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Friends, by reading you a delightful poem, a poem that, uh, celebrates and at the same time celebrates the dignity, the high dignity of man and woman as God's viceroys in his creation. The poem I refer to is number eight in the Hebrew Psalter, Psalm eight, and it runs as follows. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set thy glory upon the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established strength because of thine adversaries, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him? At that point in the poem, you might have thought, having considered the glory and the majesty of the creator, and then cast his eye upon man. The poet would go on to say, what a tiny little thing man is. What an insignificant, infinitesimal worm is he compared with God. But you'll notice, if you listen, that the poem goes off altogether in the opposite direction. It has celebrated the unmatchable glory of the Creator. But what is man? Well, here comes the poet's answer. For thou hast made him but a little lower than the angels, and crownest him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea, whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. It is a sheer joy and tonic to one's heart to be allowed to read such a beautiful, magnificent description of man and woman as God's viceroy in creation. I'm asked sometimes why I believe the Bible is the word of God. You will see my prejudice easily, won't you, when I confess that one of the reasons I believe the Bible to be the word of God is the glorious dignity it confers on us human beings. It is the feeling of many known to me that the only way for humans to assert their freedom is to get rid of every s- notion of God, and thus assert man's independence and his complete freedom. As though belief in God automatically rendered human beings slaves or prisoners. The very opposite is the fact. Belief in God, says Scripture, and this poem celebrates it, confers on humankind this pinnacle of glory under the Creator to be God's viceroys in his creation here on Earth. Whereas, of course, the atheistic view that banishes God the Creator from his universe and seems to give man freedom does eventually the very opposite. For if there is no God, we are as human beings, as we saw last night, simply the products of mindless forces, mindless matter. They have made us. And one of these days, these same mindless forces, purposeless bits of matter, will destroy us. And when they begin to do it, we shall have enough intelligence in our heads to see what they are going to do. But in the end, all our science will fail us. These mindless forces will destroy us, destroy our bodies, destroy our minds, our sense of beauty, our purposes, and all else that's human. They will destroy it, and the irony will be that when they've done it, they won't even know they've done it. It puzzles me, I do confess, how men can think it is the height of intelligence and rationality to get rid of God and end up, as they must tell you in the end, being destroyed by mindless forces who will destroy our intelligence. When they've done it, they won't even know that they've done it. How preferable, in my humble opinion, is the wonderful revelation of God the Creator through his word in the Bible, that when he created man and woman, he created them to be the viceroys in his name within creation. So we come this evening to study the first account of creation as we find it in the book of Genesis. Now, as I said in lecture one, there are in the book of Genesis three accounts of creation, and if that sounds strange to you, you may care to turn to the text of Genesis, and let me point out that there are three. The first one begins in chapter one and verse one, as you will see. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And it proceeds throughout that chapter, detailing the creation of God as it was done in six stages, and coming finally to its completion and the seventh day of God's rest, chapter two and verse three. Then we notice that in chapter two and verse four, the writer starts his second account of creation with the words, these are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. And having announced that, he will pursue his account of creation, and not only of creation, but having pointed us to some of the basic principles of God's creation, the creation of human life, and described for us what human life means, then where it all went wrong. He comes to the end of his account of affairs in the final verses of chapter four. And then notice, if you will, that in chapter five, the writer takes us backwards once more to the beginning of things. And he says in chapter five verse one: this is the book of the generation of Adam, in the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him. Male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam in the day when they were created. And having come back to that point, to the beginning of things in history, he proceeds with his account of creation and what followed from it, and the fortunes and what happened to mankind, uh, the story of their corruption and God's judgment upon them in the form of the flood, and then the great salvation that God provided for them, and the beginnings again in the person of Noah, and that will occupy the following chapters, uh, until the end of chapter nine. Those three stories do not, of course, contradict each other. They resemble, in their way, the four gospels. In the New Testament, we have four separate accounts of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of our blessed Lord Jesus, so that we get him portrayed from four different points of view, from four angles, so to speak, and thus have a four-dimensional picture of our Lord. So here in Genesis, we have three accounts of creation that look at creation from different points of view and draw out its implications and its meaning and its lessons for us who live in this distant day. So this evening we turn to study the first account of creation, occupying chapters one one to chapter two verse, uh, three. We shall not be able to consider the whole of the story. I aim to bring out some of its major points. This then is the first account of creation in Genesis, and it is the one that tells us, perhaps to our surprise, that when God created the heavens and the earth, he did not create everything. He created things in stages. Now we perhaps are so used to this story that it can occasions us no surprise. But if before, and you said to yourself, God is almighty, isn't he? And that God is all being all powerful, can do what he likes. He could, if he had so chosen, created the whole universe of time. Well, if we held that view, we should be extraordinarily surprised, wouldn't we? When we find that Almighty God, though he was and is, he didn't create the universe in one split second, but did it in stages. I have listed the days for you here. You will notice that, uh, the first day begins in verse three, and God said, and every day from one to six is introduced by that majestic simple statement, and