Gooding, David: 2 - The Book of Genesis

From chapter one, chapter one again of the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter one and verse three: And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good, and 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. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. And God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he seas, and God saw that it was good. And may he grant us understanding of his ways and his works. We began our studies last week of this book of Genesis by observing that there are three accounts of creation in its early pages. Three accounts of creation that, of course, agree together, but present God's activity in creation from three different points of view. We then went on to study in some detail the first account of creation, and it is with that first account that we must spend some time at least this evening at the beginning of this study. Let me therefore just remind you that we found it important last week in our thinking to distinguish between God's creative activity, strictly so-called, and all that other mechanism that you may call his development of what he had originally created. Genesis one is concerned to concentrate primarily on God's creative activity. It tells us that there were six days of creative activity. And I suggested to you that those days were probably days of twenty four hours, days consisting of an evening and a morning, for that understanding of the term best suits the language of the passage. But whereas God's creative activity took place on certain specified days, there is nothing in the chapter to tell us that those days were the consecutive days of one week. Between those days, there may well have been vast ages of time during which God was developing what he had created on the particular day. Creative work with God, of course, is a matter of a split second. But as history has shown us, and the New Testament itself declares, God's developing work has been spread over many, many ages. We noticed then last week that these days of creative activity were planned as a, uh, to reach a climax. They were not just repetitive and adding something. They were evidently working to a climax. That climax, the creation of man in God's image, to have control, to have dominion over the earth and all that was in it. We spend some time thinking of man's glorious position as originally envisaged in the earth. Tonight, however, I recall you to the first creation story, because we must observe a third element in this story. Element that is sometimes not so much emphasized as it ought to be. We have already talked about God's creative activity. We have talked about his subsequent development. Now we must think together of God's principles of organization. Well, chapter one of Genesis is very, very much concerned with the question of the way God has organized this universe in which we live. And perhaps this is one of the more important parts of this chapter. For with organization, we are at once involved in asking the whys and the wherefores. Why has God gone and organized it the way he has? From God's principles of organization of our world, we shall see very clear, very manifest moral and spiritual lessons. But now I'm talking about God's organization, and you'll be asking yourself what I mean and where I get it from. So may I, uh, uh, call your attention once more to this repeated statement in these early verses that God named certain things. He called the light day. He called the darkness night. He called the firmament heaven. He called the dry land earth. He called the gathering together of the waters seas. The activity is repeated and underlined so many times that we can't miss it, can we? We must therefore ask ourselves, why did God call these various things by these particular names. That's not a silly question to ask either, is it? Take light, for instance. Why not be content to call it light? That's a jolly good name, as far as I know, for the substance, if it is a substance. Why not just leave it and call it night? Why do you have to have a second name and call it day? And then the darkness, that's a jolly good name too, both in English and in Hebrew. Why add a second name and call the darkness night? And as for the firmament, the same thing might be observed. Why, why have two names when one could do? Why call the firmament heaven? And earth, a dry land, I mean, was a pretty vivid description of the situation when the waters were removed. If you've got one word, as it is in Hebrew, for dry land, why add another and call it earth? Why? Next thing we ought to observe, of course, is that with the ancients and with the Hebrews in particular, giving things names was an exceedingly significant operation. You will gather that from the names that are given to children and people in the Old Testament, will you not? I am credibly informed that when my parents came to pick my name, they put a lot of names on a bit of paper in a bowl of hat and and swung them round and and and took out the first two that they reached, you know, hence my curious name. But that's not quite how the ancients