Romans chapter 1 verse 19 and 20, it says, "...because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath 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 you watch over us, help us to serve you. I pray, God, that you'd help us, Lord, just to see what you're saying here in this passage. God, to appreciate just the beauty of what's here, and also to be convicted in some ways about it as well. Father, we thank you for all of it, and we ask you in your son Jesus' name. Now he's going to pick up on that thought in verse 21 by saying, because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. And that's the point that all of this has been building to, is that any culture anywhere in the world, no matter how vile and wicked they live, no matter what things they do that you can't imagine that somebody would do that. such as cultures which have sacrificed their children and these kind of things. He says, no matter what, nobody is excusable because the fact that there is a God is evident throughout the entirety of the universe. And there are several ways the Bible shows us that. It's very clear when you look that there is a God. You can see his fingerprints everywhere. Now, we live in a world that they have spent an unimaginable amount of money indoctrinating people with the idea that if you're scientifically minded, then science has disproven God. However, they have never given you any science that has disproven God. It says something you have to understand in this passage, and that's why we spent a long time building some of that and understanding some of that, is that you, if you've grown up in this country or ones like it, have been told your entire life that there is scientific evidence that there's no God, that man just evolved over time, and all of these kind of things, not realizing that you were being indoctrinated with a religion. Like, you were being taught a religion the same way as if you were sitting in a mosque and being taught Islam, or if you were sitting in the Mormon tabernacle and being taught You were just being taught a different religion. It just calls itself not a religion, which, ironically, a lot of atheists and others have their religions that they call not a religion, wherein you have to believe certain things to be a part of it. And so they have their belief systems. They have their things that you have to believe and all of that. Now, saying that, if you've grown up here and that's what you've been taught your entire life, then it's easy to not fully appreciate what he's saying in this passage. Because God is saying that regardless of what you've been taught your entire life in this country or ones like it, there's far too much evidence for you to use that as an excuse. There's far too much evidence around you to say, well, I didn't think there was a God because I went to school and at school they told me that there was an explosion and everything come from that explosion. and that it all came about by chance and mutation and all of this. So I didn't believe there was a God because that's what I was taught. God says it doesn't matter, it's not an excuse. You say, well I didn't believe in the God of the Bible because I was raised in a country where I was taught a different God. God says it doesn't matter, you are without excuse. That no matter what excuse you have, wherever you are in this world, everybody has the capacity to realize that there is a God. And here's where you find that there's two points in this message, and I'll go ahead and spoil what they are. One is I'm going to show you through the Bible where all of creation, all the universe screams as a preacher to you every day that there is a God. It's crying out to you every day, there is a God, there is a God, over and over again. The other point of this, and this is the one that I may be able to reserve for next week, is to understand that even people who acknowledge and say there is a God are without an excuse if they don't believe in the one true and living God. And that's because God, we will see if we get to that point today, if not we'll see it next week. When someone's heart is willing to know God, God will get them a preacher. And then it's up to them what they do with the message. And many of you know that from personal experience, that God brought preachers to you from across the world to give you the gospel because there was something in your heart that wanted to know Him. And we have stories like Cornelius, the Ethiopian eunuch. We have plenty of people like that in the Bible who God brought them a preacher through, many times in their cases, miraculous means. I mean, you have probably the greatest story of that of all is where a man literally got swallowed by a whale and spit out on the seashore to make sure that a city got a preacher when they needed him. And so God has example after example of the fact that if you want to know Him, He'll come to you. He'll get you a preacher and give you a chance. So when we say with people without excuse, there's two reasons. One is because if you really want to know God, He'll come. He'll give you the chance to get to know Him. Nobody is left without any opportunity whatsoever. God will get to you somehow. The other side of that is nobody is excusable because everybody has enough light to know that there is a God. Now, what I want to show you is that not everybody has the same amount of light. That's true, but everybody has enough light to know that there is, in fact, a