God said, and God said, all the way through, and God said. Days one to six uh are introduced by that formula. And I want to stay with that observation for a moment because it is exceedingly significant. This is emphasizing the fact that the world, the universe, and our world within it was created by the word of God. It is a thing to which the scripture continu- continuously refers. He spoke, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast. Creation by the word of God. The Gospel of John in chapter one repeats it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Creation by the Word of God, by the Son of God, second person of the Trinity, whose title, one of whose titles is the Word of God. And the Epistle to the Hebrews repeats it, by faith we understand that the worlds were created by the Word of God. We understand it, first of all, as I say, in the sense of his command. He commanded, uh, and the worlds were made. He commanded, and the light shone out of darkness, and so forth. But as we look at these accounts in the light of what we now know through science about, uh, our world, it is evident that in addition to being a command of God, as he made the universe and the matter within it, but that in creating, God implanted on matter certain information. So that, um, I want to spend a few moments now talking about this from this point of view. What the scientists nowadays call information theory is a comparatively modern idea going back but a few decades. It originated with the engineers, as far as I understand. And engineers, being good engineers, of course, like to talk their own language and mean what they say instead of what people think they say. And, uh, you'll see, when they talk about information, let's use a simple example of what they mean. Here's an engineer, locksmith. He has designed a lock. Now he's going to design the key to undo the lock or to lock it up. So he designs a bit of metal, and he designs it in this shape, and then he puts perhaps two or three prongs coming out at the bottom, do you see? Why are they for? Well, he knows what's got to be done, what's got to happen inside the lock, you see. He can envisage that, sees it, he that created the lock anyway. So now he gets the idea of a key that could unlock it and plants that idea on this bit of metal. And in engineering terms, call that information, if you like, is building certain bits of information onto the key so that when somebody picks up the key and in- and turns it, those bits of pieces on the key will do the job that the designer intended they should do. Of course, it's not information in the man of the street, is it, idea? Now the key doesn't impart any information to the lock. Never mind that. You can get a more sophisticated idea if you like. Uh, um, uh, take the, uh, computer and the computer programmer. Well, he has designed circuits on chips or whatever they are, the electrical circuits, marvelous. And then he sits down and he devises a program. He wants the old machine to do this, this, this, this, and this, and ten thousand and other things he wants them to do. And mighty complicated it is. But if the old computer is going to do it, it's got to be told what to do, when to do it. So the directions, the information, so to speak, is put onto the old chip and in the program and floppy disks or whatever they're called, uh, do you see, and bits and pieces, and uh, so the computer is told by the electrical current, do this, and it does it. Oh, and if this, do that. If not, do that. And if that, do this. And all the way through, ten thousand to one's instructions built into the thing. And idea of the designer through these chips and electrical circuits and various other things to the machinery in the computer to make it do what the designer wants it to do. That's fairly simple, isn't it? The designer puts, as they say, information onto the chips and into the machine to get the machine to perform. Let's take another example. No, I don't see any ladies old enough to know it, but when I was a boy, uh, they were the days when washing machines were first invention- in- invented, you see. They had these affairs made of plastic or tin, whatever it was, you see, an open top which you put the clothes in, and there was a whirligig thing inside that made them go round and clean them, you see. But it was a, in its way, a sophisticated device because they... the... and then the housewife was with a squ- bit of plastic, you see. And on one side there were notches in various proportions and rows of notches, you see. On another side, a lot of notches spaced differently, and so on the four sides. And the scheme was this. If the dear lady wanted to do the linens in the washing machine, she got the old bit of plastic and turned it round till the right series of notches was on the end, put it in the slit, and the machine knew what to do. She was telling the machine, so to speak, what to do, and it churned it round as linen should be churned round. And when they were done, if she wanted the woolens and the coloreds to be washed, well, she took the old chip out, uh, the the the plastic out round way to the other lot of notches, that end, you'll see. And the notches, so to speak, told the machine, controlled the machine to run a different program suitable for coloreds and woolen. Now think just a moment, ma'am. I- I- if you had handed me that bit of plastic with the notches on the side and have said to me, being a mere man, what do you suppose that is? I should have said plastic. For half a minute, is that all? Just plastic? Yes, I said, I thought I can see it's only plastic. Well, in one sense I would be true, wouldn't I? Only plastic. But in another sense, I would miss the whole point of it. Because it wasn't just plastic. It was plastic designed by the engineer to convey the necessary instructions to the machine so that the machine would run its varied programs according to the will of the housewife. It was plastic carrying information. And modern science has taught us this last forty years or so, has it not? That in our bodies, there is a marvelous device to carry information. You'll see, Genesis will tell us, Genesis one and other scriptures will tell us, that God made the first man, Adam was his name, made him out of the dust of the ground. He was a direct creator- creation of God. He had no father, he had no mother, made by direct act of a creator. And Eve was made, a rib taken from Adam, and she was built. She had no mother nor father either. That's been different with every generation since, has it not? In that sense, we are not direct creations. We do have fathers and mothers. And how does that come about? Paul says, as he was talking to the Athenians, that God has made of one, that is of Adam, all the nations to dwell upon the face of the earth, red and yellow, black and white, all of them coming from one original man. How did God manage to do it? Well, as we now know, of course, when he made man, he put into man what we nowadays call the genes. And so in the zygote, part from the wife and part from the husband, when they are