Abner Chou | "The Wisdom of the Creator" | Math3ma Symposium 2024
00:00:00.000 | You all have been on my heart and mind greatly.
00:00:11.800 | I love this time together because you are in a very, very unique position in the Lord's
00:00:19.400 | work.
00:00:20.400 | You have unique access and unique opportunities to be salt and light.
00:00:24.220 | And I know that the field is difficult.
00:00:27.000 | Not only challenges inherent in the discipline, but even challenges inherent in the workplace.
00:00:32.080 | And so I am just so thrilled to be of any kind of encouragement to you.
00:00:36.880 | And really when Ty Denae asked me if I'd be willing to speak again, not only was I eager,
00:00:42.440 | but I had a passage in my mind and I just prayed that she'd allow me to do it.
00:00:47.400 | And so this has been weighing on my heart for basically many years, but particularly
00:00:53.740 | the last year.
00:00:55.760 | And I wanted to be as encouraging to you as it has been to my own soul on behalf of you.
00:01:04.040 | And so to that very end, shall we open our time in a word of prayer?
00:01:07.920 | Our God and Father, I do thank you for what you have done, for who you are, for your immense
00:01:16.560 | genius and your immense wisdom and the glory of the scripture and the glory that from the
00:01:23.380 | scripture shines upon and illuminates the work of creation.
00:01:28.780 | And I thank you for the brothers and sisters here who are endeavoring with all their heart
00:01:35.240 | to honor you.
00:01:37.040 | And we ask that as we go through your word now, that there would be great encouragement,
00:01:43.900 | that there would be great refreshment, that there would be great renewing of the mind
00:01:48.560 | so that people would leave here all the more excited to do what you have positioned them
00:01:55.680 | to do and given them opportunity to do for your glory, with the full confidence that
00:02:01.320 | they are honoring you, with the full conviction that what they are doing is that which is
00:02:07.220 | utmost worshipful to the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:02:11.340 | May that be captured through an inadequate vessel, but may you through that be glorified
00:02:17.820 | mightily.
00:02:19.340 | And we ask this not for our sake, but so that your wisdom and your honor and your compassion
00:02:27.180 | and loving kindness would be magnified now.
00:02:30.020 | In your name we pray, amen.
00:02:33.460 | Just by way of introduction, this is highly unusual for me, I'd like to recount kind of
00:02:37.820 | two anecdotes to help us frame what I'm about to talk about.
00:02:42.980 | I usually don't ever tell a story and much less too, but I do feel the need in order
00:02:49.660 | to situate us properly.
00:02:52.340 | And the first story actually happened at a conference just like this one.
00:02:56.100 | I was standing in the back and a gentleman came up to me and he started to talk with
00:03:01.540 | me and related that he was just so discouraged, not just by the workplace he was in and the
00:03:08.900 | loneliness that was there and the opposition that he faced, but even in the work itself.
00:03:15.980 | And he didn't mean that he was coming into roadblocks or obstacles or problems that he
00:03:21.020 | couldn't solve or queries that he couldn't answer.
00:03:24.340 | He just was wondering, is this even worth it?
00:03:28.460 | Is this even honoring to God what I'm doing?
00:03:31.460 | And he wasn't doing anything unethical to be clear.
00:03:34.460 | He had just wondered, can this even be used for the glory of God or not?
00:03:41.380 | That's what he was wondering.
00:03:42.380 | And when he said these things to me, my heart broke for him.
00:03:47.260 | And I wanted to encourage him because I know the sciences can be challenging and I want
00:03:54.660 | those fields and STEM and the like to be encouraged to know that there is a way and there is a
00:04:02.100 | reason why God is glorified, not just that we are salt and light in the workforce, but
00:04:07.940 | even in the work itself, even in the work itself.
00:04:12.060 | And along that very line, I was, here's a second anecdote, standing in line at graduation
00:04:18.020 | this past year and a dear brother of mine, his name is Paul Twist, came up to me and
00:04:23.340 | said, "Abner, we haven't been able to talk all semester."
00:04:25.940 | And I said, "Yeah, I know."
00:04:27.740 | And he said, "You know, we've both been really busy."
00:04:30.260 | And I said, "Yeah, yeah, I get it.
00:04:32.580 | And I know you're about to go in there for graduation."
00:04:35.380 | I said, "Mm-hmm."
00:04:36.500 | And he said, "But can we just have a conversation right now?"
00:04:40.540 | And I thought, "Okay."
00:04:43.080 | And they're like, "Chow, stand here, face that way."
00:04:45.860 | And Paul's like, "Paul, you're supposed to be over there."
00:04:49.280 | But he said, "Abner, I just think we've got godliness all wrong."
00:04:53.100 | And when he said that, I just stopped him and said, "Paul, it's graduation.
00:05:00.260 | Do we have an issue?
00:05:03.300 | What do you mean by that?"
00:05:05.340 | And he said, "Often we emphasize what godliness is not, but sometimes we fail to remember
00:05:14.460 | all that godliness should be."
00:05:17.600 | And what he meant by this was that sometimes we just think godliness is avoiding certain
00:05:22.660 | things and doing other things, but we fail to remember that godliness is the full enjoyment
00:05:31.780 | and full approach to every single thing in our lives.
00:05:37.180 | There is a way that every single experience, every single encounter, every single occasion
00:05:44.620 | and opportunity should be redeemed for the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:05:50.140 | That's true godliness.
00:05:52.180 | And by just emphasizing don't do this, and okay, here are three things you need to do,
00:05:58.300 | there is this huge gap of an entire area or areas of your life that actually we haven't
00:06:05.900 | been thinking about how to live godly in those areas.
00:06:11.020 | Often we call this, in theology, the sacred-secular dichotomy.
00:06:15.980 | We say that there are some things that are sacred, going to church, praying, reading
00:06:19.860 | your Bible.
00:06:20.860 | Those are the holy things, those are the things prescribed by scripture, and that's it.
00:06:26.100 | And then everything else is secular.
00:06:28.740 | And not only have we divided life that way, we've even implied then that the Bible has
00:06:34.420 | no relevance on those secular so-called areas.
00:06:39.060 | We need to remember that everything should become sacred.
00:06:42.900 | Everything should become sacred.
00:06:43.900 | Yeah, you could make something secular, that's true.
00:06:46.840 | That wouldn't be right though.
00:06:49.020 | Everything should be done for the glory of God.
00:06:52.100 | And when you put these two stories together, the struggle of this one scientist brother
00:06:56.220 | in Christ that I was speaking of, and Paul twists his bombshell on me at graduation,
00:07:02.520 | you begin to see that there is a tremendous need, a tremendous opportunity to remind us
00:07:08.580 | that there is godliness in our discipline.
00:07:12.220 | That it's not just, even though it's absolutely important, amen and amen, to be salt and light,
00:07:18.460 | faithful witness, people of character, people of integrity, in our workforce, in our learning,
00:07:23.740 | in our education, amen and amen.
00:07:26.420 | But there is also worship that can and must happen in the work itself.
00:07:34.500 | It is given by God.
00:07:37.220 | The difficulty we often have because of the battles that we struggle with in our culture
00:07:41.780 | and in our society and circumstances is that we tell scientists, engineering, those in
00:07:48.340 | technology, those in math, about the wrong way to do things and not to do those things
00:07:54.540 | and we warn about it.
00:07:55.980 | And yes, it is clear.
00:07:57.540 | There are the categories that we call special revelation, general revelation, and knowledge.
00:08:03.700 | Special revelation is like your Bible where God is abundantly clear.
00:08:08.380 | He's revealing very detailed propositions about the way this world is and who he is,
00:08:14.780 | that which you could never know on your own, and that is special revelation.
00:08:19.380 | And then there is also general revelation, we understand that as well, which is that
00:08:23.420 | God through creation as an entirety, as a whole, has divulged infallible truths about
00:08:31.060 | himself.
00:08:32.060 | Namely, that he exists and he is powerful and even allowing us to understand that there
00:08:37.020 | is right and wrong, but general revelation is general for a lot of reasons.
00:08:41.820 | One, because it is general in its scope, it covers creation in total, it's general in
00:08:48.420 | its content, it is talking not about all the different specific, particular, detailed truths
00:08:54.380 | of God and the gospel, but just that he simply exists and he's really powerful and you and
00:08:59.660 | I are bad.
