Would you turn in y our Bibles tonight, first of all to Psalm 19, I know you were told Romans 1 but that's where you'll turn second. But tonight, first of all, Psalm 19 and then Romans chapter 1. Now when I say a sentence to you, you're immediately going to know what game it is I'm talking about. Ready? Colonel Mustard in the Library with a Candelstick. It is? Clue. Now Clue is a game, it's been around a long time, you know the premise if you've ever played it. The setting is in a mansion, a murder has been committed and those who are in the mansion staying, going from room to room as the game progresses will pick up clues as to who committed the murder, where it was committed and with what weapon it was committed. That's the game of Clue. Well, what clues are there as we look around this world, that there's a God? Or, let me frame that question another way: If there is a God, what are the evidences that he exists? 
Now last week we began this series on The Biography of God and we started by looking at two great realities followed by two great responsibilities. The two great realities: God exists and God is personal. The two great responsibilities requires faith and pursuit to enter into any kind of relationship at all with God.
We pick up on that tonight looking at some of the evidences for God. I want to start off with this little story, I've loved it, it's from a newspaper called The London Observor, it's been reprinted. A family of mice lived in a grand piano, they enjoyed listening to the music that came from the great player who they never saw but who they believed in, because they enjoyed the music that came from the piano. One day one of the little mice got especially brave. He climbed deep into the bowels of the piano and he made an astonishing discovery: the music did not come from a great player, rather the music came from wires that reverberated back and forth. The little mouse returned to his family tremendously excited. He informed his family that there was no great player who made the piano music, rather there were these little wires that reverberated back and forth. The family of mice abandoned their belief in a great piano player. Instead they had a totally mechanistic view. One day another one of the little mice got especially brave, he climbed up even further up into the piano. And to his amazement he found that indeed the music did not come from reverberating wires but rather from little hammers that struck the wires. It was those hammers that really made the music. So he returned to his family with a new description of the source of the music. The family of mice rejoiced that they were so educated that they understood that there was no great piano player, that the music came from little hammers that struck the wires. The family of mice did not believe that there was a player playing the piano. Instead they believed that their mechanistic understanding of the universe explained all of reality. But the fact is, the player continued to play his music.
Now what those mice did in rationalizing away a piano player that indeed did exist, is precisely what mankind has done in looking at the universe and ruling God out, completely out of the equation. Tonight I'm going to ask you to worship the Lord by thinking. I want you to think deeply about these things. And this is sort of a little warning, this is a very different kind of a Bible study tonight, it won't be your typical kind, it is going to require your attention and your thought, something I know you're capable of, and I want you to enjoin in that. When I was a kid, I remember walking outside, wondering about God, "God, are you really there? Do you really exist? And if you do, how can I know that you exist?" I discovered I wasn't alone in that. I read a book sometime back and I gave it a fresh look this week. Simply called God by J. Carl Laney and he said when he was a teenager he walked outside and asked if God existed. He said, "There's got to be a way I can find out if God exists." And this is how he decided to do it: he pulled a coin out of his pocket and flipped it. Heads, there's a God; tails, there's not a God. He was a little more definitive, he said, "If you exist, God, make the coin turn up heads." Well he flipped it and guess what? It turned up heads. He flipped it again, it turned up tails. So now he says, "Okay, does God exist or not exist?" He decided to do it one final time and it turned up heads and then he said it's time to quit. And he explained it this way, "I decided not to try this test again. I wanted to quit my little experiment with the weight of evidence on the side of God's existence."
Well tonight, what I want you to do with me is look at some clues that are out there, that are around, just three simple clues to God's existence. And we're going to look in three places. We want to look for something, we want to look at something, and we want to look in something. We want to look for a cause, we want to look at the cosmos, the universe itself briefly; and then we want to look in or within our own conscience. Now some of you might right off the bat be saying, "Skip, you know what you're sort of wasting my time because I've never really had any doubts of God, I've never really dealt with this stuff before, it's not really a big deal to me." If you have never had any doubts at all of God's existence, I applaud you. For the rest of us, we have at some point done it. And if you never have, I'll guarantee you this, your kids probably will or your grandkids probably will, or you probably have met somebody who has, brushed up against them at college or at work, and you need to tell them something. I hope you tell them the right thing.