God, that there is a God who reigns above, a God who created all things. And so once we can understand and believe that, we can realize that...once we can understand there's enough light for people to believe that, we can see that nobody can come to God when this life is over and stand before Him and say, well, I didn't know. So let me give you some Bible verses. Of course, we want to study as much as we can with this. So Acts chapter number 14, we're going to be turning quite a lot. We'll come back to Romans chapter 2 later on, so you may want to mark a place if you don't already have one marked there. But Acts chapter number 14 and verse number 15 through 18. So Acts chapter number 14, verse number 15. This is Paul speaking, it says, and saying, "'Sirs, why do you these things? "'We also are men of like passions with you, "'and preach unto you that ye should turn "'from these vanities unto the living God, "'which made the heaven and the earth and the sea "'and all the things that are therein, "'who in times past suffered all nations "'to walk in their own ways. "'Nevertheless, he left not himself without a witness, "'in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven, and the fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. With these sayings, they restrained the people that they had done the sacrifice unto them." So you have people coming and wanting to worship these men, Paul and Barnabas, as gods. And Paul asked them, why would you do this? I'm just a man like you. Why would you come to me and give me any undue authority? That's a good question to start with anybody. Why would you go to any man and give him undue authority? Why would you go to a pope? Why would you go to a so-called prophet? Why would you go to any priest and give him authority or preeminence in any way to put him where he's up with God in any way? He says, I'm just a man like you. And so why would you do these things? He said, in the past, God allowed nations all over the world to worship whatever gods it is that they wanted to worship. They were allowed to participate in whatever pagan, idolatrous things that they were allowed to do, but God never let them do that without having a witness to them. He said, even those nations that have worshipped the sun and the moon and the stars, even those nations that have worshipped every idolatrous or pagan thing you can imagine, many of them, if you know what the different mythologies would be, are many times it's a human with an animal head upon the top of it. or they're just humans who are incredibly perverse and wicked. One way or the other, that's what they're worshiping many times in different cultures in the past. And he says to them that God allowed the people to do that because it's your choice what you believe and what you worship. But you understand that nobody could, even in those times when the Bible was not written in its completion, when there wasn't preachers going across the world giving it to everyone. He said, even in those times, no person anywhere in the world could ever say that I didn't know and I had no opportunity to know. I know you're translating, but you need to deal with our kids and help with some others because it's getting a little too wild at this point. If you have to drop the translation and give it to somebody else, I apologize. I shouldn't have to stop in the middle of the message to say that, but I do. So he says to them that it doesn't matter where you've come from, where you've been, what you've done in this world, that everywhere in the world, at any point in history, no matter how much Bible has been available, there has always been a light and a witness and a testimony available that everybody can see. And his example here is the rain and the sunshine. So he says that everywhere you live, it rains. Some places rain more than others, of course. You know, Belgium has a lot of rain. There's other places that have very little rain. But wherever you live, you appreciate the rain because the rain allows you to grow the things that you eat. It allows you to continue your life. It allows you to have all this stuff. But the rain continues to come day after day, week after week, season after season, however it comes to you, whether it be in little or whether it be a lot. The rain continues to come. And every time that rain falls, it is a message to you that there is someone who has created this world to work and function the way that it does, so that we're perfectly positioned the way that we are from the sun, so as to condensate the water and evaporate it up into, evaporate the water, sorry, and then recondensate it in the clouds, and then it pour down for you and function the way that it does. It's not possible for that to have happened by chance or by circumstance, but there was a creator who designed it perfectly so that these forces, these universal invisible forces that you and I hardly understand, are so perfect that if they were off by even a smallest percent of a degree, life would cease to exist. Everything has to be exactly as it is, perfectly the way it is, for things to exist the way that it does. And God designed all of that. And God has given that as a testimony to you that the rain doesn't come and go by accident. It's not by chance that it continues to come. It's not by chance that the waves don't overtake the land. It's not by chance that all this stuff happens. It's the way that it's going because God designed it that way. So he says, no matter