Albert Mohler | Apologetics Series: "God Is in Charge of the Universe"

well the question we're asking during this special series of messages is question we ought to ask ourselves regularly do we really believe what we believe we believe apologetics is rightly addressed to the defence of the Christian faith in the face of alternatives in the face of opposition in the face of rival truth place but it also means the defense of the faith in the most healthy possible sense inside the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ we press ourselves to ask that question why do we believe what we believe we believe one of the signs of a healthy Christianity is a Christianity that asks the most important questions fully confident of a biblical answer but as Christianity as a belief system is the Christian Church as individual Christians confront some of the alternatives that are very much pressing on us in an increasingly pluralistic and secular age the responsibility to ask ourselves regularly do we believe what we believe we believe it's really important for one thing we want to make certain that what we believe is actually biblical Christianity what are the odd aspects of the Christian life is that over time even the most faithfully intended Christian can pick up any number of beliefs that sound biblical they're kind of biblical ish but they're not actually in the scripture and you hear this sometimes in Christian conversations everyone's well we need to ask one of our brothers and sisters in Christ do you believe what you believe you believe even the tone of your voice can insinuate a different meaning to that question it can be bold do you believe will you believe you believe or it can be quizzical when you hear someone say something that's not exactly right do you believe what you believe you believe this morning we're looking at the Christian belief that God is in control universe thing God is in charge and this is one of the most fundamental biblical teachings it's one of the most fundamental cleavage points of Christianity as a worldview and the other worldviews that are gaining traction in our society this is not a particularly new development but on the other hand it is and that's because the belief that no one is in control the universe is a fairly recent development at least in terms of any comprehensive sentences Richard Dawkins one of the most famous of the new atheist put it it took Darwin to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist and until you had the rise of modern naturalism and its associated doctrines including evolution there wasn't any way for a person who didn't want to believe in biblical Christianity to believe that no one was in control of the universe and so it's not by accident that the mechanism of Darwinism comes down to what's called natural selection that means natural rather than supernatural until then there have been arguments between rival claims as to which God is in control of the universe not whether any deity was in charge or in control it's really interesting in terms of cultural analysis to look back to the twentieth century and especially to the decades after the Second World War when you can tell that all the sudden there's some interesting questions being asked that really hadn't been asked before like at the popular level even of entertainment it is anyone in control is anyone in charge of the universe one of my favorite television programs when I was a little boy and the 1960s was lost in space Will Robinson was a boy he was a little older than I was by the time the television program came along but close enough I could identify with him he was 12 or 13 years old and he was with his parents on the Jupiter 2 spaceship which in the 1960s looking far into the infinite future had been launched from the United States in the year the distant year 1997 in order to escape an overpopulated earth that was starving and Will Robinson and his sister and his mother and his research scientist father and the evil scientist who had hidden himself in the spaceship they took off to parts unknown in a universe in which no one was in control looking back at it it was kind of a benign nihilism it was 1960s nihilism the worldview that no one's in charge there's there's no ultimate meaning in life but they would have nonetheless an interesting time as a family lost in space the very title the program lost in space would indicate absolute despair loss of meaning but know one of the interesting things is that they had to make the program benign I mean this was after all primetime television the 1960s television had to be safe so there had to be a laugh line it was a combination of a drama and a comedy taking at times as farce and as serious I liked Will Robinson because he had a robot he had a robot that was not just a robot it was a class m3 model b9 general non theorizing environmental robot that was the language of the day and I thought that was super cool I went in my own class am3 model b9 general non theorizing environmental robot you know what non theorizing meant it meant that the the robot was non-judgmental which is which is what every 12 a 13 year old boy once is a friend a non-judgmental friend the NE was non theorizing that the robot wasn't trying to have deep philosophical conversations with him but those of you who are of a certain age know that he was nonetheless perceptive and then he would he would warn he would warn Will Robinson you may remember this I'm dating myself danger Will Robinson danger Will Robinson and that's when the show get really entered Lawson space