Introduction: I would like us now to begin to look at some of the traditional arguments put forward as proof for the existence of God. These are the ontological, the cosmological and teleological arguments for God. Let me say a few things about how we view them before we lay them out. Firstly, we are in no doubt whether God exists or not. We believe as Romans 1:19-20 explains it that all human beings have a knowledge of God from nature, ‘For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.’ The reason for unbelief is not a lack of data but sin and an unwillingness to believe. There is a suppression of the truth that is evidently clear. So as we look at these traditional arguments for God we are following the traditional approach of ‘we believe in order to understand.’ We do not see ourselves in a neutral position who with superior intellectual skills can penetrate all mysteries and subject God to our scrutiny. We confess our humble dependence upon God to reveal Himself to us. We are not looking to these arguments to ground our beliefs, but we they do still have a use for us. Firstly, the help confirm the faith we already have. Secondly, they demonstrate the reasonability of faith, and show by careful reasoning the reasonableness of faith. They show the agreement between what the Bible says and what reason can deduce. Reason is limited in what it can deduce, but in what it can attain it agrees with the Bible. The...

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Introduction: This is the first and only mention of satan in the book of Romans. Why talk about him now? Paul has been giving his love to the church and encouraging love between people and churches. He naturally moves from the unity of the church to the enemies of that unity warning about those false teachers who have a different gospel and who cause divisions. That is why Paul is talking about satan. The book of Revelation reveals that satan is thrown down to earth and is waging war against the church. The prophecy reveals satan using persecuting power, the first beast, false religion, the second beast, and seduction, the harlot against the Church. The church in every age faces these three enemies, we in NZ are facing more of the harlot and the second beast than the persecutions of the first beast. The church in Rome likewise was facing the attacks of satan, she was suffering from persecution, we know that the Christians had been kicked out of Rome for a while; they were under attack from false religion, the presence of the false teachers makes this clear; and they were bombarded by the temptations of the permissive societies around them. The war is felt, the enemy is real, but we see in this encouragement the victory is guaranteed. Romans 16:20, ‘The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.’ This is a promise for all believers in all times. Today as we look at it we want to consider the two main characters mentioned—God and satan.

Introduction: One of the greatest proofs of the truthfulness of Christianity is Jesus Christ Himself. Once at a dinner party on St Helena Napoleon was part of a discussion on who Jesus Christ was. He sat silently while everyone else shared their opinions. Some thought him man others thought Him God, at the end of it all Napoleon declared, ‘I know men, and Jesus was no man.’ He is considered to be the most influential person in history. One author highlights the following: ‘We have no record of his date of birth, yet all the world’s chronology is linked to it. He never wrote a book, yet more books have been written about him than about anyone else in history, and the output is still accelerating. The nearest thing we have to his biography has been translated in whole or in part into over 2,000 languages. He never painted a picture or composed any poetry or music, yet nobody’s life and teaching have inspired a greater output of songs, plays, poetry, films, videos and other art forms. One film, based on his recorded words, has been produced in over 100 languages and has already been seen by more people than any other film in history. He never raised an army, yet millions of people have laid down their lives in his cause, and every year thousands more do so. Except for one brief period during his childhood, his travels were limited to an area about the size of Wales, but his influence today is worldwide, and his followers constitute the largest religious grouping the world has ever known. He had no formal education, but thousands of universities, seminaries, colleges and schools have been founded in his name. His public teaching lasted just three years, and was restricted to one small...

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Introduction: Friday March 15th 2019 will go down in history as one of New Zealand’s darkest days, or as some are calling it, the day NZ lost her innocence. More people died in the Christchurch earthquakes but the hatred filled attack which killed 50 Muslim men, women and children is more personal. The trauma of the event is amplified by the fact that New Zealand has a well-earned reputation as being a safe haven; it has always been well insulated from the troubles of the rest of the world. There are a number of issues that are all bound up in this one situation. As the media have processed this event several hot topics have come to the foreground: immigration laws; many of NZ’s Muslims being refugees who fled war torn scenarios; gun control laws; an uprising in White Supremacy groups; the failure of Australia to handle its influx of Muslims; future accommodations for Muslims; interfaith relations; the character of Islam as peaceful or warmongering. I would like to share a few thoughts with you this morning that I think Christians ought to be thinking as they try to process this situation. I would like us to consider the Biblical truths of God and the gospel as we respond. The reason for a spelled out biblical response is because we are getting used to allowing the media to shape public opinion and are not thinking through these events for ourselves from a Biblical perspective. The media has been conspicuously silent in their articles questioning traditional faith in the wake of such a tragedy. Perhaps there is fear of a backlash from Muslims, but that is not to say that questions are still not lying under the surface. The three areas I would like us to think about are God, the...

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Introduction: One of the most popular arguments against God is the problem of evil. We will be dealing with that later in the series. Today however we want to talk about an argument for God called the problem of good. The existence of morals and moral obligations points to a moral God who created us with this sense of obligation. Romans 2:14-16 gives us a record of this sense, ‘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. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.’1 Paul is in a discussion with the Jews about their sinfulness. He argues that if those who do not have the Ten Commandments have the law written on their hearts by which they will be judged, how much more the Jews who have the Law. These verses clearly tell us that we have a law written on our hearts, that is the Law of God that is written there, that we reveal we know this law by the good we do and approve, and our consciences judge us by the law we know to be true. This reality has become very important in the secular evolutionary atmosphere that we live in the in the 21st century. In our day and age there are two basic answers to the question where does our moral sense come from? There is the answer that evolution gives us, and there is the answer that we gain it from culture. In...

