Latest / Collierville Radio Network / Admonition Podcast - God Permeates The Mind - Justin Evergarden - September 20, 2026

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Admonition Podcast - God Permeates The Mind - Justin Evergarden - September 20, 2026 · Collierville Radio Network

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If you would please turn your Bibles over to the book of Genesis.
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Specifically Genesis chapter one,
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verse one. In the beginning,
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God created the heavens and the earth.
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Before Scripture tells us anything about man,
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anything about his conscience,
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anything about society, anything about the universe and the creation itself,
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it establishes God.
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He is there before creation.
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And anything that has ever existed exists because of him.
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Now there's a popular observation in Genesis chapter 1,
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verse 1, that contains the beginnings of what we're going to describe this morning
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as time, space, and matter. I've heard it in many a sermon.
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In the beginning, you have time.
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God created the heaven, that being space,
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and earth being matter.
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I'm going to be careful tonight or this evening to force to not force modern physics
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into terminology Moses was not trying to use,
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because the point is actually much greater than time,
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space, and matter. The heaven and the earth encompass the created order
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of things. Whatever exists in creation ultimately owes its very creation to our God.
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And scripture does not picture God as a creator who built the universe.
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Started moving it, and simply stepped away from it.
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So let's look over at Jeremiah chapter twenty three,
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verses twenty three through twenty four.
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Jeremiah records God asking, Am I a God at hand,
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set the Lord, and not a God afar off?
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Can any hide himself in a secret place that I shall not see him,
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set the Lord? Do not I fill the heaven and the earth.
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So this expression
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Encapsulates the idea that we're going to title our sermon this evening,
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which is God Permeates. Now, by permeate,
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I do not mean that God is physically mixed into matter or that everything
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in creation is a God, such as we see in different nations in the ideas
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of Shintoism specifically. However,
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the creator remains very distinct from his creation.
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And I mean that there's no realm of our existence in which we do not encounter the
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Evidence of his power, his order,
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his authority, and his influence.
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Paul says this concerning Christ in Colossians 1,
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16 through 17. For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that
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are in earth, visible and invisible,
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whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers,
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all things were created by him and for him.
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And he is before all things, and by him all things consists.
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Now the Hebrew writer in Hebrews chapter one and verse three actually takes
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us to a much further point. So if we look at Hebrews one and verse three,
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he says, Who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person,
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and here's the key phrase in this one,
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upholding all things by the word of his power,
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when he had by himself
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Purged our sins, that being Christ,
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sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
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So here we see God created it,
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God sustains it, and his power is evident all throughout it:
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time, space, and matter. This morning we're going to look inward at the human body.
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We're going to find it there. If we examine the mind and the conscience,
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we're going to find it there.
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If we look at human society and history itself,
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we are going to find the influence of God there.
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And finally, if we turn our eyes outward into the expanse of the cosmos,
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we find the existence of God portrayed every step of the way,
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from the smallest of particles all the way up to the largest of gaps from planet
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to planet. The question at the end of this lesson for you this morning.
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Will not simply be whether God permeates the world around us,
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but I want us to take a more personal question this evening and ask:
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does God permeate our lives?
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And so we're gonna move to our first point,
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which is God permeates the body.
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David wrote, for those of you turning in your Bibles,
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it'll be Psalm chapter 139 and verse 14.
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For thou hast possessed my reins,
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thou hast covered me in my mother's wound.
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I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
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Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well.
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I think it goes without saying that David did not possess a microscope.
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At least not that I'm aware of.
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They had technology, they had iron workers,
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but I do not believe I remember reading anywhere in the Bible of a microscope.
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He could not see the tiny parts of our bodies that we can now pull out to today.
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We were walking around the other day in a Barnes and Noble,
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and I'm sitting there as I typically do,
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the child that I am, going down the toy section.
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And in the toy section, you can find.
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An electron microscope. It's like eighty eighty dollars.
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Now granted it was a nice one,
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but it had a little L C D screen and everything,
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and you could pluck a hair from your head on a children's toy today and
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put it under the microscope and see the individual follicles and the cells
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of the hair. Very, very cool.
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David could not do that. David could not look and see all that,
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let alone understand all the work that those tiny parts within our bodies perform.
