Touching Transcendence

Christians believe that there is a God and that He has created us to live in connection with Him. Obviously, there are a lot of people skeptical about what kind of evidence there is that there is a transcendent God.

We can open together to Genesis chapter 28 and follow along as we consider that. Amen. Good morning, everybody! How are you all doing this morning? Good, good, good! As we sing that song, that chorus from an old hymn, "How Great Thou Art," it's an interesting thing to consider that declaration that Christians have made for centuries about the greatness of God.

Our vision, as we talk about quite frequently here at the church, is life in connection with God. We believe that it is possible for us to have a connection with a great God. So, we are beginning this year, 2020, talking a little bit about our vision and how that all frames out biblically, but also how it is lived out and how we make the case for this proposition, if you will, that it is possible for us to live life in connection with the transcendent God.

Last week, we talked a little bit about life through Jesus. Today, we're going to be discussing connection with God specifically. If you would take out your Bibles, if you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and one of the ushers will bring you one. We're going to open to the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis.

Today, we're going to begin in Genesis chapter 28. As we are turning there, if you wouldn't mind standing with us, we stand for the reading of God's Word. As we're going through the Scriptures today, if you have a question about what we're discussing, you can text your questions to the number on the screen, and I'll get those. We will answer those on the questions podcast next week.

Genesis chapter 28 contains a story about a guy by the name of Jacob. Some of you who are reading through the Bible in a year may find this name familiar. Jacob lived about 4,000 years ago.

Read this: Genesis chapter 28. Just a quick setting: Jacob, at this moment, is fleeing from his homeland because his older brother has vowed to kill him. This will tell you something a little bit about the character of Jacob in this situation.

We read in verse 10 of Genesis 28: "Now Jacob went out from Beersheba and he went toward Haran. So he came to a certain place and stayed there all night because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of that place and put it under his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep. Then he had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and it reached to heaven. There the angels of God were ascending and descending upon this ladder. This is where the idea of Jacob's Ladder comes from.

And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, 'I am the Lord God of Abraham your father, the God of Isaac, and the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. Also, your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south, and in you and in your seed all of the families of the earth shall be blessed. Behold, I am with you to keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.'

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.' He was afraid and said, 'How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.'

God, I pray as we consider this text today, as we consider life in connection with You, as we consider the reality of the greatness of Your nature as a transcendent God, I pray that You would help us to comprehend what it means to be connected to You. What does it mean to experience transcendence, and how do we articulate that in the culture in which we live?

We live at a time where there is skepticism, and not just questioning or skepticism, but even to the point of cynicism about this idea that we can be connected to You. Even at this moment, as I am saying these words, that You, the transcendent God, hear and respond to this can be something that people in our lives and in our culture balk at. So I pray, God, that You would give us...

Understanding what it means to have a transcendent experience and how we can express that to others is important. We ask this today in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, "Amen." You may be seated.

Have you ever had the sense that you have come in contact with something bigger or beyond yourself? What we would refer to as a transcendent experience? Have you ever had that thought where you've interacted with something that is beyond this reality? For some of you, there may be an experience or several experiences that come to mind.

For some people, an experience like that happened as they stood at a vista or overlook point, gazing at a grand landscape, perhaps looking over Yosemite Valley or the Grand Canyon. In those moments, you see the vastness before you, and you feel a sense of awe. You realize your place in it and feel very small in comparison to something much bigger and beyond you.

Maybe it wasn't looking at a landscape, but rather looking through a telescope at the night sky. You see distant galaxies and begin to grasp the expanse of the universe. Perhaps you've seen some of the pictures returned to us by Hubble, which reveal that even in a small portion of the dark sky—if you hold your hands at arm's length and look at an area just one inch square—there are potentially millions of stars in that tiny space. You are struck by the bigness of it all.

Or maybe it's not looking through a telescope; it's looking through a microscope at the cellular level. Instead of distant galaxies, you are exploring the depths of the cosmos in a different way. For some, a transcendent experience occurred while they were in the back of an ambulance or lying in a hospital bed. There is that feeling, that sense of some presence or something bigger than yourself.

Perhaps it was as you watched the birth of your child, witnessing a new life coming into this world. In that moment, you realize the profound reality of life itself.