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Introduction: A pastor has a certain number of things he must do. He has to teach, he has to encourage, as well as rebuke. But he also must warn the flock of God of the various dangers that they will encounter. Paul as a faithful shepherd is wearing his warning hat when he speaks in Romans 16:17-19, ‘I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil.’1 Please appreciate with me the abrupt change in tone in the text. Paul has been talking about sending his love to the various people and house churches in Rome, he is sending greetings from the other churches he has visited. He is trying to spread the love around connecting separated brethren and tops it all off by a call to show family affection to one another with a holy kiss. Then he suddenly flips into another mode and tells the Romans to watch out and avoid certain people. Paul values unity, but he also recognises that in a fallen world unity must be guarded and fought for. In order to protect our unity, we may have to exclude certain types of people. While studying at Baptist College my roommate Glen and I were very argumentative. We were not always as gracious as we should have been. One day when called into the office the Principal said that there...

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Introduction: Several years ago now I had an email exchange with a Muslim in Saudi Arabia. It ended badly with him phoning me from Saudi and swearing at me for blasphemy and wishing cancer on me and my family. But during the exchange it was very interesting to see the ways in which he tried to disprove Christianity, he attacked the manuscript reliability of the NT, and put a question mark over the Canon of the Bible. It amazed me to see how intimate his knowledge was of the early transmission of the various manuscripts and his familiarity with the various theories about how the Bible was copied. He did this in an attempt to show the superiority of the Quran to the Bible in terms of the reliability of its transmission. This however was a false comparison, it was a case of comparing apples and pears. The Bible is an ancient manuscript and the Quran is a medieval document. There is over 500 years difference between them and to compare transmission techniques would be like us comparing our ways of copying with Shakespeare. That said, the Quran has a terrible history of control that shows a lot of centralised interference with the transmission process unlike the natural process of the Bible. Secondly, the modern Muslim apologist is very reliant upon Liberal theories for their critiques against the Bible. In other words, the Muslims use the scholarship of Liberal Christians against Christianity. Today I would like to talk about the manuscripts that we have that make up our Bibles and the transmission process and their preservation. Contrary to popular belief the Bible has the best pedigree of all ancient manuscripts and is more reliably known than any other ancient document. I do have to stress the point of these manuscripts...

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Introduction: As a pastor I am always torn about how a funeral should be done. Funerals have changed in tone from a time of mourning to a time of celebrating a life. They are no longer times of introspection and reflection but times of therapy. Here is the trouble, there is no instruction in the Bible which tells us exactly how we are to conduct a funeral, or a wedding for that matter. The regulative principle of worship tells us how we must worship when we come together as the people of God, we are to sit under apostolic teaching, read the Bible publicly, pray, break bread, give alms to the poor and worship together on the Lord’s Day. For this reason I have had to come up with a philosophy of funerals for myself and here it is. I am primarily a preacher of the gospel, it is not my business to bury people or to marry people. These are officially functions of the state with legal implications. However being some of the most significant times in our lives these are the times when we need God’s truth to speak into our lives. So if I am approached to do a funeral, I say yes on one condition, that I have the freedom to preach the gospel. I think three things should legitimately happen at funerals. Firstly, we need to stop and be reminded of the reality of death, be quiet and humble and listen to God. We have just been faced with the reality with which we will all have to do business with. We must all die and face God in judgement and so we must stop trying to candy wrap death and face its true realities. Ecc. 7:2-5, ‘It is better to go to the house...

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We’d like to thank Michael Beck for being our guest preacher today. Mike is the pastor at Gracenet Community Church in Wellington, a sister church from the FRBCNZ.

Introduction: In the 1800s when the budding science of Archaeology was burgeoning, various bold and confident claims were made about the past which contradicted the historical credibility of the Bible. The OT in particular has been constantly reconstructed to be myth and after the fact reporting. The insistence on approaching the Bible with an anti-supernatural bias has led many to try and debunk the prophetic and miraculous elements using late date theories and accusing the Ancients of a primitive mind-set claiming every natural thing they could not understand was supernatural. The constant underestimation of the Ancients and their culture included the denial that writing and complex legal codes could have existed in the time that Moses is that to have lived, 1400BC, and so a later date is given to all those writings traditionally attributed to Moses, and Mosaic authorship denied. Add to this the way in which the new theory of evolution was impacting all the other sciences. In the area of archaeology the theory went that all cultures moved from simplistic polytheistic notions to advanced monotheistic ones. Therefore any parts of the OT that teach monotheism are automatically aged and accused of being written later and given an appearance of being written earlier. The various accounts are no longer credible historical accounts by eye witnesses, but dishonest fabrications at the hands of editors with a particular agenda. Today we face a problem. Many of these early theories have been disproven, but the damage to the Bible’s credibility has already been done. Endless amounts of people who reject the Bible have accepted these outdated and disproved opinions, and they are regularly repeated. My task today is to show that Archaeology does not in fact disprove the Bible but acts to reinforce that the Bible is in fact what it...

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