gave way to even more openly nihilistic but very similar kinds of approaches in the 1960s and 70s the the popularity of Star Trek and the later of Star Wars inventing a new kind of post-christian but yet oddly post secular mythology and a mythology that won't die there's a new Star Wars film coming out about Christmas and Americans will flock to it most of them paying very little attention to the clash of world views between biblical Christianity and the universe of the force but the question that's being asked in all this is a pressing legitimate inevitable question is anyone in control of the universe are we all lost in space are we perhaps comfortable in our homes and in our community isn't even in this Chapel when in reality all of this is a mere accident and there is no one who is sovereign and in control over our lives Walker Percy famous American novelist wrote his own work considering this it was called lost in cosmos and lost in the cosmos is the way many of us feel quite frankly and in a post-christian increasingly secular world because this worldview tells us that we're lost in space the worldview that is dominant in the Academy the worldview that is there behind the cultural elites and their understanding of the world is a worldview in which we are cosmic accidents riding on a giant round cosmic accident hurtling towards a future that is on the one hand indeterminate and the other hand destined for doom it was really interesting the other day I was listening to the BBC they were interviewing a couple of scientists and and this is one of those things where you realize people aren't paying attention to what's being said and and the scientists said yes we've just detected for the first time we've seen we've seen two stars collide and when we for the first time able to document matter falling into non matter and to actually observe it from hundreds of millions of light years away and so this happened hundreds of millions of years in the past but we're just now able to see it because the light and the images are just now coming to us and so inevitably all matter will fall into non matter being will fall into non being and then listen to that thinking well how do you go from that to lunch I mean seriously you know we're doomed now we're gonna go ahead and live our lives as if we're not doomed I guess we are lost in the cosmos and eventually the only thing that is sure is that all matter is going to dissolve or fall into collapse into non matter we're all headed toward some massive cosmic black hole what are you doing Friday night but that's exactly the way modern secular people are increasingly trying to live the eclipses of God during the same time must surely explain why so many people did feel lost in space or could identify with a narrative about being lost in space why there was so much attention not just because of the innovations and the the fascination with the space age but with the the deeper we would say experiential and even existential sense that maybe we really are just writing on a giant pebble through an accidental universe towards an indeterminate future it's interesting to note that we are as human beings meaning dependent beings we really are meaning dependent and and so here's where the post modernists came along in the 1970s in the 1980s very popular in the 1990s they said yes we are indeed meaning dependent creatures and so all the meaning that you see that you hear that's embedded in all the narratives that that all the great religions are trying to articulate all all the meaning that a parent speaks to a child or or is communicated throughout society is just social construction we're just making the story up as we go along and that's exactly the approach take by historians of religion who say here's what religion is all about the religions about building up narratives that lead to meaning and so if you just figure out this particular people and their particular geographic location and and and you figure out their experiences you will understand their story this history of religions approach says you go to India and given the circumstances and the people of India and and and and given the realities of Indian culture Hinduism and for that matter the tremendous religious syncretism and mixing that takes place in India all that's understandable it's a part of the unfolding story the same thing about Islam from the 7th century forward similarly if you're looking at Shintoism in Japan or you're looking at Christianity that's the argument it's just an effort by people to create meaning because we are meaning dependent creatures now this leads to a part of the despair however that you also have to track during the same period during the 1960's even with roots back in the 1950s but especially in the 1960s in the 1970s there were skyrocketing diagnosis of mental illnesses during the same period skyrocketing prescriptions of all kinds of drugs including psychotropic drugs and and during the 1960's drugs like valium and lithium they were described as mommy's little helpers you know just to just to help the average mom housewife in the home get through the day it took it took some drugs that tells us something about who we are for one thing it tells us and I think we need to look at this very squarely that the modern secular narrative isn't enough to live on the modern secular narratives not enough to live on with the modern secular narrative yeah if that's all you got to live on then not only mommy but daddy and brother and sister need a few little helpers and quite frankly that does help to explain the world