Who Am I? Created in God's Image

Praise God, brothers and sisters. Um, today I'll be reading from Psalms chapter 118 verse uh 24. This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. You know, it's a it's a nice day today. It's sunny finally. All the past Sundays, they have been gloomy. Um, and we know that our brothers, God willing, supposed to get baptized today as well, you know. So, uh, let's open up our hearts for today's service. Let's let's hear the message, what the music is saying to us as well. And let's stand up and pray. Lord God, we thank you for this beautiful morning you've given us. Lord, we ask you and we pray, Lord, fill us place the Holy Spirit, God, speak to our hearts, Lord, help us to learn something new today, Lord. And we pray and we ask, God, bless everything, Lord. Bless the preaching and the word today, Lord, and the music, Lord. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. And all still standing, we're going to be singing, turn your eyes upon Jesus. [Music] Oh soul, are you weery and trouble? No light in the darkness you see. There's life for a look at the Savior and life more abundant and free. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. [Music] And the things of earth will grow strange there in the light of his glory and grace. Through death into life everlasting, he passed and we follow him there. Oh, no more have dominion for more than conquerors we are. Turn your eyes upon [Music] Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. His word shall not fail you. He promised. Believe him and all will be well. Then go to a world that is dying is perfect salvation to tell. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow straight to him. And the light of his glory and grace. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. [Music] It is so sweet to trust in Jesus and to take him at his word just to press upon his promise and to know thus sayith the Lord. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I prove him more and more. Jesus, Jesus, preious Jesus. Oh, for grace, to trust him more. [Music] Oh, how sweet to trust in Jesus. Just to trust his cleansing blood and in simple faith to plunge me the healing cleansing flood. Jesus, Jesus. How I trust him, how I prove him more in all. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus. Oh, for grace to trust him all. Yes, sweet to trust in Jesus. Just from sin and self to cease. Just from Jesus simply taking life and rest and joy and peace. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him. How I proved him more and more. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus. Oh, for grace to trust him more. I'm so glad I learned to trust thee, precious Jesus, Savior, friend. And I know that thou are with me, will be with me to the end. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I prove him more and more. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus. Oh, for grace to trust in more. Praise God. Praise the Lord, brothers and sisters, for this beautiful morning that God has given us that we can all come here all together today and listen to his word that he's going to give us. And I'm going to read a Bible verse in Psalms uh 143:8. And it says here, "Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go for to you I entrust my life. Praise God. And we will have a guest speaker uh Jay Seager leading his topic for us called who am I? God bless. Be here to address you. Uh I'm going to go fast. I have a certain amount of time and I want to honor that. A lot of great information. Many of you don't know me. I say from a hole in the ground. My background very quick. There's me and there's a hole in the ground. There are a few differences. I use that slide to warn you. I have a very dry sense of humor, but I was raised in a Christian home and you can see very clearly that is a Christian home. Um, it was actually my mom that uh led me to Christ when I was in early grade school years. She was leading a backyard Bible club for kids in the neighborhood and I heard the gospel message and trusted Christ in early years. I'm very thankful to both my parents for the background they gave me. They not only taught me the right things, they lived it out in their own life. Um when I graduated from high school, I went to public schools. I live in Wisconsin. You may have heard of that. Um so headed back there today later. So I was raised in public schools. Then when I graduated, I went to a Christian university was called John Brown University in Arkansas to study mechanical engineering. I got a degree there, but then I became more interested in physics. They didn't have a physics major. So I went back to Wisconsin to the University of Wisconsin Whitewater to get a degree in physics. That's where my world changed quite a bit. going from a small Christian college where my engineering professors opened up every class in prayer to a large state university where my physics professors did not open up in prayer. They were all evolutionists. Some of them were atheists and they were telling me that everything I believed was wrong. And that made me very uncomfortable to be surrounded by those PhD scientists who I assumed that they had a lot of evidence for what they believed. I realized for the first time in my entire life that even though I knew what I believed, I did not know why. I couldn't defend the Christian worldview. So God put it on my heart to start looking into things. So I've been looking into things for 40 years. And a little over 18 years ago, I started a ministry called the Starting Point Project. It's all about our starting