named things. They were far more deliberate, because when they named a thing, they intended its name to sum up its qualities, to indicate its characteristics, sometimes even to be a kind of a prophecy as to the person's future. Old Adam, we are told, had all the beasts paraded before him, and he named them. He called his wife Eve, not because it sounded nice, doubtless it did, but he called his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living, and the word Eve in Hebrew is related to that term living. Woman in Hebrew was called Isha because she was taken out of man, that is Ish. Jacob was called Yaakov in Hebrew because he supplanted his brother, and Yaakov means something like supplanter. Names then in Hebrew were significant, and if you knew the name of a thing, you knew its inherent qualities. When therefore God is described as naming things, God is indicating to us their qualities, their characteristics, their function, their significance. And of course, it is anyway a very good way of organizing things, isn't it? It would be very difficult finding yourself play a way around Northern Ireland if the towns had no names, wouldn't it? Or if your files weren't, uh, were very much like mine, with the stuff beautifully stacked in them, but no names yet typed on the top, so I don't know where to look for the thing when I put it there. By naming these things, God then has shown us their characteristics and pointed us to the principles of organization behind them. Now I want you to notice one third thing, and then we'll begin to come down to the meat from the bones. When you look at the matter more closely, it often appears that at first sight, that the name is not quite the same as the thing that receives the name. Let me illustrate what I mean. Let's take day one. God called the light day, and he called the darkness night. Now think a moment. Is day in fact the same thing as light? And is night exactly the same thing as darkness? I mean to say, presently, uh, the light will go outside, uh, and our part of the world will go into darkness. We say the day is gone, the day is finished, but then we know right well, don't we, that the light hasn't finished. The light's still there. The Americans have got it, and after them the Japanese may be, and the Russians, and pray presto, tomorrow morning we shall have it again. But the light doesn't go out. Light's always there. And when we wake up in the morning and find, as some of us do, that the night and the darkness are past, we're not so foolish as to think that because the night has finished, the darkness is no longer existent. It's still there, isn't it? Why then did God go and call the light day, when at first sight they're not exactly the same things? And why did he call the darkness night? You'll think I'm full of problems this evening. Well, let's hope we can solve some of them. But it is an interesting fact now, isn't it, that when God called the light day, from that time onwards, the word day has now two slightly different meanings, hasn't it? There was evening and there was morning, one day. Oh. In that sense, what does day mean? Well, it means an evening and a morning. Yeah. It means the light and the dark. It means the whole period of twenty four hours. And you call, therefore, the whole thing the day, a day. And yet God then goes and takes that very same word day, and he calls the night day. Well, we have followed the custom right to this present moment, don't you think I'm talking to you about anything difficult? This is how they talk in Ballymena, as I reminded you, um, last week. You say, my aunt is coming to stay with me. Oh yes, she's coming by airplane or by sea? You say by airplane. Is she coming by day or by night? Oh, you say by day. My aunt would never fly at night. I see. She's coming by day. You mean in the daylight, don't you? Yeah, in that part of the day, the 12 hours, the, you know, the half of the day that's light. I get you. Day with you is the light part of the day. All right. And how many, how long is your aunt staying? Oh, you say six days. Uh, days? You mean six of those bits when it's light? Oh no, you say she's, no, she's staying all time night as well. Oh, I thought you said day. Yes, I mean day of twenty four hours kind of a day. Oh, so you do use the word in two different senses. We mustn't quarrel with God then about doing the same thing, maybe. But you do see what's bound up, don't you, perhaps now in this matter of naming things. God isn't trying to confuse us. We use the same terms ourselves, but we must notice the difference. In a sense, you call the whole period of twenty four hours one day. But then in another sense, you call the light day, and the other bit of the day you call night. Hmm. That is exceedingly interesting, though in the end it's very simple. It is the common observation, we've learned it as soon as we could learn anything, that though we live all the time there is given to us, we're alive all 24 hours. Yet our life is divided into two bits. There is the light part of the day, and there is the dark part of the day. We call that dark bit the night. And so, in a sense, our activities