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Yet what he could observe about the human body was enough to make
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him declare very boldly that he was fearfully and wonderfully made.
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Now we can look much further inward than David ever could,
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and the closer we look, the more remarkable the body becomes.
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One example I saw when researching the different sciences and trying to figure out
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What would be a good hook for this?
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I found a sermon actually, and the hook for this one was a protein,
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a polypeptide chain known as laminin.
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Now, I'm going to try to stick to my notes because I've got some science in here,
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but I'm gonna get not too sciencey because I don't want to put everyone
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to sleep like my old sixth grade science teacher used to do to me.
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It's a protein that helps our cells attach and support around them
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and helps give structure to the tissue of our bodies.
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Think of it as one part of the framework that keeps everything in its proper place.
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These are something called basement proteins.
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Now, for those of you that know how houses are built,
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you have to have a foundation before you can build the house.
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These are what these basement proteins do,
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they hold everything together.
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However, laminin does not literally hold the entire human body together.
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The sermon that I found had it described ~ as part of a much larger system,
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but the hook was the shape of laminin.
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The shape of laminin' s th there's a popular picture of laminin because drawings
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take it make it to look somewhat like a cross.
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Now when you're looking through the body,
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these cells don't keep their shape.
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But if you were to take laminin and unroll it,
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it's actually in the shape of a cross.
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It's very neat, but I would not build the argument around its resemblance
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to a cross. The stronger point is what it does.
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Even the smallest parts of our bodies depend upon the other parts to work properly.
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Everything has to be in sync and in order.
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Consider all that goes into keeping a simple cell alive.
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Cells are tiny living building blocks that make up our body.
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And there's activity taking place inside of each and every individual cell
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at all times of the day, all times of the night.
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If our cells quit working, we stop living.
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One example is a sodium potassium pump.
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Name sounds complicated, but the basic idea is simple.
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It works like a tiny pump. It moves certain materials in and out of the cell.
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Kind of like how we pull up to the gas station,
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you have to pump gas into your fuel tank.
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Now when you're driving, you're using a similar pump to pump that into the engine,
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which expels it out of the cell or the car.
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These particular ones help our nerves carry messages and our muscle functions.
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So while I'm standing here preaching,
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do I have to tell those individual cells to keep pumping?
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That'd be a whole lot of instruction,
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wouldn't it?
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I don't have to remind my heart to beat.
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I don't have to sit here and go,
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Okay, breathe. Exhale.
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That would be a lot. There are processes occurring all throughout
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the body that every second of our lives we never see and very rarely consider.
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Even the instructions stored within our cells need care.
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Those instructions are contained in what we're called DNA.
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For the fancy Jurassic Park people in here,
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deoxyribonucleic acid, right? You got the little picture of the little
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DNA guy with his anyway. They become damaged throughout our ordinary activity
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of life and through things we encounter all around us.
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Yet our cells have a way of finding and repairing many kinds of damage.
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Inside of our bodies, they use those instructions from the DNA to repair
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our bodies should anything happen to them.
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This is a continual work taking place to repair the damage.
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Replace worn out part and keep things functioning.
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Now think if we could take control of that.
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I was talking to Megan when I was getting this sermon together and I
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had a crazy idea. When we're born,
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especially my little one now, he's teething,
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he's getting his first set of teeth.
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And eventually when you start becoming a teen,
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you lose those teeth and you get your adult teeth.
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How cool would it be if we could get a third set when we're older?
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I know I could use a new set.
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But the instructions aren't there in the DNA.
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God meant for us only to have two sets of teeth.
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We're lucky we have a backup set.
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So if we're inappropriate to our teeth younger,
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we get a second set. I've already destroyed half of mine,
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but that's apart from the matter.
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All of this is part of keeping the body in balance.
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Your temperature, your temperature cannot rise or fall beyond certain limits.
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Your body needs the right amount of water,
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it needs the right amount of oxygen,
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it needs the right amount of sugar in your blood.
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All those things your body continually adjusts.
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We don't have to think about it.
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Those instructions are stored at a s at a nearly atomic level.
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Being alive is not something your body is.
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It's what your body is continually doing.
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It's active in staying alive. And Scripture detects our attention beyond
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the process of the one whom life ultimately depends upon.