Maybe it's not watching someone come into this world, but standing at the bedside of someone who is departing this world. When you touch death or are confronted with mortality, there is a sense that sometimes hits us, and we call that sense a transcendent experience. It happens when you have that distinct acknowledgment and recognition that this world is not all that there is; that there's something more to the world than the reality that we see or perceive with our five senses. There is something beyond what we can just test in the laboratory with instrumentation.

It is that sense that you have when you feel small in the presence of a Presence, and you realize there's something far greater than you. You're moved to a state of awe. That's exactly what is being described in Genesis chapter 28, where this individual, Jacob, experienced a profound realization of what we would call God—a transcendent being beyond or bigger than us, beyond the reality in which we live. Until that point in Jacob's life, this was just something he had heard about. No doubt he had heard stories from his grandfather Abraham about how he came to be living in the land that he was in and how he even came to exist.

Jacob's father was born by miraculous means because God came and spoke to Abraham, saying, "Follow me, and I'm going to give you a son," even though he was old and well advanced in age. Jacob had also heard about these things from his own father, Isaac. However, for Jacob, at that moment, those stories were likely just tales he had heard. Then he has an experience—a transcendent experience. In that moment, he says, "The Lord was in this place, and I did not realize it." He came in contact with something bigger than himself, beyond himself, and he was struck with fear.

The last verse we read in Genesis chapter 28, verse 17, states, "And he was afraid, and he said, 'How awesome is this place!'" This is similar to the experience that the prophet Isaiah describes in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapter six. He also had a vision or a transcendent experience. He writes about it in Isaiah 6, verse 1: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple." He sees a vision of the throne room of heaven, another worldly place, and God is there occupying a throne. Not only is God there, but verse 2 continues...

Stood above the throne were Seraphim, which is a Hebrew word meaning "burning ones." We believe them to be angelic beings, but what are these burning ones? We don't know for sure. The description given states that each one had six wings: with two, he covered his face; with two, he covered his feet; and with two, he flew. One of them cried to another, saying, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory." The posts of the door of the place he was in were shaken by him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

Isaiah sees this, and here's his response: "Woe is me! I am little in respect of that. Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." That is a transcendent experience.

It is similar to the experience Peter describes in the Gospel of Luke. Peter had fished all night long, as recorded in Luke chapter 5, which was his business, and they caught nothing. As he was cleaning his nets in the morning, Jesus, a traveling preacher, came by and asked Peter if He could stand in his boat and push out from the shore a little bit to preach to the crowd. Peter agreed.

At a certain point, Jesus said to Peter, "Launch out into the deep for a catch." Peter replied, "Listen, we've fished all night and didn't catch anything." He probably said it like that because you don't admit loudly when you are a fisherman by profession and you catch nothing. However, he added, "But at your word, I will do it." They launched out and caught an overwhelming number of fish, to the point that the nets were breaking. Peter turned to Jesus, who was in the boat with him, and said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." He acknowledged that he was in the presence of someone greater than himself.

This is akin to what the Apostle John describes in the last book of the Bible, Revelation. He had a transcendent experience, a vision of the Risen Jesus on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea 2,000 years ago on the Lord's Day, Sunday. In this vision, he said, "I saw Him" (Revelation 1:17), and "I fell down at His feet as dead." He was stricken with fear, but Jesus laid His hand on him and said, "Do not be afraid, for I am the first and the last."

In each of these instances, we have the description of a transcendent experience.

Where someone comes in contact with something that they perceive to be beyond them, beyond this reality. Have you ever had an experience like that? I think some of you probably have; maybe many of you have.

Even though we live in this moment, 2020, in a hyper-modern, humanistically oriented, naturalistically minded society, we think everything is just natural, physical, material, and scientifically governed. That's the world we live in. However, there are literally tens of millions of people in our culture who are looking for, longing for, desiring, and seeking after transcendent experiences.

This longing for transcendent experience resides in every single person who meditates, every person who prays, and in people who fast for extended periods of time. I suggest that oftentimes it exists in those who do crazy things, like climb El Capitan with no ropes or jump out of airplanes. They are seeking some sort of experience that puts things in context for them, and they have the realization that this world is bigger than just them.