are largely confined to that bit of the day that is light. How comes this alternation, you say? How is it that if the light's always there and never goes out, how is it that we only are given twelve hours of it at a time, and then we, uh, go into the dark? Well, you better ask the scientists, and they'll come back with a very learned explanation. Uh, and that's simply this, that the lighting system in this world is derived largely, though not altogether, from the sun up in the sky. And our little world upon which we live is made to twizzle round once in what we call twenty four hours, so that for roughly twelve hours, here we are on in the light, and our world is, uh, gradually turning round, and at the end of the twenty four hours, whether we want it or not, we twizzle round out of the light into the darkness, and then we have to wait in the darkness for another twelve hours with nothing we can do about it whatsoever, until our little world twizzles back once more and twizzles us round into the light. That's the simple explanation of it, isn't it, what? And that time when we're twizzled into the light we call our day, and the time when we're twizzled out of it into the darkness we call our night. I wonder if you've ever thought what a funny system that is of lighting the world. Perhaps you haven't given a lot of thought to how you would have lit the world if you'd have been in God's stead. It's quite an exercise, if you want an enjoyable afternoon, to think, to sit down and think of alternative methods. Oh, you say, but surely, um, I mean, the way God has done it is right. Yes, I'm not, I'm not querying that is right, but we mustn't imagine that's the only way God could have done it, must we? God, being almighty, could have arranged our lighting system in our world just any way he likes. Why has he gone and done it this way? Here we are, twizzled into the night, willy-nilly, we can't help it, then out into the dark, we can't help it. God could, if he wished, couldn't he have, uh, made us phosphorescent, like he's made some fish? God could have made our world phosphorescent or something and put lights in it. No, he's not done that. Why has he done it the way he's done it. It is here that we meet, and I spend, I go over it slowly because it is important that we get it. We meet what we may call not merely the creative activity of God, but the organizational activity of God. We meet not merely how has he done it, but the question, why has he done it? I always tell my friends a, a little story here. If you've heard it before, forgive me, but it illustrates the point. The difference between how a thing is done and why a thing is done. In my student days, I had two friends. One was a mathematician, one was a psychologist. We were walking along the road discussing to get together this profound philosophical question, the difference between how and why, and the psychologist had a fancy that the mathematician, for all his learning, didn't quite perceive what the difference was. So turning to him, he said, John, he said, old boy, you see those amber lights along the road there? So the Cambridge City authorities have just installed some beautiful amber lights among one of the main roads leading into Cambridge. And well, John saw the lights. He says, "Mr. John, now would you tell us please, why are those lights amber?" And the mathematician began, and there came forth a tremendous long explanation full of big words of chemical compounds that neither of us understood much at all. And in the end, after this long explanation, he gave his triumphal statement, and that's why they're amber. And the psychologist says, no, that's not why they're amber at all. That's how they're amber. The reason why they are amber is because the city council has decided that amber lights are the best lights to light the road with. And so many folks come along to the first chapter of Genesis wanting to, or hoping it's going to tell them how God has done it. And of course, they get very little out of Genesis that way, some very big marvelous things, but uh, not all the details of chemistry and physics and thus and thus that they might like to have. But what you will find in Genesis is the why it's been done. Why then has God organized our lighting system as he has? Fortunately, we're not left to guess. I want you to read with me, please, from the Gospel of John, where our Lord himself commented on our lighting system, drew first the observation of the physical fact, and then the moral lessons that we are to learn therefrom. It is John chapter eleven, Beginning in verse seven. then after this he saith to the disciples, let us go into Judea again. The disciples say unto him, Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone thee, and goest thou thither again? Jesus answered, are there not twelve hours in the day? If a man walk in the day, he stumbles not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, and now notice how it should be translated, he stumbleth because the light is not in him. You will, of course, remember the situation. Lazarus had been taken sick, and the sisters had sent to our Lord to tell him