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BYT-03

960526AM

 

Let’s take our Bibles and before you open them, I want to tell you what we’re doing.  We’re talking and we’re right in the midst of a wonderful series called “The Book that You Can Trust.”  And as you hold your Bible in your hands, I think immediately of what Charles Hadden Spurgeon once said.  He said, “The Bible is much like a lion in a cage.  All that lion needs is not for you to defend it, just to let him out.”  And all the Bible needs and all we need to learn about the scriptures is we don’t need to defend them.  The Bible does not need any defense.  It just needs to be let out.

 

And this morning I think that maybe all of us need to think whether or not we have let the Bible get a little caged in when it comes to the realm of science.  You know a lot of times we’re pretty sure that the Bible is right on when it talks about Jesus and the church and things like that, but when it gets to science, some maybe junior high science teacher or maybe some college professor started planting these seeds of doubt and we think well, let’s not get, you know, overboard here because this is pretty old and you know, and the Bible isn’t real scientific.  But that’s not true.  And I think that this morning, that the book that you hold in your hands ought to be the book that you know that you can trust.

 

I took out some old science books this week and I looked at ‘em.  And I thought, and I should have brought some of ‘em in.  I collect old books.  And I thought it would be really interesting to have the Bible here and some of those old science books over here.  And I want to tell you about this one.  The Bible.

 

The Bible is the book that not one word of it, not one word of this book has ever been proven wrong, though the greatest minds and the greatest endeavors and the greatest empires of the world have sought to dispel, destroy, and disprove this book.  There’s never been a word that’s been proven wrong.  There’s not one fact in this book that’s ever needed updating.  Now I look at my old science books.  You have to update those things every year.  I mean, you ever looked at an old encyclopedia?  I mean, you can buy ‘em at a rummage sale.  They’re just out of date immediately.  Not one fact in this book’s ever needed updating.  Not one scientific statement that God has ever recorded in this book ever needed correction.  There is not a single scientific statement that the world has ever made that’s never been updated.  Because science, scio, is to know and they’re only stating what they know at the time, and when God speaks on science, He knows all and He’s always right the first time.  There’s not one old hypothesis, there’s not one theory that needs adjustment due to some new findings.  Because there are no theories in this book.  There are no educated guesses.  When God speaks, He says it right the first time.  Just truth, absolutely true facts.  This book is full of truth you can stake your life on and not just your life, your soul, your immortal, endless life.  This book has changeless and enduring truth – truth that will last forever.  And every bit of it was inerrantly transmitted from the very presence of God right to us via what God calls inspiration.  And so we have in essence, a book that we can trust.  And not just trust, but you can know that when this book speaks to science, it speaks with absolute complete accuracy.

 

Well, there are seven reasons that I believe that the Bible is true and you can trust the Bible.  The first one we saw was Jesus Christ and His apostles, because He’s just said so.  And those apostles were and the prophets were utterly convinced that the Bible was true.  And we saw what Jesus thought about the Bible last week.

 

But another reason and really a third major one is I believe that the Bible authenticates itself through its scientific accuracy.  And I know most of its now… I’m going into this slow because most of us didn’t enjoy science too much, right?  And you got a little queasy when they took out that stiff frog out of the formaldehyde, and you ran off and got sick in the bathroom.  And then you had to cut it up, if you remember old eighth grade biology.  We’re not going to talk about that.  What we’re going to talk about is the fact that when so much has changed in our world, in fact nearly every day in some realm science has flux, change, restatement, and casting out old and disproved theories, and often we find they’ve made complete errors, and they’re mistaken, and they go a new direction.  That’s what’s going on in the scientific community.  But this book, and we’re only going to look briefly, we’re just going to go down a little bit and come back up.  We won’t go down, stay down deep and stay down long so you drown, but we’re just going to take a little, little cut through the Bible scientifically.  And I think what you’ll find is what I’ve said several times this morning that when God speaks, He always says it right the first time.  And you can trust Him.

 

If you want to look at some verses with me, you can start right in the middle in Psalm 119, and you might want to, on the back of your bulletin, write some of these down about science and the Bible.  But I want to show you a few things.  Psalm 119:89 says this, “Forever, oh Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.”  In other words, it’s not going to change.  God said it right the first time.  “Thy faithfulness,” Psalm 119:90, “is to all generations thou hast established the earth and it abideth.”  The reason why this planet is here right now is not because it just evolved, and by the selection of the best planets it happened to make it.  God planned it and He put it together.  He established the earth and abideth.  Verse 91 says, “They,” that’s all the laws of this planet, “continue to this day according to thy mishpat.”  That’s an interesting Hebrew word.  It’s the commands of God.