00:09:01.180 | That's all that you know.
00:09:02.260 | That's very, very general, and it's general in its effect.
00:09:07.100 | It's general in its effect because people suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
00:09:13.780 | And so it's general in every sense of the word, beginning, middle, and end.
00:09:18.580 | It's scope, it's content, it's consequence, and it's general, but it still exists.
00:09:24.220 | It's enough to condemn you, it's never enough to save you.
00:09:27.640 | So you have special revelation and general revelation, and in all those things God is
00:09:31.660 | still revealing.
00:09:33.880 | But then you have a final characteristic, a final category, and that is the inverse
00:09:37.920 | of it all, and that's the category that we call knowledge.
00:09:41.480 | Unlike revelation where God is revealing, God is declaring, God is disclosing, knowledge
00:09:48.720 | is what you and I figure out.
00:09:51.040 | It's what you and I discern, and it is, and it can be very specific, but it is not inerrant.
00:09:58.160 | It is not necessarily infallible.
00:10:00.420 | It is not necessarily always correct because we're the ones figuring it out.
00:10:05.080 | And the danger that can sometimes happen, and this is what we always have to warn about,
00:10:10.760 | is that we take our knowledge and we say, "Well, I'm observing things about creation
00:10:14.160 | and isn't general revelation about creation?
00:10:16.520 | Okay, so what I observe now is equal to general revelation."
00:10:20.680 | And then we're like, "And general revelation has the word revelation, so that must make
00:10:24.680 | it the same as special revelation."
00:10:27.320 | And so those are the two things, and so now what we've done is we've taken what we have
00:10:31.960 | observed and by a series of leaps and bounds we have made it equal to what God has said,
00:10:39.040 | and he knows for a fact because he designed it that way.
00:10:42.360 | That's the danger that we always face.
00:10:44.640 | That's the danger inherent, that we elevate knowledge to the level of general revelation
00:10:49.040 | and then elevate that to the level of special revelation.
00:10:52.680 | It's true.
00:10:54.040 | That's the dilemma of how we get so many theological issues, whether that be creation or other
00:11:00.320 | related factors in the whole equation that we're dealing with.
00:11:05.760 | Nevertheless, while we can warn against these things, and they have been warned about, and
00:11:10.280 | so I'll just keep my comments to that, so often we haven't told and explained, but this
00:11:16.720 | is why science glorifies God.
00:11:20.640 | This is why this thing we call STEM and all that is embraced in it can't be done as a
00:11:28.240 | noble enterprise unto the Lord.
00:11:31.020 | This is why he designed it that way.
00:11:33.760 | Put it this way, we are so concerned, and as a theologian and as a leader, I am concerned
00:11:39.920 | that we don't put knowledge to the level of special revelation, amen.
00:11:44.160 | We forget, but special revelation should be driving our knowledge, and we forget that
00:11:51.600 | side of the equation.
00:11:53.920 | What my goal is for this afternoon, and I have no idea what time, okay, the clock over
00:12:01.180 | there is perfectly blinded by the light.
00:12:03.960 | I just like it.
00:12:04.960 | I just appreciate that so much.
00:12:06.760 | Thank you, Ty, Denae, for doing that.
00:12:09.600 | That way I have no ... I'm always on time.
00:12:13.800 | But my goal for this afternoon, as long as the Lord allows us, is to go and give you
00:12:20.920 | a starting point.
00:12:22.600 | It's to go and say this, yeah, knowledge never trumps special revelation, amen, but for that
00:12:28.400 | very reason, if you start with special revelation, you're going to be driven to realize that
00:12:33.400 | there's a God-glorifying way to do knowledge.
00:12:37.040 | There's a God-glorifying way to do knowledge, and that text that helps us know that and
00:12:42.280 | helps us capture that is Psalm 104.
00:12:45.920 | Turn there with me to Psalm 104.
00:12:52.080 | It is noteworthy that Psalm 104 through really 107 is part of a series of passages.
00:13:03.360 | It really is a part of a series of passages, and you can even hear it.
00:13:08.280 | The final line is hallelujah, praise, yeah.
00:13:13.920 | The Lord is being so praised that the psalmist just concludes everything with an adoration
00:13:20.280 | of him, and he's so caught up in the emotion of it, he not only expresses it, but expresses
00:13:26.560 | it with a shortened form of God's full name, because he's so caught and compelled by the
00:13:33.360 | truths therein.
00:13:35.120 | But this is not just linguistically tied together as a series of psalms.
00:13:38.520 | If you stop and think about it, Psalm 104 deals with creation, Psalm 105 deals with
00:13:43.880 | the life of Abraham, Psalm 106 deals with Israel's history, and then Psalm 107 deals
00:13:50.160 | with God's loving kindness all the way through.
00:13:52.720 | Basically what Psalm 104 to Psalm 107 is, is it's a kind of a history book, a total
00:13:59.480 | recounting from the beginning all the way through of all that God has done for his people.
00:14:05.520 | This is a combination, a collection of psalms that is intentionally woven together in that
00:14:11.920 | way.
00:14:12.920 | And within that, Psalm 104 in discussing creation, in discussing that beginning, you can already
00:14:19.360 | start to see the structure.
00:14:21.280 | It's not hard to figure out, and the amount of points for this message should be obvious.
00:14:26.440 | How many days are there in the creation week?
00:14:29.160 | Seven.
00:14:30.160 | Guess how many points are in this message?
00:14:32.000 | Seven.
00:14:33.000 | Why?
00:14:34.000 | Because day one, God made light and dark.
00:14:37.760 | Verse two of Psalm 104, wrapping yourself with light as a cloak.
00:14:42.840 | Day two, separating the sky and the sea.
00:14:46.800 | Well, notice what happens.
00:14:48.320 | He lays up beams in the upper chambers, walks on the wings of the wind, makes his angels
00:14:54.040 | the winds and his ministers a flaming fire.
00:14:57.480 | We see day two.
00:14:58.800 | How about day three, where he separates the dry land from the water?
00:15:03.320 | He founded the earth upon its place, verse five.
00:15:06.200 | He covered it with the deep as a garment.
00:15:09.180 | There are mountains that are going up and down, and there are waters so that they don't
00:15:12.760 | pass over a certain boundary, verse nine.
00:15:15.520 | It actually even continues in verse 10, and falling with the springs that flow throughout
00:15:19.560 | the earth.
00:15:20.560 | That's all day three, the water and the dry land.
00:15:23.680 | How about day four, where he creates the sun, moon, and stars, the lesser and the greater
00:15:29.240 | lights?
00:15:30.240 | Well, you can see that in verse 19.
00:15:31.680 | He made the moon for the seasons, and the sun knows the place of its setting.
00:15:36.280 | How about day five, with the sea creatures and such?
00:15:39.600 | Well, look at verse 24, 25, 26.
00:15:42.760 | You have the sea, great and broad, creeping things are without number, and there are ships
00:15:47.480 | even there, and the Leviathan is there.
00:15:50.000 | That's the sea.
00:15:51.380 | How about day six, with people and animals?
00:15:55.120 | Verses 27 and following talks about how all people and animals wait for God, wait for
00:16:01.040 | God to give them their food.
00:16:03.080 | What about day seven, where there is the Sabbath rest, and everything is blessed, and to be
00:16:08.160 | holy to God forever?
00:16:09.320 | Well, look at verses 31 and following.
00:16:11.520 | It says, "Let the glory of Yahweh endure forever.
00:16:14.320 | Let Yahweh be glad in his works."
00:16:16.240 | What is this?
00:16:17.240 | Psalm 104 is just recounting the seven days of creation.
00:16:21.160 | That's what it is.
00:16:22.280 | That's what it is.
00:16:23.280 | Now, on the one hand, we can make this point, and it's worthwhile.
00:16:27.520 | Sometimes people think that Genesis 1 is poetry, and they want it to be poetry so that it's
00:16:32.680 | not historical.
00:16:34.520 | Okay, even though it's not poetry, there is a point to be made.
00:16:40.400 | Go to a text like Psalm 104, which is poetry, and it's still what?
00:16:47.480 | History.
00:16:48.840 | It's still historical.
00:16:50.720 | The genre doesn't determine the content of what is being asserted.