that he whom thou lovest is sick, hoping that the Lord would come at once to, to heal Lazarus of his sickness. But our Lord had deliberately stayed where he was, and Lazarus had died. And then after Lazarus had died, our Lord says, now let's go to Judea again. And the disciples say, oh no, Lord, don't go to Judea again. The Jews were going to stone you last time. If you go there again, they'll stone you. You'll lose your life. To teach them a very important lesson about walking in the will of God, our Lord first drew their attention to the lighting system in our world. Are there not twelve hours in the day? Well, yes, there are, particularly in the Middle East, roughly twelve hours day and twelve hours night. Are there not twelve hours in the day? If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not because he sees the light of this world. Well, of course he does. The light of this world being the sun up in the sky. But if a man walk at night, he stumbleth. Why does he stumble? Because, as our Lord said literally, because the light is not in him. Of course it isn't. The light is not in him. It's not even in his world. It isn't attached to the next lamppost. The light is outside him, it's outside his world, it is ninety million miles outside the world. That's a very ordinary fact to observe, isn't it, but exceedingly important. You try to walk at night, and if you haven't got a torch and there is no moon or anything like that, you stumble, and the very fact you stumble is a reminder of this, says our Lord, that the light you need to see with, the light you need even to walk down the road, to do your daily chores, to go to business, to do all your work, the physical light you need is not in you, isn't it? And it's not in your world. It is nineteen million miles out of your world. Completely outside your control. The switch, so to speak, isn't anywhere near your hand. Be a funny job if it was. And for this basic number one essential to living, we are utterly dependent on something completely outside of our world. It is number one necessity, isn't it? Light. The farmer couldn't grow his crops if it weren't for that light. You need the sun for the old chlorophyll and photo whatnota processes inside the green things, don't you, to make them grow. That light is also our warmth. We should absolutely freeze to death if it wasn't there. That light is absolutely essential for all our major activities. Even in this advanced age, artificial light is not good enough for the major operations. It is the basic, absolute, sine qua non essential of all human life and activity, and once in every twenty four hours we are reminded that it's completely out of our power and utterly outside our world. If a man walk at night, he stumbles because the light is Is not not... in. in him. I say again, why do you think God has gone and done it that way? Seems obvious to me. God has done it that way deliberately. To remind us then that number one basic essential is a something we have to pen- to depend on God for. We have to look outside our world for, a something that we are utterly dependent for and cannot do anything about. Oh, what a lesson in dependence on God is it. Oh, I think God foresaw, didn't he, what was liable to happen to man. How many there are in this present age that would tell us there isn't any God out there? Man's earth is his own concern. Earth is man's little lock-up shop. It is his self-contained flat. He can get in it and close the door and be utterly independent. He is master of everything, and he needn't be bothered. Oh, but wait a minute. It isn't altogether a self-contained flat, has it? Is it? The light to see with is outside. Every schoolboy knows that this Earth of ours is one amongst many planets that go round the sun. Yes, and every schoolboy knows that not each planet twizzles round at the same speed, does it? The moon that is a sort of a planet to us, Earth, and goes round us, that turns round at such a speed that it always has one of its sides facing Earth, and the other never faces Earth. There are some of the planets in our own system that take so long to swizzle round that their, their day would last for months and years of our system, and their night likewise. If that had been the rate at which our little world swizzles round, life would have been impossible. What keeps our world twizzling exactly at its pace that it does now? Well, if it started to run down, my dear good chap, you couldn't do anything about it. I say again, you are absolutely helpless. For your number one essential, utterly dependent on a light outside your world. Doesn't take much insight, does it, to see that in that organizational arrangement, when it comes to the physical light we need, there is a moral and a spiritual lesson, and our Lord drew it at once, didn't he? Of course, he was interested in the physical light of the day, and how a man, if he must, uh, walk steadily, must learn to walk in the twelve hours of light. But he applied it to his own life, didn't he? Says he, in effect, to his disciples, look, you're telling me not to go to Judea? You tell me that, um, if I go there, the Jews will