 

And I thought it was interesting.  In April the scientific community announced the newest level of knowledge about sub-atomic physics and you know all the… to do with that and all the accelerators and the sub-particle accelerators and all the stuff that’s going on that billions of dollars are being spent on and they’re learning things all the time.  And they’ve learned that every time they go down a level… You know, it wasn’t until about 1911 that they realized that there was a nucleus and all that stuff, and all the radiating out and the gold plates and then Marie Curie and all that stuff built up and then they learned in the ‘40’s to split the atom and through Einstein and all that team… But now they’ve gone down below that and they keep going down below the nucleus into the sub-atomic particles, and they’ve gotten to what they thought was the bottom floor.  And the quarks, not quirks… you know quarks and these little things down there and they found there were six of them, and they found a top and a bottom and other ones and so then they started experimenting on these and in April they shared their findings.  And they said everything we thought about them was true until we got to 1/1000th of their mass, and then we found out that there’s another whole layer we don’t know anything about.  But this is what the end of the article in the science magazine said.  They said the only problem we have is that when these sub-atomic particles, we don’t even know what they are, they’re sub-quarks, whatever that is, they’re down really little.  It says they all seem to know what each other are doing.  When this one goes this way, that one goes that way.  So when they go that way this one goes this way and it says like they’re all connected.  And they say, we don’t understand that.  And I started reading the article and I thought, the deeper they go, they’re just going to find God.  Because the scriptures say, look at verse 91, they continue this day according to thy ordinances for all particles, planets, galaxies, clouds of dust, quasars to the quarks, all of them, verse 91 says, are thy servants.  They cannot explain how it all fits together.  God says, I hold them together.  And when they go down deep, they’re only going to find God.  And they’re going to try and explain it in a different way.

 

Look at another one.  Psalm 119 verse 160, “Thy word is true from the beginning and every one of thy righteous judgments endures forever.”  God says,  I didn’t just throw my word out and hope it was going to make it, He says, from the beginning when I put out my word, everything I said was true and it’s going to endure to the end.  Now, old news magazines, those aren’t going to endure.  Encyclopedias?  They’re not going to endure.  Science books?  They’re not going to endure.  But God says my word endures to the end.

 

Here’s another one you might want to write down.  Isaiah 40 in verse eight.  “The grass withers,” and in this drought we’re in, it sure does.  “…the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever.”  This is a book you can trust.  I mean, don’t let some scientist cage you up to think that you can’t trust the Bible scientifically.  We’re going to see in the future you can also trust it historically as well as every other way because you can trust this book.  Because God says my word is going to endure forever.

 

How about this?  1 Peter one.  You might want to write this one down as precious.  1 Peter 1:23-25, “Being born again, not of corruptible seed,” not of a flawed Bible, “but of incorruptible by the word of God which lives and abides forever.”  Long after Lee Key’s findings and Hugh Ross’ findings have relegated themselves to the dusty trash bin, God’s word is going to abide forever.  Why?  Verse 24.  “For all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man is of the flower of the grass.  The grass withers, the flower falls away,” verse 25 of 1 Peter one, “but the word of the Lord endures forever.”  And this is the word which by the gospel is being preached to you this morning.  You can trust this book, especially you can trust it scientifically.

 

So if you’ll join me this morning, I want to take you on an incredible journey through the scriptures, and I want you to look at the incredible scientific accuracy and the authenticity of a book that, since it was written, has been thousands of years ahead of science.  Thousands of years.  The Bible spoke to matters 4,000 years ago they’re just finding out today.  And it spoke with changeless, irrefutable accuracy.  If you’ve heard of some passage in the Bible that might be in dispute, just wait.  It takes a little while.  Science will catch up with the Bible.  And here are some of the areas.  Let me show you one.

 

Look at Jeremiah 33.  This is a first.  And I’m going to probably give you about 30 verses, and for the more eager, you can write ‘em down.  The rest, you may just want to listen.  But I want to talk about first the first broad area of science, astronomy.  That’s a popular one.  People love astronomy, and stars, and space, and everything else.  Let’s talk about under astronomy how many stars there are, okay?  And let me give you a little background.