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So in Acts seventeen and verse twenty eight,
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Paul said it, For in him we live and move.
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So there's movement in life, and have our being,
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as certain also of your own poets have said,
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for we are also his offspring.
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Now, granted, science can help us understand a whole lot about how
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the world works around us. It can explain how the tiny pump pushes a cell forward,
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how our nerves can carry messages,
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and how our bodies repair damage.
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Scripture, however, answers the larger question,
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which is on whom do we depend for life?
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Because it's not found in the cells.
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It says in this scripture here in him we live and move and have our being.
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There is nothing wrong with understanding how the body works.
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That understanding should only deepen our appreciation of what God
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has put into being.
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If David could sit there and say that I am fearfully and wonderfully made,
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and then we get access to a children's electron microscope,
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should that not just elevate our wonder how wonderfully and fearfully we are made?
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Our knowledge has increased enormously,
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the wonder should have increased with it.
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But now let's look outside of the body.
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Let's turn to the mind, something that's that's less tangible.
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The evidence does not stop at the physical construction of man.
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There's something else about humanity that absolutely demands our attention,
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and that is how man thinks about living.
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We reason, we judge.
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We experience guilt. Some of us might not.
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I know I do.
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We ask questions about meaning.
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We recognize obligations. We speak of things like justice and injustice.
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We talk about preferences and dislikes.
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So let's look at scripture. Go back to Genesis chapter one and verse twenty seven.
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Scripture begins explaining why when it says
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the following So God created man in his own image,
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and in the image of God created he him,
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male and female, created he them.
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Now there's something unique about man in this scripture.
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Whatever all the implications of bearing God's image may be,
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and we're not sure what God looks like,
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we haven't been told, Scripture clearly separates mankind from all
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the rest of creation. No other portion of creation is made in the image
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of God such as we are. One evidence can be seen in Romans chapter two,
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verses fourteen through fifteen.
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For when the Gentiles, which have not the law,
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do by nature the things contained in the law,
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these, being the Gentiles,
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having not the law, are a law unto themselves,
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which show the work of the law written in their hearts,
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their conscience also bearing witness,
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and their thoughts the mean while accusing.
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One another. I got lost in my own notes for a second.
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Notice what Paul recognizes. There is a conscience.
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Everyone has a conscience, seared or not seared seared,
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and it is going to do one of two things.
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It is either going to accuse someone of something,
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or it is going to excuse someone or something.
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People everywhere understand the difference when I say,
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I do not like that, and saying that is wrong.
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Case in point. I like ~ what is it?
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a pineapple on a pizza. Now some of you may say,
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I don't like that. I get that.
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But if you're being honest, you shouldn't be saying that's wrong.
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Now that's a silly argument, but when we get to more serious things,
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it makes sense that there's a big difference between I dislike and that is wrong.
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These are not the same statement.
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If someone deliberately tortures an innocent child,
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Are we going to normally say, well,
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personally, that isn't my preference?
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Certainly hope not. We say that is wrong,
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and rightly so. We mean something by it.
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Which brings us to the moral argument.
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The argument is sometimes stated so badly,
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so I'm going to try to be very precise.
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The Christian argument is not that an atheist,
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someone who does not believe in God,
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cannot behave morally. They can.
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Of course, an unbeliever can love his children.
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Of course, an unbeliever can tell the truth.
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Of course, an unbeliever can sacrifice themselves for another person.
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They can condemn injustice. They can do a lot of good things.
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In fact, Romans 2 helps us explain why.
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Humanity possesses conscience or moral awareness,
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whether a person acknowledges the God who gave it or not.
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So what am I saying? The real question is not:
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can a person who does not believe in God
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behave morally. The question should be stated this way.
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Without an objective standard beyond humanity,
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what ultimately makes anything objectively right or wrong?
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If morality is finally grounded in personal preference,
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what's keeping someone else's personal preference,
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your personal preference for pineapple on a pizza to outweigh
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my personal preference of the pineapple on the pizza?
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Again, it's a silly illustration,
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but I think it makes the point.
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Your preference does not trump my preference,
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and so on and so forth. If morality,
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however, is grounded in culture,
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then whatever a culture approves of then becomes moral,
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doesn't it?