set on me and I shall be killed. I run the risk of losing my life. But wait a minute. It is the will of God I go. Oh, but Lord, I know it's nice to be devoted, keen to do the will of God, but, uh, couldn't you on this occasion just use a little bit of, I mean, God means us to use our common sense, doesn't he? I mean, and to, and to go just right now is to put your head right in the news. Couldn't you wait some months? All that says Christ, we must work while it's day, while God gives us the light. We must learn to walk in the light of God's will. And if it's God's will I go to Judea today, to Judea today I go. Well, but couldn't you put it off? Oh, but the night cometh. And to step outside the will of God is to put yourself at once in darkness. A man walk at night, he stumbles, says our Lord, because the light is not in him. Oh, how wonderful for him who was himself the light of the world. Thus to acknowledge his dependence on the Father. All wise that he was himself, and one with God, and of essential nature with God. Yes, as God's perfect servant. Never for one moment going outside God's will, steering his life completely by the will and light of God's declared purpose. Shall we not listen to it? Oh yes, of course, in life we are to use our common sense. That's what God gave it to us for. But first and foremost must we learn this, that there is no light in us. There's no more spiritual light in us than there is physical light. All the wisdom we require is to be found in God, and in the will of God as he makes known that will to us. If we would walk through life unstumbling, then we must learn to... not to depend on our own wisdom, but deliberately to turn ourselves and depend upon the wisdom of God. On his revealed will, on his revealed purpose, and walk in that light. But if we grow independent of heart and trust to our own understanding, we shall find we are walking in the dark, and we shall stumble. In the end, it could lead to disaster. Trust not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy path. We've had it in our promise boxes, and we've had it quoted to us from senior and older Christians who have proved it true by their experience of life. It is still life's basic secret. It applies at all levels. Seek to walk in the light of God's revealed truth, yeah, morally, spiritually. And yes, young man and young woman, you who are at school and in the sixth form. The scientists can tell you a lot about how this world ticks. Do you know there's one thing a scientist, as a scientist, cannot possibly tell you, and that is why it ticks. Why does it tick? How marvelous if someone could tell you how every little cell in your body works. Wouldn't that be marvelous? And when you finish the last millionth, millionth, millionth, millionth, millionth cell, then you'll say, well, that's all very nice. Now I understand how I go, but please would you tell me, what am I here for at all? Where am I meant to be going? And what's it all about? Where should I find out? Oh, my dear good friend, you won't find out inside this earth. The only light there is comes from him who made the whole show. It is in his revealed word that we shall find the why of things. The path that we are meant to be following, and the glorious goal that awaits us if we will but follow him. But if you turn your back on God's revealed Word, on him who is the very light of this world in the spiritual sense, oh man, let me tell you, there is no other light. All else is darkness. None has any ultimate answer. Remember it. None has any ultimate answer. Outside Christ. Outside God's revealed truth. Oh, don't let the how of things so fascinate you, though it is fascinating, isn't it? Marvelously fascinating. In my next incarnation, if I ever have one, I'm going to be a scientist. But don't you, uh, let the how of it so entrap you that you forget the why of it. But learn early this dependence upon God, to acknowledge him as the source of your light in life, even as the sun is the s- source of your physical light in day. I spent a long one, long time on that one. I hope I haven't wearied you too much. I've wearied you, but yes, but not too much, I hope. Now we've got the idea and hang of things, let's look briefly at the other two, shall we? Just to ram home the principle. God said, let there be a firmament between the waters, to divide the waters from under the firmament from the waters that are above the firmament. So God made the firmament, and it was so. You say, what does that mean? Well, or if we start off, as we probably do in Genesis one with first of all chaos, then a lump of earth appearing, so to speak, this planet of ours, darkly enshrouded in all sorts of gases, twizzling around already, but the gas is so thick that you can't see the light of the sun, it doesn't penetrate through. Then God says, let there be light. And the gases are thinned out somewhat, so light can penetrate a bit, and you become conscious of the alternation of light and darkness. And day two, God says, right, now we'll, we'll make an atmosphere. As yet, the waters are still upon the whole face of the earth, there is no dry land apparent. But with the