What a privilege it is to be here at Quentin Road Baptist Church, to know what you guys are doing, to know what you're empowering Pastor Jim to do around the world, and to use this place as a beacon of light to so many people. It is incredible. My name is Eric, has been for 43 years. I was born at a very early age, actually not too far from here, in Peoria, Illinois, right down south. So I am a Yankee. How many other Yankees we got out here? Okay, any Southerners out there? What are you guys doing? It's 80 degrees in Florida right now. What's the matter with you? Anyway, oh man, so I love it. So I feel like I'm home sweet home here. I love what I do. I run an organization called Creation Today, and really our goal with Creation Today is to help people understand the truth of why they exist. We wanna answer people's questions. I wanna take the stumbling blocks that keep people from coming to Christ and turn them into stepping stones and allow them to understand that Jesus Christ really is the way, the truth, and the life. So you can have answers. I find a lot of what I do is ministering to churches, reminding Christians, hey guys, we're right, it's true. How many of you were here during the Sunday school hour? How many of you guys heard all that? Okay, how many of you were not and should have been? Thank you for admitting that, I appreciate that. No, it's true though, isn't it guys? God really is the foundation of all things. He is the beginning of all truth. So really, I say it like this. If you're confused, you're gonna lose. And not only that, the people around you are gonna lose. But it doesn't have to be that way. You really can have answers. And I would say you should have answers because someone's eternity is typically at stake. And eternity is just way too long to be wrong. And so I want you to have answers and I want you to provide those answers to other people. So let's turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones on people's journey to know their one true savior, Jesus Christ. All right, some people look at this world and they say, it's amazing. A big bang made this world from absolutely nothing. This is the humanist or the evolutionary worldview. The evolution worldview says that man is God. We don't answer to anybody when we die. By the way, according to humanism, the reason you exist is for your own happiness. You should do whatever it takes to make you happy. I mean, after all, you're just a bunch of chemicals that got together over billions of years, right? So if you need to make yourself happy, you could treat yourself with chemicals and just make yourself happy. Whatever you want to inhale or inject or whatever, just make yourself happy. That is the end result of humanism. Other people say, no, this world is incredibly designed. God is an amazing designer. That's the creationist worldview. The creationist worldview says that God is God and he's gonna judge everybody one day. By the way. Judgment day is coming soon to a city near you, okay? It's going to happen. You're gonna get judged by God. You might as well be getting ready for that day of judgment. So this world is incredibly designed. God's an amazing designer. And based on the creation worldview, we say, hey, the end of all being is the glory of God. The reason we exist is for God's glory, not for our own glory. We live for him. And that's what I wanna talk to you about today, how we should be living for the glory of God. I'm convinced that the evolution worldview is the root cause of all kinds of problems we see in our world today. If you really believe that you're just an animal, an animal, a highly evolved, sophisticated animal, that changes the way you think about everything in life. Hey, we don't bury the possums that get hit in the middle of the road, do we? We don't care. Can you imagine somebody that really did believe that we were just an animal, highly evolved, and really treated people as though they were just animals? My son and I, it's about that time of year, we go out in the front yard, because we've actually got grass starting to grow right now down there in Florida, and we take ant poison and we spray the ant hills with poison. Sometimes we even kick it first. Watch the ants scatter all over the place and then, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. We literally watch the ants die right there in our front yard. I don't think it's a big deal. I don't want them there. There's plenty of ants in the world. It's no big deal. I'm killing those ants. Can you imagine if there was somebody in power or in leadership or who had a huge amount of wealth that believed that you were just animals, not much different than the ants out there? What kind of decisions would you make if you really thought the earth was overcrowded? How would you be thinking? What would you be wanting to do in the world if you felt like it was your responsibility? to save Mother Earth, and to take the people that are the ants, the virus that are infecting the planet off. What you believe really does make a big, big difference. The Bible says in 1 Peter 3, be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that's in you with meekness