00:16:57.080 | Just because you tell your wife, "Roses are red, violets are blue, and I love you," she
00:17:01.840 | doesn't say back to you, "Well, you put that in poetic genre, so I don't know if that's
00:17:06.160 | historically true."
00:17:09.400 | I only accept propositional statements.
00:17:11.680 | That's what I only have on my Hallmark cards.
00:17:15.360 | Ten reasons I love you, period.
00:17:18.680 | Now, we don't do that.
00:17:21.560 | Just because a genre is a certain way doesn't determine its content.
00:17:27.440 | The author determines by the way he chooses his words and the way he articulates things
00:17:33.080 | and portrays things, whether something is figurative or historical, abstract or concrete.
00:17:40.280 | In Psalm 104, the way it is worded, and even that there are days, and the days are correlated,
00:17:47.800 | and the days are chronological, and all these different things are an indication that Psalm
00:17:52.560 | 104 is affirming, yes, God made the world six days, rested the seventh.
00:17:59.680 | That's true.
00:18:00.680 | Psalm 104, as poetry, is even affirming that, and that just reinforces the whole notion
00:18:06.480 | of how we need to interpret our Bible.
00:18:09.520 | True, on the one hand.
00:18:12.040 | But on the other hand, we might ask the question, "Hey, we already got Genesis 1.
00:18:16.840 | Why do we need to hear about seven days all over again?
00:18:21.240 | I already read it once.
00:18:22.800 | I got it the first time.
00:18:24.720 | Why do we need it again?
00:18:26.240 | And why are you putting it in poetry?"
00:18:28.080 | Good question, and I love this, and this is the point of the passage.
00:18:32.600 | So crucial, because Psalm 104 isn't just repeating Genesis 1.
00:18:38.060 | It does so, and it does so to reinforce the point of the nature of Genesis 1.
00:18:43.520 | True, but it's not just repeating it for the sake of repetition.
00:18:48.120 | What the psalmist, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is doing is he's walking
00:18:52.000 | us through each day of creation, and he's saying, "Did you think about what God made
00:18:57.600 | on that day?
00:18:58.600 | Did you think about all the ramifications that are true because of what he made on that
00:19:02.680 | day?
00:19:03.680 | Do you think about all the properties, and all the characteristics, and all the attributes
00:19:07.960 | that are designed carefully in what he made on that day?
00:19:12.360 | Do you realize that all that God is going to do through what he created on that day?"
00:19:17.800 | And what we start to realize is exactly what the text says, Psalm 104 verse 24, "How numerous
00:19:25.560 | are your works, O Yahweh."
00:19:27.400 | Here's the key phrase, "In wisdom you have made them all."
00:19:34.480 | Creation in six days, God makes everything that will be leveraged for everything that
00:19:42.160 | happens in his plan.
00:19:44.560 | In six days, everything from skies and trees to animals and man and everything is created
00:19:53.760 | in a certain way with certain unique properties that will carry out every single thing that
00:20:01.820 | ever happens in human history in his plan.
00:20:06.120 | That's genius.
00:20:07.840 | That's genius.
00:20:09.440 | If I gave you six days, and I said, "Assemble everything you need that you will ever encounter,
00:20:17.600 | and in fact that all people will ever encounter for the rest of their existence, would you
00:20:23.120 | be able to do it?"
00:20:24.840 | If I gave you 600 days, no.
00:20:28.800 | I mean day six, we're just forming the committee to figure it out.
00:20:37.200 | And we realize God is a genius.
00:20:41.520 | God is a genius.
00:20:43.440 | He speaks it, and everything is created in such a fashion that it will have ramifications
00:20:49.760 | for every single day for the rest of the days of this world.
00:20:54.680 | And it has to happen a certain way.
00:20:57.740 | And here's the punchline, brothers and sisters.
00:21:00.480 | Your disciplines, they are aimed to do this in and of themselves, in and of themselves
00:21:07.760 | to discover the genius of God and reflect it back to him.
00:21:13.600 | That is what you do every single day in your acts of discovery, investigation, analysis,
00:21:22.640 | contemplation, experimentation, whatever it is.
00:21:26.640 | You are just doing exactly what the psalmist here is doing.
00:21:30.440 | You are plowing into the depths of the genius of God and reflecting it back to him.
00:21:36.800 | Special revelation doesn't say suspend knowledge.
00:21:39.680 | Special revelation tells us exactly how to do knowledge, and that knowledge must glorify
00:21:44.680 | God.
00:21:46.020 | He set it up that way.
00:21:47.020 | He set it up that way.
00:21:49.200 | And so with that in mind, surprise, surprise, we're just going to be walking through the
00:21:53.320 | days of creation with the psalmist and thinking about how the psalmist thinks about these
00:21:58.680 | things and then learning from that.
00:22:02.240 | That's what we're here to do.
00:22:04.320 | The glory, the nobility, the honorability of all these disciplines is that we discover
00:22:12.480 | the genius of God.
00:22:14.400 | That's what we're about.
00:22:16.200 | And so with that in mind, well, where do we start?
00:22:19.800 | The beginning, day one.
00:22:22.080 | And this is in verses 1 through 2a, verses 1 through 2a.
00:22:28.160 | The opening reminds us that the outcome of contemplating anything in creation, and that's
00:22:35.720 | what we all do here.
00:22:37.000 | We contemplate something in creation, something that is created.
00:22:41.560 | It is this, "Bless Yahweh, O my soul, O Yahweh, my God, you are very great."
00:22:47.720 | We acknowledge that God is the highest good.
00:22:52.360 | That is why we say, "Bless Yahweh," and we love him for his greatness, and we love him
00:22:58.240 | for his goodness, and we acknowledge this.
00:23:01.920 | We acknowledge this because we understand special revelation as it is illuminating knowledge
00:23:08.800 | that God is glorious.
00:23:10.880 | Notice the phrase, "You are clothed," as it says in verse 1, "with splendor and majesty."
00:23:15.760 | The word "splendor" refers to the innate impressiveness and gravitas that God has, that he is someone
00:23:25.480 | who is so mighty and so weighty in and of himself.
00:23:30.600 | He is overwhelming in and of himself, and "majesty" refers to the fact that he has thereby
00:23:36.680 | an effect on everything else, overcomes everything else.
00:23:40.120 | No one can resist him.
00:23:41.560 | No one can oppose him.
00:23:43.160 | All fall down before him, and so who he is in and of himself, and his effect on everybody
00:23:48.000 | else, that is the sum of his glory.
00:23:50.640 | You are clothed with splendor and majesty.
00:23:53.280 | But here's the issue.
00:23:55.080 | We talk about God's glory, and we even struggle to come up with the words to describe the
00:23:59.680 | glory of God, and so God helps us, and this is what ties in with the first day.
00:24:05.660 | What did God create on day one?
00:24:07.320 | Let there be light.
00:24:09.060 | We know that.
00:24:10.240 | So verse 2a, "wrapping yourself with light as a cloak."
00:24:15.800 | How do we know, how can we envision, how can we illustrate or make an analogy between the
00:24:24.280 | glory of God, which is so hard for us to express, so hard for us to explain?
00:24:31.720 | God gives us a help, and it's in how he designed light, how he designed light.
00:24:38.120 | The psalmist, he knows by now how God has associated his glory with light.
00:24:46.200 | You can understand.
00:24:47.440 | How did God guide the people of his people from Egypt?
00:24:51.400 | He was a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire.
00:24:54.720 | We understand that.
00:24:56.400 | There's light.
00:24:57.520 | And in Genesis 15, when he's coming to Abraham, and he puts the guy out and puts him to sleep,
00:25:04.160 | so to speak, he comes as a pillar of light.
00:25:08.720 | Ezekiel chapter 1, when it's describing the glory of God, it says there were flashes of
00:25:13.600 | light going to and fro, talking about the speed of God's presence.
00:25:18.560 | By the way, that word "flashes of light" in Hebrew, in modern Hebrew, is actually the
00:25:23.280 | word that they use for electricity, electricity.
00:25:26.580 | It's fascinating how they're conceiving of these things.
00:25:29.180 | In Revelation 1, there's dazzling light.
00:25:31.460 | In Daniel chapter 10, there's overwhelming purity of white, brilliant light.
00:25:36.680 | And in the transfiguration, of course, there's a lot of light.