So, Psalm 19, let's just begin with the first six verses noticing something out of it. David writes, "The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone through all the earth. And their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices like a strong man to run its race. Its rising is from one end of the heaven, circuit to the other end. There's nothing hidden from its heat." Very simple point David makes, God's glory is seen in the natural world. And, as we look at the natural world, it seems very ordered and designed. Now what David reflects here is something that will later on be called the theological argument, just throw out that term, don't care if you ever remember it but you can if you'd like.
So let's go now to Romans chapter 1 in the New Testament. Paul takes this thought from a different angle. Romans chapter 1, beginning in verse 18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because what may be known of God is manifest (or plain, clear) in them, for God has shown it to them. (notice in them and to them). For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things." What Paul is saying is that God has left his imprint, both in the world around us and even within ourselves. What Paul reflects are two other clues: one is called the cosmological argument, the other is the moral law. And you'll notice that those are in your outline that I gave tonight.
Consider with me the first clue. And in the first clue we look for a cause, a reason. Everything that exists must have a cause or a first cause, for its existence. There's a piece of wise philosophy (and by the way philosophy isn't always wise, I remember studying a lot of this stuff for a Master's degree in biblical studies, had to take a lot of philosophy courses and I discovered that philosophers are people who talk about things they don't understand and they make it sound like it's your fault. It can be very confusing to read through the reams of material philosophically.) But there's a piece of wise philosophy simply put says this, "Wherever there is a thing, there must have been a preceding thought; and wherever there is a thought there must have been a thinker. This is the cosmological argument, or the argument for cause and effect. Everything in the universe has a basis for its existence, a cause. A first cause, a sufficient reason. Since every effect must have a cause, what we eventually search for is the first uncaused cause. You can go back, you can go through your little infinite regression, "Well go back before that, well who created God? Who created God?" All those little arguments you had as a child. You can try that infinite regression, but logically you can't do it because there must be a first uncaused cause. What is that? Where did that come from? 
Now this argument has its roots in ancient philosophy; Plato, Aristotle held this view. But many great thinkers and minds have developed it, people like Moses Mimonides, the great 12th century Jewish scholar. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza and a guy by the name of Lidenitz, he was a German mathematician. And Lidenitz the German mathematician said, "The first question that must be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing?" The first question that must be asked is this: Why is there something rather than nothing? In other words, why does anything exist at all? And the answer: Nothing happens without sufficient reason. And some of you will remember the classic movie with Julie Andrews set in Austria, how many of you remember the movie? Well Julie Andrews in that Sound of Music, when she was developing a romantic relationship with the captain, sang a little song, "Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could." You didn't know she was a great philosopher and theologian, did you? That's correct. Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could. This is what you need to ask the atheists: If nothing comes from nothing then why is there something? It's a very basic question, because every event has a cause.
Here's a story: A Christian and an atheist are walking through the woods, they come upon a big glass ball, eight feet in diameter. The Christians asks, "Where did this come from?" The atheist says, "I don't know but someone must have put it there." And they both agreed. Then the Christian said, "Okay, suppose this is a little bit larger, say sixteen feet in diameter rather than eight feet. Will it still need a cause?" The atheist said, "Of course it will need a cause. If little balls need causes, then bigger balls need causes." So the Christian says, "All right, what if the ball was eight thousand miles in diameter and 25,000 miles in circumference." Now the atheist saw the trap that was coming and said, "Well yeah, sure I guess it would. If smaller balls need causes and bigger balls need causes, then big huge balls would also need causes. And so the Christian finally said, "Well what if we make the ball as big as the whole universe, will it still need a cause?" And the atheist said, "Of course not. The universe is just there." That's about the logic of people who try to rule God out. See atheists used to laugh at us for saying, "Someone made something out of nothing." Now we get to laugh at them because they say, "Nothing made something out of nothing." A logical fallacy. 
No wonder Paul writes in Romans 1, "From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and the sky and all that God has made. The can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature. So, they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God." We're a little bit further along scientifically than we were two thousand years ago. We know something. We know that the universe is expanding. And there's a little debate as to what the rate of expanse is but we know that the universe is expanding. So what happens if you put that in reverse, that process? Well eventually you will have the universe collapsing into nothingness. You'll get to appoint if you went backwards where there's going to be no time, no space, and no matter. Now there is a theory that you've all heard of, some of you know quite well, and that's the theory of general relativity, which in part says you never have space without time, or you never have space and time without matter. So if matter had a beginning, then time necessarily also had a beginning, thus the universe is not eternal. So, go all the way back, "In the beginning, (our Bible says) God." What do you have in the beginning? What is the first uncaused cause of all that is contingent in the universe." Our answer, quite simply and accurately, is God. That's the first clue. We're looking for a cause. 