and fear. You're supposed to be able to tell people why you believe what you believe. I find that a lot of Christians are ill-equipped to answer basic questions about why they believe what they believe. I go teach a college class, in my college class, I'll be out in two weeks, out in Wyoming. I'll put on an atheist hat, literally says atheist, and for an hour, I'll challenge the students, why do you believe in God? Why do you think God exists? And I'll just shut down their answers, one after another, after another, and at the end of that, they're going, okay, tell us, why do we believe that God exists? Let's get down to this. Why do we believe in God? Why do we believe the Bible is true? In Sunday School Hour, we talked about how the Bible, God's revelation to mankind is the foundation for all of truth. And we need to understand and know that and then be able to share that truth with others. Apologize, my remote is not working really well right here. Okay, there we go. GK Chesterton said, when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything. Now think about this, when people stop worshiping God, what do they end up worshiping? They end up worshiping an idol, which is themselves. That's exactly right. They end up worshiping themselves. They end up thinking, okay, how can I get what I want? Are we good there? Okay. Sir Arthur Keith was a famous atheist. He wrote the foreword to Charles Darwin's book on its 100th anniversary reprint from what I understand. He said, evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it because the only alternative is special creation. And that is unthinkable. Julian Huxley was Thomas Huxley's grandson. Thomas Huxley is the Charles Darwin's bulldog that spread evolution all around Germany and then around Europe. Julian Huxley, his grandson said, I suppose the reason we jumped at the origin of species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores. We weren't allowed to do what we wanted to do with God, so we had to get rid of God. That's, by the way, why the older thinking came about in 1795, why Charles Lyell invented the geologic column to get rid of the flood, the judgment of God, and why Charles Darwin then in 1859 invented evolution and wrote his book on the origin of species. That's what's really going on. They're trying to get rid of God. Because humanism says the end of all being is the happiness of man. The reason you exist is for your own happiness. You don't exist for God's glory. And that changes everything in life when you don't look at life the right way. Christianity says the end of all being really is the glory of God. That's what it's all about. You guys might have to get me another clicker, I'm sorry. I'm trying really hard, there we go. The Bible says in Genesis chapter one, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Got a question for you. What did God make the world out of? What was it? Nothing. God made the world out of nothing, correct? That's exactly right. Isn't it interesting, the Bible even teaches us this, Hebrews chapter 11, through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so the things which are seen were made of things which, made of things which do appear. God, Things which are sin are made of things that do not appear. God literally created this world out of nothing. He created it out of nothing. And it's interesting that science today is going, guys, guess what? It looks like the world came from nowhere. But they're trying to take God out of the equation and say that God didn't do it. They teach it in the textbooks. All the matter and energy is once again, the big bang is going to happen. All the matter and energy is going to be packed into a small area. This area may be no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence. Then another big bang is going to occur. They say it happens every 80 to 100 billion years. Huh? Well, in that case, we don't need to worry about global warming. We need to look out for global squishing, okay? We are gonna get squished. This place is gonna get squished really, really bad. But they're still teaching that today in textbooks today, that the Big Bang is what created everything in our universe. And it all came from absolutely nothing. Here it is in scientific America, they're teaching this. The observable universe could have evolved from an infinitesimable region. That means a dot. They say, it's then tempting to go one step further and speculate the entire universe evolved from literally nothing. Interesting, isn't it? Discover Magazine, where did everything come from? They tell us. It seems like Alan Guth says, hey, the universe burst into something from what? From absolutely nothing. Isn't it interesting that they would say this? Zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with more stuff that came from? Absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Well, they don't want to invoke God. So they have to invent theories to try to come up with a way for this to happen without God. That can't happen without God. They invented the big bang theory. Have you heard of the big bang theory? You heard of that? That's what I teach. Everything came from nothing, from