See God?

Why can’t I see God?

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), well known British philosopher and atheist, said that if he had it wrong that there was no God and would one day (1970) stand before God, he would say to God ‘Not enough evidence, God. There was not enough evidence that You existed’, putting the blame for being lost on God.

  Romans 1: 19-20 'since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.   For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.'

Three points to consider regarding the evidence of the Unseen God’s existence.

1.   God is outside the realm of time, matter and space, holy and therefore the unseen God. (He is the creator of time, matter and space and cannot be part of it and therefore not limited by it)
2. He made Himself known through His Creation  - it is hard to look at the beauty and vastness of the creation and the universe and conclude convincingly it is all accidental, a blind process of molecules falling in the exact places.
3. Through the written Word (Bible) and His Spirit, we can know Him even more, love Him intensely in our hearts and experience His love as a reality in our hearts.

God reveals Himself to man in different ways. One important means is through His written Word.

I. He  is  the holy, unseen God

1. Jonn 1:18 ‘No one has ever seen God’

2. I Timothy 1:17 ‘ …the eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God’

3. Leviticus 11:44 ‘I am the LORD you God …. I am holy '

4. Exodus 33:20 ‘You cannot see My Face, for no one may see Me and live’

5. Romans 3:10 ‘there is no one righteous, not even one’

6. I John 1:8 ‘If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves’

II. He made Himself known through His Creation

1. Paul reminded us that God’s glory is written in His creation for all to see and that we will have no excuse. Romans 1:19 ‘since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse’.

2. The Bible tells us that God is obvious in His creation and that we are making Him out as a liar if we do not believe Him. Romans 1:25 ‘They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped created things rather than the Creator.’ “What a beautiful flower” one would say, not giving the Creator the glory, for what He had made and how He made it. (Why would a rose have a pleasant smell and give pleasure to man – it is not necessary for the human species’ survival, or did evolution think of man’s heart over the billions of years to give him eyes, the sense of smell, a brain to process it to a conscious pleasure? I would think this is much more from a loving Intelligent Designer – the God of the Bible)

To tell someone that he is a liar destroys all possibility of a friendship with that person, and so with God if we would not believe Him. Believe His Word that He is the Creator of heaven and earth and that His Son Jesus Christ was sent to reconcile man with God by trusting Him.

1 JOHN 5: 10 ‘So all who believe in the Son of God have this testimony in their own hearts; but those who do not believe God have made Him out to be a liar, because they have not believed what God has said about His Son’

III. Through His Spirit we can know Him, even more, love Him intensely in our hearts as we experience His love as a reality in our hearts

When God called Abraham it was the new beginning of God’s involvement on a personal level with the human race who would trust Him.  He called Abraham His friend and declared him righteous.   Because Abraham trusted God, believed God, God called him His friend.

Genesis 15:6 ‘Abraham believed the LORD and He credited it to you as righteousness.

Isaiah 41:8 “Abraham My friend’

James 2:23 ‘Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness and he was called God’s friend.’

God is visible in His creation and an 'audible' reality in our hearts when we get to know Him. As our spirit lives in Him we will hear His voice in many different ways.

How can I hear the Invisible God’s Voice?

To use a metaphore; what does a traffic sign, a stop sign, tell us? It tells us to stop without hearing a sound through our ears.  Just as we have no doubt what the sign is saying to us if we know the traffic rules, so we would recognize God’s voice, and the better we know Him the clearer His Voice will become even though He is the invisible God that no one has ever seen.

God gives us His Holy Spirit when we come to Him, when we believe and trust Him. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit and a life in the Spirit we experience the reality of God. It is only the Holy Spirit that can change a life and make God a reality. It is His plan to make us holy and enable us to see Him with our spiritual eyes and know the truth of it.  II Corinthians 5:5 ‘Now  it is God that made us for His very purpose and has given us His Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come’

It is not that we cannot believe, as Bertrand Russell alleged because there is not enough evidence, but that we will not believe because we know that if we do believe, it will have far reaching implications for our lives.

A former atheist, Lee Strobel, said in his book The Case of Faith page 226 ‘I had a lot of motivation to find fault with Christianity when I was an atheist. I knew that my …. self obsessed lifestyle would have to change if I ever became a follower of Jesus and I wasn’t sure I want to let go of that. After all, that was all I knew. Consequently, instead of trying to find the truth, I found myself attempting to fend off the truth with fabricated doubts and contrived objections.

‘Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.’  Matthew 11:28

MCMLV