formed, the machinery inside the cell contains all the information necessary for that cell to develop into other cells, and the cells to develop into an embryo, and the embryo into a fetus. A magnificent thing it is, isn't it? If you didn't believe in God, you must think it were magic or something. It will control this information through what is called the DNA, which parts of the body grow when. No good having an eye if you haven't got a skull to put it in. It will control the development of the fetus till birth. It will control the time of the birth. It will control the growth of the infant to adulthood and beyond. When the bits and pieces of the old genes are worn out, it will bring the body to its end. But then there's a marvelous thing. In the course of their lives, that particular man and woman will pass on, maybe, that information to their children. And while the original chemicals that carried the information have perished long since, the information has gone on, hasn't it, to the next generation. That is a magnificent and wonderful thing. God forbid we should ever get used to the idea. It's startlingly wonderful. Here then is a model of the, uh, double helix. There is the DNA, and if to you it looks complicated, it's meant to look complicated because the DNA is complicated. It is here showing the double heat of these two strands, like two ladders. You'll see, carrying the various chemicals, the amino acids, and so forth and so on, that are necessary for life to become possible. And within a cell, let's look at the next picture just for a moment. Within a... one strand that is called the DNA... uncoils itself. So here, this side is what was together all wrapped around each other, now uncoiled. And here are the various, uh, bits and pieces of the amino acids. You'll see they break away. And this one separates and connects to itself all kinds of chemical molecules within the cell and makes another double heap. What is happening is the information is being transferred from one lot to the other, and from that lot to the next lot, and of course, an exceedingly complicated pe- uh, uh, uh, invention on God's part, because the acids, they're put there in different colors and so forth, must always be in the correct order to achieve what they have to achieve in the building up of the fetus and the human body and the control of its life. All I wish to do now at this stage, first of all, is to point out one of the implications of this discovery, discovered by Crick and Watson, uh, i- in the sixties. Uh, let's hear a comment from a science, a science. Could that mechanism have come about by accident, by chance, as evolutionary theory has it, by tiny little, very often mistaken errors in the gene, that gradually built up a more sophisticated store of information? Could it by accident? Now here are the Co- Hoyle and Singh, neither of whom, as far as I was ever aware, are believers in God. Fred Hoyle was an eminent astronomer and mathematician. Uh, Chandra Wickramasinghe is likewise a mathematician. Neither believers in, certainly not in the Jewish or the Christian sense. And they write, then shows that the chance of obtaining the necessary total of 2,000 randomly assembling amino acid chains is exceedingly minute. The chance of doing it, you will see, randomly, without design. The random chance is not a million to one against the possibility, or a billion to one against the possibility of its being by random, or even a trillion to one against. P to one against, with P at the minimum, minimally, an enormous, super astronomical number equal to ten to the power of forty thousand. That is one followed by forty thousand zeros. Odds we have thus computed are only for the enzymes, and of course, correctness within many other important macromolecules of life besides enzymes must also be considered. The conclusion in our book are derived from known experimentally and observationally tested properties of the universe, including not least among them the property that living cells can replicate. The right evolution of primitive life and of the evolution of life to progressively higher levels entirely through random processes is an uneasy combination of dogma and wishful thinking. I repeat, not to do them insult, of course not. I repeat that neither of these scientists is a believer in God, as far as I know. They're giving their, uh, their testimony simply as scientists, working out mathematically the odds. Is it at all conceivable that this DNA chain that holds the key for life and its development could have been put together, come together by random chance? And they say it is silly. Impossible. In the beginning, says Genesis, was the Word. All things were made by Him. Another, the first one. There is another imprecation in these apparently simple words, and God said, and God said, creation by the word of God. And that is to stay for a moment with a, in the cells of the human body that can information. We should, uh, observe that in the estimate of many scientists, the DNA is a code, a form of language that conveys information. Now, I suspect most of us, when we're not thinking too hard, imagine that information is quite an easy concept. Actually, information is a startlingly interesting thing. It is not material. You say, what do you mean it's not material? Well, it isn't so much stuff. You see, here's a, here's a good lady. She's been, she's been to Belfast, and she's looked in one of the, uh, fashion shops, you see. And she comes home, and she's now going to get some information to her daughter. I was in Belfast today, and I saw in such and such a shop such a beautiful dress. It would seat suit you down to the ground, and I went in and asked the good people to reserve it for you, you see. The mother has got this information to pass on to the daughter. You say, where is the information? What does it look like? Well, it's in the head. Oh, you say, what's it made of? Well, the scientists can tell you, well, wait a minute, let's put the machine to the dear lady's head. Yes, buzzing in that part of the brain. The electrochemicals are at work. Marvelous. And what are the electrochemicals saying, you ask the scientist? He hasn't got a clue. Only one who could tell you what m- mother is thinking is mother herself. Science couldn't tell you. The information, it's not made of chemicals or electricity. It's what we call non-material. But she's got to communicate it. How will she do it? Well, she has various choices, of course. She can get a piece of paper and write with ink on a piece of paper. The ink isn't the information, nor the paper. When her daughter gets it, she won't, it won't go into her head, nor the ink either. The paper will remain there and the ink on the page. The ink and the paper and the words are carrying the information. She needn't have used ink and paper and words. She could have done. She could have got on the telephone. And, uh, you see... the air and the current through the wire breathe the information. But the telephone itself wasn't the information, only carried it. Yes, well, that's very simple. This, uh, DNA that