a Big Bang that exploded for no reason at some point in time. And actually it had to create time. Oh, I got a little video. This is Discovery Channel actually teaching the Big Bang theory. Check this out. A little less than 14 billion years ago, the universe was born in a huge explosion of time and space, matter and energy called the Big Bang. Tiny quantum ripples grew into dense patches in the primordial brew. from these galaxies condensed. A stunning variety of sizes and shapes. I thought, well, if that's all it takes to make people believe in something, I'll make my own video about the Big Bang. Here's my video about the Big Bang. A little less than 14 billion years ago, all the matter in the universe was condensed into a dot. The dot was very small, believed to be smaller than a period on a page. And then the dot began to spin and exploded. We call this event the big bang. Now, I don't know why mine's not on discovery channel yet. I submitted it years ago and they're like, it's in review. Okay. We're still reviewing it, but, uh, they just won't put it on discovery channel yet. I don't know what their problem is, but this is exactly what they're teaching. They say somewhere at 20 billion years ago, there was a big bang. They actually used to say 20. Then they backed it up to 18, then back to 12. Then they put it at 13. Then it was 13.4. Now it's 13.79. You're going to want to write that down. That's going to be on the quiz. 13.79 billion years ago is what they say for the Big Bang, okay? They're trying to teach that. I say in the beginning, God. They say in the beginning, nothing. Nothing created everything. That's literally what they're saying. Dirt came into existence from nothing. By the way, here's the two worldviews on a timeline just so you can know what they're teaching. The creation worldview says that about 6,000 years ago, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, I don't put an exact time on it. Some people try to do that. The old Schofield reference Bible, he actually had in the notes in his margins. Some of you guys, you grew up on that, didn't you? Schofield Bible. He had in the margins in his reference notes, he said, Adam was made October 23rd, 4004 BC at two o'clock in the afternoon. We cannot get that close from scripture. All we know is that Adam was made in the afternoon because it was right before Eve. It's the only clue in scripture we've got about that one. Seriously, we also know why God made Adam first. I would never say this, but some scientists have said God made Adam first because he didn't want any advice on how to do it. I would never say that, but that's what some people have said. Anyway, 4,400 years ago, there was a flood that destroyed the world. 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ was here, and now here we are today. That's not what they're teaching in the secular textbooks today. They're saying 20 billion years ago, there was a big bang. 13.79 billion years ago, there was a big bang. Nothing happened for a long time. 4.6 billion years ago, the earth cooled down. Three billion years ago, lightning struck the planet multiple times. It hit this stuff called soup, and the soup came alive. That's literally what they're teaching. I'm not joking about it. And the soup turned into all the different life forms that we have today. That's literally what they're teaching. I like to ask evolution a certain questions, like where did matter come from? You know what a lot of times they say? It doesn't matter. I'm like, it does, man. Where did laws come from? Who's the law giver? We got laws that govern our universe. Laws like gravity, centrifugal force, Boyle's law, Coase law. That's really good with barbecue. Anyway, where did all these laws come from? Who's the law giver? Why aren't the laws changing? Why aren't they evolving? How come you don't weigh 10 pounds more one day? You say, Eric, I do. Well, that's a different problem. Okay. Gravity didn't change, man. That's a whole nother issue. Why, where did these laws come from? Where did the energy come from? You don't worry, this is one of the most fundamental laws, the two most fundamental laws of science are the first and second laws of thermodynamics. And they tell us that the usable energy is always going down. Where did we get all this usable energy in the universe? See, the humanists have to refer to the universe as self-created. It did not, it's self-existing, it was not created. They cannot allow God inside of their box of thinking. They do not allow him in there. And that's a problem. Teachers and teachers unions, they're told, Hey, you guys need to make sure you stress evolution, make sure and stress it. They tell them that over and over stress, evolution, thinking stress, evolution, thinking stress, millions of years stress, the age of the earth. They keep pretending like they're discovering the answers. This is from a couple of years ago, news article before there was life on earth, there were molecules, a primordial soup. I even found some of their soup. There it is. You gotta let it cook for a few billion years, but once it's cooked, man, you get a person, a human being comes out, okay? But they say, at