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That's a rhetorical question. If it comes ultimately from government,
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then whatever government legalizes becomes morally right.
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You shaking your head no, that's not how that works.
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History will not allow us to believe that.
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Cultures have defended slavery.
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Governments have legalized oppressions.
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Majorities have mistreated minorities.
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Human beings have repeatedly approved things that later generations rightly
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recognize as evil. When we say those cultures were wrong,
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we are clearly appealing to something higher than the culture itself.
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So what are we appealing to? C.S.
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Lewis expressed expressed the thought.
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Pretty memorably, in a book titled Mere Christianity.
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He said, and I quote, A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea
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of a straight line.
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We have to have some form of measurement here.
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So where does the straight line come from?
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The moral argument remains a serious subject within philosophy.
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Secular philosophers have proposed non theistic accounts of objective morality.
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So we should not pretend that every philosopher agrees with
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the Christian conclusion. They simply don't.
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The Christian argument is that objective moral obligation calls
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for an adequate foundation, and logic would tell us the very same thing.
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And that's God's existence and character provide that foundation in a
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way that is consistent with our experience of morality as genuinely binding rather
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than simply put as personal preference.
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Scripture does not present goodli goodliness as something higher than God,
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to which God Himself must attain to or hold Himself accountable to.
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What we are talking about is God's very nature by which we have
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our measuring stick of morality.
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Goodness flows from the character of God.
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Turn your Bibles over to Deuteronomy,
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chapter thirty two and verse four.
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Moses wrote here about God, He is the rock,
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his work is perfect, for all his ways are judgment.
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A God of truth and without iniquity,
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just and right is He.
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David later reflects this in Psalm 119 and verse 68.
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Thou art good and doest good.
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Teach me thy statutes. He's asking God because he knows that if
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the statutes come from God, they are morally correct.
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There's our straight line. God is good,
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God is just, God is true. Every single one of God's commandments that
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he passes down to us reflect his very nature.
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They are good to the very core.
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If human beings become the final standard,
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Scripture describes the result in very simple language.
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Judges chapter twenty one and verse twenty-five is it writes In those days there
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was no king in Israel. Every man did what was right in his own eyes.
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Now notice carefully the wording there.
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It is not saying that they did right,
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it's saying that they did right what was in their own eyes.
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What they thought were right. They were making themselves
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the objective moral standard. So we go the we see it right there in
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the book of Judges. They chose personal preference instead of objective,
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measurable morality.
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Scripture warns us elsewhere in Proverbs fourteen and verse twelve.
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There is a way which seemeth right unto a man,
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but the ends thereof are the ways of death.
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Look, the human mind is remarkable.
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There are people far more intelligent than I am.
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But it can never safely become its own God.
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It just cannot. And morality is not the only thing about our minds that points
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beyond ourselves. Human beings possess an unusual awareness of meaning and purpose.
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How many times in in simple movies do we get asked questions of what's
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our purpose here on Earth? I think it was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy made
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fun of this.
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They said, Well, the answer must be forty two.
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We do not merely ask what something does.
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We ask what it means. We contemplate our own existence.
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We think about death on a day-to-day basis.
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We search for purpose. We wonder whether our lives matter beyond the grave once
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we pass away. And yes, it absolutely does matter.
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Look at what Solomon observed in Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 11.
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He hath made everything beautiful in his time.
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Also, he hath set the world in their heart.
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So that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
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Now I'm not going to try to turn that verse into some psychological theory.
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Solomon's larger point concerns man's limited perspective beside the work
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of an eternal God. Yet the passage captures something we all recognize.
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Humans by nature reach out past the present.
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We're only ever living in the present,
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but we're always looking to the future,
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case in point.
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Several people, as soon as you walk out this door,
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you'll still be living in the present and you're going to be thinking,
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What am I gonna make when I get home to eat tonight?
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w what does my job have on the agenda tomorrow?
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Do I have enough time to watch that movie before I go to bed tonight?
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We're always looking forward.
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We have to understand that we can't understand the whole when we've only been given
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a piece. If I gave you a piece of a jigsaw puzzle,
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just one piece, and I told you to go ahead and describe in ornate detail what
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the whole puzzle looked like, we could not do it.
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Because we're only given a small piece of the puzzle while God has the entire thing.