we looked at, that kept the information for the development of human life through its conception, uh, uh, you'll see. Next generation. Bears every indication that it is a code carrying information. That raises a big question, doesn't it? Where does the information come from? In the whole of our human experience, we know of none other source of information than an intelligent person. But let me not be the one to say it. Let me remind you of the big program that still runs in America. They spend millions of dollars on it every year. Its chief proponent was a certain scientist by the name of Carl Sagan. He's now deceased. They had these radio telescopes facing space in the hope that one day they would pick up mess- space. They argued that if life here evolved on Earth, life that's around other suns in the vast universe, and if life beings there, and if they're intelligent, they probably would like to get in contact with us, though that proposition's a bit doubtful. If they were intelligent, they might not like to get in contact with us, but leave that beside the point. Do they? Ha. Uh, eh, they might be trying to get in touch with us. So they point their radio, uh, telescope dishes to the sky to try and pick up signals. Of course, they get a lot of noise, random noise from all the things that are going on in outer space. They can see that at once. It's just noise, it's not language. They're hoping one of these days to get a succession of sounds down their radio telescope that, when they analyze them in their computers, will show every fin- feature, characteristic feature of language, an ordered sequence of sounds, not just random noise. And even if they don't know at first what the language is saying, they'll know it's a language, because you can detect a language by the fact that it is a certain sophisticated order in the sounds. And so if they got it, they haven't so far, but if they were to get it tomorrow, how would they, on what grounds would they decide it came from some intelligent being in outer space. But the answer is, language? Information? Our only experience of it is that language comes from an intelligent personality. So say the atheist. Carl Sagan was a thoroughgoing atheist as a most of his friends. Well, let's apply their logic to this then. If the DNA within our cells, in all its marvelous design, cannot be by chance. If it is carrying information that over the centuries controls the conception, the growth of a child in the womb, the fetus, the birth, throughout life, the human being, and the information passed on to succeeding generations. Where did the information come from? The analogy would force one to the conclusion, wouldn't it? If that is information carried in a, so to speak, a code, a language, must have come from an intelligent being. Why don't the atheists acknowledge it? The force of their own argument. Ah, but the only intelligent being that you could possibly ascribe it to would be an almighty. You needn't be ashamed, my fellow Christian, of the first chapter of Genesis as an account of creation. Far from being some antiquated myth, it lifts up its face to the most modern of science and proclaims that the evidence of the DNA structure in our cells and its function come from an intelligent source, that is, a creator. That has implications for every one of us, of course. I take it to be obvious. What else shall we learn from this, uh, account in Genesis? Will you notice this small detail? That whereas each day one to six is introduced by the phrase, and God said, on two days the phrase is repeated. So it occurs twice. On day three, and God said, and then again, and God said. And so in day six, the phrase and God said occurs twice, in verses twenty four to twenty five, and then in verses twenty six to thirty one, and God said again. That is very significant. Because in day three, the first half of the verse is still dealing with inanimate, lifeless things, as day one, the light, and day two, uh, juicy, and now day three. But halfway through the verse, we turn from inanimate things to the animate. Notice that there God puts in another, and God said. You do not just evolve from inanimate to animate by the permutation of the genes. It requires another divine input of information. And similarly here, and even more to the point, the first and God said is with animals, the living things, of course, animate. But this day also God created man, but you notice not just one and God said, but two. Man did not just evolve out of animals by some chance permutation of the genes. It required another divine input of information to create man. The DNA being so sophisticated as it is, the idea that mere chance accident could add information is nonsensical. If you write a letter to your daughter and the postman let it, uh, hang out in the rain before it got there, and the rain came in and spoiled the writing, would you suppose that that accident would increase the information that you wanted to send to your daughter? It'd be nonsense, wouldn't it? No. The bridge, if there be a bridge at all between animals and man. They share much in their bodies, stomachs and things, but man is a separate creature. It required a separate input of divine creative information. I pointed out already that God didn't do it all at once. He created in stages, and in as much as when we read what was done on each of the successive days, things are obviously getting more and more complicated as it goes by. It's not just repetition, therefore, it's an ascending scale of complication. When you come to day six, you come to the pinnacle of that ascending scale, and the pinnacle, by God's grace, is the creation of man and woman. I'll allow you to puff your chest out a little bit, if you want to. How did the idea get into people's heads that God is against mankind. That God, if you listen to him, will make your life a misery and stifle your intellect and cheat you of the pleasures that you otherwise could have had. He made our very bodies that experience the pleasures. And according to scripture, he made man not as a slave. Man was made, says Je- Genesis, in the sixth day. God says, let us make man in our image and in our likeness. What does that mean? Well, in the context, the first thing that has told us to describe what it means that man was made in God's image, is that God gave man and woman dominion over creation. Its vegetation, its animal life and bird life, fish life. Man was made as God's viceroy, God's representative to the animal world. That's a tremendous thing, isn't it? You parents of children. God doesn't come down and tie your infant shoelaces, does he? He's delegated to you an awesome responsibility, whether that child is a babe or a youngster, to stand as God's representative to that child. Man made in the image of God, to be God's viceroy and to have dominion. Of course, the New Testament will indicate that, uh, being made in the image of God, man is not just a biological machine. Man is to resemble God in his moral character, in his spiritual being. We have to remember that we've never seen with our two eyes a