some point, a few specialized molecules began replicating. This self-replication sciences degree kick-started a biochemical process that would lead to the first organisms, but exactly how that happened, how those molecules began replicating, has been one of science's enduring mysteries. We know it happened, we just don't know how. It doesn't sound very scientific to me, does it? And it's not. The truth is, God's word is true. God is the one who spoke everything into existence. God is the one who created time, space, matter, and energy. God is the one who said, let there be light. And let me tell you something, you did not want to be standing in front of the mouth of God when he said, let there be light. Do you guys know how fast light is traveling? You know how fast light goes? Anybody know the speed of light? What's the speed of light? 180, not feet, 186,000 miles per second. 186,000, excuse not feet, 186,000 miles per second. I mean, light can travel around planet earth seven and a half times in one second. That's booking. That's fast. I like speed. I've got a Suzuki Gixxer 750. Anybody motorcycle riders out there? Any fellow motorcycle riders? You guys, okay, a couple of you guys are in Illinois. You're like, we don't have a season for that up here. It doesn't, that doesn't exist. Sorry. Okay. Oh man. When I die, I'm going to have a smile on my face and I'm going to be doing about 200. Okay, man. I'm dangerous on a motorcycle, but that's nothing compared to light, man. Light is booking. That's the same as 11 million, 160,000 miles per minute. That's the same as 669,600,000 miles an hour. Now that's booking. I'm gonna be in Germany here in a couple months with my friend Helmut, who's here with me. And we get to go on the Autobahn. Oh my goodness, America needs one of those things. It's awesome, man. Pedal to the metal and no trouble. I love it, I love it. Hey, this is the same as 5.88 trillion miles in one year. Light is traveling 5.88 trillion miles in one year. You have no idea what that means. Cause your brain cannot understand the difference between million, billion, trillion. Congress knows this. They take advantage of it all the time. Like they don't know the difference. Just put a few more zeros on it. How much is a trillion guys? If we really looked at a trillion, how much is an actual trillion dollars? Let's use a hundred dollar bills. For example, man, guys, I might be going out here. Let's use $100 bills for our example and try to figure out exactly how much a trillion is. I'm still plugged in, right? Sorry guys. We had some little bitty issue this morning and we had to set the laptop all the way at the back. Can you just unplug it and make sure it's plugged, plug it back in and see if it connected. There it goes. Okay, we'll use $100 bills for our example. If I had a half inch thick stack of $100 bills, I would have $10,000, okay? That's what 10 grand looks like, which could buy a lunch today, right? Wow, inflation, man, it's happening. If you had a hundred of those, you'd have a million dollars. That's what a million bucks looks like in $100 bills. You know what's funny? Some people spend their whole life trying to get that. They lie, they cheat, they steal, they step on top of people to climb the corporate ladder so that one day they can have that. Anyway, I just think that's funny. If that's a million, what's a billion look like? You ready? $1 billion in a hundred dollar bills. Is there a difference between million and billion? Oh yeah. If that's a billion, what's a trillion look like? Is there a difference between million, billion and trillion? Guys, light is traveling 5.88 trillion miles in one year. Now you need to understand something. When astronomers are looking out in space and they're using their telescopes to check out how far away things are, they don't measure distances to things in feet or yards or meters. They don't use miles, they use light years. How many light years? How many 5.88 trillion mile segments is that away from us? A light year is not a measurement of time, it's a measurement of distance. How far away are these stars? Hey, have you ever thought about how big this universe actually is? We got our sun, which is like the big giant star of our solar system. If you haven't studied this out, the solar system is the sun and the how many planets? Nine, yeah, I got a Pluto guy out there. Now it's eight, but yeah, nine, I'm still going with the nine. Yeah, I like Pluto being in it. So we got the solar system. Our solar system is inside of something called a galaxy. What's the name of our galaxy? The Milky Way galaxy. And our galaxy is inside of the whole, the big thing, the whole thing, we call that the, the what? The what? The universe? The uni-verse, the uni-verse. Well, isn't that interesting? Uni means single. A verse is a spoken sentence. Do we live inside of a uni-verse? Do we live inside of a single spoken sentence and God said? That's just kind of interesting, isn't it? Anyway, we're living inside of a universe. You are 93 million miles away from the sun and you're really glad it's 93 and not 94. Okay, you think Chicago is cold at 93, oh 94, we'd be in trouble. You're glad