where you are, he has not left himself without a witness. And then if you go back, I would ask you to hold a place in Acts because we're coming back to Acts 17 in just a second. If you go back to Isaiah 40, in verse 19, Isaiah 40 in verse 19. Isaiah 40 verse 19 through 22. It says, the workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains. He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot. He seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image that shall not be moved. Have ye not known? Have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundation of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers, that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them as a tent to dwell in. That bringeth the princes to nothing, he maketh the judges of all the earth as vanity. The passage before this is talking about idolatry, and he's talking about how foolish it is that a man would go into a forest, cut down a tree, use that tree to heat his home, half of it, or cook his food, half of it, and then the other half, he has somebody carve it into the shape of an idol for him, covers it in gold, and then worships it, and says, you know, oh tree that I cut down in the woods, oh tree that my friend carved you, oh tree that my friend covered you in gold, and I'm the one who set you on the shelf, please heal my sick son. The point he's getting to is that everybody does indeed realize within their heart that there is a God, and that's why there is a hunger somewhere in the hearts of men to worship. When they see something that's beyond their understanding, they want to worship it many times. When they see something that they think gives them an answer, they give their devotion to it. And that's what you see with a religion like evolution, for example, is that they're not bowing down and worshiping it in any traditional sense. Like, I don't think anybody has You know, Darwin's origin of species sitting on their shelf and they go home and they kiss it and thank Darwin for it every day. And maybe some are. Honestly, the more I say this, I realize that maybe this is not as crazy as I'm making it out to be. But I don't think there's too many people who go home and have an altar made to evolution in their home where they have the pictures and the statues or whatever they want. But the monuments are all over this country. I mean, you can't even go to the zoo without having a plaque in front of you telling you the theory of evolution. Every book, every TV show that has anything to do with the past will start off millions and billions of years ago and all this kind of stuff. It's indoctrinated everywhere. And people who don't want to believe that the God of the Bible, the one true and living God is God, find solace or comfort in that because it's an answer that allows them to close their eyes and sleep at night not admitting that there is a God in heaven. And so it's the same thing for them. They pledge their devotion to it because they think they found an answer. And people living in idolatrous countries where they make these idols, they pledge to that because they think they found an answer. And people living in a country like this, wherein Christianity supposedly exists, but yet you're Your loyalty is not to Christ, your loyalty is to a statue of some saint that you've carved and set on your table, who you believe if you pray to Saint so-and-so, they'll heal you from whatever need you have. Or if you put this one on the dash of your car, he'll protect you when you travel, because that's what his power is. You understand? It's literally the same thing that the pagans do. And you go to Hinduism, and you have a God for everything you can imagine. I mean, there's thousands of them, and everything you can imagine. There's a God for this, and there's a God for that, and there's a God for this one, and if I want to get over my tummy ache, then I pray to this one. If I want to get over my headache, I pray to this one. And they have all these things in which they worship. And it's always been like that. Anybody who does not want to know the true and living God, somewhere inside of them there is a conviction that they know deep down there's a God, and so they have to find something to get around that. Either they replace Him with an idol, they replace Him with witchcraft, which is praying to the devils, or they try to find some humanistic belief, atheism, evolution, or something that would allow them to pretend like there's an answer other than God. And everywhere in the world, it's always been that way. I mean, you go back to the Greeks. What did they have? Well, this is the god of wine. This is the god also of parties and of the harvest and of this and this and this. But this one, that's the god of wisdom or the goddess of wisdom. And this one's the god of war. And if you want to win your battle at war, you pray to him. If you want to have a good party, you pray to that one. If you want to be wise on your test, you pray to that one. Go offer them a sacrifice and they'll help you. And you go in the Catholic Church, which promises you that they're not pagan, and if you want help, well, you go to the patron saint of this for your party to be good, and you go to the patron saint of this to do good on your test, and you go to the patron saint of this to do good at your war. It's the same thing. And honestly, if you ever look at the statues and the carvings that they have made of Saint Peter and all these people, and