perfect man, because between creation and the present there came early on the fall. But it still remains that man is made in the image of God. That's why scripture says you must not, uh, kill, you must not murder a human being. Why not? If your TV doesn't work, and you've tried it and tried it and tried it and tried it again till you are exasperated to the last degree, well, go on, kick it in the face if you must. Smash its, its, its, its glass and have done with it. And nobody will have you up in court. It's only a machine, you see. Suppose your next door neighbor does likewise and irritates you to the last degree. Why shouldn't you kick him in the midriffs and have done with him as well? Why not? We put the question to our Russian friends very frequently. Murder a human being because he's made in the image of God. To have attacked the viceroy of the sovereign is to attack the sovereign. Man is made in the image of God. Gently try to remind Marxists, Russians, that if Stalin had believed that man was made in the image of God, he wouldn't have about sixty million human beings just to suit his political theories. Theories which in the end have proved themselves to be foolish in the extreme. This is important, isn't it? This is not just legend. But there is one more feature in this first creation story that I wish to draw attention to as we come to the end of this particular study. This first account of creation has to do not merely with creation, strictly so called, but with organization. And so, if we could have another film, please. That's obvious. Mm-hmm. And you'll notice a repeated feature of this first account. On day one, God said, let there be light, and there was light, and God saw the light that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness, and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. Now that idea of God calling things by various names repeats itself throughout the chapter. In verse eight, he made the firmament, the atmosphere, space in all probability, you'll see. And then he went and called the firmament heaven. In verse ten, he separated the waters that were on the face of the earth, gathered the waters together, and let the dry land appear. He called the dry land earth, and he called the gathering of the waters seas. And I want to pose the question, why did he do that? Why did he give them these extra names? Why didn't he just leave them as they were? For instance, uh, uh, he called the light day. Why do that? Why not leave it as light? And he called the darkness. And I repeat, why did he do that? And why call the firmament heaven? I mean, wasn't firmament a jolly good name anyway to start with? Why call it heaven? And why call the ga- the dry land earth? Why not leave it dry land? And why call the gathering of the waters seas? Why not just leave it gathering of waters. The point, of course, is that this is part of God's organization. Not merely his creating, but his organizing of our planet within the universe, and therefore our l- our life on our planet. Let me call attention now at once to the fact that when he called the night day, it means that in this verse, day is being used in two different senses. There was evening and there was morning, one day, a day of twenty four hours. So day means twenty four hours then. He called the night day. Oh, well, day in that sense, when we get light, as we call it, daylight, is roughly twelve hours. Certainly in the Middle East it would be round about that. So day can mean twenty four hours, or day can mean that part of the day that has the light, just twelve hours, or less, or more. He called the darkness night. The night equals twelve hours of darkness. So twelve hours of night and twelve hours of day make up one day. So that's a little bit confusing. We didn't come here to be confused like that. Eh, wait a moment, we use the same idiom, don't we? I say to you, aha, I believe your aunt, uh, Josie, Jemima is coming, yes? Next week, yes, that's right. What day is she coming? Oh, Thursday. I see. Is she coming by day or by night? Oh, she's say- she's flying overnight. She's coming Thursday, but flying at night. So, yeah, we- Thursday is twenty four hours long, isn't it? We call it Thursday. And then we know it's divided into two bits, the daylight and the darkness. We call the daylight business day and the darkness night. Oh. So this is the lighting of our world. Don't say it's i- unimportant, because the basic necessity for human life and existence are two things, light and heat. Without light and heat, life would be impossible. This is absolutely number one necessity for human life on our planet, is to have a source of heat and a source of light. How has God organized it? Well, he's organized it this way, that every day of our existence, in the sense of twenty four hours, every day for twenty four hours, we are given light for roughly twelve hours, but not for the whole twenty four. Then we're given darkness. We know how it is, because our light source is the sun up in the sky, and our little planet Earth is constantly twizzling round vis-a-vis the sun, do you see? So, for twelve hours in the day, the planet twizzles us round into the light of the sun. And then, whether we're ready for it or not, we twizzle out of it again and put in the dark. The light doesn't cease to be when we are put in the dark, it's still there. But as you now notice, God has organized it so that we are rationed for light. So whatever has God done that for? Well, that's a very good question to ask. What is the purpose of the organization? Let me tell you a story. In my student days, I was walking around, uh, down the road, a road in Cambridge, with a couple of friends of mine. One was a very learned mathematician, and the other was a psychologist. And we fell to discussing the difference between the question how and the question why. And the psychologist said there was a very important difference between the question how and the question why, and the mathematician agreed, but the psychologist felt that the mathematician really hadn't seen the point. So, to illustrate the point, he pointed the mathematician to the lighting, the street lighting that was gone, this amber lighting, you'll see, that was the latest thing those days, and said to the mathematician, why are those lights amber? And the mathematician began with words that took a long while to get out of the mouth. They were so complicated of chemicals and electricity, and I don't know what, marvelous. Not that either of us understood it. But when he finished, the psychologist said that, yes, interesting, but that's not why the lights are amber. That's how the lights are amber. The reason why the lights are amber is because the city council have decided that amber lights is the best light to light the road with. Why has God arranged the lighting system like it? Don't say he couldn't do it anyhow else. He could have made us like some of the fish in the deep sea with lights in in our foreheads, you know. God has arranged it so that this number one necessity that we need, the light and heat from the sun, that