Download Good morning! Welcome to Gladeville Baptist Church. And welcome

November 15, 2009 – AMAZED Worship Concert – Part One
Good morning! Welcome to Gladeville Baptist Church.
And welcome to “AMAZED” – our worship concert.
We’re calling this concert “AMAZED,” not because we expect you to be amazed at
the choir or the band, but because we want you to be amazed at GOD.
Our GOD is “amazing.” And He is where all the focus belongs today.
You’ll get a LOT more out of this morning if you can leave behind the mindset of a
“spectator” or an “audience member” and move towards becoming a “participant.”
When we sing, stand and sing with us.
We’re all singing to GOD – He is the audience for this concert.
Today is a great opportunity for you to worship Him openly and expressively and
with freedom. To lift your hands, and fall on your face.
To respond to God with a sense of wonder and amazement.
Are you “amazed” by God?
Amazed by the works of His hands? Amazed at the gift of His Son?
I think, much of the time, we move through life without a sense of wonder or
amazement. And that’s really a sad, regrettable thing for us.
I mean, we wake up every morning to a world that… you know, we didn’t make any
of this! How did all this get here? How did we get here?
We inhabit a mystery. We live in a fairyland, surrounded by sights and smells and
sounds - wind & rain, sun & moon, robins and rainbows.
Truly weird stuff – like snow and caterpillars and giraffes! Creation is amazing!
But over time, we grow used to it and we quit noticing.
Our childlike sense of wonder diminishes.
I think it actually kinda gets squeezed out of us.
Because, you know, we become adults, we’re supposed to be competent and
educated. We’re supposed to know what we’re doing.
We’re not really encouraged to be “amazed” or filled with “wonder.”
But every once in a while, something shows up in life - something startles us, wakes
us. It might be a child’s question, a brush with death, a clear, starry night.
A morning walk on the beach. A hike in the mountains.
And suddenly, we find ourselves thinking,
“My goodness! Where did all this come from? And why??”
There are moments in life when we feel wonder. Awestruck. Amazed.
Maybe today can be such a moment.
The Bible tells us:
Psalm 111:2
Great are the works of the LORD, pondered by all who delight in them.
That’s our purpose today, to ponder and delight in the works of the Lord.
And through them, to delight in HIM. The Bible says:
Romans 1:20
Ever since the creation of the world, God’s invisible attributes –
His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen,
being understood through what He has made…
The greatness of God can been seen and understood through His creation.
That’s exactly the principle behind this worship concert.
One way to be AMAZED by God is look at what He has made.
A disclaimer - I’m NOT a scientist, ok? I don’t have a PhD in anything!
I’m just a student, I like to read and learn. And the more I learn about these things,
the more “amazed” I become.
I see no reason for Christians to be afraid of science!
God is the author of the Bible, and God is the author of Creation.
He authored them both! So they agree. By definition, they agree!
So any time that science and the Bible seem to disagree or contradict, that’s a result
of us just not getting it yet!
Of course we’re going to encounter things that confuse and perplex us!
We’re dealing with GOD here!
Would you really expect to be able to fully comprehend and explain the works and
the ways of the Almighty, Eternal Creator of all things??
And… some of the science we’ll talk about today is fluid and changing rapidly.
But to me, the more we learn scientifically, the more the universe around us is
corresponding & agreeing with God’s Word, and the more amazing it all becomes.
So, where do we start? How about at the beginning…
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
We know a little about the Earth, maybe not so much about “the heavens.”
But we need to know! The Bible says that:
Psalm 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God,
The purpose of the heavens – the purpose of all creation – is to declare the glory of
God! That’s why it exists. So we need to know about the heavens.
But first, let’s start with the Earth. It’s where we live.
The Earth is a planet, about 8000 miles in diameter. It’s big.
If you’ve ever flown even part way around it – to Hawaii or Australia or somewhere
– you know what I’m talking about. The Earth is big.
But “big” is a relative term.
The Earth is one of a group of planets we call the “Solar System.”
The Solar System consists of 8 planets that orbit the Sun.
The Sun is not a planet; the Sun is a star.
When you see artists’ depictions of our Solar System, they usually look something
like this. And we tend to assume this is an accurate picture – that Jupiter is about
twice as big as Earth, and the Sun is 3-4 times as big as Jupiter, something like that.
But this picture is very wrong, in several ways.
The Earth, as we said, is 8000 miles in diameter.
Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System, is 88,000 miles in diameter. (11x)
And the Sun, our star, is over 800,000 miles in diameter. (100x the size of Earth)
This is a much more accurate depiction of their relative sizes.