whole globe enveloped in water, God then makes us an atmosphere and creates what he calls here a firmament, which divides the waters that are above the firmament from the waters that are under the firmament. You say, well, I can see what the waters under the firmament are, but goodness me, what are the waters above the firmament? Are they the clouds in the sky? Well, I don't think so, do you? Because God then put the sun in the firmament, and anybody could see on a cloudy day, even in Israel, that the clouds went under the sun and not above it. And if the sun is in the firmament, waters which are above the firmament must be somewhere out. What are they, you say? Well, I better admit, first of all, I don't know. Have a guess. As any schoolboy who's got to about the fifth or sixth knows anyway, out in outer space, there are all sorts of marvelous Marvelous forces. forces. Cosmic rays. What are they? Anybody know? Many of them are absolutely lethal. While even some of the light that comes off the sun would be enough to kill us all, so I am informed. If our world were not sheltered by a Van Allen belt or something, or rather they called it an ionosphere, goodness knows what else contractions we have out there surrounding our Earth. It looks so beautiful, doesn't it, on a nice spring day with the sheep bleating in the fields and the trees all bursting with lovely green leaves, and we say, what a glorious place this is to be in. Yeah, we'd have the shock of our lives, some of us, if we could see the cosmic forces outside our little planet. If it weren't for certain protection that God's put around the whole thing, life would dissolve in, in a, in a few minutes. We know it, don't we, from the men sent out into space. They couldn't survive not a scarce half a minute if you just put them out in space without all their scientific equipment. Space outside is utterly hostile for human life. It's ain't a safe place at all for humans. And God in his mercy put a firmament round us. The Hebrew word passively means something that is strong. It is very strong, so the scientists inform us. The thing that shields our Earth. And not only a shield, but an atmosphere under the shield, is there not? We are one, as I said before, of many planets in this system, but uh, few, if any, have any atmosphere to speak of, and therefore life is impossible on them. It is an exceedingly unusual thing, shall I not say unique thing, in our planetary system for a planet to have enough atmosphere for any life worth talking of to exist. And you say, how far up does that atmosphere go? A very short way, really. So from two points of view, an atmosphere to breathe and exist in, and further out, a protection around us from all hostile forces that here are called waters above the firmament. For those two things, atmosphere and protection, God makes the firmament. One can easily see how it's basic necessity number two, surely. Ah, but then God isn't concerned just to make a protection, just to give us an atmosphere. Listen to what he does next. And God called the firmament heaven. What an extraordinary thing to go and do. You say, why is that? Well... because the word heaven already meant something else. Why should you then go and call our atmosphere heaven? You say, doesn't that muddle things up a bit? Well, I- not really. I suppose we get on very, uh, well with it, don't we, what, ourselves? We talk about the birds flying in the heavens, and, uh, with our poetic moods, at any rate, we do. And we generally get on very well with the term being used in several different senses. But it's only one term. Why do you think God did it that way? Well, perhaps I can answer that by using the term heaven now instead of firmament. Heaven instead of atmosphere, for instance. God made us an atmosphere, separated the waters above from the waters below, so there should be a place where we can breathe in. Anybody can see a human being can't breathe if he's submerged underwater. For man's very existence, he must have an atmosphere. Right, but now, instead of saying atmosphere, I'll use the term that God has used. He called the thing heaven. So it's true then, in that physical sense, that man can't live without heaven. No, he can't indeed. You know, we are funny creatures, aren't we? We like to call the stuff Earth's atmosphere. Hey, hey, hey, hey, just a moment, says God, please. You know what I call it? I don't call it Earth's anything. I call it heaven. But you say that sounds very funny. Man can't even exist on Earth without heaven. Well, it's absolutely true. Isn't Isn't it? it? Oh, what a lesson God has, uh, imprinted on nature every time we take a breath. Of course, now it's heaven in the physical sense, the atmosphere around us, absolutely essential to our living. When God starts his lessons at the physical realm, he says, yes, that atmosphere, please, I'm going to call it heaven. You know, heaven, says God to us, has another meaning too. There are other and further realms called heaven. There is at last that spirit realm, my very dwelling place, and of course, in every sense of the term, man can't live on earth without heaven. I wonder, have