I suggest it exists in a lot of people who take mind-altering substances. Believers and skeptics alike are longing for a connection to something beyond, something bigger.

Point number one on your outline: our universal desire for transcendence reveals something significant about our essential nature. There’s a lot there, but it’s something to consider. Universally, every one of the seven and a half billion conscious beings, human beings on the face of this planet, has an inclination toward and a desire for transcendence. This is universally the case, whether you are a believer in transcendent realities or a skeptic of transcendent realities. Every person universally has this desire, and our longing for transcendence indicates...

I believe that we are fundamentally different, distinctly so, than other creatures in the cosmos. As far as we can tell through all of our observations, we don't see this drive in any other creature. You don't see animals gathering together for religious rituals to try and touch some sort of distant, bigger, or beyond transcendent reality. But human beings do that constantly. Even those who are skeptical, even those who do not believe in God or would make statements that they don't believe in transcendence, engage in this behavior.

One example that really strikes me is Sam Harris, who has written extensively from an atheistic perspective. He is a neuroscientist, yet he does not believe in transcendent realities. Interestingly, he is very much into meditation and hallucinogenic drugs. I don't recommend either one of those, at least not in the way that he discusses meditation, but he is drawn to these experiences because of the feelings they evoke.

Our universal desire for transcendence reveals something significant about our essential nature. It has to do with how we were made, by whom, and for what purpose. As a believer in Scripture and a Christian, I believe we were made by God. We were created in His image to be connected to Him, to have a relationship with the transcendent God—the one who exists outside of the creation that He created. He exists independently of the creation that we experience.

We were created by Him, in His image, to be connected to Him as an expression of His greatness and for His glory. All of that can be substantiated scripturally, and I think this is a radical reality. The truth of it is evidenced by the fact that every human being longs for transcendence, for a transcendent experience. We all do.

Now, I realize that I'm talking about concepts and ideas that are kind of meta, as they say today. These are very high-level concepts as we delve into topics related to transcendence. We don't really talk a lot about transcendence in general, but while we may not discuss these concepts much, we think about them or interact with them much more than we realize.

Than we realize, virtually every person you know, even the people in your life who might casually, though not overtly, antagonize your Christianity, are also seeking something. We just experience holidays, and probably you celebrated the holidays with some family members. Maybe you have a family member or two who is that person you say, "Hey, why don't we pray for the meal?" and they respond, "Oh yeah, let's pray." Does anybody have that person in their family?

Even that person who is a skeptic is also seeking transcendence, seeking to come into contact with something bigger. They desire it at some level, especially as people age. As they get older, they seek it more. There is a desire for something more, and it's likely that many of you, if not all of you, have had an experience like this of some sort, whether large or small. You have experienced, in some manner, that realization that there is something bigger.

The study of these experiences is what researchers refer to as phenomenology. However, phenomenology is often derided or looked down upon by certain other sciences, which assert that none of these experiences really exist. Yet, there is an entire branch of research that deals with studying phenomena and recognizing that there are ecstatic, transcendent experiences that people in virtually every culture encounter.

There is little consensus among researchers and scientists as to how we ought to explain these experiences. We don't know how to categorize them or exactly articulate what they are. But here's the amazing thing: scientists in laboratories can trigger these experiences. They sometimes do this by subjecting people to extended fasts or by giving them certain substances. Some of you, in your pre-Jesus days, may have experimented—not exactly scientifically—but you experimented nonetheless.

We know that these experiences can be triggered in people, but the very experiences that can be triggered cannot be explained by the same scientists. They have no idea what these experiences are, especially when they subject independent people to the same conditions.

Experience shows that people can have the same experiences independently and see the same things. They often express their confusion about how to explain that. Our desire for scientifically verifiable experiences that seem beyond our capacity to explain indicates, I believe, point number two on your outline: we are coded for connection with something bigger and beyond ourselves.

Evolutionary scientists argue that this inclination is a result of natural selection and the evolutionary process over millions of years. Humans universally have an inclination towards mystical, metaphysical, or what we might call spiritual or sublime experiences. We could categorize this under a religious orientation. Every human culture, both present and past, has exhibited a religious orientation. Even those who claim to be non-religious still hold beliefs and ideas that are religiously non-religious. Therefore, every single human being has this inclination towards these experiences.