 

Up until the time of Copernicus and Galileo and Kepler, the whole scientific community agreed that there were somewhere around 1,000 stars.  That’s how many they could see, you know?  They counted ‘em and they figured out the planets from the stars, and they figured out there were about a 1,000 up until the 17th century.  That’s in all the science books.  There’re about a 1,000 stars.

 

What did God say in Jeremiah 33:22?  “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered…”  That’s something God staked His name…He says you will never be able to count how many stars I made, because I am infinitely powerful and I created all of them from nothing, and He says I hold them together and I know every one of their names.  Jeremiah 33:22, “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured, so I’ll multiply the seed of David my servant and the Levites that minister unto me.”  That’s a little promise about the endurance of the Jews which we’ll talk about in prophecy and history.  But God has always said that.  In fact, listen to this.

 

Scientists are more unsure each year how many there really are.  As the reach of our instruments extends further into heaven, what were thought to be stars are becoming galaxies.  And what were thought to be galaxies are now found out to be clusters of galaxies.  And we’re talking about where they thought was one star in the 17th century they found out to be  100,000,000 stars in the 19th century.  And in the 20th century they’re finding it out to be 1,100,000,000 starred galaxies in cluster.  God says you’re not going to ever be able to number them.  Their numbers are beyond estimation or even calculation.

 

But write this one down, Genesis 1:16.  God made every one of them.  God made ‘em.  You can’t count ‘em.  You don’t even know quite what they all are.  They just keep investigating.  But it says in Genesis 1:16, “And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day (that’s the sun), the lesser light to rule the night.”  And listen to this, this is just an aside, He made the sun, He made the moon and He made the stars, too.  And there are countless stars.  And on that fourth day of creation, He just made ‘em.  You know, how did He make them?  He spoke and they came into being.  Now next week, I’m not going to go into it this week, but next week I’m going to tell you why I really believe that the Bible is literally true and that everything that is came into being in six, literal 24 hour days.  If you don’t believe that, and I always feel very secure in that, because that’s what it says, anything else you have to change the Bible.  Any other view, if you believe in age days or age eras or age eons, you have to flip around what the Bible says.  And since Moses believed that’s how it was and since Jesus said what Moses said was true, I feel very confident that God made them.  Genesis 1:16.

 

Secondly, write this down.  Psalm 147 in verse four.  The number of the stars is countless just like God said, He made them.  Secondly, He names them all.  Psalm 147 in verse four says this, “He telleth the number of the stars.”  He’s the only one that knows how many there are, and He doesn’t just know their number, He calls them all by their names.

 

Now, have you ever felt kind of like alone in the world?  I mean I’ve stood in many lines and gotten to the front of the line and they go, okay, PO57342, you know, your claim number or whatever.  You know you just feel so dehumanized.  And you feel so like a number.  Or did you ever get, you know, a letter from the IRS and you get into that tangled web where you just get paperwork going and you’re just a claim number?

 

Well, God never loses us because if God knows how many stars there are and they all have names, and if He knows how many hairs we have and they’re all numbered, it doesn’t say counted, it says numbered, He even has the number, you know, like 52 fell out today.  Fifty-four.  You know?  In your hairbrush is 27, 28 and 29, you know?  They’re numbered.  It doesn’t say they’re counted.  It says they’re numbered.  So, it’s like when you look up and you see something missing from your shelf, God is so infinite, He knows where all the stars are and what realm they are in their progress toward extinction, and He knows all that and then He knows how many hairs are on everybody’s head and He knows how many of them are still there.  You know what He’s trying to say?  He says you’re so important, you’re so much more important than stars and hair.  And if He knows the stars by name and the number of the hairs, He knows everything about us.  That’s a wonderful thought.  We’ll talk about that in a minute.

 

Here’s the third thing.  God made them, Genesis 1:16, God names them, Psalm 147 in verse four, God sustains them.  That’s Colossians 1:17.  It says, “He (that’s Christ) is before all things, and by Him all things consist.”

 

We do not even know the most fundamental, we don’t have a fundamental understanding of one of the very basic building blocks of the universe, and that is how you can have an atom with a nucleus, that’s the center of the atom, that has two like-charged particles in it because like-charges what?  You learn that early on, right?  Like charges what?  Repel.  How do you get two positively charged protons down there?  Well, they have glue-ons.  That’s what the physicists… glue-ons.  Well, good, good.  What’s a glue-on?  Well, we don’t know.  But it holds them together.