you ever thought of yourself? Please forgive the odd impression it will make if you do, it ain't my fault, but you know, if you could get a few miles outside of Earth and look at yourself in a telescope when you're going about your daily job, there would be the round Earth hanging on nothing, and there would be you walking on it. Some sticking up like that, some sticking out the sides, some sticking off down the bottom, heads down. What a comical spectacle. Yeah. And do you know, in the technical terminology of Genesis one, when you go out the street tonight or into this hall and you stand on earth, the skin of your feet or the sole of your shoes is on earth, do you know where the rest of you is? It's in heaven, isn't it? In this physical sense. You're only just on Earth. I tell you, you are. Only just on it. Why, please, has God gone and done it that way? And the way you would have thought of, I guarantee it isn't the way you'd have thought of, even as so as you'd have thought of having a world and putting millions of people on it, you wouldn't have just stuck them on it with their soles of their feet, would you? You'd have said, hey, they better be inside, like the rabbits or the foxes or something. Not God. You are physically on Earth. I'm not being comical. You are physically on Earth, but according to the physical terminology here, the rest of you is in heaven. Can't you see the reason for that too? Oh, how man, since he has fallen, does like to think he's on earth, an earth dweller, as God calls him, as though this earth were his home, as though this earth were his all. He thinks he can get on through life very well without thinking about heaven. That's nonsense. God, in his very physical terminology, has pointed the lesson that though we are here on Earth, we're only just about here, and to live, we must have connections with heaven. Let me elaborate that just a little bit. As the spacemen have told us, a human being, in order to live and continue living and not disintegrate, a human body must have two things. It must be in the air, and the air must be in it. Isn't that true? For instance, here I stand in the atmosphere. I am in the air. But if you were to tie a rope around my neck and throttle me, and the air wasn't in me, I should die. Yeah? You see, I must have both things. I must be in the air, and the air must be in me. And contrariwise, if I took a terrible big deep breath and you shot me out of a rocket into outer space, the air would be in me, oh, but there wouldn't be any air out there. And I should explode. You couldn't keep a body, body together. For me, as a human body, to exist and function, I must be in the air, and the air must be in me. God calls it, I tell you again, God calls it heaven. When the New Testament comes to preach us its deeper spiritual lessons, the discerning will see that they're not altogether that much different from the physical ones. For if I am to live spiritually, then listen, I must have a spiritual atmosphere to live in. Therefore, Christ puts me in his spirit and gives me to drink of that spirit. He baptizes me in the Holy Spirit, and I go into that glorious personality that is the Holy Spirit, and he makes me drink of that Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit goes into me. But let the physical arrangement point us who know it to the bigger and the spiritual. There is not such a thing as life on earth without some kind of a heaven. And finally, the next day God divided the waters which were under the firmament, he gathered the waters together in a heap, and he let the dry land appear. Well, yes, we know that too. But then he, not content to call it dry land, he, he called it earth. He called the dry land earth. Why do that? You say, doesn't that make things a little complicated? Well, it does in a way, doesn't it? Because now we're using the word earth in two senses. Originally, it was said that God made the heaven and the earth, and the earth was the whole thing. Yes? But now he's put the waters over here, and he's got some dry land here, and he calls the dry land bit earth. He doesn't call the waters earth, he calls them seas. So now, if I say to you, I live on the earth, you say, yes, I understand that, but I don't live on the Atlantic. You don't, uh, see any contradiction in terms. The Atlantic is part of the Earth in the first sense, isn't it? But not in the second sense. It's the dry land he calls Earth. Why does he do it? Oh, well, to remind us of one very good thing. There is a sense in which God has given us the whole world, the whole planet, the whole earth, and yet he hasn't. Only some of it. We can't even now, in any sensible fashion, live permanently on the seas. We are restricted even on our own planet, aren't we? The thing that impressed the ancients about that was this. Who has given to the waters its its decree, says Job? Who is it that keeps the waters in place so that they do not excel their decree and come washing over the world? That's the thing that impressed the ancients. It ought to impress us too. What is it that keeps the waters exactly where they are? Not sure that I know altogether, but I