the source of it is ninety-odd odd million miles outside our world. And every day we are made to feel our dependence on that source outside of our world. Our Lord Jesus was moved on one occasion to use that physical fact as a parable. Eh, he was announcing to his disciples that he was about to journey up to Jerusalem, and the disciples tried to dissuade him. If you go there, the Jews will kill you. Prudence would suggest that he didn't go. And in his answer, our Lord first appealed, by way of a parable, to the lighting system of our world. He said, are there not twelve hours in the day? Or roughly so, yes. If a man walk in the daytime, he says, he stumbles not because he sees the light of this world. But if he walks at night, he stumbles because, and to translate our Lord literally, because the light is not in him. That is a very elementary but absolutely basic observation, isn't it? The light isn't in us, ladies and gentlemen. The number one necessity for life is not in our planet. It's not within our reach. It's not within our control. It's outside of us. It's outside of our planet. It's ninety-odd odd million miles away. Why's God done it? Well, God man is to be God's viceroy, but he better observe on what terms he is God's viceroy, wielding power in the name of God. Yet he is taught every day of his week, if he has the sense to see it, that he's not independent. He's not an autocrat. The physical light he needs is not in him. It's outside of him. He's helplessly dependent on it. And not only the physical light, but at the deeper level, the moral and spiritual light that we need to find our way through life properly. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not in us. It is not in man that walketh, says Scripture, to direct his steps. That is absolutely basic number one lesson that each of us must learn. We're dependent on God, our Creator, helplessly dependent, and praise God for it. But we should, from the very first physical conditions of our life, be led to look to God, our Creator, for the necessary guidance and wisdom that we might lead life aright. Look at the others, will you, briefly. I've explained, I hope, the, the, uh, general, uh, uh, principle. He called the firmament heaven. The situation was at that time that the earth was completely covered by a water envelope, and then God spoke, and he gathered the waters together in one place, and he ga- let the dry land appear. He called the dry land Earth. Interesting, that, isn't it? Because, you see, Earth is the name you give to the whole of the planet. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. You call the the planet Earth, the whole of the thing is Earth. The earth, the dry land, and the sea, we call the whole thing Earth. And yet, in another sense, Earth is the bit we can walk on, isn't it? The dry land, and the other bit is seas. So we're not altogether free to walk just where we like on Earth, are we? You say, yes, but we've invented ships, you know, I've heard of that. And airplanes, for that matter. You still can't walk very far on water, though, can you? I'll tell you something else about these seas. They're not ultimately in our control either. The ancients, many of them, had a great fear of the sea. As they saw the raging tempest come rolling to the shore, they wondered if one of these days the sea would come rushing in over the land. They didn't quite understand in those primitive days what kept the sea to its bound, so it didn't come and overflow them. And the psalmist talked with gratitude of God, he has given to the sea its decree that it should not exceed its bounds. But ladies and gentlemen, mere common sense and observation would tell us that we didn't build this earth, and our very existence depend on those seas being properly controlled. We're now beginning to think about, uh, warming, aren't we? Warming of the atmosphere. If the ice caps were to melt, if the world just tilted just a little bit on its axis, and the ice caps melted. We couldn't stop the sea rushing in. Many of the leading capital cities of the world would go underwater. If the tilt of the world was altered significantly, I could be wiped out. It isn't we who control it? Oh, how loudly does the organization of our planet tell us we need that water. The majority part of the planet is water. We need it for our human survival, but we can't control it. Only the creator's control keeps it in its place. And then you see, he called the dry land, uh, he called the firmament heaven. That was a funny name, if the Lord won't mind my saying it, you know, my ignorance. Why did he call the firmament heaven? You know, the our atmosphere and then space beyond. Why call it heaven? Didn't he know heaven would become the word that we use to describe God's dwelling place, wherever God is. Why did he call our atmosphere heaven? Why didn't he just leave it, call it firmament? It has a curious result. I don't know if you've been able ever to float, uh, fly outside in space somewhere and have a look back at yourself, and what we all must look like to somebody miles out in space with a big enough telescope to see us. You'd see this round ball Earth, and there all around the surface are these human beings sticking out, head out into space. Funny, it would be like, look like an apple with cloves in it, you know, what the ladies put in all the way round, or cloves in an orange. Funny looking, wouldn't it? You know, when you stand up, only the soles of your shoes are on Earth, you know. Where is the rest of you in this terminology? Our atmosphere and space are now being called heaven in that sense of the word. We are so made in our life on this planet that gravity keeps us on the planet, but when we, when we stand up, only our soles of our feet are on Earth, the rest of us poking out into what is here called heaven. You say that's merely a play on words, isn't it? There did early man begin to get his awareness. We were made to live on earth, but we were made for another world. And to live on Earth properly, we must have contact not only with the heaven around us in the sense of atmosphere we breathe, but if we would breathe and survive, we need to have relationship with that other heaven and the God of heaven. Finally, he made the sun and the stars, says day four. He made them for signs and for seasons, for days and for years. Once more in day four is not merely the creation, it is more to the point to observe that it is the function that sun and moon and stars were meant to hold for us. They were there for guidance. Doubtless in the universe itself they have other functions, but guidance. We who go by our diaries often forget the need to keep looking to the heavens because the astronomers have plotted all the information into our diaries. But in the ancient world, a farmer would constantly have to watch the sky. If he got a mild November, how would he keep track of time of years? How would he know when one year ended and the other began? How would he know a mild November isn't in fact April, when he should start sowing the April barley or something. So read the ancient