 

Well, I know what a glue-on is.  It’s right there.  It’s in Colossians 1:17.  He is before all things.  That means that Christ preceded matter and He is the creator and He’s outside of it.  But it says only by Him can all things hold together.  That’s why the deeper they get into sub-atomic physics, the less they understand.  And what they’re saying is it’s getting mystical.  It’s almost a religion.  Because those particles know each other, and they move around in concert with each other, and they respond in certain ways, and there’s more of them the deeper they go…

 

And so that’s why there’s a revival right now in China and Russia of all the witch doctor stuff and the worship of spirits and demons, because the Russians basically have checked out, a lot of them on science, because the communists use science to fool them and to trick them.  And so they say we want to go back to the old animistic witch doctor stuff.  We can trust that.  No, they’re going the wrong direction.  You’ve got to trust the one that sustains all things.

 

Okay.  If God made everything, and countless stars, what does that mean to us?  It means that we should trust His power.  If scientists can’t even count the stars and if God made every one of them as a side after He made the sun and the moon, just like that, you should be able to trust His power.

 

Now, you facing anything big this week?  I mean, really big, like your car’s broken down or, you know, you’ve got to finish something, or a big test with some employment deal, or maybe some interview you have to do and it’s really boggling you?  You facing something big?  Trust the power of the God who with no exertion of His strength made all the stars that could never be numbered and never will be.  Only He knows their number.  If God names them all, trust His plan.  If God knows the names of all the stars, and if He knows the number of all of our hairs, He also said that He has planned out our life, and if we’ll just yield to His will, He’ll make it the best it could ever be.

 

Wouldn’t you rather have the one that knows the end from the beginning steering, or do you want to do it yourself and be doing the bumper… like, you ever been in the bumper cars, you know, you bump against this one.  That’s how most people live their lives.  It’s because they’re trying to do it themselves, and God says, why didn’t you in all your ways acknowledge me and trust in me with all your heart and stop leaning on your own understanding and let me direct your paths and I’ll take you the best way.  Trust His plan.  Trust His power.

 

How about this?  Colossians 1:17, if God holds all the centers of every atom together, and that’s what the word of God says, that God is holding all the atoms together.

 

And by the way, Peter tells us in 2 Peter that God’s going to take His finger off and the whole universe is going to dissolve.  Isn’t that interesting?  He’s going to change, He’s going to totally renovate everything.  There’s coming a day, 2 Peter three, you can read about it.  He’s going to let go and whew!  It’s just going to all come apart and He’s going to put it back together and there’ll be no more sin.  It’s going to be done.

 

But if you can trust in His power and trust in His plan, then you can trust in His care that He cares for you.  If he holds together the atoms, He’s going to hold together your life and my life, and I think that when we talk about astronomy and everything else it always drives me back to trusting the power of God, trusting the plan of God, trusting the care of God.  And all that takes me down to His word has always said this is true, so we should trust His word.  ‘Cause that’s where He’s going to care for you, that’s where you’re going to find His plan, that’s where you’re going to see His power.  In this book that you can trust.

 

Second major field.  Not only under astronomy and the number of stars is the Bible right on, here’s something.  In astrophysics and astrophysicists, they study physics not on this planet but out there.  They’ve been looking into, in recent days, this thing called dark matter.  And what they’ve done is through complicated calculations and just computer rooms filled with computers, they’ve calculated that about 90+ percent of our universe is made of non-visible dark matter.

 

Here’s a verse to write down.  Job 38:19.  This is what God said to Job.  “Where is the way where light dwelleth and as for darkness, where is the place thereof?”  And in one sentence in the word of God 4,500 years ago, God revealed the reality that there is light and there is darkness and darkness is not just the absence of light.  Darkness and dark matter is part of the creation of God.  And actually some astrophysicists go so far as to say that 99% of our universe, the mass of our universe is made up of dark matter that we know this much about.  Nothing.  We don’t know anything about it.  Ninety-nine percent of the universe is dark matter.  What is it?  We don’t know.  We know so much.  We know enough to determine our own destiny and we refuse to acknowledge the creator, but we don’t know what that stuff is.  Job says, do you know where the way of light, where it dwells, as for darkness, where the place thereof is?