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Our minds ask questions that are much larger than our lifetimes.
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We ask many times where did I come from?
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Why am I here?
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What is right? What is wrong? What happens when I die?
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Does life have any meaning? Those questions shouldn't come as a surprise.
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God's fingerprints are not only seen all over the structures of the body that
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we showed before, but they reach very deep in the consciousness of man.
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If we're made in his image, it's pretty safe to say that our minds are made
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in that image as well. We look past beyond ourselves.
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So let's go beyond ourselves, beyond ourselves,
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and look into society now. God permeates society.
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God's influence does not disappear when human beings gather together in flocks.
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It becomes woven throughout cultures,
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language, laws, arts, sciences,
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civilization itself.
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However, this does not mean that every society is godly.
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It can be woven throughout, and we're going to take a look at that.
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Acts seventeen gives us an excellent example of a society that was deeply religious,
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while also being very deeply mistaken about God.
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Acts chapter seventeen, verses twenty two through twenty three.
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Here we have Paul walking up. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said,
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Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
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Man, how many times I could have said that whenever I visited Japan.
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There's a there's a temple on every corner.
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For as I pass by, I beheld your devotions,
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I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God,
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whom therefore ye ignorantly worship,
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him I declare unto you. Athens was full of religious thought.
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So much so that we we see exhibited in Acts chapter 17 that these people
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of great thinking would go up on Mars Hill,
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presumably on a daily basis, and talk all day.
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about different gods and their existence in the universe and what life
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was going to be like. A there's no telling what all they talked about.
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Almost sounds like academia today,
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right? A whole lot of talking and not a whole lot of doing.
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He continues in twenty four and through twenty seven,
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God that made the world and all things therein,
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seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth,
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dwelleth not in temples made with hands,
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neither is worshipped with men's hands,
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as though he needeth anything,
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seeing he giveth to all life, and breath,
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and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men for
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to dwell on all of the face of the earth,
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and hath determined the times before appointed.
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And the bounds of their habitation,
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that they should seek the Lord,
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if happily they might feel after him and find him,
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though he be not far from every one of us.
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I want to concentrate now on that last expression there,
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though he be not far from every one of us.
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Humanity as a whole,
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society as a whole, has spent its entire history searching,
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reaching, looking for meaning,
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for purpose, for God, sometimes obeying God,
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and sometimes, unfortunately, rebelling against him.
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But this
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Key phrase in this verse shows us that God has never been far from us.
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Consider the way we number years,
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the traditional Western system of B C and A D for a moment.
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Just our dating system, something as simple as that.
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It was developed from a Christian method of reckoning,
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years, associated with someone's name whom I can't pronounce,
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Dionys Exigus I don't know how to pronounce that.
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But he was born in the sixth century.
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A D Enos Domini means literally translated in the year
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of our Lord.
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BC originally before Christ. Now today we see that people are trying
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to remove this. They have added B C E and C E instead of A D.
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They are trying to do bec before Common Era and the Common Era.
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I don't like that. I think a much better tell for that would be before
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the Christian era and the Christian era,
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separated by the cross, right?
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They still can't get too far away from it.
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They're still using letters that we can use against
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It demonstrates that the influence of Christ has become so deeply embedded
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in not only Western civilization,
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but civilizations across the globe,
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that centuries of human history even came to be numbered by him.
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And yet people want to deny him.
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The single most prominent person in all of history,
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and they want to deny him. Take something in your pocket right
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now American currency.
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When we look at the the Almighty Dollar,
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doesn't it not say, In God We Trust?
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Now where did this come from? In 1955,
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law required that motto on all U.S.
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currency. It first appeared on paper currency on the series 1957
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$1 silver certificate before appearing later on Federal Reserve notes.
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Again, printing in God We Trust on money does not make every person
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who spends it faithful to God.
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A national motto does not prove Christianity.
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But isn't it remarkable evidence of how embedded into public life
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the Bible's teachings have become?
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It's everywhere. You can't get away from it.
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The same can be observed in one of the most important documents in American history:
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the Declaration of Independence.
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It does not claim that government gives mankind its own fundamental rights.
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It speaks of men being created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain
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Unalienable rights. Even our country's founders admitted the existence of God.
