Merry Christmas. So good to be here with you all. So many great memories. I pray for you and thank you for praying for us. We had quite a year. We had a little car accident up in the ice and snow on the way from Mexicali back to San Diego. The Lord was good. It was not a big deal. It wrecked the car, but not us. And so I'm thankful for that. It's those times when I know that people are praying and appreciate being in the Lord's hands. And we thank you too for the continued support from First Baptist Garden Grove. I just turned 75. And I don't look at, I probably look more like 80 or so, but the fact is that the older I get, the more old friends who were supporting us are no longer around. And it's an interesting thing to see how the Lord provides and how he blesses in so many ways and you are a blessing to us. Things in Mexico are finally starting to open up a little bit. The COVID problem has been a big deal down there. There are pockets where a whole lot of people were lost and some places where they were able to do some things that kept it from getting really bad. The hard part was not having church services for so long. And now the hard part is that they can't really do door-to-door evangelism like they were doing. And so they're trying to do different things. There are things in the internet that are possible, but it's still really difficult. And the one blessing was that they were able to hand out food to families where the jobs were lost, and they were able to have a witness in that way. And so I continue praying, praying that the churches would be more opened up. I wasn't here last week. Last week was my normal time to be here. But I was asked to preach at a wedding. And I didn't realize until too late that the wedding was on Sunday. And so last week I was in Mexicali speaking at a wedding, and that was a lot of fun. And it is true that they're opening up more and more, and they're being able to bless people in a lot of different ways. And what great fellowship I have with people down there. It's an amazing thing to know how many years we've been going and how many people are faithful in the Lord, how many churches were planted, and they're continuing forward as well. God is great in his sovereignty and in the way he leads and the way that things happen. I was motivated to give a message here that was very different from what you might think. Does anybody else here like hummingbirds? I have four hummingbird feeders in the backyard. And I just love that they should be called buzzing birds, right? You know, the little brr that comes around. And then to watch them do what they do. And the more I thought about that, I'm out there thinking, you know, God is great. God is amazing in the way that he has done things in this earth. And I started meditating on Psalm 19. And you can all finish with me, okay? The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. Amazing stuff. The more I thought about that, the more I thought, boy, there's some greatness about God that we just don't understand, that we don't realize. And one of the things that I was hoping to do today was to ask the Lord to help us to open our eyes. Open our eyes. We sing, open my eyes that I might see the beautiful things that you've done for me. You know, there are so many different things like that. But I would like to take that thought with Psalm 19 and say, Lord, open our eyes. Help us to see the glory. And you know, the verse says the heavens declare the glory of God. And the idea of declare could be taken down into our generation and saying the heavens are preaching. The heavens are declaring the glory of God, and in the doubling poetic form in Hebrew, and the firmament shows his handiwork. There's some other things I want to say about that. But the heavens are preaching to us. I want to read just a a couple more verses here. Verse 2, and if you want to look at Psalm 19 and kind of meditate on it there, you can do that. I'm going to be going other places as well. But in Psalm 19, the heavens are telling the glory of God, their expanse is declaring the work of his hands. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words where their voice is not heard. I'm not sure what you think of when you're looking up at the night sky. In Garden Grove, you can't see the night sky. I mean, you can see the moon and once in a while, Venus comes through and it's pretty bright. And if you know what you're looking at, there's Jupiter. And you have a telescope, you can see the moons around Jupiter. It's kind of fun. But so many things, if you get out where it's really wide open, you can see so much more that's amazing. It's been a long time since I've seen the Milky Way. It's called Milky Way because it looks milky. It's kind of a fuzzy thing you're looking at up in the sky. And it's amazing. But the fact is that when you're looking at that glory and you're thinking about God, what does it make you do? It takes your breath away to understand really what all is out there. What all is out there? And when David was looking to the heavens, he wasn't looking at the spiritual heaven, he was looking at the heavens of the blue sky and the night sky, and he saw that beautiful stuff. And he said, I think in his heart, the God who created all this is glorious. And this is evidence of his glory. One of my favorite country songs, music pianist is a blind guy named Gordon Mote. Anybody heard of Gordon Mote? He's a blind pianist. Started playing the piano when he was three years old. A gift from God. He's amazing. He's one of the favorite studio musicians in Nashville because he can pick up the thoughts of a song and put it on the keyboard. and without a mistake, he's an amazing blind pianist. Several years ago, I heard him do a song. Don't let me miss the glory. Don't let me miss the glory. And I think a lot of times we are with our heads down in the dirt, you know, looking at the things around us that we don't see the glory of God. And really, this is not just talking about with our eyes, it's talking about with our souls. The song says, don't let me miss the glory. Don't let me miss the grace. All creation is singing to the honor of your name. Don't let me miss the wonder. Don't let me miss the grand design. In the lightning and the thunder, Lord, open up my eyes. Don't let me miss the glory. A few other scriptures here, Psalm 33, six, by the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. And Isaiah tells us in 40, 26, lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars. The one who leads out their host by number, he calls them all by name because of the greatness of his might and the strength of his power. We should all see that, right? It ought to be obvious to everybody. You would think. And yet, there are a lot