then go back and look at the statues and carvings of Jupiter or Zeus and all these pagan gods that were worshipped in Rome and Greece, you'll notice their faces look very familiar to you. It's because all they did was transplanted those things into Catholicism, because it is an accumulation of pagan things. And that's where all the icons and all this stuff come from. That's where these statues come from. It's just the same idea of, I know there's a God, but I'm not really willing to commit to knowing Him. So I need to fill that void somehow. Either I need a religion that will allow me to close my eyes and pretend like all this makes sense without God, which would be evolution, most of your atheist beliefs and so forth. Or I need to come up with an idolatrous religion wherein I can say that I found a God. It's just not that God. And so I made it with my hands. I went and I scooped up some clay and I shaped it and I carved it. We stuck it in a fire and we burned it and made it to the clay to be hard and then we set it on our shelf and we prayed to it because He needed my help to be formed but now He has the power to help me. Or, you know, I cut him down in the forest and I took him and had him graved and all this stuff and covered him in gold, and he needed my help to stop being a tree and be a god, but, you know, now he can help me. I mean, you think about the foolishness of that. Half of the wood that you're praying to, the other half of it, you cooked your food with it. The other half of it, you warmed your home with it. But the half that you're praying to, you trust it to heal your sick child. The half that you're praying to, you trust it to do something supernatural for you. that stone that somebody carved out of the ground and shaped it in the shape of Zeus and then claimed it was Peter. You understand the foolishness that you would pray to something like that, that you'd burn candles hoping those candles somehow have power to help you. Where does that come from? Why is it anywhere in the world, no matter where you go, there is some religion stirred up within people that allow them to either close their eyes or to impersonate God, one of the two. Either they close their eyes and deny Him completely, or they impersonate Him with an idol. How does that happen? It's because deep down in the heart of every man, they realize when they look at this universe, the clear and obvious answer is there's a God. And so some of them say, no, anything but that. I'll believe anything. You can tell me that the planet is floating on the back of a giant turtle, and we'll accept that. That's okay, but just don't say there's a God in heaven who created it. And so they'll blindly swallow anything. They'll let people who have been proven to lie to them for the past 200 years over and over and over and over again teach their children the same lies they taught them. They'll let them take pictures that have been disproven in every classroom they've ever been used in and set them up and teach them to their children. You realize everything you've ever seen image-wise in relation to evolution is a lie. Like, they'll draw a picture, and they'll draw a picture of someone who was supposed to have lived, you know, so many thousands of years ago, and they'll draw hair on this person, and the only thing they had was a bone. Like, you understand, all the Neanderthal skulls that they say that these were somebody different, they're not like us, they weren't people like us, most of them were the height of somewhere between Sophania and Jonas, so they were not supernaturally tall, they were just taller than most of us. They were of the build of that same size, what most of you guys are, you know, You're not supernatural. I understand you may look at yourself in the mirror and feel like you are better than the rest of us. But you're just bigger. You're not better. It's OK. But Neanderthal skeletons were pretty much always around that size. The shape of the skull looked a lot like Stefania. But the shape of the skull is actually normal human shape. It's just that when people eat diets that mostly consist of things like nuts or things that are hard, the more you chew throughout your life, the harder you chew, the way the muscles in your face are designed to strengthen, it protrudes your eyebrows. It makes it stick out and makes your eyes seem more sunken in. And any country in the world you go to today where the primary diet is nuts, you'll notice that all the people still look like that. You go to Papua New Guinea, I love, I have friends in Papua New Guinea, I have people I love there, but if you go to Papua New Guinea, which is where one of the other skeletons come from, it's the New Guinea man. If you go to there and you look at the way people, their skulls are shaped, it's natural, the younger men don't have that as much, but the older men do, because they spend an entire life that the more you chew here, your muscle that chews pulls against your eyebrow and it causes your body to extend that way. It's just normal. But they look at that and they say that, well, this is evidence that somebody, because these people lived in caves, which are abundant in this part of the world, which is where all those skeletons for the Neanderthals were found, and people still live in caves in France. So I guess they're also less evolved because they still live in them. But they say that all these people living in these caves are proof that these people must have been the