SPEAKER_01: You're listening to the road by Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: My soul has been created by God for excitement.
SPEAKER_00: God gave us passion.
SPEAKER_00: Gave us joy.
SPEAKER_00: Love.
SPEAKER_00: Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control all emotional.
SPEAKER_00: The fruit of the spirit is what I believe he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: David is talking about drinking from the pleasures of God is to drink from God's love, God's joy, God's patience, God's self-control in our life.
SPEAKER_01: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: For more information on The Road, visit the Road.org.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I want to um talk about the beauty of the Lord today, and um my wife's been watching me prepare and research this for weeks and weeks and months, and it's been personally uh a powerful time, but I feel like there's so much to say, and there's such a dinky time to say it in this time together that it's not gonna do it justice at all.
SPEAKER_00: But but it's really been moving in my heart because, first of all, um I think since about seventh grade, sixth and seventh grade as a kid, we we moved out to a cabin out in the uh on my grandfather's ranch.
SPEAKER_00: My dad was going back to graduate school, and I had just been a city kid, um suburban kid, grew up in Atlanta and Huntsville, Alabama, and then we came there and I'd never been in the country.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly I had time, and we were around all these ponds and marshland, and I just fell in love with being outside and and being outdoors.
SPEAKER_00: And as I've grown in my relationship with God, my love for the outdoors has only grown deeper.
SPEAKER_00: I I'm honored and blessed that God would call us to Colorado.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we were living in Japan as in as missionaries in the second largest city in the world, who are back in the city.
SPEAKER_00: And then I went to graduate school in LA.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then God called us here.
SPEAKER_00: And so um, in the process of that, I think God began this work in my life as a sixth grader and a seventh grader and on through my life of love for creation.
SPEAKER_00: And in that love for creation, a love for a creator.
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know the creator during those early years, but but I began to discover as the years went by that intricate design leads to an intricate designer.
SPEAKER_00: And beautiful design points us toward a beautiful designer.
SPEAKER_00: And somehow today, and in the process of us talking about worship in spirit and in truth, I want us to start working toward, as a congregation, cultivating a passion for the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it is a cultivation, it takes time, it does, it's it in some ways it's natural.
SPEAKER_00: I think when you see a beautiful painting, or maybe you guys that are in high school, you see a beautiful girl or a handsome guy, or you see a beautiful flower.
SPEAKER_00: There's something within us that is drawn toward beauty.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not sure it's possible to know the designer and the beauty of God without a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And we've got to get that into our DNA.
SPEAKER_00: I like what Mike Bickle says.
SPEAKER_00: Mike Bickle says that David was the theologian of the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: I love that phrase, a theologian of the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be exciting if we at the road could become theologians of the beauty of God, could become scientists of the beauty of God, could become architects of the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because beauty is all part of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: There's beauty to this stage, there's beauty to that lobby, and we love beauty.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of our highest values at the road that what we've done and what we do is done and with the beauty and with beauty in mind.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the communion tables.
SPEAKER_00: Look around today.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be taking communion together, and the way in which the team has designed those tables with the cross and the candles speaks of the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: So turning your Bibles to Psalm 27:4, let's see what the theologian of the beauty of God has to say to us.
SPEAKER_00: Really, David is the first, first leader in the Bible, first prophet in the Bible to talk about the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: And he brought a whole new, incredible worldview of God that no one in Scripture has ever done before or since.
SPEAKER_00: And we turn to him, really in a time of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: We probably should read verses one through three first, because he says in Psalm 27, The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?
SPEAKER_00: When the wicked came against me to eat up my flesh, my enemies and foes, they stumbled and fell.
SPEAKER_00: Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear, though war may rise against me, in this I will be confident.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the context.
SPEAKER_00: He's full of temptations toward fear.
SPEAKER_00: He's had armies against him.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we know the story of David.
SPEAKER_00: He's had he's had huge enemies up against him at times in his life.
SPEAKER_00: And it could be, because we don't know exactly, that could be exactly the context here.