Earth seems big… to us. But as a part of the Solar System, not so much.
Just to give you something that might stick in your mind…
if the Sun was the size of a soccer ball,
by comparison, Jupiter would be the size of a cherry tomato,
and Earth would be the size of a BB.
Are you feeling small yet? (‘cause you and I live on that BB…)
Then there’s this matter of the actual distances involved between these objects.
Let’s create a quick “scale model” of the solar system.
I think you’ll be very surprised. Maybe even “amazed”…
Our scale will be 1” = 100,000 miles - which makes this 8” diameter soccer ball an
exact scale representation of the 800,000 mile diameter Sun.
Working at this scale, where do you think Earth (represented by a BB) would be?
Relative to the Sun, where would Earth be? About here? Maybe here?
The truth is this:
If this is the Sun (right here), then
Mercury, the nearest planet to the Sun, is a pinhead on the 5TH row from the front.
Earth is a BB just inside the doorway in the very back of this room.
Right now, you’re probably thinking, “no way.”
But let me encourage you not to waste your time questioning the accuracy of this.
I got this information from an astronomer. I’ve checked the conversions and
measured the distances in here myself. It’s right.
(by the way, the Moon would be a very small pinhead, 2.4 inches from Earth.
Think about that… the Sun here, Earth a BB at the back door, and the moon 2.4
inches away from it. That’s the greatest distance man has ever traveled!)
Jupiter, in our scale model, would be a cherry tomato, over a football field away, out
near the edge of our paved parking area.
Pluto (I know, it’s not a “planet” anymore), but Pluto would be over ½ mile away.
This is the true scale of our Solar System.
Planets, even stars, as massive as they are, are absolutely TINY in comparison to the
staggering (terrifying) vastness of space.
Tiny little things, floating about in a vast emptiness.
And it gets worse.
Moving away from our Solar System (our Sun and its planets) - the next nearest star
is Proxima Centauri. It’s 4.3 light years away.
That’s 4.3 years traveling at the speed of light – 186,000 miles per second!
That’s fast. Not even my wife drives that fast. 4.3 light years.
So, in our scale model, the nearest star to our Sun would be a ping pong ball, in
Anchorage, Alaska! 4000 miles away! (That’s the next nearest star to our Sun!)
So, now we’ve got two stars.
Both these stars belong to a group of stars - a galaxy - called the Milky Way.
The Milky Way galaxy contains these two stars, and at least 200 billion others.
How many is 200 billion? Imagine an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with salt.
That would be about 100 billion grains of salt.
So 200 billion is the number of grains of salt it would take to fill 2 Olympic
swimming pools. That’s how many stars there are in the Milky Way galaxy!
How are you feeling right now? - like your brain might explode?
Our minds just can’t really comprehend these kinds of numbers. They just can’t.
Ok… so why bother to talk about things that we can’t truly comprehend?
Because part of becoming a worshipper is learning to not only accept, but to actually
embrace realities that are just totally beyond us. To embrace feeling “amazed.”
To reach the place where you “like” the feeling of having your mind just smashed by
truths that are so much greater than you; that just totally transcend you.
That’s a perspective we need, to regain some sense of wonder and amazement
towards God!
We tend to fight against this, because we don’t like to be told that we’re small.
Frankly, we are proud. Humble yourself, release your pride, and behold your God.
OK… the Milky Way galaxy – it’s 100,000 light years across!
So, if you could travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second - which you
can’t, it would take you 100,000 years just to cross our galaxy!
What does this say about GOD??
While we measure the heavens in “light years,” the Bible says that:
Isaiah 40:12
…He has measured the heavens with the breadth of His hand.
How great is our God??!!
Now get this. The Milky Way is one galaxy.
Scientists aren’t sure how many galaxies there are in the universe.
Every time we build a better telescope, we see more stuff.
But they estimate that there are certainly tens of billions of galaxies, probably
hundreds of billions!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’d say this one qualifies.
This is an actual photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
It shows just a tiny piece of the sky, about as much as you’d see if you looked up at
the stars at night through a drinking straw.
It would take 27 million such pictures to cover the whole sky.
As this picture zooms in, let me explain that it required over 800 exposures to see this
deeply into space. What you are seeing here is not computer animation,
but actual photography from the Hubble telescope, multiple exposures of the same
tiny piece of the sky, layer upon layer, looking more and more deeply into space.
And get this - in this entire picture, there are only 7 stars that are in our galaxy.
Everything else, every other point of light, is another entire different galaxy.