step somewhere between ape and man. And so every time they'll draw you a picture of this Neanderthal, he has hair all over him. He's drawn to look as much like an ape as possible. But let me ask you, how do you pick up a skull, a bone, and tell me what color hair it had or how much hair it had as a person? I mean, think about this for a moment. How do you pick up a skeleton of any kind, any bone, and tell me whether it had hair at all, much less how much hair it had or what color that hair was? You can't. Nobody can do that. I can tell you the gender of it, which is ironic since now they deny that one. They deny that the natural sex ingrained in it, that this male or female, that one they deny. But I can pick up any bone and tell you that because it's in the DNA. But I can't pick up a bone and tell you whether that person had hair or not. I mean, if, let's say today, me, Safanya, Maciej, and Jonas were all to die, and somebody dug up our bones in a few years, or any of the rest of you men, you can be included in this too if you want, but if we all died and they dug us up, I'm just getting to a point where I don't wanna make fun of Safanya, so that's why I didn't include the rest of you. But if they were to dig up the bones, they couldn't look at it and say, eh, Machia and Jonas, they had hair. One of them had it on his face and his head. One of them had it on his head. One of them, that guy, he probably had a pretty silly-looking beard and no hair on top of his head. That other guy, he was completely bald. I don't know. They're not going to be able to look at you and tell that by your skeleton. It's impossible. Why do they then draw everything that way? It's indoctrination. It's teaching you from the time that you're a child, this is what it looked like. Don't question it. This is what it looked like. Don't ask questions. We already know, even though there's no way we could possibly know. You understand, even the idea that dinosaurs had feathers and stuff, that's based off of much stuff that's not scientific, but more so the fact that we need it to be true if we're going to continue to believe our religion. If we're going to continue to believe that one species became another species, then somebody had to have feathers somewhere who wasn't a bird. So let's put them on those animals. So many of the things that they look at and say, well, see, the bone here is similar to the bone in this one. Well, it might surprise you, but a lot of animals have bones that are similar. That doesn't mean that they have feathers. I probably have some bones that are similarly shaped to a bird. That doesn't mean that I have feathers on me. You understand that none of that stuff actually makes any sense. And everything we find evidentially, in terms of evidence, proves otherwise. We found fossilized skin and several imprints of skin and things like that. And there's no evidence of any feathers whatsoever on any of it. But they still need to draw them that way because otherwise you're not going to believe the religion. So the reason why men are so drawn to this kind of thing, the reason why they have to do this, why they have to make the idols, why they have to teach things that they know are not true, and they're willing to send their children to be taught these things that they know are not true, that over and over their life has testified to them that this is a lie, it's not of God, is because deep down in their heart they know there's a God. They just don't want to know Him. They need to satisfy the emptiness and the longing, so they'll make a statue, and this is my God. Or they need to deny the truth that there's a God, so they don't have to deal with the conviction and consequences that come with that, so we'll replace it with this lie. Again, the other one's witchcraft. We won't get into that, but witchcraft is the same idea. It's like, we know that the God of heaven is God, but we're going to let the devil lead us the same way he led the angels in thinking that we're strong enough to do something against him. We'll get power here on earth, and we'll defeat God. That's where witchcraft comes in. So you understand that this is why people do these things. Paul's asking, why would you do this? Like, everywhere anybody has ever lived, there's a witness that there's a God. Why would you worship a man? And he's telling us here in Isaiah that people, it's so foolish that somebody would go and cut down a tree, cook their food with one half, and pray to the other half to heal them when they're sick and suffering, and yet men do it. when everything around you screams that there's a God in heaven who sits upon the circle of the earth and stretches out the heavens as a tent over top of you. And yet somehow people look at that and they see the clear evidence, the clear fingerprints of a creator and say, no, I think that it was a chance. You just put it in a box and shook it long enough until it all came together and made a universe somehow. And you realize it's foolish. And the reason why nobody is excusable is because there's too much evidence to be excusable. The people who don't believe in God don't believe there's a God because they willfully have closed their eyes. Now it's up to me and you to try to open their eyes. That's what we'll talk about again in the other half of this. But it's up to me and you to try to open their eyes. But the reason why nobody can ever stand before God and say, I didn't know, there was not enough evidence for me, is