Hi Everyone
Here’s this month’s Gone Fishin’ Newsletter.
Every month a team from our fellowship at Calvary Wellington heads out to our regular fishing holes – the Naenae Market and Hillary Court shops, or the Hutt Riverbank Fruit and Vege Market. There we share the Gospel to those in our immediate community.
Once a month I publish a simple newsletter that is distributed to the fellowship (or for anyone else who stumbles across this website), as a way of encouragement, and as a tool to equip us to be better evangelists.
You can read the last Field Report from 20/4/24 here.
Enjoy!
Gone Fishin’ Monthly Newsletter – May 2024
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.” (Col 1:15-18).
Hi Everyone
What a great time of the year autumn is! God chooses this special season to show off His wonderful creation skills, giving us an infinite palette of colour that leaves us awestruck with wonder.
It also leaves us with no doubt in our minds that this world was created – not by random chance – but an intelligent designer, who cares for us, and wants to give us pleasure and enjoy His creation with all our senses.
Spent Camelia blossoms and deciduous tree leaves line my street.
You can read the Gone Fishin’ Field Report from 20/4/24 here.
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When witnessing, I am often challenged to provide proof of God’s existence. It has a way of shocking, but not shocking me at the same time. Shocked that with so much evidence around how it could not be seen; yet not shocked because I know Satan has blinded their eyes toward it.
We needn’t be put off by this. We just need to learn why people deny God, and how to point them to Him.
Today we will look at four obvious ways in which God chooses to reveal himself to us – through creation, conscience, creed, and Christ.
Creation
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.” (Ps 19:1)”.
One needn’t look too far to see the existence of God. It’s everywhere:
Look at a how a hummingbird hovers in slow motion, flapping its’ wings over 70 times a second, and ponder why it doesn’t have a heart attack.
The human eye retina has over 250 million photo-receptors.
Cone receptors help us distinguish colour variations. Rod receptors help us with night vision, as well as seeing black and white.
Note how a Bombardier beetle stores toxic chemicals of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone. These are kept in individual chambers.
It then mixes them together, and fires a deadly explosion of acid from its’ rear end that burns eyes – all without scorching or blowing itself up itself in the process.
Try and count the tens of billions of stars in our galaxy, then note that there are estimated to be over two trillion galaxies. And that’s just the ones we can observe.
A cosmic nuclear explosion occurs 93 million miles away from us, and yet we are blessed with a magnificent palette of heavenly beauty in our night skies.
You don’t have to be a scientist to realise that intelligent design needs an intelligent designer. You wouldn’t look at a building and then try and convince someone that it made itself; no, that would be stupid!
The heavens declare the glory of God. Actually, they scream it. And to not hear, see, taste, touch or smell it, and refuse to acknowledge and give honour to its’ creator – is ignorance at its highest.
But what could be the reason I would deny God as creator?…
Conscience
“…for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.” (Rom 2:14-16)
The conscience is the smoke alarm of human morality. Think about what happens every time you act against it. A little heart flutter. A little bead of sweat. Then a little sigh of release when you have gotten away with being punished for ignoring it. Then the next time you act against it, the heart is not bothered the same. The adrenaline doesn’t trigger as much. You have managed to dull the noise of the smoke detector by removing the batteries, so that its’ noise no longer bothers you. By removing the danger signs, you are now the one in control over what to believe, how to act.
To dismiss the conscience is the first step to depravity.
Humanity has no answer for the real existence of the conscience. If anything, they say it is shaped by a societal moral compass. If you grew up being told that lying is OK, then that forms your conscience. Yet that is bonkers, because Hitler’s conscience told him killing Jews was a good thing. Was he right? Well if your worldview is that conscience is subjective, then you can’t say he was wrong. To admit that there is a God in control of our consciences would mean that we are accountable to Him for going against it. So it’s much easier to dull the danger signs and pretend they don’t exist. Challenging someone’s conscience though, is an extremely effective way of bringing someone to repentance.
But where can I find an objective standard to base the conscience on?…
Creed
“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” (John 5:39)
The one place we can find and study the existence and attributes of God is the Bible itself. It is His gift to us, packed with creed, doctrine, commandments, and truth for us to live by. In it contains the process of creation, the reason we exist, and why it is important to know and be reconciled to God.
Of course, the Bible is automatically rejected as rubbish by the world. If I am asked to verify proof of God by quoting scripture, I am told it is fallible, written by men not God, changed over time, and untrue. But without making reference to the Bible, we are left with nothing to back us up.
If I asked you where can you go to find out that Julius Ceaser existed, where would you go? You would probably show me a history book about Julius Ceaser. Do you trust the author? Only if they are accurate to the original writings of the eye witnesses of the time of Julius Ceaser. But what if I said you can’t offer that as proof that he existed because you can’t trust the writings, that they have been written by fallible men, and have been changed over the years. Please find another way of proving he existed. You would be hamstrung to do it. That is the fallacy of the world’s objective. At some stage you have to accept that those long before tv, internet etc existed are telling the truth – otherwise history becomes subjectively ludicrous.
If I write a book, who is doing the writing, me or the pen? I am the one writing the words, using the pen. In the same way, God is is the author of His Word. He used men as His pen, to create the passages. The words are perfect because the people writing them were His instruments, compelled by The Holy Spirit to pen His thoughts exactly. That is why we can rely on it for truth. So when the source of truth says I cannot tell a lie, I must comply.
But if I have broken God’s rules, how can I make things right?
Christ
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.” (Col 1:15-18).
If I have broken society’s rules, I deserve a punishment. If I have broken God’s rules, I deserve a punishment from Him also. If I deny that the Bible is true, I am denying myself the only way to avoid this. As in our earlier verse, we learnt that the Bible testifies about Christ. Why would it do that? Most people see Jesus as an example of how to live a moral life. Obey the golden rule – do unto others as you would have them do to you. Stick to that, and everyone will get along just fine.
But that doesn’t take away our punishment owing for breaking God’s rules – just like doing five good things after robbing a bank will not excuse us from being punished for the crime.
We need a saviour who can take our hell punishment for us.
Enter Jesus, the triune Son of God. He didn’t just magically appear out of a teenage girl’s womb – He was there at the beginning, creating the universe alongside His Father. This makes Him above all things, and before all things. He chose to enter the world He created so that He could become one of us. He became one of us to show us that He was fully a man, as well as fully God. He lived perfectly on this earth, keeping every commandment His Father established, never once going against His conscience like we do. And then He chose to take the punishment we all deserved, offering His life on the cross, where His Father poured out the wrath that you and me deserve. He drank it down to the last drop. In exchange for His death, He offers us His life as a free gift for all that will repent and accept it.
But for one to deny Him as God and deny what He has done, is to cut us off from ever being reconciled back to God. This is what the world needs.
If the world denies there is a God who created everything, they can ignore their conscience, dismiss the Bible, and laugh at Jesus dying for them. On Judgement Day there will be no laughing, only tears.
This is why we evangelise. This is why we spread the Gospel. God wants to save them, and so should we:
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9).
I’ll see you all at my place at 10am on Saturday for prayer before heading down to the Naenae shops!
Blessings,
Craig.
Witnessing Tip: If you don’t know the answer, don’t make it up!
Sometimes people ask us questions about God or the Bible that we don’t know how to answer.
It’s OK, only God is all-knowing.
Just say “That’s a good question, I’ll come back to that”, and bring it back to the Gospel!