point. We start with the belief that God exists and the Bible is the word of God. And along the way, I was invited to be on the board of directors of a group called Logos Research Associates. This is the world's largest group of scientists who are Christians and creationists. Um, the scientists who started it, Dr. John Sanford. He's from Cornell University. Um, he's famous for having invented something called the GAN gun. Uh, it inserts genes into the DNA. Worldwide famous for that. He was an atheist for much of his career, but he became a Christian. Very strong Christian, very humble man. Actually had lunch with him a few weeks ago. He's moved to Nashville now. Another scientist on the board, Dr. John Bombgardner. He's a PhD geoysicist. He just happened to build the world's best 3D computer simulation of plate tectonics. So even secular geologists use that model to see how plates of the earth are moving. Brilliant, brilliant scientist. So those those two scientists, myself and a few others on the board, I always say as smart as these guys are and they are brilliant. If they were here with us this morning, they would be the first to admit out of all eight board members, I am the tallest. So pretty proud of that. Um and actually two years ago, Dr. Sanford, who started this group, asked if I would step up and become president. So now I guess I'm president and I've lost all respect for the other guys if they want me to lead them. But they're doing cutting edge research and then I get to convert their findings into English. So quick summary of the ministry been speaking 18 years full-time but 40 years total. Um given over 3,400 lectures all over the United States been in other countries including Russia. Um been to the US Naval Academy, West Point officers. I lead Grand Canyon tours. This is a picture from the top of Horseshoe Bend that we actually raft around earlier in the day and then we go to the top at the end of the day, watch the sunset. U my daughter, we hired her about three years ago. She works with me full-time, helps coordinate all of our Grand Canyon tours. Wonderful to work with. Our son, he's gone on some of my tours, but a couple years ago, another group flew me down to give some lectures, and they wanted to hike all the way down to the bottom and back up. We don't do that on our tours, but they wanted to. So my son came with and we hiked down, but we went in February. It was 19 degrees at the top, snow and ice covered trails, very dangerous. We had spikes on our boots, but we made it out. It's a great trip to do that with my son. My wife Amy, uh, we've been married 32 years in a row, so we're kind of on a roll. and she's been on some of my tours a few years ago, but she wanted to go again because we've added a few new things, including going to the top of Horseshoe Bend. And we've also added going to a beautiful orange wavy antelope Canyon. It's called the Slot Canyon. So, we hiked through that. She was really excited to be able to see that. Um, I do weekly podcasts. Every Friday, new one comes out. We have over a hundred out there. We've reached the top 5% on the planet. It's in 77 countries right now. Those are all free. I'll talk about a resources a little bit more at the end. I've written three books. Uh the book on creation, I've been told by some of the world's leading scientists. I think it's the best overview that's out there. So with that, we're going to jump into this talk. Who am I? This is all about who we really are. The world is trying to redefine who we are. And so we're going to take a look at who we really are. And there are two approaches to try to answer this question. We could look at man's wisdom, everything that man is telling us about us. Or we could look at God's wisdom. I kind of highly lean towards going with God's wisdom. Um when I put this talk together, my own church back in Wisconsin was doing a series and the first week was going to be addressing the question of who is Jesus? That's the most important question. So they went through that and then the next week they wanted to do who am I? So, I will summarize the answer to who is Jesus. Pretty straightforward. Jesus is exactly who he said he is. He's the way, the truth, the life. He's the Messiah, the son of God. He is God. And because Jesus is who he said he is, uh we are who he said we are. We are created in the image of God. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. Furthermore, we are fellows with Christ. We are the body of Christ. We are God's chosen ones also. We are more than conquerors. We're God's temple. We're chosen in him before the foundation of the world. Uh we are the light of the world, partakers of the divine nature, and fearfully and wonderfully made. We're not going to take time to stop and go through all the passages. You're probably familiar with many of those. It's very clear who the Bible says we are. Well, what does man say about who we are? Here's just one example from a very intelligent scientist. This was Stephen Hawking. He was uh the world's leading theoretical physicist. He suffered from Lou Garri's disease, but brilliant scientist. This is what he said. He said, "The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a 100 billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. We are each free to believe what we want. And it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization. There is probably no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that I am extremely grateful. I could do a whole sermon just on this quote. I'm going to pull out just two things of what he said. He appreciated the grand design. Does anyone see a problem with that? How do you have design if you don't have a designer? He was an atheist. He didn't believe in God. So, how do you have design without a designer? And then he was extremely grateful to whom or what is he grateful to particles for banging together over billions of years to create him. And now he his particles could appreciate all the other particles. That doesn't make any sense. Then we have Lawrence Krauss. He's one of the leading theoretical physicists today. Brilliant scientist, but he's also an atheist. He said this. Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if the stars hadn't exploded. The only way for them to get in your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. the stars died so that you could be here today. I would not want to be in his shoes when he meets his creator. He doesn't believe in the creator. Very sad. But this is what the world is telling us about ourselves. Well, why can't we put the two together? Take the best of man's wisdom and God's wisdom and put them together. Most people actually do that. But this is what happens. Uh God's wisdom, the Bible usually takes a back seat way in the back. And often the the blinds are drawn down because people are embarrassed to say that they believe the Bible. They mainly go with man's wisdom and then they add a little Bible here and there when it's convenient. So that's why it's dangerous to put the two together. And how does this happen? How did we get to the point where we've lost respect for God's word? Well, it has to do with a very powerful Hebrew word and it's pronounced yabat. The English translation is, "Yeah, but it's not actually a Hebrew word. I made it up. I don't know Hebrew. I'm still working on English." So, but what happens is we see what the Bible says, but then we say, "Yeah, but I saw a YouTube video of this scientist and he's really smart, so you got to go with that." But doesn't the Bible say this? Yeah, but my teacher says this. My professor says that. So, we're constantly saying, "I know what the Bible says." says, "Yeah, but I know better cuz I heard something else." So, we're going to see this, "Yeah, but" theme all the way through this talk. Go back to the Garden of Eden. God creates everything and it's perfect. What's one of the first things that happens? Satan comes in there and he starts to mess with Eve. He says, "Did God really say? Did God really say you can't eat of any tree in the garden?" Guess what? God didn't say that. He said, "You can eat of any tree in the garden except for one." So, Satan misqued God, twisted his words, took it out of context, and got Eve to doubt God's word. His plan has not changed at all. He's doing the same thing today. He gets skeptics to doubt God's word, but he even gets Christians to doubt God's word. They know what it says, but Yeah. Yeah. But they know better. So, even Satan is getting Christians to doubt God's word. Well, John 5:46-47, Jesus speaking, he said, "For if you believed in Moses, you would believe in me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" Jesus is saying, "I'm not sure what's going on here because you don't believe Moses and what he wrote. But Moses wrote about me. So, if you don't believe him and his writings, why would you believe anything I have to say?" Well, again, what were Moses's writings? The first five books of the Bible, including the book of Genesis, was written by Moses. But people are doubting that. Well, it's interesting. Pretty much every major doctrine we believe as Christians is founded in the book of Genesis. For example, we have the doctrine of sin. What is that? God created Adam and Eve and they were perfect, but they disobeyed God. That's what sin is. Sin is disobedience to God. Its definition goes back to the book of Genesis. We have death. There's death all around us. Where did death come from? Well, God created Adam and Eve in that garden. They were perfect, but they sinned and disobeyed God. And the consequence of their sin was that it brought death and a curse into God's perfect creation. The definition of death goes back to Genesis. Then we have marriage. Marriage is one man and one woman for life. That is highly controversial around the country, even in many churches. Where did that come from? Well, God created Adam and Eve in that garden. They were perfect. And he said, "It's going to be one man and one woman for life." It goes back to Genesis. And then we have clothing. I I noticed you're all wearing clothes this morning. That's a good thing. Do you ever think about this? It's kind of weird, but uh like right now it's a little colder outside. So putting clothes on is nice. Gets you a little warmer. But when it is perfectly nice outside, nice and warm. Why put clothes on? Because God created Adam and Eve in that garden. They were perfect. But they sinned, disobeyed God, and brought death and a curse into God's perfect creation. And clothing was just a temporary covering for our sin. Goes back to Genesis. And then we have work. Why do we work? Because God created Adam and Eve in that garden. He said, "Adam, I want you to work the ground till the earth." Now, it got a lot harder for him after he sinned. But it was actually designed by God right from the beginning. It goes back to Genesis. Then we have Jesus. Jesus is referred to as being the last Adam. If the first Adam wasn't real, oh that didn't really happen. What does that say about the last Adam? And then most importantly, the gospel message. What is the gospel message? Well, that Jesus Christ came and he died on a cross and he rose again the third day. We'll be celebrating