SPEAKER_00: And yet here's what he, I mean, if I was him, and I'm a warrior king, I'd be thinking about this one thing that I need, Lord, right now is a refuge.
SPEAKER_00: This one thing I write now, I need a strategy for fighting the enemy and enabling the kingdom of God to go forward on the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says in verse 4 in that context.
SPEAKER_00: One thing, underline that, highlight that, circle that.
SPEAKER_00: Mine circled in my Bible because I still have one of these kind of Bibles you write in.
SPEAKER_00: It looks like this.
SPEAKER_00: One thing I have desired of the Lord that I will seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: What a strange worldview.
SPEAKER_00: In the midst of this kind of trouble, he wants to behold the beauty of the Lord all the days of his life.
SPEAKER_00: David is enraptured by God's beauty.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I think he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, when I behold the beauty of the Lord, when I see his beauty, when I cultivate beauty in my heart toward the Lord, all my worries go away.
SPEAKER_00: All my fears are taken care of.
SPEAKER_00: Men and women, how many of you would say you've had some fears this week?
SPEAKER_00: Ah.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of you are liars.
SPEAKER_00: You know you have, you know.
SPEAKER_00: But but David is saying that in the midst of his fears, worries, and stress, he's gonna go into the sanctuary of the Lord, he's gonna behold the beauty of the Lord, and that's gonna take care of all those issues.
SPEAKER_00: There's something about that we've got to cultivate.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that I get it all right now, but I want to commit myself to understanding that I want to I want to build into us a cultivation for the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because so that as we come into that beauty each day and worship.
SPEAKER_00: I think I told you a couple weeks ago when I was speaking that I got really weird.
SPEAKER_00: And I took my took my little phone, I was out in the woods, nobody around, and I just felt like dancing before the Lord, so I did, and I'm glad that you weren't there because it would be awful for you to behold.
SPEAKER_00: But I was beholding the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You would have been beholding something else.
SPEAKER_00: But but to cultivate the beauty of the Lord in worship is what David is longing for.
SPEAKER_00: And we've been in the book of Philippians, and I can't think of a better um synchronization of joy in our hearts than beholding the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And we're we're gonna see that later on in this Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: That David experiences joy by beholding beauty with his enemies all around him.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine that?
SPEAKER_00: That the debtors are coming, that they're calling the loan, that the company's in trouble, that your marriage is in trouble, that your kids are going wayward, that your finances are not where they should be, and you're not sure about what to do to cultivate in the midst of that, surrounded by all that stress, to cultivate a worship of the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's radical stuff, folks.
SPEAKER_00: People don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: American Christianity is figure it out, figure it out, figure it out, and I'm not saying anything's wrong with that, if that's part of it.
SPEAKER_00: But if that's the only thing we do, we're gonna be stressed out.
SPEAKER_00: And from what I'm seeing and all the stats on pharmaceuticals, what I'm seeing about all the stats with counselors, what I'm seeing with all the stats as it relates to therapy, we are choosing stressed out.
SPEAKER_00: David's choosing beholding the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Surrounded by all his enemies, I'm gonna behold the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: God's gonna speak to me as I behold the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to get that into our DNA.
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible?
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that we might change our worldview, even as young people, even as adults, that we might become a people that is learning and growing and how to cultivate that worldview.
SPEAKER_00: So, what is beauty?
SPEAKER_00: What is the beauty of God?
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a few definitions on the beauty of God for contemporary science.
SPEAKER_00: Their definition is the first trait of beauty is elegant simplicity.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_00: Elegant simplicity.
SPEAKER_00: As in, in the stuff I was reading, as in Einstein's theory of gravitation.
SPEAKER_00: So simplicity is the key to beauty in science.
SPEAKER_00: In philosophy, centuries have taught that beauty is unity, harmony, symmetry, wholeness, and radiance.
SPEAKER_00: Theologian Wayne Grudom defines the beauty of God as that attribute of God whereby he is the sum of all desirable qualities.
SPEAKER_00: Other words for beauty would be wonder, mystery, splendor, humility, delight, thrill, excitement.
SPEAKER_00: So I got to go fly fishing twice this week.