00:25:40.020 | And in Isaiah chapter 9, one of the clearest demonstrations of the nature of light, it
00:25:43.820 | says this, "The light has shone.
00:25:46.340 | The land is pierced in darkness, but those in darkness have seen a great," what?
00:25:50.220 | "Light."
00:25:51.220 | Light is invasive.
00:25:52.500 | Light is powerful.
00:25:53.960 | Light shines.
00:25:55.060 | Light cannot be put out, John chapter 1.
00:25:58.020 | Light is fast.
00:25:59.540 | Light is flashy.
00:26:01.340 | Light is resilient and brilliant and can be overwhelming.
00:26:06.260 | All of those are descriptors of light.
00:26:09.900 | And those are only descriptors of light because God made it that way on day one.
00:26:15.860 | Day one.
00:26:17.900 | You can't have that unless God didn't design it that way.
00:26:22.940 | God designed light with all of its properties on day one.
00:26:27.740 | And when we study light in any fashion, in any way, whether that be from electricity
00:26:34.580 | to light itself, any kind of energy, what we start to realize is the absoluteness of
00:26:42.100 | all of those characteristics that I just mentioned, all of those facets that I just described,
00:26:47.660 | we start to quantify how absolute those things are.
00:26:51.940 | And with that, then we understand the absolute majesty of the glory of God, the majesty of
00:26:57.720 | the glory of God.
00:26:58.720 | You see, God, to help us understand himself better, on day one, when he said, "Let there
00:27:04.780 | be light," he assigned light all of these different properties just so that we could
00:27:10.140 | study them, just like the psalmist is doing here.
00:27:13.540 | And through them, one application is to actually understand the glory of God better.
00:27:20.420 | Every facet, even its mystery, I know you all know better than I about these things,
00:27:26.660 | but that light is a wave and a particle, and which one is it, and all these kinds of questions
00:27:31.180 | that people have, yeah, that's the point.
00:27:35.900 | That amplifies exactly God's message about himself.
00:27:41.240 | You can't contain him.
00:27:43.680 | You can't even contain light, which is the analogy of him.
00:27:46.700 | What makes you think you can contain him?
00:27:51.460 | God designed on day one that which helps us to grasp things that are very hard for us
00:27:57.780 | to grasp, namely, his glory, his glory.
00:28:02.140 | Here's another one, day two, day two.
00:28:05.540 | Speaking of grasping things, on the second day, we know that God made sky and sea.
00:28:10.340 | And so, with that, the psalmist even instructs us on the nature of God as reflected in this.
00:28:16.100 | God, as it says in the end of verse two, he stretches out the heavens like a tent curtain.
00:28:20.460 | That's the aesthetic aspect of God, that he can craft the world as if a tent curtain,
00:28:27.480 | taunt and smooth, and with a specific kind of curvature.
00:28:32.220 | One of the cool things about when you look at the world, and you look at the earth from
00:28:36.620 | space, and I know Jeff Williams is here, and he'll chide me on this simple, simple observation,
00:28:43.400 | but it's so smooth.
00:28:45.520 | It's not wrinkly.
00:28:48.660 | I can't draw straight lines or curved lines.
00:28:51.340 | I can't draw anything.
00:28:52.980 | So, and it's just, you know, you just feel like it's everything's a wave, you know, and
00:28:57.460 | when I try to draw waves, they become smooth.
00:28:59.140 | It just doesn't work.
00:29:01.660 | But God can shape things so that it's perfectly curved, perfectly smooth, no ruffles at the
00:29:11.660 | end.
00:29:13.540 | That's a sign of his craftsmanship.
00:29:15.980 | That's a sign of his brilliance.
00:29:17.780 | And we say, "Well, yeah, how else are you going to make it?"
00:29:19.700 | He could have made it a lot of other ways.
00:29:22.020 | He could have, but he didn't.
00:29:23.780 | He designed it that way to demonstrate something about himself, and the more we study about
00:29:27.980 | those matters, and the more we realize how brilliant that is, that's just studying the
00:29:31.860 | genius of God.
00:29:32.860 | That's just studying the genius of God.
00:29:34.980 | It's not just that.
00:29:35.980 | It's not just his aesthetic aspect.
00:29:37.780 | It's also his strength.
00:29:39.460 | He lays the beams of his upper chambers in the waters.
00:29:43.240 | The idea is that he keeps the sky from falling, so to speak, and ensuring that it just doesn't
00:29:47.740 | perpetually rain, things are contained, things are stable, and that's indicative of his strength.
00:29:55.940 | When we understand how atmosphere works and all these different things, what we are magnifying
00:30:01.260 | is the genius of God and how he designed things strong and stable, and even his own power.
00:30:08.020 | We are learning about the God we cannot see, speaking of which, continue on, he sets up
00:30:14.420 | the clouds to be his chariot.
00:30:16.340 | Clouds move fast.
00:30:17.940 | They're swift, and that's why they're God's chariot.
00:30:21.300 | We learn about the swiftness of God, but we don't just learn about the swiftness of God.
00:30:25.740 | Here's another one.
00:30:26.740 | He walks upon the wings of the wind.
00:30:30.180 | We learn that though he is not visible, he is invisible.
00:30:35.420 | That doesn't mean he's not present.
00:30:37.740 | Do you remember what Jesus recalled in John chapter three, that the spirit, he moves as
00:30:47.420 | he wills, just like the wind.
00:30:50.960 | You feel the wind, but you don't see it.
00:30:53.580 | You feel the wind, but you cannot see where it came from.
00:30:56.920 | In the same way, there is a supernatural realm.
00:30:59.740 | You might not be able to see it, but you have every analogy to comprehend it, and God in
00:31:05.980 | creating all the meteorological properties that we see on day two, the sky and how it
00:31:12.860 | works, he is helping you to understand what you cannot see by virtue of what you can see.
00:31:20.060 | That is the genius of God.
00:31:21.780 | The more we study these kinds of things, the more we learn about that which we wouldn't
00:31:28.220 | know on our own per the revelation of the word of God.
00:31:34.320 | By way of illustration, he makes his angels the winds, and his ministers flaming fire.
00:31:41.500 | Angels in the supernatural realm can go quickly, and not only can they go quickly, but they
00:31:44.800 | are equally effective.
00:31:46.280 | The notion of the word flaming here, referring to actually like lightning, it refers to that
00:31:52.140 | which can consume anything.
00:31:54.380 | In Deuteronomy 32, a flaming fire can consume a mountain.
00:31:58.140 | In Joel 119, it consumes trees.
00:32:00.680 | In Psalm 97 verse 3, it consumes all of God's enemies.
00:32:04.560 | This is a fire that cannot be quenched.
00:32:09.280 | We know that, especially in Southern California, fire can have those kinds of properties.
00:32:12.920 | Even lightning can have those properties.
00:32:14.820 | Even when you study lightning and such from the sky, we can be impressed by the statistics.
00:32:22.240 | Lightning in an average thunderstorm releases more energy than a plutonium bomb.
00:32:28.860 | We think about that.
00:32:30.640 | People are worried about nuclear wars.
00:32:31.840 | There's a nuclear war every time there's a thunderstorm.
00:32:37.040 | That is just an illustration where we study something, and it helps us to know the depth
00:32:42.840 | of God, to understand his careful design, and to realize this, that yes, you may not
00:32:48.440 | know that there ... You might not be able to see the supernatural realm, but it's there.
00:32:53.160 | Wind is there, even though you can't see it, and even more, it's very effective.
00:32:56.880 | It's so effective that it is that like lightning.
00:33:02.260 | It is that like fire, all-consuming, and so God, in his design of days, in his design
00:33:09.520 | in six days, he ingeniously crafts every single property, every single aspect, every single
00:33:20.080 | characteristic to carry out not only his purpose, but to reveal things about himself.
00:33:26.560 | He does that, and for those who have the scripture, they can behold the genius of God.
00:33:31.800 | Well, there's day three, and day three, I wanted to get here because it demonstrates
00:33:36.640 | the breadth of God's purposes, the breadth of God's purposes.
00:33:40.120 | This is found in verses five through 18.
00:33:42.440 | Day three, we know God created the land and the sea, speaking of which, that's why it
00:33:46.440 | opens in verse five with, "He founded the earth upon its place so that it will not shake
00:33:51.160 | forever and ever."
