The Case For God: Why The Christian Worldview Make Sense 3 by Pastor Dolapo Lawal: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Christianity is the only religion where the God comes to you — and He doesn't just come to you, He comes to journey with you so that you can now be with Him. The idea is to come as you are, but not remain the way you came. There must be intentionality.

You are going to be a banker for 60, 70 years. A lawyer for 40, 50 years. A father for maybe 80 years. A mother for maybe 90 years. But you are going to spend eternity for eternity. It is a wrong valuation — what theology calls wrong valuation — to not put premium on what will determine your eternal destination.

The biggest expression of love is the cross of Jesus. And by implication, the biggest expression of love we can show another person is to point them to the cross. That means being the kind of person who can answer questions — who can bring people out of darkness and translate them by the power of the Spirit and the word into the Kingdom of His Son.

The Bible clearly warns about the falling away. One of the things that makes people denounce Jesus is a lack of grounding. When you read the book of Hebrews, there is a strong warning not to be like the children of Israel — because they typify God's plan in the church. Just as they came out of Egypt, we came out of sin and entered the wilderness. The wilderness is the church. And we are headed to the promised land — God's rest. If there is no grounding, you will be surprised what can happen when you are faced with trials and challenges.

Chief cornerstone, rock of offense.

You can have a counseling anointing for marriages and have three failed marriages. You can be barren and He will give you a ministry to open wombs. God's ways are not our ways. That is why we must be discerning. In John 4, Jesus sits by a well and speaks to a woman who had been with five different men — in a society where men issued divorce certificates, not women. She was in a cycle of rejection. And God opened an entire city to Jesus through her. The person who helped evangelize the work was the very one the world called a sinner. If you do not have that grounding in who God is and how He works, things can happen that cause you to stumble.

Those that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

Debunking Atheist Arguments: Archaeological Confirmation

For centuries, critics said the Bible was mythology. Archaeology keeps proving them wrong.

• The Hittites — once called fictional in the Bible, were later discovered as a verified people group through historical evidence.
• Pontius Pilate — doubted as a historical figure, until a stone inscription bearing his name and title was found — exactly as the Bible described.
• The Pool of Bethesda — once considered symbolism, has been excavated and found to be exactly as described in John 5.
• Solomon's Porch — confirmed architecturally, matching biblical description.
• The House of David — the Tel Dan stele confirmed the historical House of David.

The Bible is the most well-attested and manuscript-supported ancient document in human history. No other book from the ancient world comes close in terms of evidence.

An agnostic professor of Egyptology — David Rohl, who studied ancient history, archaeology, and ancient Greek at University College London — concluded after archaeological research that the Bible is the most authentic historical document from that age. He argues for a historical Bible. To him it is not the word of God, but even from a purely academic standpoint, he validates it as history.

Non-Christian Historical References to Jesus

No historian — not even atheist historians — argues about the person of Jesus. The person is not the argument. The death is not the argument. The argument is the resurrection.

• Thallus (52 AD) — the earliest known non-Christian reference to Jesus. Biblical scholar Frederick Fyvie Bruce notes that the earliest mention of Jesus outside the New Testament occurs around AD 55 from a historian named Thallus. His work was lost, but fragments were preserved by Julius Africanus. In those fragments, Thallus was attempting to explain away the supernatural darkness that occurred when Jesus died — attributing it to a solar eclipse. That attempt in itself is a confirmation that the event was publicly known and discussed. For a historian in 55 AD to be making mention of the death of Jesus and its surrounding events — trying to provide a natural explanation — further authenticates the events. In historiography, varying independent data about an event validates the event. This is the earliest mention of Jesus in history by a skeptic, by someone who was not an apostle. And he made reference to what the Bible records — written not in 55 AD when he was writing, but around 60 AD. That means the Bible writer and this historian were writing at two different times, without knowledge of each other. It further authenticates that Jesus really died.

• Flavius Josephus (93 AD) — a Jewish historian and commander in Galilee where Jesus ministered, stationed in a city three miles from Nazareth, who knew participants in the trials of Jesus. He mentioned Jesus twice in the Antiquities of the Jews. In one passage he described the condemnation of James by the Jewish Sanhedrin, calling him "the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ." This reference is significant because Josephus was not a Christian. His mention of James squares exactly with what Matthew 13:55, 1 Corinthians 15:7, and Galatians 1:19 record.

• Tacitus (116 AD) — a Roman historian who wrote that Nero fastened guilt for the burning of Rome on those called Christians by the populace, and that "Christos, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of Pontius Pilate."

• The Dead Sea Scrolls (discovered 1947) — further manuscript evidence that continues to validate the reliability of scripture.

No other document from ancient times comes anywhere close to the New Testament in the number of authenticated manuscripts — now exceeding 25,000 — or in how close those manuscripts date to the original composition.

Michael Grant, a classical historian and non-Christian, wrote: "There are those who argue that Jesus never existed at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that anymore."

Rudolph Bultmann, a liberal German theologian and skeptic who spent his career questioning the gospels, still conceded: "There can be no doubt that Jesus did such deeds which were, in his and his contemporaries' understanding, miracles — deeds that were the result of supernatural divine causality. Doubtless he healed the sick and cast out demons."

Jesus is not a figment of imagination. His existence is not a white man's religion — it was God's plan. From the book of Isaiah, prophecy after prophecy declared: "All people shall be my people."