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Now, whether every signer understood God exactly as scripture reveals
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is a separate historical question that I'm not going to touch with
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a ten-foot pole today. But the important observation is the argument reaches above
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government for the basis of what human rights are.
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Government does not create human value.
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The majority does not create human value.
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Human beings possess a value before legislation ever took a vote.
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So when I say God permeates society,
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I'm not saying that every institution is Christian and every nation belongs
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to God in some special or political sense,
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or every religious reference proves the gospel.
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But human civilization repeatedly encounters the question of God
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and how they react to it is very important.
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We find him discussed in our philosophy,
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we see him row woven throughout our history.
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We see him reflected in our vocal in our moral vocabulary.
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We see him acknowledged in our institutions,
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worshipped correctly in some places and terribly in others.
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Even rebellion against God has to define what it is they are rebelling against.
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Isn't that funny?
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Paul walked into pagan Athens and found a society searching.
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His answer was not, you guys have enough religion already.
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And I can tell you right now, religion's not going to save you.
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Because man's religion is just all over the place.
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But God's religion is exactly what you need.
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His answer to those pagan people were,
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Let me tell you about the God you don't yet know.
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Let me explain the one that you don't know.
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Let me tell you who you need. Because he's not very far from you.
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He's right around the corner.
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But let's look out further, beyond society.
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Now we're going to look up into the universe.
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Paul wrote in Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4:
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The heavens declare the glory of God,
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and the firmament showeth his handiwork.
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Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.
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There is no speech, nor language,
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where their voice is not heard.
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Their line is gone out through all the earth,
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and their words to the ends of the world,
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in them that hath
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Set a tabernacle for the sun. Again,
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David did not have an electron microscope,
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nor did he have a Hubble telescope.
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He could not look any further outward than he could look inward.
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He could simply look up.
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But what he could see declared the glory of God.
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And today we can look much further.
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Astronomers estimate that our Milky Galaxy contains more than
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one hundred billion stars. NASA notes that it on several estimates
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of the universe as a whole can reach as high as approximately one septillion stars.
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Now I had to look this up. I didn't even know what a septillion was.
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That's one with twenty-four zeros behind it.
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That's a lot of stars.
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Now look at this. Turn your Bibles over to Isaiah chapter 40,
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and we're going to read verses 25 through 26.
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The prophet Isaiah wrote something very cool.
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Now remember that as we read through this.
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One followed by twenty-four zeros,
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twenty-four one septilian stars.
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To whom then will you liken me?
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Or how shall I be equal? said the Holy One.
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Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things that bringeth
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out their host by number.
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He calleth them all by names, by the greatness of his might,
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for he is strong in power, and not one faileth.
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I don't know about you, but when I look up at the night sky,
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when it's clear and the streetlights aren't on,
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I struggle to see all the stars in the sky.
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You can't, your eyes can't hold them all.
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And that's just a small snapshot of what we see in the sky.
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Stars form and operate according to consistent physical relationships.
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Things like gravity, nuclear interactions,
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matter, other other features of the physical universe behave with regularity
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so that we can even predict those.
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We live in a universe that we can study.
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We can describe it mathematically.
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We can even make predictions about it.
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We do so all the time with weather.
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We can send instruments millions and millions of miles away based upon calculations
34:27
and expect nature to behave tomorrow the same way that it did today.
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And yet we get models that
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That tear apart God's order, that try to propose very weird ideas,
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and I think that the order God has put into the universe deserves contemplation.
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Does sleep and woke up. I have a Lego set.
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Now I want you to imagine for a moment that I took every piece necessary
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to construct a Lego model and placed them in this box.
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They are not all here in this one.
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And I'm not gonna open the box.
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I shake the box, and after a while I open it.
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If I pull out a completed model,
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is anyone gonna believe me? No.
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Okay.
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Well, are you gonna accept my explanation if I say,
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Well, I didn't build it, I just shook it long enough?
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Does that make sense? No.
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What if I tell you I shook it for a week?
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Is it ever gonna assemble itself into this little little spaceship that's on there?
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No.
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If I say I shook it for a thousand years.
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I'm not gonna make you sit that long.
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Adding time does not suddenly make intelligence an unreasonable inference.