00:33:53.040 | God made dry land a certain way so that it would be that way, and in fact, you and I
00:34:01.600 | presume that every single day of our lives.
00:34:04.440 | We're presuming it right now.
00:34:07.200 | Why?
00:34:08.240 | Because we're here.
00:34:10.000 | We're sitting.
00:34:11.120 | We're seated, and no one's just ready to jump because the land is about to collapse from
00:34:17.560 | under them.
00:34:19.440 | The properties of the dirt, the properties of concrete, the properties of rocks and geology
00:34:24.920 | and such, we understand them, and the more we understand it, we realize the genius of
00:34:31.360 | God to do that, and there are other implications that we'll cover in a second.
00:34:36.080 | But God didn't just create on the third day dry land.
00:34:39.180 | He dealt with the sea.
00:34:40.500 | He dealt with the waters.
00:34:41.800 | Look at verse six.
00:34:42.800 | "You covered the land with the deep as with a garment," and at this point, with this word
00:34:48.080 | covered, we might be wondering, "Is this talking about the flood or is this talking about day
00:34:54.760 | three?"
00:34:55.760 | Good question.
00:34:56.760 | And the question continues.
00:34:57.760 | The waters were standing above the mountains.
00:35:01.120 | In the flood, the flood waters came above the mountains.
00:35:05.560 | We know that.
00:35:06.560 | End of Genesis chapter seven.
00:35:08.180 | So is this talking about the flood or is it talking about day three?
00:35:11.760 | We understand that God had power even in the flood.
00:35:15.040 | At your rebuke, they fled.
00:35:17.120 | It's amazing to think about.
00:35:19.160 | If you go to the ocean and you just yell at it, it doesn't do anything for you, but when
00:35:25.960 | God says one word, the waters move, and you say, "How do you know that?"
00:35:31.040 | Well, day three, evidently it happened.
00:35:33.160 | The flood, evidently it happened, but how about when Jesus was on the Sea of Galilee?
00:35:38.640 | He just says, "Hush," and it's done.
00:35:44.480 | The waters hushed.
00:35:46.920 | That's how powerful God is.
00:35:49.360 | That's the genius of God.
00:35:52.320 | That's the properties by which He dealt with.
00:35:55.160 | But at the sound of your thunder, they hurried away in alarm.
00:35:59.040 | Only the waters can be commanded by God and seized by fear at who He is.
00:36:05.800 | The mountains went up.
00:36:06.800 | The valleys went down.
00:36:07.800 | Again, is this talking about the flood or day three?
00:36:11.520 | Because yeah, in the flood, we can see some of these tectonics happening, and to the place
00:36:16.560 | where you found it for them, the water is properly allocated, and you set a boundary
00:36:20.840 | that they may not pass over so that they will not return to cover the earth.
00:36:25.040 | Two observations here.
00:36:26.320 | One is, and I'm always astounded by this, that God sets a boundary for water and it
00:36:31.640 | just doesn't cross.
00:36:33.680 | We do that all the time, and it just doesn't work.
00:36:37.720 | You have a boundary.
00:36:38.720 | It's called a pipe.
00:36:40.920 | For some reason, the water just seems to cross it all the time.
00:36:44.180 | You have a boundary called a levee, and then they just break.
00:36:48.720 | But God says, "You shall not pass," and it never does.
00:36:52.920 | It never does.
00:36:55.040 | Absolutely profound.
00:36:56.220 | So that they will not return to cover the earth, and here's the question once again.
00:37:00.640 | Is this talking about day three or is it talking about the flood covering the earth?
00:37:06.080 | I thought that would be the flood.
00:37:08.200 | Which one is this?
00:37:09.860 | And the answer is yes.
00:37:13.580 | Which one is it?
00:37:14.580 | Day three or flood?
00:37:16.600 | Yes.
00:37:17.680 | Say why?
00:37:19.520 | Because when God designed water on those days and formed it and formed the land in certain
00:37:26.520 | ways and gathered one to one place and the other to another place all on day three, He
00:37:32.760 | designed it so that the flood could happen.
00:37:37.000 | Think about that.
00:37:38.060 | This is why I tell my students, "You know, if God was like me," which we're thankful
00:37:45.320 | He's not, and He said, "Wouldn't it be hilarious to design the water like Jell-O?"
00:37:53.260 | You can't have a flood if the water is like Jell-O.
00:37:56.980 | It won't be called a flood.
00:37:58.980 | You know, it would just be called wobbly or something.
00:38:01.260 | It won't work.
00:38:04.460 | The reason the flood happens and the reason it's linked with day three is because God
00:38:09.060 | designed everything about water to have certain properties so that that would happen.
00:38:14.120 | And the more you understand the properties of water and the more you understand the properties
00:38:18.100 | of land, the more you see and understand the genius of God in doing that specific formulation.
00:38:24.100 | That's what you learn.
00:38:25.100 | And you say, "Wow, well, that doesn't sound very nice though.
00:38:28.460 | I mean, God just designed water to kill people.
00:38:31.460 | Great."
00:38:32.460 | Hey, before you jump to that conclusion, look at verse 10.
00:38:37.340 | The same water that was used to destroy the earth is the same water used to provide for
00:38:43.180 | the earth.
00:38:44.180 | Isn't that profound?
00:38:45.180 | And it's the same properties of water.
00:38:47.580 | Notice this.
00:38:48.580 | He sends forth springs in the valleys.
00:38:50.220 | They flow between the mountains.
00:38:53.860 | Why could the waters kill everybody?
00:38:57.220 | Because they flowed.
00:38:59.020 | Why do the waters provide for everybody?
00:39:02.300 | Because they also, what, flow.
00:39:04.660 | That's the genius of God.
00:39:06.580 | That's the genius of God.
00:39:08.140 | They give water to every beast of the field.
00:39:10.380 | The wild donkeys quench their thirst.
00:39:12.660 | God designed water so profoundly, so brilliantly that it can both destroy and give life and
00:39:19.820 | all kinds of life and, in fact, all kinds of places of life.
00:39:24.660 | Notice verse 12.
00:39:25.660 | "Above them, the birds of the heaven dwell.
00:39:27.580 | They give their voices among the branches."
00:39:29.420 | How do you get water all the way up there?
00:39:32.020 | Simple.
00:39:33.020 | Verse 13.
00:39:34.020 | He gives water to the mountains from his upper chambers.
00:39:36.700 | Water has the unique property that it can evaporate and re-precipitate.
00:39:43.940 | That is part of the genius of God.
00:39:45.300 | You say, "Well, like, you know, water is a liquid."
00:39:49.580 | Yeah, but it also can be a gas, and it can also be a solid, and all of those things allow
00:39:54.580 | water to do what God intended it to be.
00:39:57.980 | In one entity, in one object, God designs every single property, every single nuance
00:40:04.620 | of water, and in one moment, he says it, and it is, and all of these applications come
00:40:10.860 | from it.
00:40:11.860 | And so the earth is satisfied with the fruit of his works, verse 13.
00:40:15.420 | And verse 14, what also happens on day three is, because of the way water works and the
00:40:20.420 | way land works, now you can have grass grow, and grass grows for cattle and vegetation
00:40:25.980 | for man's cultivation to bring forth food from the earth.
00:40:28.900 | Now you can have sustenance, and not just sustenance, verse 15, joy.
00:40:33.500 | All of this is because of how God designed water, and how he designed everything to interact
00:40:38.860 | with that water so that man's heart can be made glad, and his face would glisten more
00:40:44.620 | than oil.
00:40:46.060 | But here's something fascinating.
00:40:47.380 | Not only what happens on day three are all the grass that grows, and all the plant life
00:40:51.660 | that grows, that can have so many applications from keeping you full in your tummy to giving
00:40:56.260 | you joy in your life.
00:40:57.620 | It makes good for people who are just hungry, and people who are foodies.
00:41:01.980 | Everything above, it is good for all of them.
00:41:04.740 | That's the genius of God.
00:41:05.900 | That's how he designed it all, in one instant, to have that many ramifications.
00:41:11.020 | But notice this, and I love this, this is so profound, verse 16.
00:41:14.620 | He didn't just design grass that day.
00:41:16.480 | He designed trees.
00:41:18.220 | He designed trees.
00:41:20.340 | I'm bad at so many things.