it's not 92, okay? Florida's warm, but 92, we're baking, okay? You're really glad it's that far away. Hey, if we were to take our solar system, this is, by the way, the planets next to each other. These are all the different planets. If you compared them one to another, that's what size they would be next to each other. You got Pluto and then Earth and Neptune. They ought to rename that one, but anyway, Saturn and Jupiter. So there's all the planets next to each other. If we were to zoom out and put the sun inside of that image, that's how big the sun is compared to the planets. You could fit 1 million planet Earths inside of the sun. People think, oh man, the sun is huge. The sun is tiny. You want to see what the sun looks like compared to some of the other stars out there that we've discovered? Check this out. It's nearly a million miles in diameter, yet our sun is tiny compared to the really big stars out there. Eta Carinae, over 5 million times larger than our sun. Betelgeuse, 300 times larger than Eta Carinae. If it was our sun, it would reach as far out as Jupiter. And then there's this monster, VY Canis Majoris, the largest star ever discovered, a billion times bigger than our sun. It's a big world out there, isn't it? It's a big world out there. Scientists that are looking out at the stars, they keep asking themselves this question. What's it all there for? What's all that space? What's, what's it all there for? I mean, if all of these stars and all of these galaxies are just for us, you and me and the other 8 billion people on the planet. Seems like there's a lot of wasted space. What's it doing? David, the Psalmist, never even had a telescope. And he said, I figured out what the heavens are doing. The heavens are declaring the glory of God. The heavens are doing something amazing. The heavens are declaring God's glory. Matter of fact, there is no speech. There's no language where their voice isn't heard. You can't look up without going, wow, wow, God. His glory is on display. A.W. Tozier said, what comes in our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. And I just can't help but wonder what comes into your mind when you think about God. It's the most important thing about you. What do you think of when you think of God? I grew up in a church environment just like this. School, college, I heard lots and lots of preaching. And I learned a lot about God, but I became the product of the church environment rather than a disciple of Jesus Christ. I knew what to say. I knew what not to say. I knew how to act and how not to act. It wasn't until I was in my twenties and I watched a message called Hell's Best Kept Secret by a friend of mine now named Ray Comfort. And he contrasted the modern gospel to the biblical gospel. And after watching that message in my home at night, I called my brother-in-law, I said, dude, you gotta come watch this. I watched that message a second time. I was floored at what I was hearing because I had repented on my terms, not on God's terms. I had been sorry to my principal, to my pastor, to my dad, to my sister, my brother, my friends. Man, he was presenting this message. Look, my sin is not against others. My sin is against God and God alone. And he gets to this part in the message where he talks about David's sin with Bathsheba. When he was confronted by Nathan the prophet, he rents his clothes and said, God against you and you alone have I sinned. And Joseph, when he was tempted with Potiphar's wife, said, how could I do this and sin against God? Not against Potiphar, not against the Israel, not against his name, not against his family, against God. And all of a sudden I had this realization, my sin is not against people. My sin is against God and God alone. And man, I had to go down on my face on my carpet that day and I had to repent before God and God alone for my sins. I call it God's glory because man, I'd grown up in a Christian home. My dad was a famous evangelist. And I remember after I really got saved, God, I experienced the old things were passed away, all things were become new. Because my desire for righteousness was really a desire to be accepted among my peers. It was a desire to look good among others. That's why I wore what I need to wear, I cut my hair the way I need to cut my hair, said what I needed to say so that I would get acceptance among my friends. Man, at this point in time, I heard this message and I went, God, I don't want to be accepted by anybody but you and you alone. You're the only one that I want to be accepted. When I really got saved, I remember thinking, I don't want to play games with God. I'd grown up in a Christian home and I'd seen lots of people play games with God, you know? You get close to God, man, revival comes, a powerful speaker speaks, and people come down, and they get right with God, and then over time, they drift away. Camp experience during the summer, and man, I get fired up a whole week with Jesus, baby, and I'm close to God, and then it just kinda drifts away. I thought, God, I don't wanna play a game with you. Surely, if you're real, I won't play this game, this hot, cold game. I wanna know who you for who you truly are. I