SPEAKER_00: That never happens.
SPEAKER_00: And I took Josh one day, I took Samuel the other day, and both of them had never seriously fly fished, so I took them out and and uh and showed them how to fly fish.
SPEAKER_00: And we got into this river early and I did that because it's been so hot, and you you can catch more fish in four hours between 6 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: and uh and about noon than you can for the rest of the day.
SPEAKER_00: So we were there, and um I just have to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I like to fly fish, I think it's great.
SPEAKER_00: But but being in the river and being with uh around these huge rocks and being down in the in the in the sounds and the beauty and the sun starting to ripple down into the area where we where we were is just stunning.
SPEAKER_00: It's just beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: God made all that, church, for us to enjoy, for us to experience.
SPEAKER_00: I like what Jonathan Edwards said.
SPEAKER_00: God created man for nothing else but his own happiness.
SPEAKER_00: He created him that he might communicate happiness to him through creation.
SPEAKER_00: God gave us creation that you'd be happy, that you'd love it, that you'd experience as part of his beauty.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the rest of this verse.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the rest of this, the next two verses after verse 4, verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: For in the time of trouble, so here he is, he's surrounded again by trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion, in the secret place of his tabernacle, he shall hide me.
SPEAKER_00: He shall set me high upon a rock, and now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in his tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So all he's doing is beholding the beauty of the Lord, and he says that in beholding the beauty of the Lord in the tabernacle of God, surrounded by this tabernacle, his head is lifted up over his enemies.
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: I think what he's saying here is that when we start to make the divine strategy of God our strategy, he gives us his divine strategy.
SPEAKER_00: That when we make his divine strategy, beholding the glory of the God of the Lord, our highest priority, God downloads his divine strategy.
SPEAKER_00: Don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: Take your mind off what to do.
SPEAKER_00: And put it toward the designer who knows what you should do.
SPEAKER_00: And as you begin to focus on the beauty of the God of the Lord and worship him, he begins to give us designer strategies from the designer.
SPEAKER_00: We hear from him, and David's life is turned around because even in the midst of that, in the time of trouble, verse 5, verse 6, my head shall be lifted up.
SPEAKER_00: There's enemies above my enemies that are still all around him.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna continue to offer sacrifices of joy in the tabernacle, and I'm gonna sing praises to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Now, church, this is immensely practical because it doesn't sound practical at first.
SPEAKER_00: Beholding the beauty of the Lord, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Is that for artists?
SPEAKER_00: Is that for worship team people?
SPEAKER_00: Is that for people who like to take pictures and paint?
SPEAKER_00: No, I believe this is for all of us, and it's a DNA that God wants to cultivate in us that raises us up above all our circumstances, all our problems and situations, because God changes you.
SPEAKER_00: God is changing your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing like a changed heart for understanding God's plans and his strategies.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's always speaking, he's always at work, and he's looking to and fro for those whose hearts are completely his that he might, what does he say?
SPEAKER_00: Lift them up, that he might lift them up.
SPEAKER_00: So this beholding of the beauty of the Lord is immensely practical.
SPEAKER_00: Again, let me, I think Edwards captures this again.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Edwards said, God is glorified not only by his glory being seen, but by it being rejoiced in.
SPEAKER_00: When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it.
SPEAKER_00: God made the world that he might communicate, and the creature receives the glory both with his mind and his heart.
SPEAKER_00: So as we receive his glory, as we receive his wisdom, and then we reflect it back and praise to him, God is glorified in that, and then God raises your head up above your enemies.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's God doing at the road?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, what's he doing here?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, why does this church exist?
SPEAKER_00: There's like 300 churches in this city.
SPEAKER_00: I resign from Mountain Springs, we start, we go into 40 nights of prayer, and he seeks very specifically to plant the road based on seven times him speaking, the road less traveled.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that sounds really exciting until you realize what I just said.
SPEAKER_00: The road less traveled.
SPEAKER_00: That means less traveled.
SPEAKER_00: That means most people don't travel that way.