00:41:23.220 | I'm also, one of the additional things I'm bad at is construction.
00:41:27.660 | Anything involving building stuff.
00:41:34.380 | If you give me a plank of wood and say, "Cut it in half," you will have no plank of wood
00:41:38.780 | by the end of the day, because I'll just keep trying to cut it in half.
00:41:41.900 | Well, that wasn't in half, but I'll try to cut it in half again, and I think that's even
00:41:45.060 | a math equation.
00:41:46.060 | But here we are.
00:41:50.560 | The trees of Yahweh are satisfied, and notice what it says here.
00:41:54.260 | The cedars of Lebanon, which he planted.
00:41:56.260 | Why does God make a mention of the cedars of Lebanon?
00:41:59.220 | The cedars of Lebanon are the trees that made the temple.
00:42:03.460 | The trees that made the temple.
00:42:04.620 | Do you realize, and here's what the psalmist is reminding us of, God didn't just say, "Trees,"
00:42:10.660 | and then a random plant ensues.
00:42:14.160 | He made each tree with its certain properties intentionally on day three, including a tree
00:42:23.340 | that could be used for the construction of the temple.
00:42:28.480 | He had that in mind.
00:42:30.540 | Take it one step further.
00:42:32.300 | Day three, when he made a tree, he made a certain kind that could carry the weight of
00:42:40.300 | the body of his son, so that when he died on the cross, it would carry him.
00:42:47.580 | All on day three.
00:42:52.100 | God doesn't just create random things.
00:42:56.460 | Everything is perfectly designed to carry out all of his purposes, and yes, people who
00:43:02.580 | work in engineering and STEM can appreciate the tensile strength, the density, all the
00:43:08.420 | different factors that go into finding good wood for construction, all that, but what
00:43:12.540 | you are discovering at that moment is the genius of God.
00:43:16.020 | What you are discovering at that moment is the genius of God, because God designed it
00:43:19.840 | that way for those kinds of purposes.
00:43:21.980 | He didn't have to make it that way, but he did, and he did for very specific purposes,
00:43:26.740 | all purposes, but even these purposes here, and that illustrates that nothing in this
00:43:31.260 | universe is random, and all of it is for him.
00:43:35.140 | That's why this can not only support things of man's efforts and God's, of course, superintended
00:43:40.020 | efforts, but even the efforts, verse 17, that's where the birds build their nests and the
00:43:43.960 | storks' home is in the fir trees.
00:43:47.700 | Not just the strength of a tree, but the height of a tree.
00:43:51.620 | All of it designed by God.
00:43:53.780 | All of it designed by God.
00:43:55.620 | Every single aspect of it designed by God for his purposes, his genius, all of that
00:44:00.980 | there.
00:44:02.540 | Verse 18 kind of closes out this section.
00:44:04.500 | It says, "The high mountains are for the wild goats.
00:44:06.360 | The cliffs are a refuge for the Shefanim."
00:44:08.820 | These are the different kinds of animals, the different kinds of creatures that live
00:44:14.220 | in the heights, and it's allusion all the way back to the fact that God made not only
00:44:20.940 | the waters on day three, but the dry land, and why did he make the dry land the way he
00:44:26.240 | did?
00:44:27.240 | Simple, because it's a refuge.
00:44:30.180 | It's even a refuge for those who are in the most remote places.
00:44:34.400 | We live in homes, don't we?
00:44:36.180 | We walk on the planet, don't we?
00:44:38.200 | We do all these things assuming the ground is going to hold us up and that we're going
00:44:41.780 | to have provisions, and God made it that way.
00:44:45.700 | So when you study anything from erosion to the composition of rocks in the mountains
00:44:52.300 | and everything, what you are studying is the genius way God made it so that it would do
00:44:59.660 | all that he wanted it to do, things that we presume all the time.
00:45:05.100 | You know, if God had made the entire world out of sand, on the one hand, you know, every
00:45:10.180 | day would be a beach day, I guess, but every day you wouldn't be able to survive because
00:45:17.840 | you wouldn't have a home.
00:45:19.880 | You wouldn't have any stability.
00:45:23.900 | God made things a very certain way so that everything that can happen happens.
00:45:30.780 | That's what we learn from day three, the breadth of all God's purposes.
00:45:35.500 | It can even be for judgment or revival, all of it there.
00:45:41.460 | What about day four?
00:45:43.180 | What about day four?
00:45:45.580 | Day four is the sun, moon, and stars, and we understand that, and it's not at that day
00:45:50.300 | to be clear that God made light.
00:45:52.660 | He made light on day one.
00:45:54.500 | Day four was the light bearers who organized all of this for all of light for the sake
00:46:01.180 | of time, and that's why in verse 19 it says this.
00:46:04.100 | He made the moon for the seasons.
00:46:06.540 | The sun knows the place of its setting.
00:46:09.380 | That's the point, and so the psalmist read Genesis 1 very, very carefully.
00:46:13.500 | He understood that it wasn't just that God created light on this day.
00:46:16.980 | No, no, no, no, no.
00:46:17.980 | That's not what's going on at all.
00:46:18.980 | It is that he created the light bearer to organize time, to organize time, and that
00:46:26.020 | matters.
00:46:27.780 | Time matters for animals.
00:46:30.380 | You appoint darkness so that it becomes night.
00:46:32.540 | The beasts of the field, forests cry out.
00:46:34.620 | The lions go after their prey.
00:46:36.160 | They seek their food from God.
00:46:37.860 | Verse 22, when the sun rises, they gather together, lie down into their dens, and man
00:46:42.820 | goes forth to his work and to his labor unto evening.
00:46:47.220 | If you don't understand the value of time, realize this.
00:46:49.800 | What would happen if predators and us all were awake at the same time?
00:46:58.580 | You wouldn't get anything done.
00:47:01.380 | We wouldn't advance at all.
00:47:03.500 | Redemptive history, the rest of the biblical story would be, and then there was Adam, and
00:47:08.500 | Adam ran from a lion, the end, and then he had Cain, and Cain ran from the end, and Abel,
00:47:16.460 | the end.
00:47:17.460 | I mean, that's all you would read about because you would just keep dying over and over and
00:47:20.840 | over and over again, but God ordained day and night and assigned animals and man different
00:47:28.180 | times so that we would be safe and that animals would operate a certain way and be provided
00:47:34.620 | for at the same time.
00:47:36.580 | All of that's happening because of this.
00:47:38.900 | Time is so profound.
00:47:41.580 | Man goes forth to his work and to his labor until evening.
00:47:45.180 | Notice that time and the way that time is ordained by the sun, moon, and stars, even
00:47:51.580 | back then and now, shapes human industry.
00:47:55.340 | You say, "Really?
00:47:56.340 | Does time do that?"
00:47:57.340 | Oh, yeah.
00:47:58.340 | Think about this.
00:47:59.340 | Think about how consumed we are with time, particularly in this land of America.
00:48:04.740 | Think about school.
00:48:05.740 | What do we have?
00:48:06.740 | Credit, hours.
00:48:08.620 | Everything's measured by time.
00:48:10.460 | If you don't think that that's enough, how about this?
00:48:12.540 | How do we describe food?
00:48:14.900 | You can go to fast food.
00:48:16.860 | Why do we call it fast food?
00:48:18.780 | Because it's fast, hypothetically, which relates to what?
00:48:22.780 | Time.
00:48:23.780 | Why do we call a restaurant a restaurant?
00:48:27.620 | Because it takes a little bit more time so that you get a little bit of rest.
00:48:32.300 | How about how we calculate the hours that you have to work?
00:48:36.860 | We calculate that by, inherently, time.
00:48:40.140 | Holidays are calculated by time.
00:48:42.500 | Retirement is calculated by time.
00:48:45.580 | Everything is dictated by time.
00:48:49.340 | And when did God ordain all that?
00:48:51.460 | He ordained it, of course, the very first day when He ordained evening and morning,
00:48:57.540 | and there's time.
00:48:58.540 | And He organized that time by the sun, moon, and stars.
00:49:02.500 | Here's the profundity of God.
00:49:04.660 | When you look at astronomy, and you look at meteorology, and you look at just even the
00:49:11.500 | science of time, God ordained all of that a certain way in one day to organize everybody's
00:49:20.180 | life.