around us so what are the alternatives here and in terms of under standing if anyone is in charge of the universe well the alternatives come down to this maybe indeed the naturalist materialist worldview is right maybe no one is in charge of the universe let's just consider that alternative squarely that's exactly the worldview made possible by modern atheism modern atheism holds that the very idea of God is a social construct invented by the kinds of human beings who need that kind of crutch atheism looking at Christianity says well that can be explained in terms of space and time in history but we've outgrown that we now know that's one of the favorite introductory phrases of the of the atheist we now know well well what are the things we now know well here are the things they say we now know but we now know that rather than living in an earth centric a geocentric universe we're actually living in a in an expanding universe that apparently just happened what we now know according to this atheistic worldview is that this little pale blue dot as NASA named it after for the first time it was seen by human eyes from outside of our own atmosphere outside of our own orbit in the 1960s that this pale blue dot can't possibly be the most important place in the universe but then again there really is no important place in the universe every particle every molecule said on its own destiny interesting in its own way but meaningless in the big picture atheism straightforwardly holds that there is no one to be in control there was no creator who set the the cosmos into its shape and created it out of nothing there there is no creator who sits atop the earth and judges all those within there is no creator who is in charge of the universe no one is in charge and and so in the 20th century especially the last half of the 20th century the dominance of even modern understandings of physics and modern science became increasingly naturalistic and and and so you had the rise of things like the special and general theories of relativity offered by Albert Einstein and Einstein himself by the way was that exactly an atheist but he certainly wasn't a theist but even Albert Einstein the author of both the special and the general theories of relativity understood two things and he made these clear in his statements and in his letters one of the things that Albert Einstein understood is that those theories are not enough to explain the universe but the second thing that Albert Einstein understood is that those theories of relativity would be in his view misused as relativism it didn't take long that that argument in physics about relativity quickly became the argument in morals about relativism people claiming well now we know in the settled science is that the universe is marked by absolute relativity and there if there is physical relativity then there must surely be moral relativity as well by the way that's not a bad argument if premise a is true then premise B actually does follow it if the world itself if the physical laws of the universe are randomness and relativity then we are morally in an indeterminate place why it's because the Christian worldview understands that morality and ontology which is to say being are necessarily connected and thankfully in the Christian worldview they are because the Christian worldview makes very clear we are not in a cosmos hurtling merely toward some indeterminate future driven by mere principles of relativity that hold that for a moment I can remember when I was was a doctoral student professor who had read up on physics now I was a student at Southern Seminary in interesting days in Norton Hall we had no air-conditioning and that meant that when the weather got hot all the windows were open and all the doors were open thus you could attend several classes at once and so especially on the second floor of Norton Hall you might be in Norton 208 but you were also in Norton 209 I am I found myself in a situation in which I had Dale moody teaching theology on one side of the hall and George Beasley Murray whose class I was taking at the time teaching baptism in the New Testament on the other side of the hall George Beasley Murray and Dale moody infamously had a theological feud that was going on I was a friendly feud it was a family feud but it was a kind of scholarly argument that professors can get themselves into but at least in these days it could happen right in the middle of class so George Beasley Murray is holding forth on baptism in the New Testament when Dale moody teaching across the hall here's what George here's what George Beasley Murray said and so all the sudden Dale moody came into our classroom he had a Greek New Testament in his hand he was a systematic theologian George lisa-marie had a Greek New Testament his hand he was in New Testament scholar Dale Moody came over and said George you know that's absolute nonsense and he just went on and on he had done a second doctorate at Oxford on baptism and he considered himself the world's greatest expert on baptism and he's correcting the great George Beasley Murray teaching baptism in the New Testament on baptism George Beasley Murray was British you can probably hear from his name had been the president aspersions College in London and he simply held his Greek New Testament he put his head his hand on his chin and he looked at him and he'd start shaking his hand and he said Dale I shudder every time I see a systematic the logan carrying a Greek New Testament and I I understood what do you meant just here he walks in with a Greek New Testament