 

How about gravity?  I mean, remember someone was sitting under an apple tree or whatever kind of tree and got bopped on the head and had a revolutionary thought about gravity.  Newton.  Listen to what Job 38:31 says about gravity.  Four-thousand five-hundred year old book of the Bible.  “Can’t thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion?”  You know it’s very interesting the words that are used in Hebrew.  It talks about the pull of Pleiades and the pull of Orion.  Did you know that’s talking about the, what scientists are just in the last few hundred years understanding about the gravitational tug of star systems.  And how Einstein perceived by mathematics what they observed in later years that the gravity of the sun can bend a light.  I mean light can be bent?  That means there’s something there that can be bent.  And all the gravitational studies… and yet the scriptures in this major area of study in astronomy and the gravitational tug of stars and of star systems, the scriptures talked about the tug of the star system Pleiades and the constellation Orion.

 

Now let’s come to the earth.  Let’s get out of the sky and come to the earth.  How about geophysical sciences.  Let’s look at oceanography, okay?  Oceanography.  I wanted to be an oceanographer at one time.  Still love oceanography.  Here’s what it says in Job 38 in verse 16.  Job has a lot to say about science.  “Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea or hast thou walked in search of the depth?”  You know they found it two miles down at the bottom of these trenches, two mile plus down that there are volcanic vents that are squirting out super-hot water.  At the bottom, you know, it’s real cold there, like 30-some degree water at the bottom of those trenches, and coming out of those rifts in the earth’s crust are these super-hot water vents.  And at the bottom of these two mile deep ditches there are teeming life systems surrounding these toxic, hot springs.  I mean, these things are just belching out horribly poisonous elements, and yet the life forms there are so vast that…

 

It’s kind of like when they got up to the top of the rain forests, you know, a few years back, they found out that there are literally thousands of animals that live 200 feet high in the air on the canopy of the rain forest.

 

Now they’re finding when they go to the very depths of the earth that there are teeming life systems, and God says, have you ever entered into the springs of the ocean?  Now that’s just one spring.  Did you know there are underground currents and they didn’t find these until the sailing days in the colonial times in the 15th, 16th century.  They found that if they went out into the current that they’d get quicker even though it was a further distance, and they found out that God put springs and currents into the ocean and they follow patterns and there are currents coming up out of the bottom of the sea floor and two miles down in the dark ocean depths unknown until this century is the life God placed down there to show His creative power.

 

Well, oceanography.  How about biology?  I thought about ornithology.  That’s the study of birds.  Job 39 says this, “Does the hawk fly by thy wisdom?  Does the hawk stretch her wings toward the south because you tell it to?”  Have you ever thought about the navigational system of birds?  Homing pigeons?  How about just plain dumb birds, you know, that are not homing pigeons?  How do they know all that?  “Does the eagle soar at thy command,” Job 39:27.  Verse 28, “Does she dwell and abide in the rock, in the crag of the rock in the strong place and from then seek her prey?  Her eyes can see afar off.”  Why is it that those birds can’t see diddly-squat up close, but they can see anything from 200 feet?  I mean they can see a mouse move a little branch and it’ll just dive down and get it.  Now isn’t that interesting.  I mean how many generations did they have to evolve to get and starve to death before they got eyes like that?  Isn’t it interesting that they came with the right equipment right at the start?  Interestingly enough, the migratory navigation systems that are in birds, bees and ants are not even fully understood and were not even closely mimicked until the satellite system.

 

You know you’re hearing about this satellite deal where you can get a little thing in your car and it’ll tell you how close Pizza Hut is.  You know, I mean, that’s really important.  And you have to have these multi-billion dollar networks of satellites up there, and you’ve got to have a receiver here, and you’ve got to figure out how to use it, and you can’t even figure out the CD, you know?  I can’t even set the time sometimes on my car clock, you know, let alone figure out how to find Pizza Hut with the satellite thing in my… you know, I don’t have one, but when it comes.  You know?  And here we are like this…

 

And yet, listen to this, every year of history at precisely the same week in the month of June, 50,000,000 sockeye salmons come back and spawn in the same streams, and yet they live 4,000 miles away out in the ocean.  And yet they all come back the third week of June, 50,000,000 of them.  And you know what the scientists have done?  They have implanted homing devices and radio things, and they’ve written on them, and they’ve found out not only do they come back to the general area, they will come back to exactly the spot in the stream bed where they were spawned and they will spawn there.  Now how does that sockeye salmon, who has a brain the size of a mouse, go 4,000 miles out into the ocean and be at varying depths and have all these fun things to eat out there… I mean, can you imagine a kid?  Let him loose and tell him to come home, if he could go through the candy store and McDonalds.  I mean, can you imagine a fish out there just eating its way around, and all of a sudden BONG!  It knows, it’s got a plan.  It knows how long it takes to swim 4,000 miles against the currents, against the predators, against all the harsh whatever it goes through, and it comes back and you can set your watch by ‘em.  They start coming up to spawn.  How does that happen?  They never miss their mark.  Why?  Because God gave them an absolutely focused sense of direction.