00:49:21.980 | He did it like that.
00:49:23.940 | And yet, you know how often you feel the effects of that?
00:49:28.500 | Every single day.
00:49:31.780 | Because every day has time.
00:49:34.340 | Well, we've been through day one, two, three, and four.
00:49:37.980 | We've seen the glory of God reflected, the invisible made visible.
00:49:41.480 | We've seen God's multitude in His purposes on day three, and how He can just create water
00:49:45.940 | with its certain properties.
00:49:47.380 | We've seen it in day four, that He can create just a few entities that control and dictate
00:49:51.780 | all of human experience, and the world's experience, that's the depth of it.
00:49:56.180 | And on day five, here we are, verse 24 and following, verse 24 through 26, here is the
00:50:02.520 | punchline of it all.
00:50:03.980 | The psalmist cannot contain himself anymore, and he says, "How numerous are your works,
00:50:07.980 | O Yahweh, in wisdom you have made them all."
00:50:11.300 | That's the absolute truth.
00:50:13.340 | Have you seen that God, in these things, in everything He has created, He's created it
00:50:20.500 | with wisdom.
00:50:22.700 | Nothing is random.
00:50:24.100 | Nothing is by chance.
00:50:25.500 | Nothing is purposeless.
00:50:27.060 | Nothing is outside of design.
00:50:28.540 | No, He's actually designed it for certain purposes, and we are just catching up to how
00:50:34.060 | brilliant that design is, how brilliant that blueprint is.
00:50:39.460 | That's what science is.
00:50:41.820 | In wisdom, you have made it all, and He, that is the psalmist, just contemplates day five,
00:50:47.500 | which is the sea creatures and the sky creatures that are created, and here's what he says.
00:50:53.020 | There is the sea, great and broad.
00:50:56.540 | I love going to the beach and just looking out into the ocean, because it is that vast.
00:51:01.340 | It's just so massive.
00:51:04.140 | It's so sweeping, and that magnifies God, because He alone designed it that way.
00:51:10.060 | There are creeping things without number, creatures both small and great, and we know
00:51:14.680 | that about creatures.
00:51:16.740 | They're amazing to even understand the depths of the ocean.
00:51:19.980 | If you want a justification for marine biology, here it is, right here, because God created
00:51:26.140 | that for us to investigate.
00:51:28.460 | There the ships move along.
00:51:29.660 | If you want nautical engineering, here you go.
00:51:33.180 | The ships are there to explore it all, to enjoy it all, to engage in commerce, and here
00:51:41.380 | is what is profound.
00:51:43.100 | There is the Leviathan, and the Leviathan is a dinosaur-like kind of creature, and it
00:51:50.420 | is the mascot of evil, a mascot of evil in the scriptures.
00:51:57.460 | It had that reputation, but at that time, and there seemed to have been the Leviathans
00:52:03.900 | at the time of the psalmist, the psalmist comments that you formed to play in it.
00:52:11.220 | Yes, you might have seen this fearsome, terrifying creature that you're scared of, but for God,
00:52:17.740 | He just made that thing to play in the water.
00:52:20.300 | It's a big bath toy, and He just magnifies God.
00:52:27.340 | That's the genius of God.
00:52:28.660 | That's where you really understand something about God.
00:52:33.260 | You think evil is so formidable and so insurmountable, and for God, it's just His toy.
00:52:40.620 | It's just to play before Him, because it's not even a rival to Him whatsoever.
00:52:46.700 | There are so many lessons to learn, so much to be impressed about, so much to be engaged
00:52:53.660 | in and to discover here, speaking of which, day six, day six, and now it gets personal
00:53:00.180 | and powerful.
00:53:02.100 | What about man?
00:53:03.820 | What about animals?
00:53:04.940 | That's what was created on day six.
00:53:07.060 | Let me give you one word, maybe two, that help to describe some things here.
00:53:15.060 | Here's the first word, dependence.
00:53:17.540 | They all wait for you to give them their food in due season.
00:53:22.900 | You give to them, they gather it up.
00:53:24.340 | You open your hand, they are satisfied with good.
00:53:26.300 | You hide their face, they are dismayed.
00:53:27.660 | You take away their spirit, they breathe their last and return to the dust.
00:53:30.660 | What does this show you?
00:53:31.980 | What is God demonstrating with His creatures?
00:53:34.420 | How dependent we are on Him.
00:53:36.260 | Do you know one of the most major lessons I think that you can learn, we can learn in
00:53:41.180 | studying this world, this creation, is how much we are not in control.
00:53:47.540 | How much we are not in control.
00:53:52.020 | I grew up in a family of scientists, and so sometimes I've asked my family, "Well, what
00:53:57.020 | would happen if this happened or that happened?
00:53:59.380 | And why doesn't this experiment prove this, that, or the other?
00:54:01.620 | And what is always the case?"
00:54:03.060 | Well, in an experiment, in that environment, it's a what kind of environment?
00:54:08.620 | Controlled.
00:54:10.220 | Everything presumes that we have to have control to make things work.
00:54:13.780 | And absolutely, that's the case, because you don't want some other situation or some other
00:54:18.140 | factor coming into play and messing up the equation.
00:54:21.180 | We understand that.
00:54:22.180 | But in the real world, there is no such thing in that way as the same controlled environment.
00:54:27.740 | Why?
00:54:28.740 | Because we don't have that control.
00:54:30.660 | We don't have that control.
00:54:31.660 | And that's what makes science applied hard, and we understand that.
00:54:37.420 | And what do we learn here?
00:54:38.820 | God says, "That's part of the point."
00:54:41.740 | You start to realize, how do you know if this medicine's going to work?
00:54:45.660 | Well, that's why we don't say for certain, we just give a probability, don't we?
00:54:49.660 | How do we know that this treatment's going to work?
00:54:51.620 | How do we know that this procedure's going to work?
00:54:53.500 | How do we know?
00:54:54.500 | We never give it for sure, because there are things outside of our control.
00:55:03.620 | When you look at human beings, and you look at people on this land, and animals on this
00:55:08.300 | land, we all wait for God.
00:55:13.600 | Everything is God-willing.
00:55:15.860 | Everything is dependent on Him.
00:55:17.640 | And the more we study, and the more we know that we have to control things to produce
00:55:21.460 | scientific discoveries and outcomes and conclusions, the more we realize how much we don't control,
00:55:27.360 | how much is outside of our control truly, how much we depend on God.
00:55:32.600 | I think one of the greatest fallacies, sometimes people think, "Oh, I've got science.
00:55:36.440 | I don't need God."
00:55:40.140 | What God reminds us here is if you really studied science hard, you would realize how
00:55:44.040 | much depends on Him, how much depends on Him.
00:55:49.240 | Lots is not in your control.
00:55:50.560 | If that was the case, you could run experiments not in a lab.
00:55:55.440 | But there's a reason why we have to, because there's so much outside of our control.
00:56:00.040 | We are so contingent on Him.
00:56:03.480 | But here's something beautiful to think about, verse 30.
00:56:07.800 | You send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.
00:56:16.440 | On the one hand, this refers to both the birthing of animals and people.
00:56:24.480 | That's true.
00:56:25.480 | And on the one hand, this can even refer to the rejuvenation of plants and such.
00:56:31.440 | That's true.
00:56:33.160 | God sends forth the breath of life, and things are made, and things are renewed and come
00:56:39.600 | to fruition.
00:56:40.840 | But on the other hand, this is crucial.
00:56:43.460 | This is so crucial.
00:56:45.000 | With the language of created and with the language of renewed, we can't just be talking
00:56:50.440 | about resuscitation.
00:56:52.520 | We can't just be talking about a seed falls into the ground and grows up again.
00:56:56.880 | That is included and obviously referred to, but the description is pointing to so much
00:57:01.620 | more than that, and here's the logic.
00:57:04.000 | The logic is illustrated by our Lord in John chapter 12.
00:57:07.360 | What does He say?
00:57:09.040 | But the seed must die in order to come back to life.
00:57:13.240 | That's the illustration of the what?
00:57:15.160 | The resurrection.
00:57:16.800 | And what we have here is the psalmist saying, "I know my God can raise people from the dead.
00:57:23.880 | I know He can make them new creatures and renew them in that way.
00:57:28.880 | How do I know that He has that power?