can tell you this, that if God gave our little planet a nudge, oops, one day like that, and instead of being a little bit on the wonk, it moved in the other direction, the ice caps would melt, wouldn't they? That could spell disaster over vast areas of the world. Do you hold it all an accident, my good sir? That the world, uh, is just at the right angle? That the proportion of oceans to dry land is so delicately balanced that our atmosphere is breathable. For if there were much more water, our atmosphere would get too moist, and if there were much less water, it would be too dry, and life would be impossible. Do you hold it is an accident altogether that the land masses aren't vastly bigger than they are because at our present tiltage of the axle axis of the Earth, if the land masses were much bigger, life in some of them would be almost unbearable. All that an accident? Is it an accident that this Earth we live on is just about the right size of gravity so that it can retain its atmosphere and make life possible? Altogether, one accident, I suppose, that our planet is just that distance from the sun where it's warm enough, but not too warm, and cold enough, but not too cold. It is an accident there's a firmament around our world that not only gives us atmosphere, but stops some harmful cosmic rays coming in. Oh no, my good sir, I'm glad it ain't an accident. I should fear that there'd be another accident tomorrow, and the world would go tooling up the wrong way. But if it ain't an accident, I've got to ask, why has God done it this way? To remind me that even when I'm on Earth, the little bit of square footage that I own and stand on, I only have by his permission. There are vast forces, so to speak, lapping around the coasts of this. And if it weren't for God's organization- organizing word, my dear brother, your farm would be inundated tomorrow and you'd lose a lot, and life in Ballymena would become impossible. The earth has he given to the children of men? Yes, a bit of it, and such bit as he pleased. You say, what can we do about these seas then? We must see that they don't come one of these days by accident, rushing in and overwhelming the lot of us. Well, do what you can. Pull up your barricades, go and sit down on the beach like King Canute if you like, but the sea won't take any notice of you. They are forces utterly beyond your power to control. And every tide that turns whispers in our ear the very same lesson. We live here, utterly dependent on the Almighty. We live here in the middle of powers, gigantic physical powers that we couldn't possibly control. We only live here because he controls them. And in his mercy, he arranged the whole thing and put us here and said to us, now look, you rule it, you rule it. And man was to be king of the earth, so to speak, so long as he lived in dependence upon God. What a foolish thing that was that man did when he turned round and deliberately disobeyed God and grasped at independence. It makes a nonsense of his whole position. A man living in independence of God. What a frightening concept. What a nonsense. Our world is fast moving to the final showdown. There shall come a man of sin sitting in the very temple of God, giving himself off as God and exalting himself above all that is called God. He shall tell us that God is a myth. There is no God out there. Science has proved that evolution is the sole explanation of everything there is. Man must be God. Man must control his universe. And in that day, that great political ruler is going to forbid anybody to worship the true God. The beginnings and seeds of that movement are already afoot. And when that happens, the great creator of this universe, with his little finger, shall begin to let loose some of the tides, let loose some of the cosmic rays, and man will have to learn amidst cosmic, cosmic commotion. This world isn't his. There is a God who made it and controlled it. God used his word to write this lesson of wonder and awe, get gladness on our hearts, and teach us not only intellectually, but in a practical way, to learn to live as God designed we should live, in grateful and humble, daily dependence upon him. Now we pray. Now, O Lord, we pray that thou wilt help us to grasp what thy word is telling us. These may be our unusual lessons, and yet, Lord, we thank thee for their simplicity written into our everyday world, written large for us to see. Help us, Lord, constantly to open our eyes to see them and to learn to live in thy light, in thy world. We thank thee, Lord, for forgiving our sins, for bringing us back to thee. We thank thee above all for him who is the light of the world, through whom we have found thee, know thee personally. O Lord, now as not only thy creatures, but as thy sons. Help us daily and deliberately to put ourselves at thy disposal, to walk in thy light, walking ever come nearer to thee, so that even when our little world is done for and forever forgotten, we may go on enjoying that eternal life that thou hast already given us through faith in thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant us thus thine evening blessing for his name's sake. Amen.