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It doesn't make sense just simply because you added time to it.
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When we see the finished model,
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there are things that we can understand that the arrangement
36:09
of pieces reflect intention, the intention of the designers who created it.
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And possessing material is not the same thing as it explaining the source
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of its order. In this example,
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I gave all the material that was there.
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All the pieces already in the box,
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already painted, already ready to be assembled.
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The directions are even in there,
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but just randomly shaking the box isn't going to put anything together.
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And yet we have science telling us wild theories like Big Bang,
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something happened, there was a large explosion,
36:44
and all these minute cells that we looked at,
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those
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sodium potassium pumps, the stars,
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our bodies, our minds, everything just fell perfectly together.
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I can't even shake this for a thousand years and get a Lego set to be put together.
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When you look at the Lego set,
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you can tell me what the pieces are made of and still have not explained the model.
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You can describe every chemical in the paint and still have
37:09
not explained the painting process.
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You can describe the physical process within the universe and still
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ask the larger question why is there a universe governed by these processes at all?
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Why is it here? Remember,
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we were going through the mind,
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man looks likes to ask those kind of questions.
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So let's keep going.
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Modern cosmology describes evidence that the universe developed from
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an extremely hot, dense early state and has undergone cosmic expansion.
37:39
Scientists continue studying the early stages.
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NASA openly notes that the cause or trigger of the earliest rapid expansion is,
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and I quote from NASA, not known.
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I know it 'cause the Bible tells us.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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Genesis answers at the level of ultimate cause.
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And I skipped the slide.
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Our argument should never be as Christians scientists do not understand everything,
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therefore God.
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That would make our faith dependent upon gaps in current scientific knowledge,
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wouldn't it? It would. So even if tomorrow scientists describe some physical process
38:27
far better than they can today,
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they are still quoting and describing creation.
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Sometimes they do it wrong, though.
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Paul writes in Romans 1 and verse 20:
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For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.
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Being understood by the things that are made,
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even his eternal power and Godhead.
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Important part, so that they are without excuse.
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That is precisely what David said in Psalm 19.
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The creation speaks very,
39:04
very loudly. The microscope can point inward,
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the telescope can point outward.
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At one end we find systems so minute that we can't see them with the naked eye.
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On the other end of the spectrum,
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we have distances so great that we can't even fathom the number of zeros behind
39:21
it in the terms of miles to get out there.
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But look at Colossians one seventeen.
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Scripture will tell us that at neither end of that scale,
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and no point in between will ever exist independently of God.
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Colossians one seventeen states,
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and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
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God permeates everything.
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We began with God's question Do I do not I fill the heaven and the earth,
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set the Lord? It is possible to live in a universe filled with the evidence
40:05
of God while refusing to let God's influence govern your life.
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You can carry a body that's fearfully and wonderfully made by Him,
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and you can still use that body for sin.
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I can possess a conscience that recognizes right and wrong and still choose
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the wrong.
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I can live surrounded by reminders of God
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and train myself not to notice them.
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I can look into the heavens that declare the glory and simply refuse to glorify Him.
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Paul gives us a beautiful conclusion in Romans 12,
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1 through 2. I beseech you,
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therefore, brethren, by the mercies of our God,
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that you present your bodies a living sacrifice,
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holy, acceptable unto God,
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which is your reasonable service.
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And be not conformed to this world,
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but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
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that ye may prove what
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Is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God?
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Now look at that verse close, because we notice how beautifully that returns
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us to everything that we've considered this evening.
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Your body presents yourself as a living sacrifice.
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Your mind be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
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and then your life begins to conform to the will of God.
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Paul expressed it differently in Colossians chapter three.
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Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom,
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teaching and admonishing one another,
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and psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
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singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
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And whatever ye do in word or deed,
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do all in the name of the Lord,
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giving thanks to God the Father by him.
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Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.
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We can't do that unless we spend time in God's Word.
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When those on Pentecost realized their guilt and asked what they needed to do,
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Peter answered them, didn't he?
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Acts two thirty-eight. Peter said to them,
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Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ,
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for the remission of your sins,
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and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
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If you need to do just that this evening,
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we stand ready and willing to aid you do that.
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Make sure that you allow God to permeate your life today before it's too late.
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As we stand and as we sing.