SPEAKER_00: And if you know the road not taken by Robert Frost, that's what the poem's about.
SPEAKER_00: Is he comes to a juncture and he takes the one trodden less, traveled less?
SPEAKER_00: So if you want the well-tailored roads, don't behold his glory.
SPEAKER_00: Because you'll naturally think the natural way and you'll take the highway that everybody else takes.
SPEAKER_00: And so you'll be in all the same problems that everybody else is in.
SPEAKER_00: Or is it not true that it's as whole-hearted disciples that God calls us many times in our life, not once, not twice, but many times, we come to this place where our natural tendency is this.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody says this.
SPEAKER_00: We begin to behold the glory of God, we begin to worship Him, we begin to seek Him, and He says this.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: I read it somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not, and yet I has not seen and ear has not heard all that God has planned for us.
SPEAKER_00: I want what God wants because that's way more exciting.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not boring, and I'm in for excitement.
SPEAKER_00: I want an exciting, joy-filled life.
SPEAKER_00: I want everything that God has, and if he's the creator of daffodils, if he's the creator of this brain, if he's the creator just of my DNA, I think he's smarter than me.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's something here from this theologian of the beauty of God, David, that is expressing to us a principle of beholding the beauty of God that is a road less traveled that changes our soul and changes our heart to hear from Him.
SPEAKER_00: I believe the Orthodox and Catholic traditions get this way better than evangelicals do.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to give you a few books that I've been reading.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, if you're a reader, researcher like I am, you might enjoy these.
SPEAKER_00: This is the one I'm most fascinated by.
SPEAKER_00: The Evidential Power of Beauty, Science and Theology Meet by Thomas Dubay, he's Catholic.
SPEAKER_00: One thing, Developing a Passion for the Beauty of God by Sam Storms, an Interior Castle by Teresa Vavilla, which is a mystic, Catholic mystic.
SPEAKER_00: But let's get really practical.
SPEAKER_00: I want to just close with this two things, two really practical ways that I think are a part of cultivating a passion for the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: So turn to Psalm 36.
SPEAKER_00: Look really quick at Psalm 36, and there's going To be a part two to this.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get back to this later.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this beauty of God theme.
SPEAKER_00: But look at Psalm 36, verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: How precious is your loving kindness, O God.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the children of men put their trust under the shadow of your wings.
SPEAKER_00: They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we see light.
SPEAKER_00: So here's my first point.
SPEAKER_00: First point on cultivating a passion for the beauty of God is cultivate a passion for God's river of pleasure in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna explain it.
SPEAKER_00: And that sounds a little weird what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, cultivate a passion for God's river of pleasure in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Parenthetically, I mean the hidden person of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: The hidden person of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: Your soul, my soul, has been created by God for excitement.
SPEAKER_00: I really believe that.
SPEAKER_00: God gave us passions.
SPEAKER_00: He gave us joy.
SPEAKER_00: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control are all emotional.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of those are.
SPEAKER_00: Probably self-control, might be a little more disciplined.
SPEAKER_00: But love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, what are they?
SPEAKER_00: The fruit of the Spirit is what I believe he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: David is talking about drinking from the pleasures of God is to drink from God's love, God's joy, God's patience, God's self-control in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: To nurture, listen now, don't miss this, the inner hidden person of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here's what 1 Peter says.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm always thinking, Peter said this?
SPEAKER_00: He had to have been anointed by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Because Peter's like the opposite of this.
SPEAKER_00: But 1 Peter 3, 4, Peter says this: the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty, there's that word again, the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, comma, which is the very pre which is very precious in the sight of God.
SPEAKER_00: So let me read it all together.
SPEAKER_00: The hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.
SPEAKER_00: So to drink from the river of God's pleasures is to cultivate the hidden person of the character of your heart with a quiet and gentle spirit, which it says is beauty to God.
SPEAKER_00: So that means, men and women, when you get up in the morning and you don't feel like spending any time with the Lord, and you do, you're cultivating the inner beauty of your heart, the hidden person of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: No one's gonna see it.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody cares.
