So, Romans chapter 1, verse number 20. We are going to pick up where we left off last week, as last week's message was essentially a big introduction to this week's message, because I never got to the stuff I was trying to get to. We talked about some good stuff in the Bible. We talked about some Bible examples of how the Bible has been the proof of science before there was even a debate to have about it. But today we're going to try to get to what he's actually saying in Romans chapter one about how the Creator can be seen in his creation. So Romans chapter one, verse number 20. And I have moved my bookmark to a whole other book. The good news is I'm in Romans so much that my Bible opens there all by itself, so I don't need a bookmark anymore, I guess. Romans chapter 1, verse number 20, 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. All right, 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. We pray that you just speak through the message today. Use it to touch every heart. I pray, God, you'd help to open eyes to people who don't understand. And then, God, you just give wisdom as we bring it. Lord, we ask in your son Jesus' name. Amen. Now there are two things in this verse that we are told creation will teach us about our God. The first one is Him. It helps us understand Him as the Creator. And the second one is His power. So next week we're going to talk about His powers, or not next week, the week after we'll talk about His power when we come back to this passage. But this week we're going to talk about seeing Him in His creation. Seeing the fingerprints, the evidence, the DNA, however you want to say it, of God. so that you can see that there is clearly a creator and his design is evident through it. And just to be clear, to me this sounds like it's very loud and also to me it sounds like probably Joshua's microphone, his headset is very loud because I can hear something coming through it. But maybe it's not him. Maybe it's something else. All right. I'm just giving that note before I get started too deep because I don't want to have to come and throw books at people and all this stuff. We have new hymnals, so I can afford to throw the old ones, but I don't want to if I don't have to. But anyways, when we look at this passage, the reason why this matters is he's making the point that we'll get to eventually, that everybody in the world is without excuse. Like everybody can see that there is a God because his fingerprints are all over creation. The clear evidence that there is one creator behind all of this, a mastermind, are all over his creation. That's something that we have to consider. The other thing that he wants us to see is that the power of God is evident in this universe so that nobody can look at this and logically, correctly say that I think it just happened by accident. Not in terms of there being a creator, nor in terms of the power that would be necessary to make something like this universe. That's why we've been looking at a lot of the scientific things behind it, because it does matter. And I don't want to get sidetracked. I know I'm very prone to do it in this circumstance, but do bear with me to give one example of what I mean why this does matter, what you believe about this. Because if you tell me today that I believe the Bible to be the Word of God, but you believe creation to be a metaphor, you are not a Bible believer. You are someone who has decided that you like the ideas that are within the Bible, but there are certain things that don't line up with your worldview, and so those things must not be true as they are written. There must be an excuse why I don't have to believe that part. And so there's a great number of people today that are being told that it's okay to believe that the Bible is the Word of God in some capacity, and that Jesus was God in some capacity, but that the creation story was a metaphor. But here's the issue with that. My wife, who has no Bible college education, is smart enough in three seconds to shut that doctrine down without even having to think. Because I told her about this, and she, I guess, didn't know that people believe this, or at least she didn't know it was common that people believe this. And so she brought up the question, well, if Adam and Eve in the creation story are a metaphor, then does that mean Jesus Christ is a metaphor? Because Adam is the first Adam, who through him literally the entire human race was plunged into sin. And Jesus is the second Adam, through him literally the entire human race has the ability to be saved. So, if the first Adam is a metaphor that metaphorically there was a man who brought sin into the world, then it stands to reason that the second Adam is a metaphor who metaphorically brought salvation into the world. Like, you can't pick and choose here. You have to take it as it is or you have to mess up the entire Bible by insisting something is a metaphor that is not. Here's the other issue you have with it. God presents it to you as a literal 24-hour day, and where He says the evening and the morning of the first day was this, and the day was good, and so forth. And when God presents it to you as a literal 24-hour day, and you say, no, I think that was billions of years, you are saying that, God, I like the idea that you created, I just don't really believe you. You understand that God multiple times describes creation in ways that we as scientists and suffer just now catching up to, that we say the universe expands. It looks like it's expanded and all this and it's expanding. Well, God says that He stretched out the universe multiple times in the book of Isaiah alone. Like in one book, written a thousand years ago almost, 700 I guess, not 700 years ago, 700 years before Christ, 2,700 