Then it begins panning across the picture, to show us just a cluster of galaxies within
that tiny, drinking straw piece of the sky.
Galaxy after galaxy after galaxy.
Each one composed of billions upon billions of flaming stars.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
Psalm 19:1
Lift up your eyes on high and see Who has created these.
Isaiah 40:26
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
And by the breath of His mouth all their host.
Psalm 33:6, 9
“In the beginning, God created…” THIS!
Really? I mean, is it reasonable, is it intellectually credible for a Christian living in
2009 to believe that God created this? YES! It’s more “reasonable” than ever!
Now listen - the Bible says it, and I believe it, don’t misunderstand me.
But it becomes “scientifically” more credible with every new discovery.
It’s a matter of faith, to be sure, but I see the science steadily moving, more and more,
in the direction of a Creator…
It’s only recently that science has come to accept that the universe even had a
beginning! Brilliant men as recent as Einstein believed in a “steady state” universe
that was fixed, static, it had no beginning and no end, and therefore required no
Creator.
It was in the late 1920’s that an astronomer named Edwin Hubbell began making
some remarkable discoveries. He was the first to figure out that there is more than
one galaxy, that many of those blurry little points of light scientists had assumed to be
stars or dust are actually entirely different galaxies.
Then, Hubbell discovered that all these galaxies are moving!
And they are ALL moving AWAY from us – and each other - at incredible speeds!
And, the further away from us they are, the faster they are moving.
A spherically expanding universe - that’s the mathematical relationship, much like
inflating a balloon.
Now think about this It raises a very interesting point.
As we go forward in time, these galaxies will move further and further apart.
But, what if we extrapolate backwards in time?
Then the points will get closer and closer together.
Matter and space contract until you arrive at what scientists call a “singularity” - a
singular beginning point.
This discovery by Hubbell is what gave rise to the theory called “the Big Bang.”
His new evidence suggested, not a fixed universe that had always existed,
but a universe that had a definite beginning!
This shook the foundations of the scientific world.
Most scientists thought this idea of a beginning was preposterous.
One of the scientists very troubled by this development was Albert Einstein.
Einstein had actually fudged his theory of relativity to avoid dealing with a beginning
point to the universe. Einstein eventually traveled to visit Hubbell, to observe what
Hubbell was observing, and then announced “I now see the necessity of a beginning.”
Even then, most astronomers disagreed. This theory was very controversial for the
next several decades. They proposed other ways of explaining the data.
Over time, however, scientists have continued to find more and more overwhelming
and compelling evidence for a beginning point, so that, today, Big Bang cosmology is
widely accepted.
Today’s best scientific minds agree that the observations, the math, the physics all
point to the fact that, as you go back in time, you reach a “singularity” where space
equals zero and time equals zero. There is no matter, no energy.
And suddenly, in a tiny fraction of a second, the universe exploded into being,
expanded from literally “nothing” to a volume of astronomical proportions in a
trillionth of a second, breaking all physical laws.
What does that sound like to you??? That’s creation!! A literal creation event!
This is what today’s best scientific models and observations say.
Now understand – they are still learning, this is still very fluid and changing.
They may announce something totally different tomorrow.
But it’s fascinating to me that the Bible describes exactly what scientists are finding –
an expanding universe with a finite beginning.
For thousands of years, God’s Word has told us:
Hebrews 11:3
By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God,
…that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
Isaiah 44:24
“I am the LORD, who made all things. I alone stretched out the heavens.”
That sounds like an expanding universe to me, just like what Hubbell found!
Isaiah 40:22
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a
tent.
Jeremiah 32:17
Ah Lord GOD! You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great
power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You!
Nehemiah 9:6
You created the heavens, the highest heavens with all the stars…
and the host of heaven worship You.
That’s the appropriate response to this – an amazed response of worship and praise!
Listen to Psalm 148 (because we’re fixing to sing this):
Psalm 148:1-5
Hallelujah!
Praise the LORD from the heavens, praise Him in the heights above.
Praise Him, all His angels, praise Him, all His heavenly hosts.
Praise Him, sun and moon, praise Him, all you shining stars.
Let them praise the name of the LORD, for He commanded, and they were
created.
But this Psalm doesn’t only call on the heavens to praise Him! It continues:
Praise the LORD from the earth.
…all creatures of the ocean depths
…fire and hail …stormy winds
…mountains and hills, orchards and forests
…Kings, princes and rulers of earth
…Men and women alike, both old and young together
...the praise of all the saints, the people close to His heart.
Let them praise the name of the LORD, for His name alone is exalted!
Are you ready to praise this great God?! Let’s stand and worship Him!