While evolutionary scientists may describe this inclination as a bug in our makeup, Christians would argue that it is a feature. We believe that God created us in His image to be connected to Him. The thing we want to connect to is not merely a concept; it is a person. God designed us to be in relationship with Him.

To summarize before we move on to the main focus, we observe a universal desire for transcendence that is supracultural. It transcends every culture, as every culture has this leaning towards transcendent experiences. This inclination appears to be hardwired into us, uniquely distinguishing us from other beings. Skeptics may explain this desire as an evolutionary trait that somehow benefited our success as a species. If you listen to an anthropologist discuss this, they will suggest that we have this tendency to seek the transcendent.

Experience and those transcendent moments get codified into religions. We join together tribally in these religions, and we will succeed as a species more together than as individuals. That's the anthropological explanation for why this exists.

However, evolutionary scientists argue that we have moved beyond the need for religion. They believe we are so progressive in our knowledge and understanding of all things that we no longer need religion or transcendent experiences. They claim there is no real transcendent reality, suggesting we should move away from all that because it is merely magic and superstition.

Theologians theorize that we are made for this; it is hardwired into us, and we cannot simply get rid of it. The postmodern conception of our transcendent bent, according to anthropologists, has led to the creation of religion. Yet, they argue that religion is dangerous and that we have outgrown it. This perspective is echoed by figures like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens.

This may reflect the views of some people in your own family or workplace. They might look at your Christianity, your commitment to attending church, serving, giving, and praying to God, and they may not be overtly hostile about it. Living in California, we often feel the need to pretend to be nice, so they might roll their eyes when you discuss these topics.

How does a Christian respond to this? We all have to navigate this culture, and you may feel pressure to keep your beliefs quiet. First, it is important to acknowledge that the assertion of the skeptic is just that—an assertion. What is an assertion? It is a statement of faith, an idea or belief.

Your faith in a God that transcends this reality is often met with skepticism. When people look down at you for that view and make statements like, "There is no God; there is no transcendent reality," they are making a statement of faith. Every statement of faith needs to be backed or supported with argument, evidence, or proof. For literally centuries, Christians have been forming arguments for why we believe what we say we believe.

As a Christian preacher, I make statements of faith constantly, and it is my job to support those with what we call apologetics. What is an apologetic? It is a defense for my statement of faith. This is exactly what the Apostle Peter, in 1 Peter 3:15, told Christians 2,000 years ago: "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give an apologetic, a defense, and an answer for the hope that is within you."

If you're a Christian today, you might say, "I hope that one day when I die, I'm going to be with God." How many of you hope that? Come on, lift your head. I hope that too. But what evidence do you give to support your claim? The skeptic will say, "I don't believe there's a God or a transcendent reality." So, what evidence do you provide? They must also give an apologetic reason for the lack of hope that they have within them, just as you need to give an apologetic reason for the hope that you have within you.

Now, I'm taking the long route here, but let me bring this around. I am essentially posing that in our culture, there are two conceptions of reality. The first conception is the Christian view, which asserts that every human desires transcendence, a transcendent experience, a connection to something beyond this reality. We believe that the something beyond this reality is God, who has created us to experience connection with Him.

The skeptic's conception of reality, on the other hand, would be something like this: There is nothing beyond the material world; transcendence is illusory. It's just an illusion; your brain is playing tricks on you. That is their assertion. Now, how do we reconcile these two worldviews?

Even if you're a Christian and you believe that there is hope after this life, you need to reconcile this belief and articulate your understanding.

Point number three on your outline is that if something bigger or beyond exists, then there must be evidence of its existence. In the remainder of our time, I want to present five pieces of evidence. There are far more than five, but I will focus on these five evidences for why my faith, and your faith if you believe there is something beyond this world, is real and grounded in reality. We need to be able to articulate to the people we interact with why we believe in these things that they often discount.

The first evidence that a transcendent being or reality exists is our universal desire for transcendence. The fact that every human being has this desire for something beyond this reality is, in itself, evidence that there is a reality or something beyond our current existence. This is actually one of the very first philosophical proofs for the existence of God, formulated in the 11th century AD by Saint Anselm of Canterbury. It is called the ontological argument for the existence of God.