just began to go on a journey. I call it God Quest, just because I'm like, I wanna know the one true God of the Bible. Whatever you are, whoever you are, I want to know you, the one true God. I knew creation was true. I knew evolution didn't make any sense. I'd grown up in a home with that, and every time I tried to rationalize, well, is it possible God doesn't exist? Is it possible evolution is true? That was really easy for me to throw that to the side and say it's not true. I knew God created the heavens and the earth. I mean, that was the very first verse in the Bible. Okay, I got that. Got to the book of Romans and I was kind of floored. I'm like, oh my goodness, Romans is incredible. Chapter 11, oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Did you know God is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really smart? Did you know that? Did you know he knows everything? Has it ever dawned on you that Nothing's ever dawned on him. He's really smart. How unsearchable are his judgments? His ways are past finding out. How many of you try to figure out what God is up to in your life? Oh God, the reason you allowed, and that's why, and then they so that, and then I could, I got it. No, you don't. You're not gonna figure it out, man. Who had known the mind of the Lord? Does anybody understand the mind of the person you're sitting next to? No, let alone the mind of God. Who's his counselor? Who's God leaning on? Don't even take Dr. Phil out of the equation. Is God leaning on anybody? Is God getting advice from anybody? Here's the problem. You and I, if we were honest, we'd have to say, I try to give God advice. I try to tell God what he ought to do. And we do, don't we? Have you ever thought about the absurdity of telling God what you think is best? He knows everything. I mean, think about how you pray. Think about it. Dear Heavenly Father, Give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. Help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me. Do this, do that, do this. Make sure they don't. Hey, can you, can you? Wow. Do we realize who we're praying to? You're not his counselor. Has anybody ever given anything to God? Oh yeah. Offering came, the plate came by, mission strip opportunity came up. Boy, that would be nice if you could give something to God, wouldn't it? You ain't giving nothing to God. All you're doing is giving back to Him what already belongs to Him. You can't give anything to God. If you could give something to God, He would be indebted to you. God's not in debt. God doesn't owe anybody anything except judgment, which we all deserve. Who has given to God that it should be recompensed unto Him again. Then this, you need to underline these, circle these three little words in your Bible. It says, for of him and through him and to him are all things. Hey, hey church, seriously, don't let this just be another message. Let this sink in. For of him, everything comes from God. And through him, everything goes through God. And to him, everything goes back to God. Are what? How many things? How many? Only the good? All things. Some of you have gone through some pain that I have not endured in my life and I've endured some pain. What if we looked at God and we said, you know what? All things come from him, go through him, go to him. Why? For me, to make me who I need to be. For me, it's all about me. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, my friend. For the glory of God, so that God will be glorified. You can't read scripture without coming to this conclusion. God does everything for his glory. I am the Lord. That is my name and my glory will I not give to another. These are my praise to graven images. Remember the former things of old. I am God and there is none else. I am God, there's none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times and things that are not even yet done. Saying I will do all, saying my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure. What does God do? He does what pleases him. And some of us have allowed humanism to come into the walls of our hearts. And we want God to do what pleases us. And God says, no, no, no, my friend, it'll never be that way. I do all my pleasure. Colossians for by him, all things were created. How many things? How many? All things were created. Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by Him and for who? For you? No, no, no, not for you, for who? For Him. God has created everything for His glory and for His purpose. All the people of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the power of heaven and the people of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, what have you done? And yet, what do you and I try to do? We try to say, God, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing, God? Let's just blow our little brains here real quick. I had a quarter up there and I left it. Does anybody have a quarter? I don't have any cents at all. We're gonna shrink our solar system. Just bring it right up here to me if somebody's got a quarter, 25 cents. I'll try to give it back if I remember, 25 cents. Quick, quick, quick, quick, bring it up here. Bring it up here, somebody, come on. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna shrink our solar system down to the size of a quarter, okay? Credit card, I don't know, what should we do? Oh, we got a quarter, okay, thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, we're gonna shrink our solar system down to the size of a quarter, okay? So this, yes, give him a hand, thank you, thank you, thank you. If I don't return this, I'm the typical Baptist who doesn't steal, he does borrow, though, and never return, okay? That's gonna be our entire solar system, okay? So this is the sun, George Washington's earwax is the sun. And as you go out, you got the planets, the edge of the quarter is the edge, the orbit of Neptune or Pluto, whichever one you guys decide to have, okay? This is the edge of our solar system right there. That's our entire solar system. If that's our solar system, how big would the Milky Way galaxy be if that's our solar system? Now remember, the Milky Way galaxy is pretty big and we're not in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, we're kind of way over on the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, because it's way too crazy in the middle, way too much star activity going on in the middle. So we're kind of over on the edge. If this was our solar system, and that's you on planet Earth going around George Washington's earwax, okay? That's you right there on planet Earth. Sorry, I keep hitting that button. You keep going around right there. If that's you sitting in that little bitty building on that little bitty speck called Earth right there, how big is the Milky Way galaxy? You think it'd be as big as this entire auditorium? And we got our little bitty Hubble telescope and James Webb Space Telescope right there going around a little bit of earth and looking out. As big as this whole auditorium? Bigger. As big as Chicago, Illinois? Bigger. As big as the state of Illinois? Bigger. State of Texas. Ain't nothing bigger than Texas. Bigger. United States of America? Bigger. If this was our solar system, the Milky Way galaxy would be represented by all of North America, Canada, Mexico, and the United States. And that is you. On that little bitty dot. Thinking that you're in charge of the world. I got life by the reins, man. I am in control. You are not in charge of anything, man. You you're doing nothing. If you were to try to cross the Milky way galaxy, and you were to travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles every single second, it would take you a hundred thousand years to get from one side of our galaxy to the other side of our galaxy. How many stars does God need to put in our galaxy to make us go, wow, you're amazing. How many, a million, a billion, 20 billion, 50 billion scientists estimate that in our Milky way galaxy alone, there are 200 plus billion stars. God said, no, that won't do. I need to do another galaxy. He made a second and then a third, then a fourth, then a fifth, then a sixth. And he kept on making galaxies one after another. And Hubble telescope and James Webb has repeated this. They looked at a section of the night sky. If you looked up at the night sky and you zoomed in onto a section, the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length, the size of a grain of sand, that's the section of sky that you zoomed in on. They thought that there were no stars at all in that section of the sky, none. They gave an exposure of the camera for over 100 hours so that if there was any little pixel of light, their instruments would pick it up. After a 100 hour exposure, this is what they saw in that speck of the sky. Oh, by the way, those are not stars. Those are galaxies, each filled with billions of stars. It's been estimated there are enough stars in our universe that every single person on earth can own 11 trillion of them. You get to have 11 trillion of your own stars. Go name them. You're gonna be, and you're gonna be, you're gonna be there a while is what you're gonna be, okay? They estimate in our known universe, there are 76 trillion stars in the known universe. And those are only the ones that we know about. We don't even know about the ones that we don't know about. It's a lot of stars. And they say all of those 76 billion stars formed in the last 13.4 to 13.7 billion years. You know how fast you'd have to form stars in order to get 76 billion stars in 13.4 billion years. You'd have to form stars at the rate of 165,000 per second for all 13.4 billion years to get that many stars. I live in Pensacola, Florida. We got the beautiful white sand beaches. Anybody ever been down there to Pensacola? Oh, it's amazing. It really is. We should go sometime. It's awesome, okay? Scientists actually did an experiment. They calculated how many grains of sand are on the beaches of Pensacola, Florida. One, two. It was a government job. Three. They added that to the number of the grains of sand on the next beach over Navarre beach and went around Florida, around the United States, and then around the world. And then they went to all the deserts of the world, calculating how many grains of sand are on all the deserts of the world, in all the deserts of the world. So