Second clue, look at the cosmos, look at the universe itself. Lift up your eyes, go outside, consider the moon, the sun (don't look at the sun during the day but consider it), look at the stars at night, consider the galaxy in which you live in, the biosphere that's all around you. Look at the world, the cosmos. And it seems like it's in order, it looks as if it's been designed. And interestingly, scientists, some who are not believers at all, will say something like this, "the universe appears as though it's finely tuned for our kind of life. It seems as though the universe anticipated us. It looks as if it's designed." Now this is the argument called the theological argument, or the argument from design. It goes all the way back again to the philosophical schools of ancient Greece. Plato refuted atheism with this. And he said and I quote, "The order and the motion of the stars shows that a mind ordered it." Now they weren't theistic as you and I are. They were polytheistic, they believed in many gods. But nonetheless something, someone, is responsible for the universe.
Psalm 19 which we just read, it appeals to this, "Day after day," David said, "they pour forth speech. And night after night they display knowledge." One thing we notice as we observe the universe, there are patterns, they are predictable. It looks as though it's right on track and designed and very very ordered. And either were just left with saying, "It just happened that way. I know it's really weird, but it just sort of happened that way." Or, we'd say, "but it seems so much like it's designed." It was actually designed. I'm going to recommend a great book and even a greater movie I found called The Privileged Planet, something that we passed out several months or a year ago here, brilliantly shows how that the earth happens to be in what's known as the "habitable zone" in the universe, very few places that this kind of life could occur and we happen to be in it. It's the same idea of the argument. So follow me: It just so happens that the earth is 93 million miles away from a source star called the sun that's 12,000 degrees at its surface. If we weren't, let's say we were as close as Venus, we'd all burn up; if we were as far away as Mars we'd all freeze to death. It just so happened that we're on this orbit. It also just so happened that the Earth rotates 365 and a third times on its axis as it makes its journey around the sun. Why? Why not thirty times? Why not three thousand times? If it was thirty times traveling as it is at a thousand miles per hour, then the days and nights would be thirty times longer, you'd freeze and you'd burn up alternately, it couldn't sustain life. It just so happened that the gravitational force of the earth is perfect for life. If it was any more, we wouldn't move; if it was any less, we could fly off into space; it's just perfect. It just so happens that the earth is tilted twenty-three and third degrees on its axis, and it's stabilized by a large Moon to keep it that way, keeping it at a very very stable tilt which gives our four seasons, perfect for life. It just so happens that we have a perfect atmospheric balance of oxygen to nitrogen at a ratio of 79 to 20, with one percent of varying gases. If it were, let's say fifty-fifty, fifty oxygen to fifty nitrogen, you don't want to be a smoker because the first dude to light up a match, it would all be destroyed. It just so happens that the oceans are the perfect dimension for advanced life on this planet. That the land mass to water mass is just beautifully balanced. Let's say the oceans were half of the amount in size that they are now. We would only have one-fourth of the rainfall that we get on the Earth, imagine what we would do in that. In places like the desert, all life would disappear. If the oceans were just an eighth larger than they are now, we'd have four times the amount of rainfall that we have on the earth, and the world would be a swamp. It just so happens that the distance between the stars is necessary for life.
Did you ever see a movie some years ago, it was filmed in New Mexico, it was called Contact, remember Contact? The script was written by Carl Sagan and here are these people listening to hopefully radio impulses from outer space to see if life exists. Butt here's this subtheme in that movies that's repeated a few different times. The sentence goes like this: If there isn't life elsewhere then there's a lot of wasted space out there." That is not true, scientists are now telling us that all of that space and the relationship of the bodies within space is necessary to life on this planet and they way they are spaced and positioned. For instance, the position of Jupiter is a great blessing to us because of the cosmic waste that would hit the Earth. For instance, there have been objects as large as the Earth coming at the Earth stopped by Jupiter. Those planets that shield us from that cosmic array, it's like a huge cosmic vacuum cleaner. Well, all of that that just seems as if it's designed, it's because it is designed, it didn't just so happen, it was made that way by God. 