"Ontological" comes from the Greek word "ontology," which means "being" or "existence." The idea that there exists in your mind a concept of a being that is beyond this reality serves as a proof that such a being exists. The ontological argument for the existence of God is much more complex than this simple explanation; entire volumes have been written on the subject. In fact, Saint Anselm wrote "Proslogion," which delves deeply into this argument. You may need to read it with several dictionaries at your side, as his language can be quite challenging.

The ontological argument essentially posits that conscious human beings universally share this desire for something greater, which points to the existence of a transcendent reality.

We have an awareness and a desire for a transcendent being, a transcendent reality. The fact that we all have this awareness is itself evidence, perhaps not definitive evidence, but evidence nonetheless that such a reality exists.

The second piece of evidence is the historical accounts of transcendent encounters. Being a preacher of the Bible, I would want to use the Bible as the historical account of these encounters. The Bible is filled with hundreds of accounts of individuals who experienced transcendence throughout history. I talked this morning about the Apostle John, the Apostle Peter, Isaiah, and Jacob. The Bible is rich with experiences of transcendence.

Of course, there will be skeptics who say, "I don't believe those people actually lived." They might claim, "I don't believe there was an actual guy named Abraham." However, there is a lot of evidence to support the existence of these figures. If someone says, "I don't believe there was an actual guy named Peter," they face a significant problem because history supports the fact that these individuals existed.

Another way to think about this is to recognize that all of Western culture is built upon the core testimony of a group of people who, 2,000 years ago, claimed to have had a transcendent encounter where God became a man. This man, Jesus Christ, lived a perfect life, performed miracles, was crucified on a Roman cross, buried, and three days later rose from the dead. He was seen by more than 500 eyewitnesses. That transcendent encounter has fundamentally altered not just Western culture but all of human history.

Understand that all of human history was fundamentally transformed 2,000 years ago by the testimony of a transcendent encounter with the Living God. That is a significant point to consider.

So, the first piece of evidence would be the ontological argument: the universal desire for transcendent reality. The second piece would be the historical accounts of transcendent encounters.

The third line of evidence that I would present today is the line of evidence of transcendence from prophetic fulfillment. For many years, I have had the privilege of teaching at a local Bible college, and a couple of classes that I have taught many times are on the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the prophetic books of the Old Testament. I begin all of those classes by explaining to my students that prophetic prediction and fulfillment are like God's fingerprints on a crime scene.

The fact that we see a prediction made about something that will come to pass, followed by a fulfillment of that prediction in history, hundreds of years apart, indicates that there is one outside of time who is able to see the end from the beginning. The Bible describes this one as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the one who was and is and is to come. He has a vision of things that have not yet come to pass.

Of course, the skeptic will say, "Yes, but I am skeptical of the historicity of both the prediction and the fulfillment." That's fine, but let me give you one prophetic through-line that has existed for 4,000 years, going all the way back to the book of Genesis, chapter 12. We can see this being fulfilled in our very moment today, and it is absolutely phenomenal: the existence of the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.

Almost 4,000 years ago, a man by the name of Abraham, who later would be called Abraham, had a transcendent encounter with the Living God, or so he said. This God told him, at the age of 75 and childless, that he would have a child, a male child. From this child, he would have many millions of descendants, and he would become a great nation. God promised to give Abraham's descendants the land of Canaan as an inheritance forever.

Based on this vision, Abraham followed this God. Twenty-five years later, when his wife Sarah was 90 years old and still childless, she gave birth to a son named Isaac. They named him Isaac because his name means laughter. What do you think they were thinking when she got pregnant?

They have Isaac, and God reaffirms His promise through Isaac and then through Jacob. We just saw this in Genesis chapter 28 at the beginning of our time together this morning.

So, 25 years after this promise, from this transcendent experience and encounter with God, Abraham has a son. Four hundred years later, his descendants, a vast number of descendants, have become a great nation, and they receive the land that God had promised to their father Abraham. They are being led into the promised land by Joshua.