that soon. Why did Jesus do that? Because God created Adam and Eve in that garden. They were perfect, but they sinned. got kicked out of the garden and that brought death and a curse to God's perfect creation and the shed blood of Jesus Christ is the only permanent solution for that problem. The gospel message starts back in the book of Genesis. In fact, if Genesis is not literal history with a literal very good creation and a literal Adam and Eve, then sin did not literally enter the world through their actions and you and I don't literally need to be saved. I hope you can start to see Genesis is kind of important for us. It's not a side topic that you can take or leave. No, it's very important. It's foundational. Fact, if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? Genesis is the foundation for the Bible. If that gets destroyed, if it wasn't true, it didn't happen, if there are errors or contradictions in Genesis, were in big trouble because that's our foundation. Here's a quote from another atheist. I think this quote is very disturbing, but it actually makes a lot of sense. This is what he said. Christianity, Christianity has fought, still fights, and will continue to fight science to the desperate end over evolution. Quick side note, he's saying Christians fight science. We do not fight science ever. Science was birthed out of the Christian community. It was started by Christian men and women. We don't fight science. We just occasionally disagree with some scientists opinions. Science is great, but some scientists have opinions that we would disagree with. But he goes on to say this. We're supposedly fighting science because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus's earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve in the original sin and in the rubble you will find the story remains of the son of God. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing. And I would agree with that. If evolution is true, as they're teaching it in our school systems, then Christianity is not true. If evolution is true, there wasn't an original perfect creation with an Adam and Eve in a garden who who angered God and got kicked out and then God says, "Oh, I got to send my son to die on their on a cross." That in Genesis didn't happen. if evolution is actually true the way that they teach it. So it's really bad that we try to put the two together. They say, "Oh, God used evolution." So again, if we would believe Moses, we would have believed Jesus and my words. Well, who is Jesus? What are his words? Well, here are some of his words. Jesus said, "Behold, I come quickly." Jesus is going to return. And when it happens, it's going to be very quick. Well, guess what? People are doubting the return of Christ today. They don't think he's coming back. Second Peter chapter 3 written almost 2,000 years ago. Peter is talking about the last days, the end times. And Peter is specifically talking about those who doubt the return of Christ. He had a prophecy of what's going to be happening in our time. Why are people doubting the return of Christ? Peter actually said this. There are two things that are causing people of our day to doubt the return of Christ. You would expect those to be very spiritual things, but that's not what Peter says. It's also not these two things. Here are the two things that Peter says are causing the people of our day to doubt the return of Christ. They're rejecting the Genesis creation account and they're rejecting the Genesis flood. That's interesting. What in the world does that have to do with the return of Christ? It confused me at first and then it made a lot of sense. By rejecting the Genesis creation account, they're rejecting God as the ultimate authority. He created everything. He owns it. He gets to set the rules. They don't like that. So, they reject it. The flood. Why do they reject the flood? Well, what was the flood? The flood was the judgment on mankind's sin. The skeptics say they're not sinners. They're good people. So, they reject God's judgment. They reject his authority and his a judgment. What's the return of Christ? Another judgment by God. Peter says by fire the second time, not by water. That's why they're doubting the return of Christ. God's not the authority and he shouldn't judge them because they're good people. That's why they're doubting the return of Christ. And today, every single scient secular scientist rejects the creation account and the flood. But even many Christians now doubt the details of the creation account and the flood. So, here's some more wisdom from a surprising source, a guy named Richard Dawkins. He's arguably the world's leading atheist. Wrote wrote the book The God Delusion. This is what he had to say. And here's the context. He's responding to those Christians who compromise and say, "Well, I got the solution. God used evolution." You can believe everything about evolution that Richard Dawkins and others are saying. We'll just say God did it. Here's a quote from Richard Dawkins. See if you think he's impressed with that compromise. He said, "Oh, but of course, the story of Adam and Eve was over only ever symbolic, wasn't it?" symbolic. So in order to impress himself, Jesus had himself tortured and executed in vicarious punishment for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent individual. As I said, barking mad as well as viciously unpleasant. It seems to me an odd proposition that we should adhere to some parts of the Bible story but not others. After all, when it comes to important moral questions, by what standards do we cherrypick the Bible? Why bother