal Present.
I am Who I am. I am the personification. of the verb To be.
Now again. In the Ancient World. as philosophers tried to Figure out how. The universe came into being. and how the universe could be Understood in an intelligible way.
Plato wanted to save the phenomena. That is, you look at all of the experience of things that we see: the birds and the trees and the crickets and the daffodils and all those things. How can we make sense of them? How does all of that? diversity fit together in any coherent, meaningful all.
And the philosopher Parmenides. Said fundamentally. The most important thing. For us to understand as we try to examine reality, is this. Whatever is.
Yes. What he was saying here is that. Nothing can exist. A part From being. Pure.
Beiyang. Perfect. Being. Without any shadow of turning, Now. He was challenged by Heraclitus, who came on to say, no, no, no, no.
Everything that we investigate in the world around us has one thing in common. Bears differ radically. From daffodils But the one thing that every bear has in common with every daffodil is that all things in the creaturely world are in a state of becoming. Heraclitus said you can't step into the same river twice. Everything's in a state of flux.
What did he mean by that? He said, Well, the river is running down its banks, and you put... On foot ends. Wet your toes in the river? And then you want to put the next toe in?
But the river has moved on. The river has changed. And not only that. But you have changed. Today Vesta was bringing out all kinds of photographs.
From the past history of 40 years of ligander ministry and a bunch of photographs of me. Yeah. The naked eye can perceive. the radical character of the changes over those forty years. You know that today?
I'm different from what I was yesterday. If only one day. Older. One hair Grayer. One molecule.
Weaker. One step Closer. To my own demise. And what is true of me at that point. is true.
of you as well. And the one Element. That everything that is in a state of becoming has with every other thing that is in a state of becoming. This one critical word. Change.
Every four years, when there's an election for the President of the United States, some candidate. Runs His campaign On the promise. of bringing change. It's time for a change. And the assumption is that any change that comes to pass.
Will be a good one. But that's not the case. We all know. that things change in our lives and they don't always change. for the better.
Sometimes They are Four. the worse.
So We are defined. As creatures. By change. And that's what is the difference between May he? and God You know, we say this distinction.
That God is the supreme being. And we are human beings. And so we think that the difference between God and us Has to do with those adjectives that qualify the concept of being. He is supreme. We are human.
But do you know what the real difference is between God and me? Is being. He alone. has being in and of himself. He alone has eternal being.
Any being that I have is transitory. Any being that I have is dependent. It's contingent. It's derived. It's a subset of pure being.
That's what Apostle Paul said to the Athenian philosophers with respect to God. In him. We live and move. And have our B? Let me put it another way.
Without him. We couldn't let. Our existence would be static, inert. We couldn't move. The stars would freeze in their courses.
Because their motion Is not independent. It started. In this vast organization in static inertia. Aristotle understood that. For anything to move In this world, It has to be moved.
By something. Other than itself.
So even our emotion Pens. On the being And have Our being. Let me just say this. We debate all the time about Can we prove the existence of God? If we define God, being from whom all things come and upon whom all things are.
All things are dependent. I think that that proposition can be proved indubitably and compellingly In about ten seconds. Ten seconds. We don't have to jump into an abyss of darkness and Just embrace God with a leap of faith. It's rationally compelling.
How can that be? If anything. Exists. Anything, these glasses.
Something Somewhere Somehow. must have the power A being. Him himself. Without that nothing can exist. Again, if the river of time But there were nothing.
Just imagine A vast emptiness in the universe, pure darkness. Nothing. No stars, no people, no oceans. What could there possibly be now? God's existence, His very being, is what allows us to live and breathe.
It's incredible to think about, isn't it? And the Apostle Paul would echo that in Acts 17. when he addressed the men of Athens, for in him we live and move and have our being. I'm glad you've joined us for this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. R.
C. Sproll taught this series with a desire to help us as Christians see the significance of God's revelation to Moses. This is a 10-part study. And we'll send it to you on DVD as our way of thanking you for your donation at renewingyourmind.org in support of Renewing Your Mind and the global outreach of Liginear Ministries. will unlock the series and study guide for you in the Ligonier app, as well as send you the companion book, also titled Moses and the Burning Bush.
Respond before midnight tonight at Renewing Your Mind. org or by using the link in the podcast show notes, and we'll send you the series and book while unlocking it for you digitally in your Ligonier Learning library. If you live outside of the US and Canada, an entirely digital edition of today's resource offer is waiting for you. at Renewing Your Mind.org slash global. Thank you for your generosity and for helping take trusted teaching to the nations.
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Well, with regard to the creation of the universe, have you ever heard the term spontaneous generation? I hope you'll join us next time as RC Sprawl explains the absurdity of that hypothesis. He'll explain that God's self-existence is the only logical explanation for the universe. That's next Saturday, here on Renewing Your Mind.
