Romans chapter 1 verse number 19 and verse number 20, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. so that they are without excuse. Let us pray. Father, we thank you and praise you, God, for what you do. We pray that your watch over us helps to serve you. I pray, God, that you would help us, Lord, just to be faithful to you today. I pray that you would bless, Lord, in the rest of this service, that you'd be honored and glorified. Lord, we thank you for all this, and we ask it in your son, Jesus' name. Now, just for the context of what we've been talking about in this passage so far is the fact that God says himself that there is nobody in this world who is excusable because everything in creation points to you that there is a creator, that there's nothing here that says there is not a creator. In fact, I saw something very foolish recently that somebody had shared something on Facebook, and I don't know how I managed to click the comments on it. I do that sometimes, but this time it was an accident. And the first thing I saw was somebody saying that science would be closer akin to atheism because atheism and science both show that there is no God. And it's like there is no factual science anywhere in the world that points to there not being a God. Everything in science that is observable, testable, factual points to there being a God. The only things that point to there not being a God are the things that somehow cannot be tested, cannot be proven, cannot be held up to any scientific scrutiny whatsoever. and themselves are theories at best. And we've dealt with some of those across the past few weeks. We're going to deal with a few of them today as we go through this. Today, though, I want to stay a little more focused in the scriptures because we've talked about the evidence of there being a creator. We've talked about his fingerprints across all of creation. And we had one very long message that was just an introduction to all of that because I got carried away when I was talking about it. And so we've had all of those things till now. But, what I want to look at today is God's power as the Creator. I want to see, because it doesn't say just simply that we can see God in His creation, it says we can see His power in His creation. So, we saw last week that it tells us we can see and understand some things about the Godhead by looking at creation and how He has made the universe. That's the last time we're in this passage, I mean. And so the last time we're in this passage, as we looked at that, we saw that, for example, the Trinity is taught to us through nature itself, even as you yourself are a triune being made in the image of God, who himself is a triune being. He's three in one. And so we looked at how those things are taught in the Bible. And then we showed how that even the world around us shows us that also. and how the Bible tells us that the world around us shows us that. So we've seen those kind of things, but the other half of this idea is that it's not just who God is and His nature that can be seen through His creation, it is His absolute power that can be seen through His creation. So, saying that, let's look at some verses that will help us. Of course, the first and most obvious one we're going to go to is Genesis 1.1. Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. If you can get a hold of this verse, then there is nothing in the Bible that should be hard for you. Nothing else would be hard or complicated for you to understand if we get a hold of this. that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." The reason I say that if you can get a hold of this, God's power will be so evident to you that there will be nothing that should be hard for you to believe, hard for you to understand, hard for you to trust God in. The reason why I'm going to be less focused maybe on the evolution versus creation side of things is because I want to spend a little bit of time before I get to any of that helping you as a Christian understand why this is important from a different perspective. Last week we saw it was important because if you don't believe this You are not truly a Bible believer if you don't believe that God created, because God said He created, and you can't change His word to fit your theories, or else you don't believe God, you believe your theories, and you just like God and want to include Him in them. So we saw that, but this time I want to look at something a little bit different in that I want you to understand and I want to help you appreciate that if you can just wrap your mind around the three verses we just read, then there is no trial, no difficulty, no heartache, nothing you will ever face in this life that should be that intimidating to you. Because if God is the one who indeed created the world, then there's nothing in this world that is too hard for Him. If He is the maker of this universe, there's nothing in the universe that you'll ever meet or any challenge that would be difficult. And that's why whenever you come to a passage that's difficult and hard for you to understand, why would God do that? How did God do that? When you read Genesis chapter 1, if you really believe that, it answers those questions for you. How did God do that? Well, God making the sun stand still shouldn't be surprising to you when God made light when there was no sun. God making the sun to stand still when Joshua asked for it shouldn't surprise you when God spoke the universes into existence and stretched them out with His fingertips. None of that should be of any surprise to someone who believes that in the beginning God created. So there's nothing that's too hard for God when you believe that. Abraham and Sarah laughing at the idea of God giving her a child when she's past age It's not something that's funny if you really believe