with the Bible at all if we have the ability to pick and choose from it what is right and what is wrong? I would love to go on a speaking tour with that atheist and I would say Richard tell everyone that thing you said about how it's not impressive to say God used evolution. It doesn't make sense at all. It really demeans the Bible. So it leads to a problem today too. Today's statistics show that probably about 77% of Christian youth end up walking away from their faith before they leave college. Even if they don't go to college, about that age, they're walking away from their faith because they kind of know what they believe, but they don't know why. And I'm actually going to skip a section here just to save a little time. Many, many Christian churches are working worried about this. And there was one pastor at a mega church in my area. They have about 6,000 people and they're losing their youth left and right. And the the pastor actually asked me, "How can I help them?" And my answer was, "You can't." And he was shocked. He wanted me to tell him, "Oh, this is what you do." And and I said, "Here's why. You can't help them because you don't know what you believe." That church did not take a stance on Genesis. Well, it might mean this, might mean that, might mean that. Okay? If you don't know, what are you telling your youth? You're telling your youth, we don't know. Oh, it might mean this, might mean that, might be that. Doesn't matter. Believe whatever you want. Then they go off to college and professors say Genesis is wrong. Evolution is a fact. We don't even need God. And they walk away from their faith. So, it's a problem with youth walking away. But if we don't give them a solid foundation, they're going to go off in a different direction. So, I'm going to fast forward through this really quick and get to a few other slides here. So, we're going to do an interesting exercise. It's not this kind of an exercise. No one's going to pull a muscle. Um, it's just a mental exercise. I'm going to read a passage. This is really fun. This is super cool. I'm going to read through a passage and I want you to follow along as I read. But here's the point. Don't pull a muscle. Don't think too hard. Just relax and listen to me as I read through this. A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is better placed than a street. At first, it's better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it's easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problem. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance. And you're all thinking, "What in the world was that?" You understood every sentence, but it didn't make any sense together. Guess what? I'm going to read it again. The exact same thing. But this time, when I read it, I want you to all picture something in your mind. I want you to picture a kite. Think about a kite as I reread the same thing. A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is better placed in the street. At first, it's better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it's easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can cause problems. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance. Ain't that cool? How something that made no sense whatsoever at first makes perfect sense when you have the right thing in mind, the kite. Well, guess what? The Bible is our kite. The Bible is something that makes sense of a crazy world around us. things are going crazy. When you know the Bible, you start to understand things that are going on around us. The Bible really is our anchor and our rock. It says in Deuteronomy, he is our the rock. His work is perfect. And then we read in Hebrews, which hope we have as an anchor for the soul. The Bible helps us make sort of of everything. The world we're living in today is completely upside down. It's always been slowly getting worse morally, but a few years ago, the wheels fell off and it's gone absolutely crazy. And there's no shortage of social issues we're dealing with today. I'm not going to go through all of these. It's not that any one of them is too hard. It's that there are too many of them. They're overwhelming the system. It's like the old entertainer on the stage keeping all these plates spinning. We're just going crazy running back and forth and keeping the plate spinning. It's too much. But here's a very, very, very important point about all these issues. These issues are not wrong because they're problematic. We don't say they're wrong because it seems like they're causing problems. They are causing problems because they are wrong. They go against God's created order. It's not the way he designed it. Here's a simple analogy. Picture a hypodermic needle and now picture using that to eat rocky road ice cream. That would not go well. Would you get mad at the manufacturer of the needle because you can't use it to eat rocky road ice cream? No. It wasn't designed for that. Well, it's the same thing with all these social issues. When we try to use them and define them the wrong way, there are problems. It's not what God intended. And so we have to help people sort through this. Another important point, no matter which of these issues anyone ever brings up, it should never be your philosophy versus theirs. Who are we that the whole world cares anything about what we think? Someone brings up one of these topics, you should say, "Hey, fascinating issue. Let me see what God's word says about that." And if they have a problem with what you're sharing at that point, their problem isn't really with you. It's with God's word and it's just up to us to very graciously