 

God has placed some nearly unbelievable senses into the animal world.  Migratory birds, they fly thousands of miles exactly to their destination, how?  Scientists have concluded that they have a sense of the earth’s magnetic field and they have literally an internal compass.  The king of the universe, our creator, didn’t leave us out.

 

How’s your compass this morning?  Don’t let scientists rob you of the reality that God has put a compass on you, and what we’re supposed to do is to look to Him and trust His word.

 

Well, here’s another quick one.  Astronomy, oceanography, biology, how about meteorology?  We like weather here.  Great weather here in Oklahoma.  It’s exciting.  Meteorology is the study of our atmosphere.  A few hundred years ago it was found out that the air above us has weight.  I mean that was a… they thought that guy that invented, discovered that was crazy.  They said, you mean there’s, there’s nothing there.  What do you mean it has weight?  You know, you can’t see air, you can’t feel air, this scientist said it has weight.

 

Listen to what the oldest book in the Bible says.  Job 28, you might want to write down meteorology, Job 28:24-25.  “He looks to the ends of the earth and He sees under the whole heavens.   Verse 25, “He establishes a weight for the wind and He apportions the waters by measure.”  Meteorology.   The air has weight.  God said so to Job 4,500 years ago.  But He doesn’t stop there.

 

The water cycle, which is a part of hydrology, and hydrology is the study of the water cycle of the earth, how water circulates from the ground and the seas to the air and back again.  And the scriptures explicitly document this fact.  That’s why some of the early scientists were Bible believers, and I think that they kind of got their discovery vein in place by reading the Bible and saying, you know it says that, let me see it.  I know if God says it must be there.  And some of these early scientists were ardent believers.  But it says in Ecclesiastes 1:7, “All rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full.  Unto the place from whence the rivers came thither they return.”  You get it?  It rains in the mountains, it runs down the river, the river goes into the ocean, the ocean gets full of water, it condenses and comes over the land and precipitates.  Do you get it?  That’s hydrology.

 

How about Job 36?  And it talks in Job 36:27-28 about evaporation, condensation, vapor clouds, and precipitation.  That’s the elements of hydrology.  Listen to Job, Job 36:27.  “(God) He draws up drops of water which distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man.”  That didn’t enter the scientific textbooks until about 300-400 years ago.  And they called it hydrology.  I call it God knows what He’s talking about.

 

Psalm 135:7, “He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth.  He makes lightning for the rain, He brings wind out of His treasuries.”

 

Job 26:8, “He binds up the water in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it.”

 

Job 28:10-11, “He cuts out channels in the rock; His eyes see precious things.  He damns the streams from trickling, what is hidden He brings forth to light.”  God controls the hydrological cycle.

 

Now this one.  Don’t faint, but how about isostacy?  You ever heard of isostacy?  Probably haven’t heard it in school lately.  They don’t cover it.  Isostacy is a brand new study of the rotational balance that’s on our planet.  And what happened is they started studying earthquakes and they wanted to predict earthquakes, and so they had to study all about the earth and its balance and what would shift it, and so they started a whole science called isostacy.  And they found out that there is a global relationship between the heights of the mountains and the depths of the oceans.  And so in their study of earthquakes, they discovered all this, and they said that in order for the earth not to wobble as it’s rotating, there has to be a balance between mountains and oceans.  Listen to Isaiah 40 in verse 12, written 600 years before Christ, 2,600 years ago.  “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand?  Who has measured the heaven with a span and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in balance?”  You know that’s cute poetry, but you know what?  It also is talking about the reality that God says I have balanced the water and the mountains.  And scientists didn’t even know they needed to be balanced until in the last century.  And they found out that there is a very delicate balance.

 

And that when God moves all the islands out of their place and when he causes the earthquakes and in the tribulation time, the whole planet is going to get out of balance.  And what you’re seeing in the tribulation is the whole planet is going into a death spin.  And the oceans are covering the land, and everything gets mixed up, and it’s the final judgment.