informing one of the greatest Greek New Testament scholars of the age what the Greek New Testament meant on baptism as professor was teaching a class on papped ISM and Beasley Murray just shooed him out of his room and he turned back to us and said now back to the New Testament well I shudder every time I see an evangelical with a new book on physics now that's not to say you shouldn't read new books on physics it is to say if this new book on physics exhilarates you and gives you the key to the universe you've got the wrong book on physics but that's exactly what you see going on with many people they look at this and they pick it up when I was a doctoral student a new book had come out popularizing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics the Heisenberg uncertainty principle some of you know this some of you have had physics or science classes perhaps some other class in which the Heisenberg uncertainty principle has been brought up now here's not what the Heisenberg uncertainty principle means the Heisenberg uncertainty principle does not mean that our knowledge is always uncertain but just like Einstein's theory of relativity was heard by people to mean relativism the Heisenberg uncertainty principle became licensed for this professor to say everything is uncertain all knowledge is uncertain all confessions are uncertain all theological propositions are uncertain and all all Scripture is uncertain well if so we're lost but you don't have to worry about the general or the special theory of relativity or the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which isn't even about what that professor thought it was about but you do have to recognize that if if the entire cosmos is just one giant question mark and uncertainty we are lost indeterminacy became one of the big code words of the age everything's indeterminate the the the universe is indeterminate in its future and even the the the cosmos itself it's its future is is indeterminate in terms of what shape is going to take indeterminacy was also taken from the giant level of the cosmos down to the tiniest microscopic level of the atom and the the the parts of the atom saying that they're indeterminacy actually reigned in the smallest and the smallest microscopic level whether it's the cosmos at large or the tiniest site then available through an electron microscope what was found was indeterminacy well there been some different answers to this through time when modernity happened when when the modern age came after the Enlightenment one of the first Christian attempts or attempts from within the Christian world we should say to try to respond to this was deism the response was alright if we can't believe in a God who controls the universe we at least are gonna hold on to the idea of a God who who created the universe and and and so what we're gonna give up is is is what's called meticulous Providence we're going to give up on the idea of the sovereignty of God we're gonna maintain belief in a divine creator because there's no other way to explain why the cosmos exists but but we're going to suggest that this God just to generalize creates the universe and then retires in essence the more sophisticated forms of deism held that God had not only created the world but had embedded within the world certain moral principles principles of divine moral judgment but he wasn't ruling over the universe and in the active sense and he did not intervene in human affairs when you're looking at Diaz it's very easy for example to look back at at many of the founders of the of the United States of America many of those founders were explicitly deist some of them were explicitly Christian they could use much of the same language but their worldviews were entirely different but if I were looking in American history for the classic statement of deism I wouldn't look to the founding I would look to Abraham Lincoln and I am not able to do an inventory of Abraham Lincoln's soul to determine if he had been precisely Adeus but I can tell you that his speeches were deistic for instance when he spoke of the fact that the divine would judge both sides in the United States Civil War and that God's judgment would indeed be hammered out he was speaking of that kind of judgment he was making clear God's not intervening in this battle he's not intervening even in this war he's not intervening in this moment he's not intervening in our lives but he is implanted in the universe these unbreakable and inexorable moral principles that will reveal God's judgment over time but we can clearly say that deism is not compatible with biblical Christianity the God of the Bible does not create the universe and retire otherwise the Bible would be Genesis 1 there would be nothing that would follow another one of the the rescue attempts or the the theological responses to this modern world view them the modern idea of the world is basically indeterminate and accidental was a kind of revisionist theism the idea of a limited God and so by the time you get to even the chaos the moral calamity of world war 1 you have theologians beginning to argue that the theism has to be reinvented and interestingly enough british theologians were in many ways the front line on this argument that our understanding of God has to be reinvented and revised so that God is not responsible for world affairs we've got to relieve God with this responsibility and and and thus we would believe in a God who probably would intervene if he could but he can't now all of this continues and again by the time you get to our own generation