and kindly help them understand what did God intend with these things, help them sort through those things. So why does any of this matter? It's because origin determines purpose. The origin of something determines its purpose. If I showed you this piece of equipment, most of you would not know what its purpose is. But if you knew who the manufacturer was, they could tell you. It's called a proximity probe. It measures vibration in large pieces of equipment like this. I worked on things like that just out of college. The point is the origin of that piece of equipment determines its purpose. Well, guess what? Your origin determines your purpose. If you really believe the universe came about through a big bang, the scientists say there's no purpose for the big bang. It's just kind of happened. If you're part of that universe, there's no purpose for your life either. You're just here. You can make up a purpose, but there's no ultimate purpose for your life. In fact, just to save some time, I'm going to skip this quote where they admit there's no purpose for the universe or your life uh whatsoever. Let's fast forward very quickly. Um here's a quote from Stephven Hawking again, one of the world's leading, he was one of the world's leading theoretical physicists. He didn't believe in God. He said, "Because there's a a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing." Wait a minute. Let's think through this. Because there's something, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Wait a minute. If you have something, you don't have nothing. What was the something he mentioned? The law of gravity. What is the law of gravity? It's not a physical thing you can take into a laboratory and weigh and paint and bend. It's a description of how the universe operates. But you can't have a description of how the universe operates unless you have a universe to describe. But if you have a universe to describe, you're not creating it out of nothing. It's already there. So here's an example of a very smart scientist saying something that doesn't make any sense at all. So there's no purpose to the big bang. On the other hand, if this universe was designed, there's a purpose for it. And if you're part of that universe, there's a purpose for your life, too. And so Psalm 139:14 says, "I will praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made." Here comes the Yeah, but yeah, but the scientists have proved we've evolved by accident from an apeike creature. Well, let's take a look at this again. Jesus said, "If we don't believe Moses's writings, why would we believe Jesus's words?" Well, again, who is Jesus? Long before Jesus was savior, he was creator. John chapter 1, Colossians chapter 1, Hebrews chapter 1. By him, for him, through him, all things were created. Jesus is the creator. If you're going to trust him as your savior, you need to also trust him as your creator. He created us fearfully and wonderfully made. A typical human adult has about a 100red trillion cells in their body. And each one of those cells is more complex than the space shuttle. In fact, if you went into the nucleus of one tiny cell and you pulled out your DNA, it'd be about six feet long and you have all the information on there to develop your body on each strand of DNA in each cell. Um, if you took that center nucleus of the microscopic cell and you magnified it, so it's the size of a basketball. So now you're holding a basketball. That's a cell, the nucleus of one of your cells. That little DNA we pulled out that was 6 feet long. Now it is 27 miles long. So that's the DNA in your cell. So I'm gonna keep moving here. Let's say you took the DNA out of every single one of your cells and you laid them end to end. Uh if you did that, you'd be dead. So don't do that when you go home later today. But let's say you did that. You got your DNA in front of you and you want to go for a walk from this the beginning of your DNA to the end of your DNA. We can walk about three and a half miles per hour. How long would it take you to get to the end of your DNA? 30 minutes, 2 hours, a half a day? How about 3,76,339 years? That's how long it would take you to walk to the end of your own DNA. It's in your body right now. Your DNA would stretch from the Earth to the Sun. That's 93 million miles. But it wouldn't stretch that distance just one time. 1,222 times. your DNA, which is in your body right now. Okay, let's go faster. We can't walk. That would take too long. Let's say we went 3,100 miles per hour. That's the the speed the astronauts traveled when they went to the moon. I did another calculation. This is almost as fast as my wife drives. Just kidding. She's a better driver than me. So, you're traveling the speed of a rocket. How long would it take to get to the end of your own DNA? 4,180 years traveling at the speed of a rocket to get to the end of your own DNA. That's amazing. We have to stop messing around. All right. Star Wars speed, the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second. Every second you're going 186,000 miles per hour. How long would it take you? A half a second? A millionth of a second? Seven full days traveling at the speed of light to get to the end of your own DNA. That's all in your body right now. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Again, the Bible says that God created male and female in the image of God. So, we're in the garden there. Ah, yeah, but the scientists have proven evolution, so you can't take the Bible seriously, right? Well, here's another quote from that atheist Richard Dawkins. It's absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to be believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane or wicked. But I'd rather not consider that. A very intimidating statement from very intelligent scientists. So, we got what the Bible says, but we say, "Yeah, those scientists are so so smart, you can't really take the Bible seriously." So, what about the eightmen? I'm I'm probably going to shorten some of this up, too, to get to the end because we got all these eight men in the in the museums and all that, right? Well, let me give you a classic example. Hespythecus, Herald Cookie. What? They give him these big names to make him sound so technical. Hespythecus just means ape of the Western world. Harold Cookie. It was discovered by a guy named Harold Cook. The common name is Nebraska Man. Why did they call it that? Because they found the evidence in Wyoming. No, they found it in Nebraska. So that's why they call it Nebraska Man. So here's Nebraska Man. Everything you'd want at an eightman. Very brutish face, longer hair, stone age too with a club there. He's got a wife behind him. She's making a fire. A little bit harder to see, but there are domesticated animals. Some horses there and some camels up there. They discovered a lot about Nebraska man. Very impressive. What was the evidence they found to figure out all those details? One bone and it was a tooth. How do you take one tooth and figure out all those details? You don't. You make it up. Later, they found more of those teeth. It was from an a pig. How do you take one pig's tooth and make a whole ape man out of it? You don't. They wanted it to be an eightman. I'll skip some of the story. It was at a museum and I got to actually hold one of the actual teeth that they found. It was just from a pig, but they use that to make an entire apeman because they wanted it to be an apeman. I'll have to skip Pilt Down Man. this was a fraud where they took some bones from a human and bones from an ape and said it was on the same skeleton. Kind of looked human, kind of looked ape. It was in the textbooks for 40 years. It was a complete lie. Um, current example, I'll have to shorten this up too. You may have heard of the name Lucy. This isolopythecus apherensis just means southern ape from the aar region of Africa. Um, I'm going to fast forward. Basically, they did a lot of work on this to try to make it look more like evidence of an apeman. skipped through some humor and all that. I really got to get to the end here. Skipping some funny things. Um, every ape man you've ever seen or ever will see falls into one of three categories. And here we have the categories. It was either really just an ape that they tried to make look more human. They were cheating. Or it was really fully human that they tried to make look more apelike. Neanderthal man. Secular scientists know Neanderthal man. They were fully human. There are Europeans and Asians that have 1 to 3% Neanderthal DNA in them. Meaning they were intermaring, you know, Neanderthalss in the past. They were fully human. But in the museums, they make them look very brutish like, "Oh, we evolved from them." No, we didn't evolve from Neanderthal man. The third category is a mix. It wasn't an ape or a human. It was both. They had some bones from an ape and bones from a human that they put together and and kind of lied about it. So, u Adam and Eve, I may have to skip through some of this and I'll get to some cool stuff. Um, they say we've evolved from an apeike creature starting six million years ago. The Bible says God created Adam and Eve, one male and one female. Secular scientists laugh about that. They used to. Now, secular scientists believe we have all come from one male and one female because they're studying science. The genetics, which I have to skip some, I have to wind down here. Oh, males are the only ones that have a Y chromosome. So, by studying the Y chromosome on males all over the planet, they can tell they have all received theirs from one copy that was distributed. Yeah. Adam. And then females are the only ones that have this that carry on and pass on this mitochondrial DNA. I'll skip some of the details. So, by studying these little loops of DNA in females, I can tell they have all received theirs from one female that passed hers on, just like the Bible said thousands of years ago when they didn't have microscopes in modern science. The Bible got it right. So, I'm going to fast forward through some of these other things. Just really cool things. But I got to get to the end here. Science keeps discovering more and more evidence that the Bible was right all along, including it seems like almost everyone was wiped out not too long ago and then repopulated the Earth. Well, yeah, we've got the flood account there. About 4 and a half thousand years ago, everyone was wiped out except for Noah and his family and the two of each kind of animal. We have genetic evidence for that now. It's just absolutely amazing. I'm going to skip my video on Grand Canyon. I lead Grand Canyon tours. I'm going to skip the video for now just to save a little time. We have brochures on the table if you're interested in learning all about the Genesis flood, seeing all the evidence from the Grand Canyon. So our website the startingpoint project.com. So wrapping this up, winding down the reality. You are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God created to do good works. And the relevance is this. We've been talking about the Yeah, but we are going to now use this and turn it completely around. Every single person on this planet at some point's going to die and face God. And he could look at