books on, on farming, and the directions are, when you see such and such a constellation rising with the sun, or just before the sun, that is the time to start sowing your, your seed. Absolutely vital. The guidance that people got from the constellations. And the early inventors of the boats that went from, uh, east across to the west to the new world, performing amazing feats of navigation in their day, were guided by the constellations, weren't they? Listen to what the organization is telling us. For the guidance we need to go about daily life, to find our way, to organize our activities, we have to look outside our world, the signs that God has given us. Gave them us also for days and for years. The days pass and the years come round. We know it because we know now the circling of the Earth round the sun. It gives us the variety of constellations at any one time in the night sky. The very revolution of the planet and the signs in the sky tell us we're moving on, don't they? The years go by. Sir, madam, you and I have seen a lot of circling of the moon, many a circling of the years. They're going past. Whither are they leading us? This is a temporary world. Thank God for him who, being God our Creator, visited our planet and said as he walked among us, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. So may God give us good understanding of his word. We have two very interesting, very thoughtful, and in their way profound questions. The first of them reads like this: If we had access to all the information within the cosmos, would this prove that there is a creator? Now, that's a very interesting and profound question, because in the first place, at the heart of it is this word prove. And, uh, the word carries different meanings in different situations. You can prove a mathematical, uh, theorem, for instance. One and one make two. You can prove it by mathematical logic, given your presuppositions and your numeral system, then one and one make two, and five times five are twenty five. So you can prove things by mathematical logic. Philosophical things have to be proved by logic as far as we can, but then in all logical systems, you have to have your axioms. You have to start believing something before you can prove anything. Let me demonstrate to you what that means. Suppose you say to me, uh, I say A is is is true, A, whatever that is. You say prove it. So I quote B, you see, to prove A. Ah, but you say prove B. Oh, I see. So I I say C then, and C proves B, and B proves A. Obviously, I don't believe C either. If that were true, if you had to prove everything, you'd never prove anything, because it would be an infinite regress, as they call it. You'd never stop anywhere. And any system of philosophy that is a sensible system of philosophy will tell you you'll have to start with what are called axioms that you can't prove, but you assume them because they seem reasonable, and then you can begin to prove that, you see. So it is, uh, uh, with the, uh, God himself. You cannot prove everything in the universe. In that logical sense, you see, sheer logic. Moreover, the mathematician Gödel developed a theorem that startled the mathematicians and the philosophers in their day. Gödel proved mathematically that in any closed system, you see, where you can't bring in information from the outside in, so you have a closed system, you will never be able to prove everything within that system, by the laws within the system. That shocked the scientific world at the time, because if our universe is a closed system, and you can't bring anything in from the outside, you will never finally prove everything within the universe. That Gödel demonstrated mathematically. So this matter of proof is a very profound thing, do you see? Forgive my appearing to make it a little difficult, but this, if we want to be rigorous in our thinking, we shall have to face this. That's why Christians say, of course, if you want to expound this universe, explain this universe, ultimately you won't explain it unless you're prepared to go outside and bring in the evidence of a creator. But now let's think of another level. If I said to you, and you're a married man, prove, uh, your wife loves you. What kind of proof would you offer? You wouldn't, uh, offer me a sum in arithmetic, I suppose, would you? She allows me to keep, uh, uh, you know, five pounds pocket money a week or something. How, how would you prove your wife loves you? Oh, you say she darns my socks and she feeds me well. And I come back to you and say, you believe that? Only doing it so one of these days she hopes you'll die and she'll inherit your fortune. She can marry somebody. How would you prove I'm not true? Kind of a proof would, uh, suffice in that circumstance. I suggest to you that in that circumstance, you can't prove somebody loves you by mathematical formula, QED. What you have to do is to survey the evidence, and then take what people call a leap of faith. Faith in the Bible is a response to evidence. So you know your good wife, you've known her for years, you know the way she behaves, you think you know her character, you look at her loving kindness, and all the rest of it. You cannot prove it a hundred percent, but you take now, on the basis of the evidence, the leap of faith, and you trust your dear wife. So now when it comes to proving that God exists, it's not a question of a mathematical or a formula or or an equation in chemistry, but God is a person. There is evidence, says the Bible. There is evidence around. We've been discussing some of it last night and tonight in the cosmos around us. You see, suppose we had all the information in the cosmos, that would be a colossal amount of evidence that would point to a creator. What little we understand points to a creator, a designer. You will notice, perhaps, that when the Bible says the invisible things are, uh, uh, from the creation of the world are seen, namely his deity, his divinity, and his almighty power. It doesn't say that creation shows us the love of God. You'll notice that, doesn't it? Don't you? Creation also shows us earthquakes and volcanoes. But that there is evidence for a designer, I take to be overwhelming. But knowing God is not merely accepting the result of some logical proof, because God is a person. And if you are ever, and I are ever going to know God, God will have to let himself be known by us. Our Lord Jesus said, talking to God at one stage, I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thou hast hid these things from wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Why is that? Well, God is a person. Well, I- I- I'm a person, so are you. And if you wanted to know me, you could, uh, put me through a machine and analyze my blood and my bones and put me through an encalograph and examine my brain and dissolve me into atoms and all this kind of thing. You could know a colossal about amount about me. You'll never know me. Unless I am prepared to let you know me. You see, if it's a question of getting to know an atom, well, that's simple if you've got a moderately high IQ. Put