God created the universe, because if God created the universe, I'm pretty sure it's not a problem for Him to help create life in a womb, something that was already designed to produce that. I understand that it's past age. I understand that it shouldn't be able to do it anymore, but creating something from nothing sounds a lot harder to me than taking something that was already meant to do a job and making it do that job, even though it's not able to do it anymore. You see what I'm saying with that? That when it comes to this idea of God's power as a creator, if you can believe in the beginning God created, then it shouldn't bother you to wonder, can God do this or can He do that? The other side of that is, why does God do certain things? Well, if we believe Proverbs when it says, the Lord by wisdom hath created the earth, by understanding hath set it upon its pillars, by knowledge hath filled it with all good things. We believe that, that idea that God by wisdom created all of this. And we can see that how thousands of years later, God's plan still flows perfectly. If you don't think that's an answer to your troubles, then you've never read the book of Job. Because after all those chapters of Job trying to understand, God, why would you let this happen to me? You and I can look at the story and understand that the reason God allowed this to happen to Job is because of the fact that God was using Job as a message, as a preacher to everyone who would ever come after him, that man does not serve God for naught. That we don't serve God because of what He has given us, but because of who He is. And we can trust God and serve Him even in the darkest, hardest possible times imaginable. So for you and us, we can read the book and we can get the answer. We can see all the things pointing to Christ and how the real meaning and purpose of life is Christ. There's so many beautiful, wonderful things we can get from Job's life that Job didn't have any of those. Job didn't have those answers that you and I have because he didn't have the rest of Scripture to compare his life to, nor all the recordings and preaching and all the stuff that we have to look at. But what Job did have was an answer from God where God looked at Job and said, were you there when I created the world? Do you understand how any of this stuff works? If not, then why would you think you can understand what I'm trying to do? If you don't understand how the wind blows from the east to the west, you don't understand how I can speak to you through the lightning, you don't understand any of that kind of stuff, then why do you think you would understand why I allow something like this to come into your life? So my point is that Job's answer to his suffering was, if you can see that God has designed creation so intricately, so perfectly, so well, that it runs so smoothly as a machine, even after being broken by the fall of man and by sin, then you can trust Him to run your life far better. Like you can trust Him to take your life, which He is renewing and fixing and working in and trying to fix what sin has done to it. You can trust Him to do much greater things with your life if you can look at this world and see what He created and how perfect His design was. So I know this is somewhat simplistic, but I want you to make sure you get this today. that one of the greatest things you and I can do as Christians when it comes to creation is to step back and let it show us just how mighty and how wise our God is. Because if we will let it do that, next time your heartache is coming to your life, and your trials are coming, and things are where you don't understand why it's going like this, you can know it this much. There is a God who is powerful enough to speak the world into existence, that knows exactly what He's doing and He's completely in control. So now saying that, let's consider what He actually says here. God says that in the beginning He created the heaven and the earth. Do you notice He didn't even say heavens yet because He hasn't created the firmament to separate one heaven from another. So He's created the heaven and the earth at this point. That's all there is. The earth itself is without form and void because it's covered in water, and it's only in another couple days that He's going to separate the dry land from the sea, and so then it'll have shape to it beyond just being a ball of water. And so you have this creation wherein God has spoke, and there was nothing. There was not time. There was not space. There was no matter. There was nothing at all, and God created everything from that. Any other religion you believe that tries to justify to you how all this exists has to be able to give an answer. And if you were to believe, for example, the Big Bang Theory as it's taught and as it's presented, you would have to believe that Well, there was a universe before this one, it imploded, it became an infinitely dense ball of mass, that exploded, then it formed our universe, and eventually this one's going to collapse, and it's going to turn into a ball, and then it's going to explode, and it's going to make another universe. But you always will have to trace that logic back to the point where you can give an answer as to where did it begin. And anybody with an ounce of wisdom to their mind can look at that and see that there is no answer to be found in what's taught in most systems of teaching. There is no answer to be found when you say that, OK, I believe that it was an infinite ball of mass that exploded before that was universe. It imploded because you're always just going to keep going backwards to the universe before in the universe before in the universe before. And you will never get to a creator. You will never get to a point of origin. With this, we have a definitive point of origin and that