of people who don't see it at all. In fact, Paul in the book of Romans, if you want to look with me, Romans chapter one, just reading a few verses there. Romans chapter one, verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made. So they are without excuse. Have you heard of scientism? There really is a religion that comes out of materialism. There's a blind faith that people have. The whole idea of evolution back in the 1850s around that time of Clarence Darwin, what's his name? Anyway, Charles. He thought he had found something fantastic because there was evolution, minor evolution happening in certain species. And so they thought, hey, we can do all this without God. I don't know if you've never thought about that, but that's the same thing they were doing at the Tower of Babel. We can do all this without God. We can look at the stars and start predicting life. And now we come down to the 1850s, and the scientists are saying, we really don't want God. We want to have a life where we're not responsible to anybody. And because of that, we can look at the stars in the sky, we can see all these wonderful things. And the more science started developing, you know what happened by the 1950s? They said, God is dead. We don't need God anymore because we have solved all these things. In the 1950s, there were a couple of guys who put together a neat experiment where they made some juice that they thought was where the life came from. They've created life. But in reality, they did nothing. They were able to do some scientific experiments, and they were able to bring together a few things that looked life like what they thought life had begun with. There was a man named Francis Crick back in those days, and he had been part of the duo that developed the DNA They solved the DNA problem. What is DNA? How does it work? It's fantastic how all of these things come together in creating life. And he said, you know what? This is so complex. This is so complex that there's no way that there's enough time in our universe for this to happen. So the answer, the brilliant answer of the guy who won the Nobel Prize was, it must have been planted here by some other being from another universe. You think, is that really smart? It really is true. Professing to be wise, they became fools. Professing to be wise, they became fools. There are other things that are going on today where they're really proving all kinds of things to help us understand the greatness of our God and the truth of his word. Eric Metaxas is a pretty popular author. He wrote a really good book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and another one about Martin Luther. He has a new book out. In fact, I have it in the car if somebody wants to see it. It's called Is Atheism Dead? Because atheism is the proclamation that there is no God. I know in my heart there is no God. And you go, are you crazy? They say, yeah, look, we've been able to create life, right? No. Look, we've been able to determine that there are enough planets all over the universe where there must be life out there somewhere because there are so many millions of other planets that have the same characteristics as Earth. The fact is, that's not true. It's not true. And this is hard for me to say. I was a fan of Star Trek. I liked all those little different looking creatures coming in and speaking English and doing all the things that they did. That was a lot of fun. But the fact is that our Earth is so finely tuned in the universe that there shouldn't even be life here except for very specific parameters that give us the possibility of having life. The earth has to be exactly the size that it is. If it was any smaller, it couldn't sustain life. If it was any larger, it couldn't sustain life. If the moon wasn't there, it couldn't sustain life. If Jupiter wasn't there playing linebacker for us for all of the asteroids and things that come through the solar system, there's so much gravity there that it catches all that stuff and prevents us from being destroyed. There are so many things like that that are helpful to us to understand what God has really done with us. Did you know they can't agree what gravity is? There are scientists today who are saying, well, maybe it's not just the mass. They say it's the mass that creates gravity. Because the thing is so big, it draws things to it. Okay. There's some people I get next to, and I'm not drawn to them. I'm actually kind of repulsed away from them. But the fact is that scientists are now saying, no, there's a thing called space-time. And when space-time gets warped a little bit, it creates a thing like gravity. And they're going, why are they doing that? They can't even figure out why the electrons or the little things traveling around an atom hang together. Is it gravity? We're not really sure. Oh wait, I'm sure. I know why they hang together. I know why gravity works. Because in the book of Colossians, it says in 117, he created all things and in him, all things hold together. He's done it for us. He's doing it for us right now. Our bodies are hanging together because of what he has done. It's amazing to understand the greatness of our God. Why do you think there's beauty in the earth? Why do you think that birds can look so beautiful and fish can look so beautiful? And you can go on a mountain side where there's nobody there and there's a beautiful flower growing. Why is that happening? It's because our God loves beauty. He created beauty. He created it for all of us to be able to have this kind of an appreciation for his glory because all of this stuff is made to give him glory. It's made to give him glory. I just love seeing sunsets, the kind that take your breath away, you know, when the colors are so, they're magical. It's a beautiful thing that God has done for us and he does it all the time. He keeps doing it over and over and over again. It's a beautiful thing. Have you been to Yosemite or to Grand Canyon and your breath is taken away because it's so fantastic. And you think from a materialistic point of view, it's just a big hole in the ground. But no, it's made in a way that God is giving glory to himself, and it's a wonderful, beautiful thing. Think again of the hummingbirds. I don't know. I've got a few of these ruby-throated ones. Have you seen those? It's just bright, incredible color. Did you know that's not the color of the feathers? It's the way the light is bent going through the feather and coming to you. Isn't that amazing? It's an amazing thing. I saw a television a program one time where a lady was being highlighted, and the lady had the job in Louisiana. She weighed hummingbirds. That was her job. Okay, so they catch them in a net. She'd put them in this little cage, and they'd have