because God says everything around them screams that there is a God. Everything is telling them that there is a Creator. You don't have to be that intelligent. You don't have to be a scientist. You don't have to have degrees in anything to be able to look at the universe and realize that there is indeed a Creator. There is indeed a God. And so God says everybody has that ability to look at this and see this. In fact, I asked you to hold your place in Acts and then I didn't even do it. Acts 17 verse 22. Acts chapter 17 verse number 22. We find Paul on Mars Hill talking to the Athenians. If you don't know about Athens, Athens is part of Greece. They were the ones who worshipped Zeus and all these other pagan gods. I'm not going to teach this to you as doctrine because the Bible doesn't go into a lot of this, but the Bible does say some of this. In Athens, where they had the different monuments set up to worship gods, there was one that was set up to what they called the unknown god. And they believed that in addition to all of their pantheon of gods, you know, the god of parties, the god of hunting, the goddess of hunting, the god of war, the goddess of wisdom, and so forth, they believed in addition to all of that that somewhere there was too much evidence that there was another god, that there was somebody that they weren't counting when they put all their stories together. And so because of all of that, they built a monument to him. And so Paul comes to preach to them and tells them, I know who the God is and I can tell you who He is. Acts 17 verse number 22. It says, Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For I passed by and beheld your devotions. I found an altar with the inscription to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship. Him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is the Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men's hands as though he need anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things. And hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation. He says, I know who your God is, but I want you to understand, you're too superstitious. You didn't believe there's another God because you know Him. You believe there's another God because you realize that all your superstition doesn't really answer all the questions. And so, I'm going to tell you who that God is. There's a God who He doesn't need you to build Him a temple. There's a God who doesn't need you to worship Him. There is a God who, unlike the pagan gods of the Greeks, didn't need men's worship to be strong. He didn't need men's temples to have a place to live. He let people build things for Him at different points in history, but He didn't need any of it. He didn't need any of it. He's still God just as much on the throne whether you worship Him or not. He's not dependent upon your worship to get His power and be God. And He says, that God is the one who created all things. Every man upon the face of the earth, He's the one who created him. He's the one who set everything in its place upon this earth so that the sea doesn't overtake the land and so forth and the water cycle continues day in and day out. He's the one true and living God and He has set everything in its place to be a witness and a testimony unto you and I so that we can see this clearly and without question. Then in Psalm 19, I keep telling you for a long time we're going to get there. So Psalm 19, we're finally there today. This is the psalm about how that every man is without excuses, the whole point of the passage. Psalm chapter number 19 and verse number 1. It says, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun. which is a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit to the ends of it. And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. Now I'm going to say the rest of this chapter is telling you why men are without excuse, because he'll talk about the Word of God, he'll talk about people's own conviction over their sin, there's a lot of stuff he'll talk about. But just right now in the context of what we're looking at, understand that God is telling you that the heavens are a preacher, meaning the sky, the universe, the sun, the moon, the stars, all of that stuff, when you look out above you. And understand, here you're going to see clouds if you go outside and look up. Even at night, you're probably not going to see a lot. But some of you have had the privilege to be outside of Belgium and look up at the sky and see that there is something up there besides clouds. And if you look at the right time, you can find them here too. I'm just joking. But you know if you've stepped out and you've looked up, that there are many beautiful things out there that we as the most scientific men in this world cannot fully understand or appreciate them. They can tell you that it's a ball of gas, different types of gas that they burn and they can do this. They tell you what it looks like when they die because we've seen that. And so they know what it looks like because we've seen it. They can't tell you in truth how they really form, why they would form the way that they do. They can't tell you anything much, honestly, beyond this is what they look like. This is where some of them are. This is the names we made up for some of them. And yeah, that's what they look like when they die. This is the stages of death for them that we've seen on the ones we've observed. Other than that, there's not a lot that they