there is a God who, by definition, this is why it's important for you to understand this. The reason why the world has a hard time with believing in God is because they imagine something like the Greeks worshipped, wherein it is a created being who was born from somebody's loins and went forward and did whatever evil things they did. God is not that. God is someone who is so powerful at the sound of His voice, darkness can be made into light, nothing can be made into something, the absence of time can become time. All of these things can exist simply at the sound of His voice. I mean, you think about what He just said. He spoke and there was light. He didn't create a sun to produce that light, not for a couple more days. He spoke and there was light. Simply at the sound of His voice, there was light, and that was enough. Now, if you study, you'll find that Jesus is the light of the city of New Jerusalem, and I understand all of that, but I want you to notice that it's simply at the sound of His voice, there is light. He doesn't need to create anything to create light. His voice is enough to produce it. So what you have to understand when you look at Jesus Christ and you look at creation and understand how He carried that out is the reason why the world has a hard time with what we present to them is because they can't wrap their minds around the idea of a God of infinite power, one who inhabits eternity and lives outside of time, so that time is nothing to Him, so that there is no power that is limited to Him. The only thing limiting Him is His character and His nature and the things that He will not do. There's nothing that He cannot do. It is simply what He will not do. You understand that when it comes to God, that's His limit. But when you listen to men like Dawkins over in England and other ones who present themselves as very intelligent men, the problem they have with God is they always say, well, where did God begin? Where did He come from? Where is His origin point? And you have men who accept blindly, swallow it fully, completely, this idea that there was a universe, and it collapsed and became a ball, and that ball exploded, and it became a universe. And that's happened over and over and over again, infinite number of times. They swallow that blindly, never asking, where did the first ball come from? Where did the first universe come from? Never willing to accept it because even when you press someone, I've heard Dawkins himself, and it's not a message on Dawkins, but I've heard him himself say plainly that we know we don't understand the cosmos. We don't understand the universe. We just accept that one day we'll have somebody who comes along like Darwin, who will give to us a theory that helps us to accept what we already know and explains it to us better. So he says, we're just waiting on our Darwin to come and make it all make sense. but they blindly believe a faith that has no logic, no understanding, no wisdom behind it. There's so many things that show you that it's not correct. And some of these are things I would like to get into later in the message, but you understand that it is impossible for this universe to have existed for millions of years. And it's ironic that this part of the world is the Netherlands, actually, that will try to give an answer to one of the things I would propose to you to consider. But if you've never considered this, the age of a comet is less than about 10, 15,000 or so, 20,000 years, somewhere in that range. It's less than all of that. And so how could a universe that's millions of years old have comets flying around, you know, all freely throughout the universe and there's nowhere that they're being produced, and yet they all should have faded away millions or billions of years ago. I mean, think about that. Like, you have these things that have a shelf life, they can't exist more than a few thousand years, and yet they're just flying around freely out there in space in a universe that was supposed to be billions of years old, and they're not being produced anywhere. And I'm only giving you this now because I want you to see the blind faith with which men swallow the evolutionary teaching that they get. They blindly accept that and say, well, there has to be an answer because we know there's not a God, so there must be another answer. So a man from the Netherlands, one of your people, he's proposed the idea years ago, a long time ago, he's dead now. He proposed, I was looking at you, but he proposed that there must be somewhere out there in the universe a pocket wherein comets are being created and they're being spit out into the universe and they're spreading out. He's never seen it. I say he's dead now, he never saw it in his whole life. Nobody who He ever taught it to has ever seen it. Nobody who has ever lived has ever seen it because it does not exist. Now, I don't believe in it because there is no evidence of it existing other than comments. Here's the irony. I get what I'm saying and I realize that you have two alternatives. There is a God who created everything or there is a pocket somewhere out in space creating comets that there's no evidence or sign of it other than the presence of comets. They tell you that you're foolish because you look at that same equation and you choose to say, well, I believe there's a God who created everything. instead of believing that there's an invisible pocket out there somewhere in the universe creating comets that nobody's ever seen, and the only evidence of it is that comets exist. But you think about it, as a Christian, our greatest evidence that there's a God that exists is the presence of the universe. The fact that it exists means it came from somewhere. And so we're foolish because we use that logic to say, well, then there must be a God. But they're OK to say