You may say, "Well, okay, that explains it. Roughly 3,400 years ago, the people of Israel took possession of the land, and they've had that land the entire time." No, they haven't. They lost the land about 700 years later, in the eighth century BC, when the Assyrians came and removed them from the land. About 150 years after that, the Babylonians came, completely destroyed the nation of Israel, the capital city of Jerusalem, their temple, and took them as prisoners of war back to Babylon.

But God, through a transcendent experience, spoke to the prophet Isaiah, saying, "Don't worry, because after this, a guy by the name of Cyrus, who will be king of Persia, will let you go back to your land," 200 years before Cyrus even was alive. After they had been in Babylon for a period of nearly a hundred years, this guy by the name of Cyrus, king of Persia, overtakes Babylon and says to the Jewish people, "You can go back to your land." So, they go back to their land.

Well, there you have it. They've been back in their land, except that the Greeks took their land from them about 200 years after that, and then the Romans expelled them from their land in the early second century AD. For 1,900 years, they existed as a people without a homeland, as pilgrims dispersed throughout the world, until May 14, 1948, when the modern State of Israel was established.

Today, we see this nation of Israel, which 2,400 to 2,500 years ago, the prophet Zechariah said would be a trouble to all the world. What's the probability there's no transcendent reality, or maybe there is?

So, first, we have the evidence of the fact that we universally have this desire for transcendence. Secondly, we have the historical accounts of transcendent experience. Third, we have the transcendence of prophetic fulfillment.

The fourth type of evidence I would call contemporary transcendent experiences. Two examples of this are miracles and near-death experiences. Do you realize that there are hundreds of millions of people who say they have personally experienced a miracle? Many of you sitting here today may be among them.

Now, either those hundreds of millions of people who claim to have personally experienced or witnessed a miracle are lying, deluded, or it actually happened. Are we ready to say that literally hundreds of millions of people, potentially half the entire population of the United States, are delusional? At this point, some of you might be thinking that, yes, a lot of them are delusional, but are we really willing to say that all of them are liars?

Craig S. Keener, a professor of theology at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, has written an extensive two-volume work on verified substantial miracles that have been recorded scientifically in our day.

Now, let's talk about near-death experiences. This one blows my mind. Dr. Jeffrey Long, an oncologist, states that there is currently more scientific evidence for the reality of near-death experiences than there is for how to effectively treat certain forms of cancer. This is coming from a cancer doctor who has done extensive research and has founded the Near-Death Experience Foundation, where they catalog thousands of near-death experience stories.

One of these stories is particularly striking. Let me read it to you because it truly amazes me. This account is taken from the book "Imagine Heaven," which originally included a section by Dr. Kimberly Clark Sharpe, a near-death experience researcher. She tells the story of a woman named Maria, who was rushed to the hospital with a severe heart attack. After successful resuscitation, Maria recounted her near-death experience, including a detailed out-of-body observation of her resuscitation. She watched herself being worked on from above by the doctors. Then she went one step beyond; she claimed to have traveled outside of...

The possible disembodied experience occurred when she observed, while sitting on the ledge of the hospital, a tennis shoe on the third-story window ledge. Maria provided detailed information about the shoe; it was a man's left-footed shoe, dark blue, with a wear mark over the little toe and a shoelace tucked underneath the heel. Sharp went window to window on the third floor of the hospital ledge and finally found the shoe exactly as Maria described it.

Statistically speaking, one in 25 people have experienced a near-death experience. This means there are four to six of you here today who may have had such an experience. However, there is no transcendence; there is no reality beyond this reality, even though all of us universally desire it. We have historical accounts of it, prophetic realities that substantiate it, and contemporary accounts.

The fifth and final piece of evidence is personal experience. I could go through many of these, but I'll share one in the form of an answer to prayer. I remember it very distinctly because I actually have notes from that time. In late June 2007, my wife and I were newlyweds with no children, and life was easy. We also hadn't bought a house yet, so my parents were living in Arizona while we were staying at their house.

One day, we received an unexpected bill. How many of you have ever received an unexpected bill, maybe just last week? This bill was for just under twelve hundred dollars, which was more than we could afford to pay. I remember feeling very stressed, as I often do; you can ask my wife about my reactions to bills.