and by the time you get to even the 1990s there are those who are openly arguing for what they call the openness of God the the argument that God knows what can be known but the future decisions of his free creatures as they said could not yet be known and therefore God did not know them and that meant that there was not only their open concept of God and a limited emissions but by definition this was a radical redefinition of divine sovereignty I can still remember reading one of the the earliest of these arguments for this limited God the openness of God the very revised form of theism pastor Lee this author was saying that we need to have confidence in the fact that for God if plan a fails he's ready with Plan B we're told that God was infinitely resourceful not sovereign I'm glad to say that the most biblical and pointed effective responses to open theism came from this very faculty including professors such as Bruce ware who responded to this by saying whatever that is it's not the God of the Bible but it's very attractive to people who want to make human freedom and and and the ultimate good and actually want to embrace and determinacy and they offered us to hope and this was their hope that the hope that we should rest upon they said is not that God's in control the universe or even that God knows the future but he is well intended and infinitely resourceful I'm not gonna hang my life on that even before this came what might well be understood as its theological ancestor also early in the 20th century Alfred North Whitehead came along a philosopher who taught what was called process philosophy that the entire world is in is in process it's it's it's becoming the the world isn't it isn't yet it's becoming and and the argument was made that that's the most basic physical reality of the universe what we see in the universe is change and flux and process thus process philosophy and and the world is is being on the way to becoming and just as you might expect every bad idea in philosophy gets picked up by some theologian and bad philosophy becomes bad theology that's exactly what happened so process philosophy became processed theology and by the mid point of the 20th century theologians are arguing not only is the cosmos in the material world developing but God himself is developing and I can still remember the first process theologian I read and when she said God is over time maturing isn't that listen that's reassuring isn't it I mean God has gone through a gangly awkward adolescence and is now moving into a slightly more competent adulthood it's it's ridiculous but of course it got translated into theology and became actually very influential in the mainstream theological Academy in the 20th century but here's another principle every theological fad that is based upon some kind of of pseudo scientific or philosophical theory dies a generation after the theory had already disappeared elsewhere that's what's really sad about liberal theology it represents the continuing half-lives of radioactive ideas that the secular Academy is already discarded so you found processed theologians long after you could possibly have found a process philosopher and a major campus of a premier university evolutionary Christianity is very similar to this that also came out saying that as evolution is the primary way we understand that that organisms are developing and that have Ellucian in the sense of of the context of this expanding cosmos well then perhaps God's evolving too and if God's evolving then whatever religion is rightly worshiping that God will be developing and evolving as well thus the argument was as God is evolving the universe is evolving is a universe is evolving religion ought to be evolving and as religion evolves doctor not to be revolving and that's very convenient because that means we can exchange the doctrines in the name of this evolutionary Christianity the sterility of the worldviews around this what they break through from time to time in in my lifetime a generation ago the the central paradigm of this was a massive miniseries that appeared on television that was hosted by Carl Sagan of Cornell University it was entitled cosmos at the time it basically transformed public television into something no one watched to must watch television cosmos was viewed by millions and millions of Americans and at the beginning of the series and at the end of the series Carl Sagan the astronomer opened and closed by saying these famous words the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be it's an absolute statement of material isn't an absolute statement of atheism as a matter of fact again he began the program with those words and after explaining the the the astronomical and and and physical insights that were all courant at the time a generation ago he looked into the camera with his turtleneck in his blazer and just reassured the audience of millions the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be some of you may certainly know if Stephen Hawking the Cambridge University physicists and mathematician considered to be one of the greatest minds of the age and a man of indomitable will who has overcome the physical calamity and illness that would have kept most persons completely unable to thrive no doubt Stephen Hawking is a remarkable human being but in his view of the universe as he said by the time science has had it say there's nothing left for God to do in other words you needed God when there weren't enough scientific insights and there wasn't enough scientific theory to explain the world and everything