00:57:31.440 | What gives me a taste of seeing that power?"
00:57:34.180 | He says, "I look in creation, and I see the God.
00:57:38.140 | If He can cause birth, He can cause new birth.
00:57:42.820 | If He can cause a seed to go in the ground that dies and comes back rejuvenated as a
00:57:46.980 | plant, then He can do that with me too and more."
00:57:52.280 | What are God revealed here is not, to be clear, that creation just inherently tells the gospel.
00:58:00.860 | It's not general revelation as the same as special revelation at all, but rather this,
00:58:05.300 | that when you understand the truth of scripture and then you look at creation in it, you can
00:58:11.940 | see that the God who did one thing can do the other thing, that you can see the analogy,
00:58:18.740 | that you can see the correspondence, that you can see the illustration, that you can
00:58:23.540 | see the evidence.
00:58:25.300 | You know what science should do?
00:58:27.260 | Science should give us the greatest confidence in the competence and the power of our God.
00:58:32.860 | Because we know what He has designed.
00:58:35.660 | We know what He has put together.
00:58:37.980 | We know what He has constructed, and if He did all that by one word, and all of that
00:58:44.700 | is so genius and all of that had to work a certain way to get outcomes and it couldn't
00:58:49.060 | have worked any other way, then that God is able to save souls.
00:58:54.540 | That God has the most amazing power ever.
00:58:57.300 | Then we learn the worship of God, and that moves us from days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to day
00:59:03.020 | 7.
00:59:05.260 | Let the glory of Yahweh endure forever.
00:59:09.140 | What happens on day 7?
00:59:10.460 | God rests.
00:59:11.540 | He enjoys all of His works, and all works are sanctified.
00:59:15.780 | They're made holy unto Him, and that's why the text doesn't just say, "Let the glory
00:59:19.780 | of Yahweh endure forever," verse 31, "Let Yahweh be glad in His works."
00:59:26.220 | That's the whole point of all this.
00:59:28.300 | Everything He made, He should have delight in.
00:59:32.500 | Everything He made, we should remember that we are revering Him.
00:59:36.460 | He looks at earth and it trembles, He touches the mountains and they smoke.
00:59:40.780 | And here's the thing, for us personally, we don't just want God to be glad in us, but
00:59:46.940 | here's what we want to do to God, verse 33 and verse 34, so crucial.
00:59:52.580 | "I will sing to Yahweh throughout my life.
00:59:55.020 | I will sing praise to my God while I have my being."
00:59:57.940 | Why does the psalmist talk so much about singing?
01:00:01.980 | Some people don't like to sing.
01:00:03.580 | They struggle with this verse.
01:00:05.700 | What does it mean that I have to sing?
01:00:07.380 | I only can sing monotone.
01:00:09.100 | Is that really counted as singing?
01:00:11.180 | You know, you don't have tonal variation, all that kind of stuff.
01:00:16.380 | But everything that has breath, praise the Lord, singing is the usage of your breath.
01:00:27.340 | The breath is what designates you as alive.
01:00:30.780 | And what is the psalmist saying here then?
01:00:33.500 | I will use what uniquely shows that I am alive to honor my God.
01:00:42.420 | It is the culmination of all that life is leveraged to the praise of God.
01:00:49.660 | That's why he wants to sing.
01:00:51.660 | He might not have been the greatest singer.
01:00:53.020 | He might not have been Pavarotti.
01:00:54.380 | We don't know.
01:00:55.380 | David, if it was David, he probably was, but what makes me alive should be there to give
01:01:04.500 | God glory.
01:01:06.060 | That's why he sings.
01:01:08.140 | That's what's going on there.
01:01:09.860 | But it's not just what we do with our entire physicality and life.
01:01:16.340 | Verse 34.
01:01:17.340 | And this is what's so appropriate for all of us here.
01:01:21.680 | Let my musing be pleasing to him.
01:01:28.920 | The psalmist, what has he just done?
01:01:31.260 | Mused on creation.
01:01:33.500 | Days one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
01:01:37.440 | And what he has done is he has thought about all that God did in those days and all the
01:01:42.660 | ramifications that have come about and all the careful design that happened to accomplish
01:01:47.820 | very particular purposes.
01:01:49.660 | It couldn't have happened any other way.
01:01:51.980 | And he is magnifying the genius of God in all of those designs.
01:01:57.820 | This is the activity of everything in STEM.
01:02:01.620 | It is my musing.
01:02:03.620 | And what do we want it to be?
01:02:05.980 | Pleasing to him.
01:02:09.640 | You might wonder, "Well, what in the world is going on in verse 35?
01:02:12.800 | Let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more.
01:02:15.880 | Why would you end with that?"
01:02:19.500 | Simple.
01:02:21.740 | Because this creation, God made for himself.
01:02:25.880 | And what do we want it to be?
01:02:28.060 | The way he always made it.
01:02:31.180 | And whether that be through judgment or whether that be through the gospel, we want it to
01:02:35.760 | be that way because that's the way it always was supposed to be.
01:02:40.020 | And at that moment, and at that moment, our heart is really captured to what our God has
01:02:46.800 | done.
01:02:47.800 | In fact, it's captured to the purpose of all of this because what's the purpose of flood
01:02:52.120 | and what's the purpose of cultivating and allowing man to exist and what's the purpose
01:02:56.820 | of allowing us to enjoy creation and what's the purpose of God sending forth even his
01:03:01.560 | spirit and so that there can be rejuvenation and everything?
01:03:04.980 | What is that all pointing to?
01:03:07.140 | What is that all providing demonstration and illustration of the reality that he redeems?
01:03:13.700 | That is all his goal in all of redemptive history is to do that.
01:03:17.540 | And if we really understand what God did on those first six days, then we have to say
01:03:21.980 | with verse 35 what it says because that's the entire point.
01:03:25.460 | This is our father's world.
01:03:26.700 | It must in the end belong to him and that is our whole desire.
01:03:30.800 | And so at the end, at the end, the psalmist having just thought about creation in these
01:03:35.820 | magnificent ways, he says, bless Yahweh, oh my soul, bless Yahweh.
01:03:41.740 | You want to know why?
01:03:42.940 | He says it at the beginning.
01:03:44.240 | He says it at the end because Yahweh is so amazing.
01:03:47.160 | But even more, he is agreeing with what God did in Genesis 1.
01:03:52.320 | What did God do?
01:03:53.320 | He blessed.
01:03:55.280 | He blessed and he is affirming.
01:03:57.940 | That is exactly who God is and what he has done in this world.
01:04:02.940 | Because only one so genius, only one so good, only one so kind and coordinated, and only
01:04:11.060 | one who has designed all of this for such a redemptive purpose, that one is blessed.
01:04:17.540 | He blessed because that's true and we bless him to acknowledge that truth.
01:04:22.900 | Bless Yahweh, oh my soul, praise Yah.
01:04:26.340 | That's the cry of every scientist in the end, amen?
01:04:31.980 | Shall we pray?
01:04:33.380 | Our God and Father, thank you.
01:04:36.460 | Thank you for this text which reminds us that all we are doing as those who investigate
01:04:45.780 | this creation is we are magnifying the works of God back on himself, that we are discovering
01:04:53.260 | the genius of God and exposing the genius of you in all the particulars and all the
01:05:00.580 | specifics that you have done to achieve every single purpose, every single end result.
01:05:07.140 | We are magnifying and amplifying all of that back to you.
01:05:12.740 | And so these endeavors, they are inherently noble and they are inherently worshipped because
01:05:21.180 | of what they do in the discovery of all the glory therein that you have magnified in six
01:05:28.140 | days.
01:05:30.260 | Remind us of these things, oh God.
01:05:31.980 | Help us to marvel at these things.
01:05:34.300 | It may be every discovery we make, every find that we have, we say bless Yahweh, oh my soul.
01:05:44.940 | Bless Yahweh because we are proving that indeed you are so blessed.
01:05:51.820 | In your name we pray, amen.
01:05:55.220 | Amen.
01:05:55.720 | Amen.
01:05:56.220 | Amen.
01:05:56.720 | Amen.
01:05:57.220 | Amen.
01:05:57.720 | Amen.
01:05:58.220 | Amen.
01:05:58.720 | Amen.
01:05:59.220 | Amen.
01:05:59.720 | [BLANK_AUDIO]