the old stuff atom in a cyclotron and speed things up to the, uh, nearly the speed of light and bash them into the atom, and poor old atom, it has to give up its secrets. It's only a thing. You don't get to know a person that way. And God is the supreme person. If we're ever to know him, it won't be simply as a proof of a logical equation. There's the evidence that he exists, that he is the designer, but he has made himself known to us, one through his word spoken and written, we call it the Bible, and supremely through his son Jesus Christ our Lord. So that, uh, if we will humble ourselves and come to God through Christ, God will let himself be known by us. That is the question. Now, finally, uh, you say if we knew everything in the cosmos. When our Lord was here on Earth, he did some spectacular signs, according to the Gospel of John. For instance, on one occasion, he miraculously multiplied five loaves and two small fishes, and with it fed the multitude, giving them a sign that he was God become man. He was the creator, you see. And the Bible tells us of an interesting thing that happened. Next day, the crowd came, uh, uh, around him again, seeking him. What for? Well, because they had a free meal yesterday, they wanted another one today, that's what for. They had seen the physical miracle, and our Lord said to them, sorry, no more bread today, gentlemen. You seek me not because you saw a sign, but simply because your stomachs got filled. What they should have done was to take the evidence, th- this miracle in front of their noses, and their stomachs were full of the bread and the fish. What they ought to have said, but who is he that did it? Those hands that broke that bread, what hands were they? Who is this? The bread ought to have led them on to ask about him and whether they could get to know him. If you had all the information in the cosmos, it would point overwhelmingly its evidence to the existence of God. But that wouldn't be enough, would it? We need, therefore, to come to God, and to hear him and hear his voice, and responding to his voice and his word, get to know him. That's how I believe, I'm no authority on the topic, that men eventually decide to marry their wives. They weigh them up, you know, let alone the wives are weighing them up. And they watch their ways and their behavior and their dispositions and their characters and all the evidence about them and what people say about them and how they behave in general. But then, of course, there has to be that personal relationship, the posing of the question from both sides, and the acceptance of the person. That's how it is, it seems to me, with God. Sorry for that long sermon. I promised not to spend a long sermon like that on, on the next question, but I wanted to try and be fair to your question, because this matter of proof is something that often gets in the way of our coming in simple faith to God through Christ. Now, this next thing is, should scripture be used to establish our scientific belief, or should our scientific belief influence our interpretation of scripture? Well, I, I, I think it's not an either or, but a both and. You see. Eh, should scripture be used to establish our scientific belief? Well, you can't use scripture, as far as I know of, to decide what's inside an atom or what isn't. You can't use scripture to decide how the heart works in the body. You have to find that out by experiment, you see. Yes? So when it comes to the conquest of nature, God has left us to develop nature. The people who discovered electricity didn't discover electricity because they happened to read about it in the Bible, did they? Well, of course not. You see. Eh, people who discovered the internal combustion engine principle didn't read of it in the Bible first. God leaves us to run the universe, to find out how it works, to copy the universe. He leaves that to us to do. You see. But there are certain things in scripture that should be the basis of our scientific endeavor. You'll see. Now then, that is true on both sides of the fence. People who talk much about evolution, they don't accept God, they believe in evolution because evolution is science, very often are mistaking something, uh, a science for something much more important. They think that science is simply science. Science deals with the facts. You don't have to believe anything first when you come to science, you just do science, and science delivers the fact. Whereas the Bible, they say, is all about faith. You have first of all to believe. And the scientists, many of them, overlook the fact that science is built on faith. Even the most hard-headed evolutionist atheist, his science is based on his faith, based on his philosophy, based on what philosophically is termed materialism. That's the thing from which he starts, that there is no God. That's his presupposition. That is a faith. You've asked me about proving that there is a God. Well, now let me tell you that you can't prove there isn't one. Any scientist worth his salt will show you that you can't prove there's no God. He starts with the assumption there is no God. Einstein himself says, of course, science is built on faith. Science is built on faith because you, if you're going to do science, you've got first of all to start with the belief that the universe runs according to law. If the sun did different things every day of the week, every o- uh, week in the year, and what you observed today wasn't something acting in accordance with law, but just randomly doing things, there would be no science. You have to suppose that the universe is governed by law before science is even worth starting. That is a thing that should be heralded abroad, particularly to our younger folks. Science is built on faith. The Bible will insist that the true way to do science is, first of all, to believe that God exists. That is the basis. But even the atheist, when he comes to do his science, I repeat, he bases his science on his philosophical presuppositions. Do you see? In other words, more important than science, even at the level of academic discipline, more important than science is philosophy. You see, and the atheist has his philosophy and bases his science on his philosophy, that is materialism. Christians should and do base their science on belief in God. And because they believe in God, they expect the universe to be ordered and run according to laws set by the Creator. That doesn't excuse them for do- from doing science, but their scientific endeavor is encouraged by the fact they believe in the Creator who established the universe. It runs according to divinely appointed laws. It is worth studying, and the more we study it, the more we shall find it, uh, runs according to law. So that's my answer. Hope it made some sense. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to keep you so long, but you ask such interesting and profound questions, you see. I'm a little bit afraid you're trying to test me as to whether my, uh, uh, uh, uh, basic approach to philosophy and science is correct. Well, I hope it's met with your approval so far.