that, oh, no, it's all right. We know that there must be a comet creator out there because comets exist. It's the same exact logic, but you're a fool for believing one and they're wise for believing the other, even though they take it entirely by faith, because there is no evidence of it. It has never been seen. It is just a theory that was made up by a man who did not want to believe in God. But if that was all, then you could see why they would believe what they believe. But there are so many things that can be seen and observed in our universe, things that should not be possible in a universe that are millions and billions of years old because they should have already been done. It should already be that these things are finished. I mean, one here on the earth I would give you, and we'll see in a minute God's the answer to this question, but the largest desert in the world is the Sahara Desert. The Sahara Desert, by anybody who's a scientist, typically believes it's a few thousand years old. The reason why is because we have evidence that there was plant life and other things in it just a few thousand years ago. So everybody estimates it has to be less than about 5,000 years old and there's a good reason for that because about 5,000 years ago there was an event that it would have definitely been covered in water because everything on the face of the earth was covered in water during that event. It's called the flood. And so that Sahara Desert, anybody who believes science will tell you that it has only existed for about 5,000 or less years. Now, if you don't know this, the way a desert expands is because the way the winds are pushing the heat front through it, it dries out the land and spreads the desert. So the Sahara Desert is the largest desert. It wouldn't have started that way, though. It would have started very small, and over the past few thousand years, it would have expanded. So if the largest one in the world is only a few thousand years old, why is there no desert larger than that? Why is there no desert in the entire world that has expanded for millions of years or for tens of thousands of years or 50,000 years? Why has that never happened? Why is there only the one that we know it can't be more than about 5,000 years old because there's evidence of it having plant life not so long ago? But the logic escapes the person who wants to deny God because they're not actually looking at it logically. They're grasping in the darkness because they're afraid to look at the light, desperately trying to find anything they can hold on to that keeps them from turning to God. So instead of believing that the logical answer is there's a God who created everything and it's all the age that He says it is and there's a good reason why everything matches His story, is to come up with theories that, well, there's a pocket somewhere out in space that creates comets, that there must have been some reason why that desert is not that, or maybe it's millions of years old and those plants, somebody put them there, I don't know. But they'll come up with any silly theory they can come up with. You have things as simple as understanding that when we first went to the moon, it was estimated there would be between 10,000 and 15,000 years worth of dust accumulated upon the surface of the moon. And yet, when we landed on it, they say it was only a few thousand years. I'm sorry, it was estimated. Sorry, millions of years was estimated. When they landed on it, we estimated it's less than 10,000 to 15,000 years of dust accumulated. It could be as little as 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000. somewhere in that area. So why would you explain that? Like, how do you answer that as someone who doesn't believe in God and believes the universe is millions of years old? Does somebody come and vacuum all the dust from the moon? I mean, we don't have an answer for so many things in our world that if we simply believe God, it's answered. It's been answered. It was answered a long time ago. but the equivalent of what we have today and what's taught in the modern classroom and what is taught in a lot of religions nowadays. is the idea of what was taught in Hinduism and all those religions of the past, wherein the world was sitting on the back of a giant tortoise, it was on the back of four elephants, the elephant was on the back of the snake, and the snake was in the cosmic sea. And if you don't know what I mean by that, the ideology was that somebody said it was on a tortoise, somebody said, well, what's the tortoise on? They said, well, it's on four elephants. They said, well, what's the elephant on? The elephant's on a snake. Well, what's the snake on? What's in the giant cosmic ocean? Why? Because they couldn't understand the logic of where the world come from and how it was floating, so setting like it is in space. How could that happen? And so their idea was to make up that a man was holding it or that it was setting upon something. And anybody with wisdom can look at that and say, well, then what's the ocean floating in? There has to be a limit to this, but they can't understand or get to that. And men today who just keep saying, one universe exploded, one imploded, back and forth, over and over again, are doing the same exact thing, denying what is clear in front of them. That most of the things in the universe point to the fact that it can't be that old. The size of the sun tells us it can't be that old, the presence of stars because stars are dying but none are being created. It tells us that it can't be that old. There are so many things around us that we can see that everything's pointing to a universe that was created and is now dying for some reason. The Bible gives you an answer to that because God created a perfect creation and put it in man's hands and man created