 

How about this?  Isostacy, you thought that was good.  How about geodesy?  Geodesy is the study in shape and size of the gravitational forces of our planet.  And although science has always thought, up until about the 17th century, that the earth was flat, in fact everyone thought it was flat, God always said it was round.  Did you know that?  Even though the Roman Catholic church, you know, didn’t appreciate, you know, some of the early scientists that said it was round, the Bible always said it.

 

Number one, the Bible says the earth rotates.  That means it turns on an axis.  And in 1,400 that fact was absent on the planet until the year 1,400.  The thinkers of the day said the earth was flat.  In fact, the Hindu Bible affirms that the earth is flat and it rests on the back of elephants.  But God says in Job 38:14 that the earth takes the form of clay under a seal.  You say, well, what does that mean?  Well, go over to the museum, the Philbrook, and the first exhibit in their antiquities thing has clay to seals.  And you know what it is?  It’s a little thing, it looks like a roll of toilet paper and it’s got a stick through it and you would go like this.  And you’d roll it.  And that’s how you’d sign your name.  You’d stick your stick through your little seal and you go like that.  And you know what it says?  The earth turns like the clay to the seal.  What does it do?  It rotates.  It turns like this.  You say, that doesn’t say it’s round.  I know.  It’s in another verse.

 

In Job 26:7, “He stretches the north over empty places.  The earth hangs upon nothing.”

 

Isaiah 40:22, “And it is He who sits above the sphere of the earth.”  The circle of the earth, Isaiah 40 verse 22.  So you know what God says about geodacy?  He says the earth is round, and it rotates on an axis, and it hangs on nothing.  No elephants.  When they twitch, causing earthquakes, which is what the Hindus believed.  That’s what the Bible says.  Forty-five hundred years before science found it out.

 

Geology, Job 38:4-6, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Who laid the measures?  The foundations are fastened and the cornerstone thereof.”  And all the way through Job it talks about the layers of the earth and how God put it together.

 

I want to conclude with this.  Some of the basic laws of science are called the laws of thermodynamics.  There are some rules how the universe operates.  And these rules are collectively called the laws of thermodynamics.  The first law of thermodynamics states this, that ultimately nothing is destroyed.  This is the idea of the conservation of mass and energy.  Okay?

 

What does the Bible say about that.  Isaiah 40 in verse 26, “Lift up your eyes on high and behold who created all these things that bringeth out their host by number.  He calls them all by names by the greatness of His might and He is strong in power and not one faileth.”  And that word faileth literally means passes away.  God says I made everything, and I hold it all together, and nothing goes away.

 

Do you know what scientists found out?  They found out that there’s a law of conservation and energy and nothing is ultimately ever destroyed.

 

Ecclesiastes 1:10, “Is there anything of which one can say, look there is something new?  It was here already long ago; it was here before our time.”  Thousands of years before scientists discovered the laws of thermodynamics, God states that He keeps everything from missing and there’s really nothing new, which is a layman’s way of saying the first law of thermodynamics.

 

The second law states that although there’s a conservation of mass and energy, that’s the first law, all matter in the universe is still involved in a breakdown, going from order to disorder and declining.  That’s the second law of thermodynamics.  Everything’s falling apart.  From order to chaos.  From energy to entropy.

 

You know what the Bible says?  Even though evolution denies this, this Bible affirms the second law.  It says creation, Romans 8:21, “…creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”  Why is the universe decaying?  ‘Cause God cursed it in Genesis 3.  And ever since that curse and the entrance of sin through the fall of Adam and Eve going along with Satan’s rebellion, the universe has been decaying.

 

Do you know why all the scientists get all these billion year things?  Because they don’t realize the effect on the original creation of God that that curse had and how it just caused everything to decay so rapidly.

 

Well, a fellow won the Nobel prize a few years back, his name was Herbert Spencer, and he won it in physics, because he classified all knowable things into five categories, and they gave him the prize.  And this is what he said, he said, science can classify all things as either time, force, motion, space or matter.  Isn’t that neat?  Wish I would have thought of that.  Got $50,000 for saying five words:  time, force, motion, space and matter.

 

But you know what?  If you look at Genesis 1:1, and we’re going to conclude here, okay?  Genesis 1:1.  Look at this.  I want to show you something.  You can win a Nobel prize.  Better write this down.  Some of you need some money.  Okay?  In the beginning (time), God (force) created (that’s motion) the heavens (that’s space) and the earth (that’s matter).  Time, force, motion, space, matter.  It’s in the first verse of the Bible, and Mr. Spencer only rediscovered the truth that’s already there.