On a Saturday afternoon, we were standing in the driveway. I was getting ready to come down to the church. At that time, I wasn't yet the pastor of this church, but I was teaching the Saturday night Bible study. As I was getting into my car, my wife, being the wonderful spiritual and godly woman that she is, said, "We should pray." In that moment, my pastoral cynicism kicked in, and my first thought was, "Oh yeah, let's pray; she's more spiritual than I am."

So, we prayed a very simple prayer: "God, would you please provide for this bill?" After that, I came down here to set up for the service, and one of the guys who was helping me set up...

A service walked up to greet me and shook my hand. When he did, he left a little piece of paper in my hand. I just smiled and said thank you, then put it in my pocket. I didn't look at it until later that evening when I got in my car and pulled it out. It was a check for $1,000, but my bill was more than that; it was just under $1,200.

The next day, I came to church on a Sunday, greeting people. Another gentleman walked up, shook my hand, and left another piece of paper, which I could tell felt like money. I put it in my pocket and looked at it later. It was a $100 bill. The following day, I went out to the mailbox and found a check for $80.97. I know it was $80.97 because I still have the Excel spreadsheet that I kept as a budget of my deposits from July 1, 2007.

In the space of 48 hours, God, based on a prayer that only my wife and I prayed, provided the exact amount of money for the bill. What's the probability? There's no evidence for transcendence, is there? None whatsoever. I cannot be skeptical about the existence of a transcendent God and transcendent realities because I have seen that God worked providentially in our world. I've seen too much evidence of His existence.

Point number four: evidence abounds for the existence of a reality beyond the reality we know. Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord was in this place, and I didn't know it." How many of you have had that experience? Lift your hand if you say, "I've had that experience; the Lord was here, and I had no clue." He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! There is none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven."

A skeptic would call Jacob's account an unsubstantiated metaphysical claim, but many skeptics have not or will not consider the evidence that contradicts their assertion. Why? There may be many answers to why they won't consider the evidence. I don't know that there's one answer; there are probably many. But certainly, a passage of Scripture comes to mind. Paul wrote this in Romans 1: "What may be known of God is manifest to them, for God has shown it to them."

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 they thankful. Instead, they 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, four-footed animals, and creeping things.

What does that mean in verse 23? It means that they worshiped creation and not the One who made it. They believe we are just a product of creation, natural random processes over billions of years. They worship creation and not the God who made it. Paul goes on in that passage to say that even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, they didn't want to believe in God. Nothing good can come when the will is wrong, as Richard Weaver stated in his book, "Ideas Have Consequences." They don't want to believe in God because if they believe in God, then they are morally responsible and accountable to Him.

I would suggest that, at the end of the day, the skeptic disbelieves not because of a lack of evidence, but because he or she does not want to believe in God.

Point number five on your outline: the evidence reveals that God is, and He is not silent. That's the title of Francis Schaeffer's book from the late 1970s, "God Is and He Is Not Silent." Not only is God the I AM, but Hebrews 11 says He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. He is the reward of those who diligently seek Him, which is why I want to finish by encouraging you to diligently seek Him. Seek Him in prayer, seek Him in the Scriptures, seek Him in worship, or seek Him in the gathering of the body of Christ.

As you seek Him, Jesus said, "He who seeks will find." The more I seek Him, the more I experience the reality of God in this world in a way that I can't explain with just scientific rationality. We prayed for a bill just under twelve hundred dollars, and three independent people who had no idea of that bill gave.

Us the money within 48 hours. If you consider it, there's a lot of evidence, much more than what I've shared this morning.

Would you stand with me as we close in prayer? God, I pray that you would stir us as people who believe in the Living God, who have even experienced that reality—your reality—in this world. We would share that with other people. There are people that we know who need to know that you exist and that we have experienced your presence through answered prayer, through dreams, through visions, through interactions. Whatever it may be, we've experienced your presence.

I pray, God, that you would stir us to share that with other people because a lot of the people that we know need to hear it. Even if we feel embarrassed or weird to share it with them, God, would you stir us to share it with them? That other people would know life through Jesus, that other people would know life in connection with you.

God, do that work in us, we pray. We ask it in Jesus' name.