SPEAKER_00: Now, your spouse cares if it's changing you, but hardly anybody else cares.
SPEAKER_00: And you think nobody cares, but God sees it and he says, that's the hidden beauty of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's beauty.
SPEAKER_00: That's where beauty begins.
SPEAKER_00: When we begin to worship him, we behold the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We do some worship songs, we spend time in his word.
SPEAKER_00: God is changing us in that hidden place of our heart that nobody sees.
SPEAKER_00: But it's beautiful to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's precious to him.
SPEAKER_00: So, church, let beauty grow in you.
SPEAKER_00: Let beauty start growing in you by beholding his beauty in the hidden person of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: We should be, as whole-hearted disciples, becoming less burdened with stress as we grow as whole-hearted disciples.
SPEAKER_00: We should be coming less angry, less jealous, less, and if that's not happening, look back at Psalm 27, and what David said is in the midst of all these enemies, I'm cultivating a passion for God, and in so doing, he was cultivating the hidden person of his heart, and he was being transformed.
SPEAKER_00: I believe seriously, and I say this from personal experience, 50% of our ailments physically could be wiped out by just learning this principle.
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that inflammation feeds on stress?
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be cool if there were hardly any ailments within this congregation, at least based on that alone, because we're becoming, we're becoming beholders of the beauty of God and the inflammation of our back and our neck and our shoulders is being wiped out because we're walking in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, more and more.
SPEAKER_00: We'll never get that perfect till heaven.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is we can get stronger and stronger and relax more and more in him.
SPEAKER_00: But you gotta cultivate it, you gotta go after it.
SPEAKER_00: It's the listen, it's the road.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody look at me.
SPEAKER_00: It's the road less traveled.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody's doing it.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's stressed out.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta break the power of that through taking our heart off our enemies and our struggles and take the gaze up to the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: And say, God, cultivate in me a desire to have a beautiful hidden person character.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we're running out of time here.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, um, Psalm 19.
SPEAKER_00: Love Psalm 19.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Psalm 19, I'm gonna do it really quick because uh a lot, oh man, I get way too much stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I knew this is gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.
SPEAKER_00: Day unto day utter speech, and night into night reveals knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: There's no speech nor language where their voice is not heard, their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.
SPEAKER_00: In them he has set a tabernacle for the Son, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices like a strong man to run its race, its rising is from one end of the heaven and its circuit to the other end, and there's nothing hidden from its heat.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, muse upon, meditate upon, think upon the beauty of God's creation.
SPEAKER_00: Muse upon the beauty of God's creation all around us.
SPEAKER_00: God's divine art gallery.
SPEAKER_00: God's divine art gallery is all around us.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna read you some stuff here.
SPEAKER_00: It's too in-depth for me to just say it.
SPEAKER_00: I might miss something, and it's just too good.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing, God's creation, the South American glass knife fish.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if any of you heard of the glass knife fish.
SPEAKER_00: Been turned basically a computer with fins.
SPEAKER_00: The swimming computer finds its way along rivers and streams by means of its inbuilt technology.
SPEAKER_00: Researchers Gary Rose and Walter Helgenberg report, listen, signals bouncing off an object are received by specialized cells all over the fish's body.
SPEAKER_00: Its brain then computes the object's location, much as our brains locate a noise by clocking the arrival of sound waves at our ears.
SPEAKER_00: But while our brain can distinguish two sound waves reaching our left and right ears at 15 millionths of a second apart, these fish can detect electrical impulses at 40 billionths of a second apart.
SPEAKER_00: How do they do it?
SPEAKER_00: Parallel processing.
SPEAKER_00: It's the soul of the supercomputer.
SPEAKER_00: So we thought we were so smart with our supercomputers.
SPEAKER_00: The South American glass knife fish has been doing this for millennia.
SPEAKER_00: What about a bird?
SPEAKER_00: Everything about a bird is elegant, beautiful, and almost beyond belief.
SPEAKER_00: The pneumatic skeleton air sacs throughout the body, which provide circulation that cools the bird like a radiator.