This is the argument from design and it is so apparent, it's mind-boggling. I don't know if you've heard of the name Antony Flew, Antony Flew for fifty years was a very intellectual atheist, in fact most atheists borrowed what Antony Flew wrote and said to the atheists. Antony Flew was so aggressive as an atheist he stood before the C.S. Lewis Socratic Club and delivered a paper and arguments for atheism and against Christianity. So every intellectual atheist followed what he did and what he said. Then in 2004 he said something that shook the world to those who followed him. He said this, "God must exist. The universe must be the work of an intelligent designer." Why is that? We've studied the DNA and he said and I quote, "It shows that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements together. The enormous complexity looks to be like the work of design." Here's a guy who took an avid position against God and said the burden of proof lies on you theists, you Christians, to come up with proof that God exists. And now he says, "I know God exists. He has to exist based on these elements in the DNA." He's going back to any old argument that was held by William Paley and the whole watchmaker argument, it's still a very good and compelling argument. If you see a watch, you can as a thinking a person, say, "There's got to have been a watchmaker." It didn't like "evolve, after billions of years, this little thing hit rocks and explosions took place and glass formed on the right surface and then little arms and hands and gears." That'd be stupid to say that. You look at a watch and you go, "I be somebody made this." So if you look at a painting, you think, "There must have been a painter behind it." If you look at a play that was written, there must have been an author behind it. This is the argument from the design. Nothing in the world is able to explain its own existence. So here's David, "The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament (or that expanse of the universe) shows his handiwork." And David is taking it to the next conclusion: If the art hanging in the sky is that amazing and glorious, what must the artist be like? See this is the great part about knowing God is that you can stop at a sunset in the afternoon, park your car, and you don't have to get out and go, "Hmm, fortuitous occurrence of accidental circumstance." You can go, you can say, "I know the painter, I know the Maker. I know Him, I believe in Him, I love him." 
Now here's a quote I want to give you before we move on to the last and final, this is by Robert Jastro, Robert Jastro is NASA's Institute for Space Studies developer. He wrote in a book called God and the Astronomers, here's the quote, "For the scientist who has lived by faith and the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he's about to conquer the highest peak, he pulls himself over the rock, he's greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." And folks, that's what I've discovered in reading so many of these different people who were ardent, agnostic, atheistic scientists who by reason of design and cause and effect infer there must be some one behind this who's responsible for all of this. These are clues that are unmistakable. 
Here's the third clue and we'll close with this: The third clue isn't to look for a cause or at the cosmos but to look within, to look within your own conscience. This is something called the moral law. There's a universal feature that is true of all human beings on the earth, no matter what culture, no matter what country, no matter what language; and that is we all have a sense, a moral sense, a compass of what is right and wrong. Granted, it can vary from people group to people group and it could depend on a different amount of social conditioning. But there is built into the fabric of a human being, something called the moral law. This is something people do and think every day but they're unaware of it. From the wife who criticizes her husband to the child who says, "That's not fair," to a nation who will rise up and defend a poor innocent nation from an aggressor nation; all of that is built on the moral law. Where did the sense of right and wrong come from? Where did this moral law come from? And why is it so universally felt? Even the agnostic or the atheist will say things like this, "Well, look at this world, there's evil everywhere. That's not fair. That's wrong. There's tsunamis and cancer and earthquakes." And they'll say, in other words, "Those things are morally wrong. Thus," they say, "there can't be a God." Okay, when somebody says something's wrong, how do you know? Unless you're appealing to a standard, something that is right, that's the moral law. You can't say that's unjust unless you are appealing to a standard of something that is just, you have a hunch or a belief that there is justice and there is truth and there is good.
Dr. C. S. Lewis, the famous Oxford scholar was converted by this argument. And this is what he said, "the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man doesn't call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line."