that happens in it but we're pretty much there now he said we're pretty much there now and as a matter of fact he's been a proponent of the idea that we basically now know all that we're ever going to know amazing statement actually and and what we now know is enough that there's nothing left for God to do we can explain everything in the universe we can explain everything in terms of its origin we can explain everything in terms of its current status and we can eventually explain everything in terms of its future there's nothing left for God to do well by the time you come to our present moment the alternatives are very stark and the alternatives appear to be these you can hold to an atheism in which the universe is just self explanatory and there is by definition no one in control and our lives are basically accidental lives in an accidental cosmos headed toward some kind of accidental future out of an accidental present that's at least a coherent worldview I don't understand how you live with that worldview I don't understand how you explain I don't understand how you explain experiences just in terms of that materialistic worldview I'll tell you one that perplexes me motherhood motherhood here's a newsflash for ya I had a mom so did you and thus we live right now there are moms momming as i walked into the chapel this morning a mom went by with a stroller with a about a I'd say a two-year-old in the front and of the stroller and then she had a shed one of those I don't even know what you call one of those things that babies hang in on you and she had another one it's just moving along and here here's a mother who's mothering and you just know this mom mommy she got up this morning and she did what moms do and you know she took care of that baby and and dad did what dad does which is make some contribution clumsily to this process and and so there you but mushy there there ma right now their mom's bombing all over the place and and not only that I have to tell you their job is disgusting they deal with stuff none of us should have to deal with Mary and I just got to celebrate Benjamin's 2nd birthday and just perfect I know I know original sin I know I know all that I know that - tell ya at this point it's just it's just it's just perfect and and we got to do a grandparents get to do we just kind of helicopter in and ramp up the energy level and and we just take the we did was just glorious well he's he's picked up something since we left and two-year-olds don't know what to do when they sneeze so they just sneeze if you're standing nearby good luck and say you think how can this little cute thing in these adorable little photographs become this little organic monster so quickly and then who's gonna clean that up mom now here comes mom and she loves this little critter and she takes care him and and and babies do even more disgusting things and and and then they get older and the things grow a little disgusting less and frustrating more and then you think okay okay I understand I understand evolution would say she's got to love that critter long enough to take care of it so that it can thrive okay so but here's the problem my mom still loves me and your mom if she's alive still loves you and and there's something there that I don't think anyone can explain with a straight face just as evolution I don't think that's possible because that pond has long exceeded what was necessary to get us to the point where we could biologically reproduce at that point Darwin's got nothing to add to the conversation see I think motherhood is one of the great perplexities because when you consider motherhood they're simply more there I don't believe that a mother's love for her child somebody comes down to the fact that it is it is a process of making certain that genes replicate I don't think that's enough I don't think that's possibly enough I don't think that the people who hold of that worldview actually hold to that worldview in the aftermath of Sutherland Springs what does someone say who holds that kind of absolutely naturalistic materialistic worldview because at the end of the day nothing really matters what would it really matter in the ultimate scheme of things if a few more accidents accidentally end early there's got to be more to it than that and when it comes to attempts to kind kind of come up with a middle way a middle way between biblical christianity and atheism let me suggest to you they feel like every attempted middle way whether it's processed theology or it's limited God theism or it's the openness of God or or whatever people might come up with it fails the test of meeting scripture on honest terms and they ultimately fail because none of them can be satisfied I can remember during the the 1980s when rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book that became one of the best-selling books in America at the time why do bad things happen to good people and his argument as a very liberal Jewish rabbi was that we should believe that God is doing the best he can under the circumstances that he had just as a as a rabbi with his family experienced too horrifying circumstance but the only answer he could come up with is that God's doing the best he can under the circumstances well here's what the scripture would allow us to understand very quickly if God's merely doing the best he can under the circumstances then at the end of the day the circumstances win not God I want you to turn with me to Daniel chapter 4 Daniel chapter four and we're simply going to begin reading in Chapter four and we're going to look