they could get a number of how many grains of sand are on planet earth. You know how many grains of sand they say are on planet earth? Calculate it out. They estimate seven and a half quintillion grains of sand on planet earth. Oh my. You know what that means? Do you know what that means? There's more stars in the sky than pieces of sand on our entire planet. Every grain of sand, you get stuck back there when you're trying to wash off at the beach. Every little bitty grain of sand represents 9,333 stars in the sky. And then God says, I don't have time to show you that. God says, he's the one who measured out the heavens. He says, I call the stars by their names. Wow. Wow. Hey, what comes into your mind when you think about God? Some of us have a very small view of God and your view of God needs to enlarge. I will, I'll show you this video. It's a good video. It's a little bit long. It's the video. It's a video of the largest photograph ever taken. Largest photo ever taken. We got our megapixels on the phone. This is a one and a half gigapixel image. It's of one quarter of the Andromeda galaxy. One of the nearest galaxies to planet earth. Oh, is it playing? Can you hit the play button on that for me? See if it'll play. Oh, it's powerful. If it doesn't play, you have to go Google this and look up, just try it. Okay, this is the largest photo ever taken, the Andromeda galaxy. you. What is it that comes into your mind when you think about God? What's the most important thing about you? Do you think of a God that's not big enough to take care of your problems? Do you think of a God that really can't handle what you're going through? Do you think of a God that's not smart enough to give you what you need? What is it that comes into your mind when you think about God? What's the most important thing about you? Quentin Road Baptist Church, if you lose sight of the greatness and the glory of God, you have lost the message that he is declaring to this world. You've missed it. If you look out there and you think that God did all of that for just you, you're wrong. He did it for himself, for his glory, so that he would look good. And you're glad. You don't want God to be stuck on you, you don't want God to be stuck on me. The supreme being in the universe can be stuck on nobody else but himself. God can't glorify anything other than himself. Oh, and that's where our cosmic battle takes place, guys, because you want God to glorify you. You want God to do everything for your glory and for your pleasure. And I'm just telling you, God does everything for his own glory. He created the heavens and the earth for his glory, and he created you for his glory. And God can get no greater joy, God can get no greater glory than when you choose to follow him. He made you different than every single one of those stars in the sky. He said, I'm gonna give you the choice. Because you can't get more glory than when you set something free and something free says, I choose to come and return and to love you. I can't get more feeling of love than when my daughter who got married last year chooses to come and spend time with Tanya and I. So what are you consuming your life with? Are you living for yourself? Are you laying up treasures on earth? Are you coming back to Jesus Christ saying, God, I wanna do everything I can for your glory? What comes into your mind when you think about God? Some of you here are the product of a church environment. You're not a true disciple of Jesus Christ. Let me just tell you something. You need to see God for who he truly is. You need to stop playing the Christian game and you need to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. You need to become a Christian. If you're here and you're a believer, what on earth are you doing for the glory of God? The whole world is created for his glory. Are you part of that? God's gonna either take it from you or you're gonna give it to him. I promise you'd rather give it to him. Why don't you give him the glory for your life? Why don't you let every conversation you have be one where you ask, how do I glorify God in this? How do I speak to my spouse like this? How do I talk to my roommates in a way that glorifies God? How do I go out into the world and be a witness for Christ in a way that glorifies God? Not that glorifies me. Thank God for Quentin Road Baptist Church, but not that glorifies Quentin Road Baptist Church, but that glorifies our creator and our redeemer of mankind. What on earth are you doing for the glory of God? God created this whole world for his own glory. What are you doing for the glory of God? That, that, my friend, is a question you should ask yourself every single day. That is something that I pray doesn't just fall off of you after this message. I've heard thousands of sermons. I pray that what happened to Isaiah, read in Isaiah chapter six, when he saw God for who he truly was, he was forever changed. He was a different individual. I hope you'll be forever changed. And I hope you'll go on a journey to know the one true God of the Bible, the creator of all mankind, the creator of heavens and the earth. Truly, your life will be forever changed if you do.