And notice that Paul in Romans chapter 1 verse 19, I'm quoting now from the New Living Translation, "For the truth of God is known to them instinctively." Instinctively. You can't say the world is crooked unless you have a belief or an ideal of what is a straight line. That's the moral law, where does it come from? That's the clue within the conscience of man. You see, moral comparisons of any kind demand an objective moral standard. So let's way we're to say, if I put up a picture of Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler; and I say, "Which person was a better person?" Now instinctively you know Mother Teresa is better than Adolf Hitler. You instinctively know that. The only way you don't know that is if you're taught something weird like in a college philosophy course, taught to mess that up, but you know that instinctively, that's the moral law. 
I found a book here in the airport in Albuquerque, I was taking a trip and just out there, it's in the secular bookstores, it's called The Language of God, so that caught my attention. I had to buy the book because it was written by Francis Collins. Now Francis Collins is the chief scientist, the head of the Human Genome Project. The worldwide developer had a whole host of team to decode the DNA of man, a very imminent scientist. His own admission, he grew up an agnostic, he turned from an agnostic to an ardent atheist. And then something happened to him, he looked at the moral law, he started reading C.S., Lewis' book Mere Christianity and in being intellectually honest he had to come up with this. He said, "You know what? I had drawn conclusions about God without examining all the data." Can you imagine a scientist saying that? That's a no-no for a scientist, to come to a conclusion without examining the data. He started examining the data and this is what he writes in this book The Language of God, "I started this journey of intellectual exploration to confirm my atheism . That now lay in ruins as the argument from the moral law as well as many others, forced me to admit the plausibility of the God hypothesis. Faith in God seemed more rational now than disbelief." And he shows his spiritual journey as the head of The Human Genome Project, agnostic turned atheist turned believer, based upon some of the evidence, looking at the clues, looking at the clues within the moral law. Looking at the cosmos, looking at the cause and then he put it all together. Now many of these testimonies, and there are many more, are the same. In looking for the cause for everything in the universe, that is contingent; in looking at the universe itself, at the cosmos and notice that it's ordered and looks like it's designed; and looking inside at the conscience and those moral underpinnings that everybody has; it should cause you to look up, to embrace God himself. So the universe is packed with evidences, with clues, and these are just a few, they're a few of the big ones, they're a few of the undeniable ones. And they're good things to engage unbelieving friends to get them to think through logically with the mind God has given you.
I pray that you do, I pray that you won't be afraid of the unbeliever, I pray that you'll engage in very lively, intellectual, honest discussion. And I pray that if you don't personally know the Lord of whom we're talking about, His biography, in these weeks; that you'll come to know Him.
Let's pray. Our heavenly Father, in a very very different kind of a Bible study, a very different kind of a discussion, lacking some of the exegesis that normally goes on and language study; but nonetheless we see how perfectly it dovetails with those truths that are put forth in the scripture by David, a simple shepherd boy who could just look up from time to time away from his sheep and notice how the seasons change with predictability and infer design. And it just seems like we're living in a zone that is very unique. We are indeed a privileged planet." To the arguments of Paul when he says, "Because God has left his imprint within people and on the universe itself, we are without excuse. That God exists can be known. Now Lord as we will experience and study some deeper more special kinds of revelation, I pray that we as believers will not only be able to share with unbelievers, that our knowledge of you would expand, our appreciation and thus eventually our trust in you; would be such that joy fills our hearts and marks our existence. Lord I do not know the spiritual state of everybody who's in this room or listening over the Internet or listening by radio; but I do know from personal experience and watching thousands of changed lives; that you love to change lives. So Lord, whether somebody's listening in a hospital or in a automobile or at home or here in this church, that if they don't know you, they're sensing that restlessness and that emptiness, as Paul called it a void, subject to vanity. I pray that the God of this universe who has made a way through his Son Jesus Christ by dying on the cross would occupy the throne of their heart.
Maybe right where you're at tonight, right where you're sitting or standing or wherever y9ou are listening to this message, maybe you would surrender your life to Christ, if you want to do that, it doesn't matter what state you're in, it doesn't matter what place you're in your life, it doesn't matter what sins you've committed or failures that you acknowledge, all the more reason to come to the One who made a way through his Son Jesus. But be honest and right now say something like this to him, "Lord, I give you my life. I don't understand everything there is to know about you, I want to know you. I give you permission to invade my space. I pray that as I give my life to you, you'll change me. I believe in Jesus who died on the cross and rose from the dead. I turn to you, I turn from my past, I make you my Savior, I make you my Lord. In Jesus' name. Amen.