at Nebuchadnezzar look at verse 28 of chapter 4 all this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar at the end of 12 months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon and the King answered and said is this not great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty while the words are still in the king's mouth there fell a voice from heaven Oh King Nebuchadnezzar to you it is spoken the Kingdom has departed from you and you should be driven from among men and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field and you shall be made to eat grass like an ox and seven periods of time shall pass over you until you know that the most high rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar he was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as Eagles feathers and his nails were like birds claws at the end of days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted my eyes to heaven and my reason returned to me and I blessed the most high and praised and honored him who lives forever for his Dominion is an everlasting Dominion and his kingdom endures from generation to generation all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing and he does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand or say to him what have you done well the text begins before this with a series of dreams experienced by Nebuchadnezzar and here was the dream and as the dream was fulfilled Nebuchadnezzar in his arrogant pride walking on the walls of Babylon said is this not Babylon the Great which I in my greatness have built and immediately the dream was fulfilled and Nebuchadnezzar's debasement was made clear the kingdom was removed from him he was transformed into a man who lived as a beast he lived out in the field the hair grew long on his body his nails grew long like the talons of an animal and he was completely humiliated but in the midst of that humiliation Nebuchadnezzar's reason returned to him in other words he came back into his right mind and in his right mind here's what he said look back especially at verse 34 at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted my eyes to heaven and my reason returned to me I blessed the Most High what does he say of him who is praised and honored who lives forever look at the words for his Dominion his kingdom is an everlasting Dominion and his kingdom endure some generation to generation what about who's in charge of the universe look at verse 15 all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted is nothing and he does according to his will amongst the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and how comprehensive is his rule and none can stay his hand or say to him what have you done well that's just one biblical testimony amongst the myriad biblical testimonies and what it means to know the God of the Bible I mentioned this before but I come back to it again BB Warfield that great Princeton theologian in his little book just on on the plan of salvation he says that if you take into full consideration what it means when we read in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth then everything follows because he who creates the heavens and the earth is sovereign and it is exactly what he means in his unfolding plan are we lost in the cosmos well if so you better hope for a very good robot because that's the only friend you're gonna have if we're lost in the cosmos then we are lost but the scripture rescues us from this so we ask the question do we believe what we believe we believe we really do that God is in control of the universe that there isn't an atom or a molecule outside his divine sovereignty that he not only created the world and is the sole sufficient explanation for the existence of the universe but he is the sole sufficient explanation for why the universe is being held together now if you look at the Christology of colossians chapter 1 where you look at a passage such as was preached in this pulpit just days ago and look at Romans chapter 11 the last verses for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be glory forever amen if you read the Bible and you understand its unfolding narrative from Genesis to Revelation it's about a God who is in control absolute control in the beginning and a God who is in absolute control in the end and thus we are saved not only in the beginning and in the end but at every point in between God the God of the Bible the creator god of the universe the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob the father of our Lord Jesus Christ the God who is creator and ruler over all he is in charge of the universe and thus we are not lost let's pray our Father we are so thankful that in the entire tapestry of Scripture there is the consistent reminder of the fact that you are on your throne and that your rule is inviolable your reign is forever Father that is not just for us justification for our worship it is for us the life line to which we cling for every moment of our lives and thus for eternity we praise you Father Son and Holy Spirit we pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord amen you

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Keywords: SBTS, SBTS Chapel, Southern Live, Southern Seminary, Chapel, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler, Al Mohler, R. Albert Mohler, Apologetics, Apologetics Series, Christian Apologetics, Jesus, Philosophy, Worldview, Theology, Daniel 4:28-37

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Length: 47min 50sec (2870 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2017