can tell you about the stars as they look out. But God tells you He can number every one of them. He calls them by name. He knows each and every one. There's not one star in all the heavens that He doesn't know. When we thought there were hundreds, He already knew that they were innumerable. When we thought there were just 150 or so, God knew they were innumerable because He already knew each and every one of them and knew them by name. There was no question for Him. You understand that when it comes to God and His fingerprints on this creation, When you look out every day and that sun rises in the east and sets in the west as it goes across your sky, He says that sun is a preacher that is calling out to you, there is a God, there is a God, there is a God, there is a God. There is a God who made all things. He made the heavens and the earth. There is a God. And that's what the sun, every moment as it goes across the sky, He says it's preaching that to you. He says you may be deaf to it because you've closed your ears and you don't want to hear it. You may have found an idol to worship so you don't have to hear it. You may have bought into some religion such as evolution so you don't have to hear it. But regardless, it's still up there preaching every day as it goes across the sky. And He says every night when you step out there and you see that moon, and it starts its journey across the sky, and it's just reflecting back to you the sun. It's just telling you, didn't you hear the sun? It said there's a God. Didn't you hear Him? He said there's a God. There's a God. There's a God. There's a God who made the heaven and the earth. There's a God. The moon's just reflecting back the same message. All the stars, you understand, they're the same thing the sun's made out of. They're just out there far, far away, sending forth the light to tell you there is a God, there is a God. Over and over again, everything in creation is screaming that to you. The sun, the moon, the stars, the day and night, coming and going, every day in its cycle, nothing ever changing. And it's always the same because there's a God who made it and put it in its place. It didn't get here by chance. So the same chance that created it is also not going to destroy it because it didn't happen. It wasn't made by chance. It was made by a God. And the only one who can destroy it is that same God. And every day it continues the same, it's consistent, and it's regular, it's there. And even if I as a preacher fail you, it's still out there telling you there's a God. And if everybody else fails you, it's still out there telling you there's a God. And he says no matter what language you speak, it's still out there telling you there's a God. It doesn't matter if you speak a language where not one word of Scripture has been translated into that language. He says there's a Son out there telling you there's a God. And if you want to know Him, He's proven time and time again that He'll get somebody to you who can tell you who He is. There have been countries in this world and people in this world who they did not have even a word for the forgiveness in their language, much less Scripture or anything else. There's countries that there have been where there is… and societies and cultures where there are people in that place that they're completely locked away from society. And the story I'm thinking of, if you don't know it already, is a story of missionaries who went to Ecuador. There's five of them. Nate Saint and Jim Elliott are the most famous. But they went to a country wherein there's no Bible. There's no outside contact. Nobody has ever had contact with these people and lived to tell about it, the tribe there. And for the sake of translation, I won't get into more than that. But those people, in their language, had no word for forgiveness because they had no concept of forgiveness. So how do you go to a people who don't even believe forgiveness is a thing? They believe that you are required, if someone hurts you, you hurt them in return. How do you go to them and tell them God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son? How do you tell them that God's willing to forgive you your sins and save you? Well, God sent five preachers and some ladies as well. The ladies actually were the ones who were chiefly part of the translation. They learned the language first because they could get a little bit closer to some things. And so he sent these five men, and these five men died, never having got to preach the gospel to that tribe at all. They were killed just like they were told they would be because those people have no concept of forgiveness or mercy or these kind of things. So how did they get the gospel? Well, those people who killed them eventually got sick and were in need. And when they were sick and they were in need, the son of one of those men, the sister of another, came back because they were doctors, they could help them. And they started taking care of them, and they had never heard the word forgiveness, but they started to see what it looked like. And little by little, without having the word, without having Scripture, without having anything, these people started to be open. And all that time between the death of those men until the time that this happened, some of those people had been working on translating and getting some Bible, some Scripture into their language. And so they were able to sit down and begin to tell those people, and they