their little feet on the little bar in there, and she could actually weigh them. She'd put a little tiny band on the little tiny leg, and then let it go again for a while in that area, and then they'd catch it again and realize that the little hummingbird had gained weight by 100%. Why would they do that? Because those little hummingbirds, they've come from the north to Louisiana because they're getting ready to fly to the Yucatan Peninsula across the Gulf of Mexico. You go, what? So did Charles Darwin teach them to do that? Why are they flying across the Yucatan to spend time over there to fly back again? Evolution didn't do that. God put that in their little fast beating little hearts. And we know that God in his greatness is creating things just to show us his glory, how incredibly wonderful he is. Anybody here been to Carlsbad Caverns? Wonderful place. How many years was that beautiful before somebody discovered it? Why is their beauty buried deep underground? Why is their beauty deep in the ocean where no one ever sees it? Because God loves it. He enjoys his creation. He enjoys what he did. And it's a wonderful thing to understand that we can enjoy it too. He's put within us the capacity of enjoying the things that he created. The heavens are declaring the glory of God, and we get to rejoice in that. Now this isn't all about hummingbirds, but I do want to give you one more thing. If you go on YouTube and you look up hummingbirds, look up genius of flight hummingbird's tongue. University of Connecticut did a study with high speed and incredibly close in photography. A hummingbird, when it goes and puts its little tongue into the little flower to get the little bit of nectar there, did you know that the tongue splits? It becomes two different things on the end of the tongue. And then each tongue is like a little straw that opens up, and it grabs the nectar, and it pulls back into the little hummingbird's mouth. 20 times a second. And you go, wow. Wow. I'm gonna have long discussions with the Lord in heaven. I wanna know all about that stuff because it's so fabulous to see it, to understand that God is doing some amazing things. And the more we see what he is doing, the more we understand his glory, the more we wanna bow down to him and the more we want to serve him. And the more we want people to know about him. And I really would like somebody to design for me a gospel tract all about the hummingbird. I would like people to know that this is an amazing thing that's going on, and it's going on all around the world. And all around the world, people are responsible for looking at the sky, for looking at the creator and what he's done, and for seeing the amazing things that are happening all around us. And there's so many different ways of applying this to us. We can see it in so many different ways. And the people who've been suppressing the truth and living in a way that is without God because they don't want God. And we're wondering why in the world are they doing that? Why are they so committed to this materialistic scientism where they don't have to worship God? They don't have to be with God. What's going on? And yet they're studying and they're working hard and they're putting all their efforts into all these studies. They're learning so many different things. And according to Eric Metaxas, the more they study, the more it proves the existence of God. He says that it's gone so far that atheism cannot be sustained logically. That encourages me. I don't know if it encourages you, but it is a thing where there is so much to be understood in the created world all around us. It's an amazing thing when we look at the way our bodies heal. This year they cut off a big chunk of my nose because of basal cell cancer. And then the doctor said, oh, I know what I can do with that. I'm just gonna take a piece of your skin and fold it up over and tack it up here and it'll all grow back. Okay. Whatever, I'd rather not have a big hole in the side of my face. But from where you are, you can't tell that happened. I can tell, but you can come look close. But the fact is our bodies heal like crazy. It's amazing how our bodies are able to take things and come back to full health. And it's a God-given thing that gives him glory and gives us grace. It's really a beautiful thing. But the scientists, I have a quote here that I love. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance. He's about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls himself over the rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. God did it. And he keeps doing it. And we need to keep giving him glory because he's a glorious God who did all this. My prayer would be that we would open our eyes, open our eyes and see the glory that he's showing us all the time. I love the idea of the glories of Christmas. and all the music that's out there. And one of the things that we ought to be praying for is that God would use that music to reach the minds of some who still don't know him. Because there's enough truth out there where they could grab it. And there's enough stuff that you and I could be doing and giving glory to God in giving our testimonies of what he's done for us. Let's pray that he would open their eyes as well We need to be looking for God's glory continually, looking for what he's doing and how he's doing it, and keep learning about his greatness and his glory. There's a thought that was given to me out of the book of Ephesians. A pastor just read some of these verses, but I wanted to, to point out one thing in the middle of the great chapter on the grace of God coming to us. In chapter two, we all know we've been, for by grace you've been saved through faith. But in verses six, it says, he has raised us up with him, seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that, catch this, in the ages to come, He might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. We can't learn it all here, and we're gonna keep learning there. In the ages to come, he's going to keep showing us his grace. He's going to keep showing us what he did for us, and he's gonna keep showing us what he does in his great creation. The heavens declare the glory of God. And the firmament, the firmament, that's a term you don't really use every day. It's hard to know exactly what it is. It just means expanse. Probably the sky. But wherever he is, he's showing us his glory. He's showing us his glory in so many different ways. And we want to give him praise. Praise him for his glory. I've asked the pastor if we could change the end of the service today, and we're gonna sing a song, and that's number six in your hymnal. And if you wanna open up to that, we're gonna sing it together, and then I'll pray to close. Number six.