The Hebrew word for redeemer is ga'al — it means the one who buys back his lost relative. When the Bible says He redeemed the Gentiles, it is considering Gentiles as lost relatives. That was always His plan.

The Transformation Argument

1 Peter 3:15-16

The final and most powerful argument for the existence and truth of God is transformation. Nothing has transformed wickedness in the human mind like the Bible. Notice what God's word does to the mind when genuinely received:

• It has broken addiction cycles that therapy couldn't touch.
• It transformed violent persecutors like Paul, cowards like Peter, doubters like Thomas, and sinners of every kind into people who died for what they witnessed.
• It has produced hospitals, universities, the abolition of slavery, and the dignity of the individual — ideas largely foreign to the ancient world before biblical influence.

A corrupted mind producing a corrupted book could not consistently produce transformed lives across every culture and every century. If the Bible is not from God, nothing is.

There is a prison in America called Angola. In the past, the violence rate among inmates was 85% — when new inmates entered, they were handed a knife to defend themselves. Then a Christian administrator took charge and did something unusual: he didn't start with programs. He started with pastors. He instituted a seminary and made 19 pastors first, then began weekly Bible studies — because people fall for lack of a shepherd. Every problem is a leadership problem. Leadership first, then institution.

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The result: violence cases dropped from 885 to 78 by 1980. By 1995, the transformation was so complete that the warden said he was confident that if a woman walked past the prison fence, no prisoner would harass her.

One prisoner, sentenced to life, was asked how he could worship God knowing he would never be free again. He said: "I want you to go to my family and tell them that I am free — and they are not. I am experiencing more freedom in this prison than I ever experienced outside under the yoke of sin and death."

The Bible won't take the pain. It will change the perspective.

The Problem: We Allow the Bible to Talk, Not to Work

1 Peter 3:15-16

The instruction is to be ready to give a defense — but to do it with meekness and fear, having a good conscience, so that those who revile your conduct may be ashamed. Apologetics is not just about talking. There is a disposition. There is a lifestyle.

The problem with many believers is this: we never allow the Bible to work. We only allow it to talk. We preach it, but we don't live it. We read it, but we don't allow it to read us.

When John the Baptist spoke of Jesus in Matthew 3, he said: "I indeed baptize you with water, but He who comes after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." The Holy Spirit he referenced is the witness and nature of God placed in the human heart. Once that Holy Spirit is received, God's desires start to become your desires. You start to feel conviction over evil and peace over righteousness — because now you are alive. You are awake. You know what is evil and you know what is good. Your disposition toward life changes. Instead of looking at life subjectively, you begin to look at it objectively through God's lens. That is repentance — metanoia. It doesn't mean a change of behavior. It means a change of mindset.

You can stay away from food because you want to lose weight — and you can discipline yourself for 10 days. But there is a way we do it called fasting. It is not about staying away from food. It is about the disposition of the mind. God is after that consciousness.

Every blessed day is an opportunity to be transformed. Someone is not wasting your time — you are learning patience. Someone is not using you — you are learning tolerance. That is transformation.

Jim Bakker — at one point among the most powerful and then most disgraced preachers in America — lost everything and went to prison. When he got out, he was in hiding, broken. His assistant came and told him someone was there to see him. He refused. The assistant persisted until he reluctantly came out. Standing there was Billy Graham with his wife. He said he wept, embracing Billy Graham for over 30 minutes. Why? Because the most hated preacher was embraced by the most celebrated preacher. Everybody had turned away — but Billy Graham did not allow celebration take away Christianity from him.

Notice that Billy Graham did not speak in tongues. The problem in the body of Christ is not ungifted people. The problem is anointed, charismatic, gifted people — who feel they can get away with unbroken character because of their gifts. Once a small gift manifests, the mic is given, and people forget that behind the spirit is a soul that must be discipled. If you don't pursue discipleship, your faith will suffer shipwreck.

The Separation Principle and Evangelism

A church will stop growing if it stops evangelizing. When a church commits to consistent evangelism — going out daily — growth happens. Not always because the people directly reached come in, but because the act of going out opens the church to new ecosystems. The people already in the building have already exhausted their circles. The committed ones already have their friends in other churches. The only people who can truly bring in new converts are the new converts themselves — whose ecosystems are still full of unreached people.

God's technology is: you come in to go out. You are brought out of a group so He can send you back into that group as salt and light.

Acts 1:8

From Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the uttermost parts of the earth — that is the pattern. Separation from ungodly environments is not about becoming boring. It is about becoming effective. Jesus ate with sinners — but everywhere He ate with sinners, they were converted before He left.

If you are not influencing, they are influencing you. If people around you are not changed by your influence, someone is being changed — and it is you. Put four people in a room without assigning a leader — and you will notice that one person naturally decides what is watched, what is said, what is done. That is the law of power. If God wants to do something with your life, He will first say: come out from among them.

If Jesus had stayed in His hometown, the familiarity and unbelief around Him would have limited the manifestation of His power. He laid hands on just a few sick folk there. But He carried that ministry to Capernaum — and miracles happened everywhere. Environment matters. Come out. That is the first step.

If you have truly changed, it will show. When someone meets you after four years, they should notice. Transformation is not invisible.

Prayer