 

But you know there’s a day coming when the one that did all this, that created all these things, that holds them all together, is going to sit as judge on His creation, and that’s why this book is so important to know about.  Because it says in Revelation 20, “I saw a great white throne and Him that sat on it from whose face the heavens and the earth fled away.  And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened.  And another book was open, which is the book of life.  And the dead were judged out of those things that were written in the books according to their deeds.”  And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, all those that were cremated and scattered to the sea, those that were buried at sea, those who were lost at sea.  The sea delivers up the dead.  Death and hell,  the grave delivers up the dead which were in them and they were judged everyone according to what they did.  “And death and hell were cast in the lake of fire.  This is the second death.  And whoever was not found written in the book of life was cast in the lake of fire.”

 

You know the creator that has flawlessly left His signature on the universe, has beamed down a book that tells us about immortality and our origins.  He’s going to someday sit before His creation and they’re going to stand in front of Him, one by one.  He’s going to say, I, when you were born, I gave you two candles. Romans 1 says, I gave you the candle of creation and if you hold up the candle of creation, you can see my handiwork in every corner of this planet and every realm of outer space you can see me.  And that light will, that little light of creation, will lead you to me if you’ll let it.  And He says you were born also with the candle of your conscience, and I put within you my image that you know that things are not right; and even the most savage, primitive people have within them the law of God written that will lead them to seek after God, Acts 17 says.  But you know if you won’t do that, or if you just plain have the blaring spotlight of His entire revelation in front of you and you still won’t believe, He says I’m going to cast you in the lake of fire forever.

 

Revelation 21 says He makes a new heaven.  Revelation 22, there is a new realm called eternity and it says in Revelation 22:12 and “Behold I come quickly.  My reward is with me to give to everyone according to his work.”  He is coming.  Revelation 22:15 without will be forever those whose sin He will judge.

 

But you know how the Bible ends?  And the spirit and the bride say, Come, let him that heareths say come, and let him who is at thirst come, and whoever will let him, take of the water of life freely.  You know the way the Bible opens, it closes.  Fallen man and sin, God loves them, God seeks them, God forgives them, God saves them, God offers them everything.  That’s how it starts.  You know how it ends?  He’s still seeking, He’s still loving, He’s still forgiving, He’s still saving, He’s still offering them eternity.

 

I don’t know about you, but that’s the most glorious news in the world.  That this book you can trust has never had a correction, never had  a mistake to be corrected, never had a flaw or a wrong theorem, never needed to be updated.  It says the same thing it’s always said.  That God so loved us that He sent His one and only, Himself in human flesh, to die in our place.  To whoever would receive a free gift would have forever, everlasting life.  The book you can trust.  I hope you trust the God of that book.  Let’s bow for a word of prayer before we go this morning.

 

Lord we love your word because we know the incarnate word Jesus Christ.  If there’s someone here this morning that’s never met Him, we pray that you would draw them to yourself.  Because no one can come to the son except the father which is in heaven draw them.  We can’t convince them.  We can’t coerce them, we can’t scare ‘em into it.  You have to tug at their heart through your spirit, and we ask you, as you have promised, that you would do that this morning.  Maybe there’s someone that’s been going to church all their life, they’re on the rolls, they’re a member in good standing with everyone but you.  We pray that you might rattle their cage a little bit this morning, make ‘em realize that it’s only by simple faith in your gracious, free gift that they can have eternal life, not by racking up enough they’ve done.  And maybe there’s someone here who’s never been able to trust you enough to be saved ‘cause they didn’t know your word was true.  May they be prompted to believe this is the book that they can trust.  And the God that loved them so is true and real, and this morning He’s offering Himself to them.  And for any Christians that have left their Bible caged up because they’re afraid of science or philosophy or whatever, may they just let it out of the cage and realize they don’t need to defend it, that the Bible is true.  It defends itself.  There are no errors in it.  And Lord we pray that we would just go as confident people and that you would bring us back tonight to rejoice in our salvation around your table as we celebrate the greatest meal that can be celebrated by the greatest family there is – your family – as you’ve invited us tonight to eat with you.  I can think of no higher invitation than to be invited to eat with the king of the universe and partake at His table.  May we come with clean hands and pure hearts.  And may we come worshiping you on this very special day which is your day.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray.  Amen.

 

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