would know, why did you come here? And we killed your family, why did you come here? They begin to share with him that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. They begin to share with him the concept of forgiveness from the Word of God. And then finally, the man who was chief culprit, who calls the death of those men, sat down with the son of the man who he had gotten killed. And he told him, he said, I'm the one who got your father killed, now it's your time to kill me, because that's what their culture was. And instead of killing him, instead of taking revenge, he preached to him Jesus Christ. And almost everybody in that entire population was saved as of a few years ago. I don't know what the statistics are today. But how do a people who have no concept of forgiveness, have no scripture in their language, who are not allowing any outside contact to even come within their presence, how do they get the gospel? God will send them a preacher if they're willing to hear. If somebody's willing to hear the gospel, God will get a preacher there. And you understand that everything in history is telling you that over and over again. You see it throughout the Bible. You see it throughout the world that He first sends them the preaching of the Son, of the universe, of everything around them. But if you're willing to listen to the first preacher, He'll send you a better one. He'll send you someone who will give you the Word of God. So nobody's excusable because they have the message in front of them. So that's why he tells us in John 1, 9, and 10, like as important as a son is as a preacher in this context we're talking about, he says there's a better light than any other light. There is a light that lighteth all men that come into the world, and that light is Jesus. John 1, 9, and 10. It says, that was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He says, there is a light that has come into this world that lighteth every man, that no matter where you are, God has illuminated you enough to know that there is a God. And He says, it's not just that there's a Son, that Jesus Christ has given light enough to everybody to know that there is a God. He says He's the Creator. He's the one who gave you the Son to preach to. He gave you all these things. That's part of His plan, how He did it. He sent preachers out into the world. I mean, in fact, the context here is He's talking about John the Baptist, that he was not the light. Jesus was the light. John was just like the moon saying, hey, look at what the sun said. He's just pointing people to Jesus. But you understand that when we look at Him, He is the light that everybody has around them enough evidence that there is a God. He's the one who has given them the evidences. He's the one who's given them the preachers. He's the one who says that He's put it in their heart, a conscious to convict them over their sin and show them that they are sinners. That if there's no God, why would there be any concept of that? You understand, like most, you look at animals and most of these things, they have no concept of sin. They have concepts of, okay, I don't bite you because I don't want to get bit, but when you're talking about sin, they don't have concept of these kind of things. Men do, anywhere in the world. No matter how wicked a society you grew up in, deep down in your heart, there was something that when you sin that you know that that's not right. When you lie, you know it's not right, even if culture tells you to lie. Even society tells you you have to lie, cheat, and steal to get ahead. Deep down in your heart, you know it's not true. You just burn your conscience so it doesn't convict you over it anymore. You learn to embrace the conscience of society and culture. But he says every man has. That's what Romans chapter 2 was talking about when I told you to save your place there, that he tells in Romans chapter 2, verses 12 through 16, he talks about that even if they don't have the law, they have a law within their hearts, their own conscience that convicts them. But he's telling us here that God has given us light in terms that we have our conscience to convict us, we have the Word of God out here preaching. This is the rest of Psalm 19, that he first tells us we have the Word of God, which is perfect and it's a light to us. And then he tells us that you have your conviction over sin, which is a light to you. You have creation, which is a light to you. You have all of that that is a light that nobody in this world can stand before God and say, well, I didn't know. Because he says all of that's available. So then we go to Job chapter number 12. This will be my last passage. I will manage to cut off the other point. So Job chapter number 12 and verse number 7. This is Job talking to his friends. And so when his friends talk, you have to take it with a grain of salt. When Job talks, it means a little bit more. So Job chapter number 12, verse number 7. It says, But ask now the beast, and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee, and the fishers of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these things that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this, in whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind? Doth not the ear try words, and the mouth taste his meat? We'll pause on that because he's making a deeper point. He's making a point about the fact that he knows that God's in charge and what happened, God has a part in that.