you and say, "You do not deserve to come into heaven." And this is when you say, "Yeah, but you sent your son to die on a cross to pay for my sins so that I could enter into heaven." And God says, "Enter into all eternity." So, we can use the Yeah, but in a good way. It's actually good news for us as Christians. So, I know I went fast and skipped a bunch of things. I hope this was encouraging. Who are you? You were created in the image of God and he wants you to tell other people and he wants you to share Jesus Christ with them. You don't have to try to debate them on a lot of technical topics. Share Jesus. And if they ask you tough questions, you can say, "That's a good question. I'll get back to you." And you can always talk to your pastor. You can contact us. I'm going to fast forward. We got a bunch of resources. Almost everything we have is free. So, I'm just going to put up the website again. And you can go to our website and there's 34 free videos. There we go. 34 free videos, free articles, bunch of stuff. You can get the resources for free, get answers, and get back to them and say, "Okay, I answered your question. Can we talk about Jesus again?" So, with that, I'm going to close in a quick word of prayer because I know you guys have there's another service coming up here. I'll be in the back for a few minutes if you have additional questions, but I appreciate you allowing me to be here this morning. Uh, dear heavenly father, we just thank you so much for allowing us to be here. We thank you for the authority of your word. We thank you for its truthfulness. I pray for each person who is here this morning that you would be greatly moving in their life to strengthen their faith to better position them to share the gospel message with others very confidently but also very graciously. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen. And al together now we're going to be singing the song by the name of I give praises to your name or I sing praises. [Music] I sing praises to your name, oh Lord. Praises to your name, oh Lord, for your name is great and greatly to be praised. [Music] I sing praises to your [Music] name, oh Lord, praises to your name, oh Lord, for your name is great and greatly to be praised. [Music] I give glory to your name, oh Lord. Glory to your name, oh Lord, for your name is great and worthy to be praised. [Music] I give glory to your name, oh Lord. Glory to your name, oh Lord, for your name is great and greatly to be praised. I sing praises to your name, oh Lord. Praises to your name, oh Lord, for your name is great and greatly to be praised. [Music] I sing praises to your name, oh Lord. Praises to your name, oh Lord, for your name is great and greatly to be praised. [Music] God. My dear friends, I think um it was a wonderful message and thank you Jay. Thank you. And I think it just shows how our God, he's a mighty God. Jesus is our mighty God and he's the one who actually sacrificed himself for us. He didn't have to. He didn't have to. The thing that he could have done was destroy all of us because that's what we deserved. But his love, as we're going to be speaking in the coming weeks, is that his love has set us free from the sin. And uh we just want to again once again say thank you Jay and um this FIG uh for coming today and sharing the the good news of our Lord God. Okay to the to the announcements. So, they have this uh training camp that they talked about. If anybody wants to sign up, it's for high school students. If you want to sign up, it's a it's a I believe a three-day camp or a week camp, $100 per students. And over there, like you can learn more about uh creation and all the other stuff. So, I'm not quite sure what it's all about, but Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, they do have Okay. Okay. Okay. And so, parents can come, they can participate, everybody can come, everybody can enjoy it, everybody can learn about our God, the creator. Amen to that. And today at uh 3:00 we're going to have a baptism. We're going to have baptism at the park, Esther Simpl Park. We're excited for that. So, we would like everybody to join. After a baptism, we'll have a little uh barbecue. And at the shelter, we're going to be there at 2 uh 10ish to to pick up anybody that wants to join. So, so we invite everybody to the baptism at the Esther Simplot Park at 300 p.m. today. Also, we have some needs and we're also thankful of brother Doug. He's finally back again. Praise God. He's right there waving to everybody. He was gone for a couple of weeks with an infection in his foot, but it looks like he's doing better. Amen to that. Amen to that. And we had some needs from David his mother uh Dela Tom Tolman. Dela Tolman like he asked us to uh pray for her and also for Mike. He said for his baptism that it goes well for Sylvia. She she asked that we pray for her sister and her sister's children. And for Andy, he had a flu and we're going to pray for them. Does anybody else have any needs that that we can pray for and give to God? No. Okay, then let's pray. Lord God, we thank you so much for this time, Lord. We thank you for the word that was that was shared about you, Lord. God, that it was you who made us, Lord God, and why we are here, Lord. We have a purpose, Lord God. And you and you God has uh put like each of us here Lord God and may you use us to to honor you to uh praise you and glory you. May your name be praised and glorified in Jesus' name. Amen. Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For your kingdom, your power, and glory forever are yours. Amen. Be blessed. And all the information is in the back.