a big problem when he fell in sin and he broke that creation. Be like me giving you a machine that's perfect, it'll run forever, and then the first thing you do is stick a wrench in the gears and you destroy it. And God said, from this point on, there'll be thorns coming from the ground, animals will be harmful, there'll be poison, there'll be all this stuff. You'll die, you'll work by the sweat of your brow, women will suffer throughout the birthing process. All these things and complications will come because by one man's sin, sin entered into the world and death by sin. And why does it seem like there's a sudden reset about 5,000 years ago? I mean, think about this. The average scientist says that, or not scientist necessarily, but historian says that written language is traced back to about 5,000 years ago. That before that, there was no evidence of a written language. Now, we know that men were smart well before 5,000 years ago. I mean, before the flood, they were already making stuff out of metal and making instruments and all this kind of stuff. If you don't believe in God and you believe in evolution, then you believe that men were smart before 5,000 years ago, enough to build societies and stuff. So why did we only learn how to write 5,000 years ago? Why is it there's no evidence of a written language before then? Could it be that there was a event that God describes that wiped out the entirety of human civilization and there's only a few things that stand? And ironically or interestingly enough, most of those are covered with erosion marks wherein water would have ran across the surface of them. You just think about it. Like you don't have to be smart to realize that everything around you is pointing to God being correct. The reason why people deny this is not because God is incorrect. It's not because God doesn't make sense. It's simply because the alternative is that there is a God and they don't want to buy that. They don't want to hear it. They don't want to believe it. But all the evidence is showing you this. So for you and I, we have to step back and look at what God says He did. We have to choose, do we believe Him or not? Because if you believe Him, All the universe is showing you the evidence that He is the powerful Creator who spoke it into existence. That it didn't come about little by little, by accident and by chance, across billions of years, infinite time and infinite realities and infinite possibilities and infinite universes and whatever they want to put in there to try to make their equation work. Because you understand that infinite time is not enough, infinite possibility doesn't even work. Somewhere in all of that, there has to be the understanding that there must be a Creator. But the world is so desperate to understand that they'll come up with multiverses, they'll come up with everything to try to do anything but believe in God. And God says in Hebrews 11 and verse 3, it's by faith that we understand that God created the heavens and the earth. You understand, it's by faith that we believe and understand this. You and I are able to let God explain Himself to us because we don't approach Him saying, I don't believe you, there's no evidence of you. We approach Him saying, okay God, you've never been wrong about anything else. Let me understand a little bit better how you created this whole thing. Let me understand a little bit better what you did. And when we come to Him with that openness, that willingness to be taught, wherein by faith we understand what He has created, whereby faith we can see something that is not visible to us, the actual act of creation. we begin to look at the evidence around us and we begin to see it. We begin to be able to see what God has done because we come to Him by faith and not as someone who is so opposed to God that we wouldn't believe the evidence that was right in front of our face. And that's really the difference. If you're asking me the difference between the Christian and those people who hate God, who would do anything to make you deny God, it's that simple. You are somebody who came to God and was willing to let God show you who He is. You were interested to know Him, and so He lets you see who He is. And little by little, you've learned to trust Him more and more. The reason why they don't trust Him is because they don't want to trust Him. It's not that there's a lack of evidence. It's not that He's untrustworthy. It's not that there's something wrong with God, and there's a reason for them to be this way. It's simply because if there is a God, then they must answer to that God, and they must understand and believe there's an eternity, and they will give an account to Him when this life is over. And it's easier for them to pull the blanket over their head like someone who heard an intruder come into their house at night and would rather pull the blanket over their head and just hope that the noise goes away than to deal with the reality that someone's in their house. That's what these people are doing. Judgment is coming. Heaven is real. Hell is real. Eternity is real. All of it is real. And all the evidence around you shows you that. It shows you that there is a God who is so wise and so powerful that at the sound of His voice, all of this exists. And they would rather pull the blankets over their head and pretend like judgment's not coming. Like there's not something real and big and important that they have to deal with. They're burying their head because they don't want to deal with it. And that's all it is. That's why evolution is a fairytale for people who are afraid of the light. They always tell you that Christianity is a fairytale for people who are afraid of the dark, but that is not true. The reality is that atheism, evolution, and so many of the religions in the world today