SPEAKER_00: The intricate design of feathers and wings of diverse types cannot be reproduced by man even today.
SPEAKER_00: While jet planes need runways two or more miles in order to take off and land, the bird can land successfully on a twig and take off from a twig one quarter of an inch in diameter.
SPEAKER_00: We're so smart.
SPEAKER_00: On a single twig, many birds can jump and turn as they fly 360 degrees.
SPEAKER_00: Engineers, even today, continue to study birds to solve problems in designing aircraft.
SPEAKER_00: Then there are the mysteries of the migrations of birds and animals.
SPEAKER_00: Much has been written on this in popular periodicals, but still we don't even understand it.
SPEAKER_00: Take, for example, the green sea turtle, which makes the 1,300 mile swimming journey from Brazil to a stretch of beach on Ascension Island where it was born.
SPEAKER_00: It lays its eggs and then after a few hours begins the journey back to South America.
SPEAKER_00: In two months, the newly hatched young begin their own journey back to Brazil and then return sometimes between eight and thirty-five years later to their birthplace to lay their eggs.
SPEAKER_00: Scientists still don't understand the navigational skills of these turtles in a featureless ocean.
SPEAKER_00: Zoologist Archie Carr of the University of Florida remarks, it's aesthetically irresistible.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't that sound like a scientist?
SPEAKER_00: It's aesthetically irresistible.
SPEAKER_00: Even the most moderately informed person is readily amazed at the human body and our awesome mind.
SPEAKER_00: To just refresh our minds on DNA.
SPEAKER_00: This is the fundamental building block and the nucleus of each living cell.
SPEAKER_00: It carries the genetic information that determines the individual heredity characteristics of each person.
SPEAKER_00: John Dubay writes the incredible complexity and beauty of this tiny reality in each of our billions of cells is mind-boggling.
SPEAKER_00: The Human Genome Project is an international scientific effort to map the entire DNA code of Homeo sapiens.
SPEAKER_00: They write, this code, listen to this, this DNA code is expected to be so big that it will occupy 200,000 pages of dictionary-sized small print.
SPEAKER_00: This would be 16.6 feet deep thick.
SPEAKER_00: Men and women, we are indeed God's work of art.
SPEAKER_00: Well, as the worship team comes up, I would be remiss if it didn't at least broach the subject of evolution.
SPEAKER_00: What is clear to honest and competent biochemists and microbiologists is that Darwinian natural selection cannot account for any of this.
SPEAKER_00: Honest and competent research biologists are abandoning in drugs Darwin's chance theory.
SPEAKER_00: They're searching for alternative hypotheses.
SPEAKER_00: None have been found yet.
SPEAKER_00: They should turn to the very first part of this book.
SPEAKER_00: New discoveries in microbiology, chemistry, and astronomy is almost daily dismantling the premises of evolution.
SPEAKER_00: Living plants and animals are so this is listen to what I'm gonna say now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read it.
SPEAKER_00: Living plants and animals are so fantastically complicated that astronomer Fred Hoyle and astrophysicist Chandra Wikrazom, or some name like that, have calculated the odds against life happening by chance, which is Darwin's theory, as ten to the forty thousandth power.
SPEAKER_00: That's unspeakably impossible.
SPEAKER_00: Church, listen, don't let your kids listen to evolutionary theory without you giving them the creation story.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wish we'll do a part two to this, but there's so much information out there.
SPEAKER_00: Just just take the book I mentioned.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just say it again.
SPEAKER_00: I encourage every one of you to read.
SPEAKER_00: The Evidential Power of Beauty, Science and Theology Meet by Thomas Dubai.
SPEAKER_00: The complexity of oneself is more complex than a jet airplane.
SPEAKER_00: There are more stars that your eye can see in the sky.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, this is one that Jay Inman shared with me before I got up this morning.
SPEAKER_00: There's more stars in the sky that can be visibly seen than all the bricks that man has ever made since the Tower of Babel.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what we're finding: the universe is expanding.
SPEAKER_00: It's continuing to expand.
SPEAKER_00: Folks, behold the beauty of the Lord.
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