years ago from now, In that book, at that point in time, nobody had any remote understanding. Again, if you remember our lesson from a few weeks ago, they still believed that the stars could be numbered as being 150 or so. They didn't understand the idea of a stretched out universe wherein there's light existing and age and all this stuff that it looks like, but it's not. It's just stretch marks. Scientists say that's proof of an old universe. No, it's proof that God stretched it out, which is exactly what he says. And the more we catch up to it as scientists, the more we agree that, no, no, that's evidence that it was stretched out, like it's expanded. And that's where even theories like the Big Bang and stuff get some of their little kernels of truth that they take to seed into the lie. That's where they get it from, because of the fact that if you're going to lie to somebody, you can't just make up something that has no evidence of truth whatsoever. There has to be a little bit of truth in there or nobody's ever going to believe it. And so you believe a lie when it sounds a little bit true. And so there are things within the Big Bang Theory that sound a little bit true. Like the idea that the universe began with a flash of light. Yeah, God said in the beginning, let there be light. So it did begin with a flash of light. That is correct. It looks like it's been stretched out so that things that used to be maybe close together in a sense are now spread out. That's not proof of a rapid expansion, it's proof that a creator says he stretched it out with his own hands. like grabbing some Play-Doh and stretching it out is the idea he's presenting to you because he spread out the universe so that it's all spread out across. Now again there's a reason why some of that sounds like stuff you get taught in a science class and get taught when you're taught the Big Bang Theories because there is a little bit of truth in every lie normally. Some lies have far less than others but there's usually a little bit of truth there. And the Bible has taught these things that there is a reason why light that would normally take millions of years to reach us from a star somehow is reaching us if the universe is not millions of years old. And the answer is because of how God has stretched out the universe. So it matters, that kind of stuff. But here's my point. People who believe that this stuff is a metaphor, who don't believe in creation, who say, well, I believe in intelligent design and the idea that God created the Big Bang and God made sure that evolution happened. Those are just people who say that the world matters more to me than God. And because the world matters more to me than God, I'm going to find a way to fit God into my primary religion, which is the world, which is what are they teaching me at school? What are they teaching me somewhere else? And that's the reason why these kind of things exist. The reason why people invented the gap theory is not because there's anything in the Bible that promotes it. If you know what the gap theory is, it's the idea that there's a gap between Genesis 1.1 and Genesis 1.2, where an entire different civilization existed, they fell in sin, and God deleted them from the earth in a different way that wasn't Noah's Flood or the Tribulation or whatever version of judgment. And then God started over again with Adam and Eve. The reason why that sounds like fantasy nonsense to you as a Bible believer is because it's not in the Bible. It literally is a doctrine built on what is not in the Bible. And that's where it comes from. And actually it's a doctrine that their main argument can be defeated in about three and a half seconds as well. And that is they ask, why does Genesis 1-2 say that the earth was without form and void? Well, that's because if you pay attention and read a few more verses, he'll tell you that the entire world was covered in water. And water doesn't just take shapes of mountains and all this stuff. It is without form and void. If you've ever been to the ocean or been over top of the ocean in an airplane, you will notice that it was without form and void. The only shapes you see in it are the little ridges of the waves cresting every once in a while. because that's what water does. And the reason why you know that is because if you pay attention on the second day, God draws the dry land out of the sea and creates dry land. So the answer to the gap theory's question of why was it without form and void is because when God made it, it was a ball of dirt covered in water and He pulled the dirt out of the water on the second or third day or so. So you understand that, that this idea exists because Men like Charles Spurgeon in their time thought it was a joke when people began to believe evolution. And they said, nobody will ever believe this. It's nonsensical. Nobody will believe it. And then suddenly their congregations started to believe it because they didn't think it was worth preaching on. They said only a fool would believe that man came from a monkey. And I have quotes from Spurgeon saying exactly those things. And he said, only a fool would believe this. I don't need to waste my time on it. And then suddenly, the Prince of Preachers, as he's been so titled, began to lose his congregation to people who believe that we came from monkeys. And then he began to say, well, I don't understand the science, but there is a reason. And I'll give him this, like he was enough of a Bible believer that he said, I have to find a reason in the Bible that the earth looks old. But instead of realizing that there's a very clear and evident reason in the Bible, he went along with one that's not in the Bible. And what I mean by that is men like him and men like Schofield, who wrote the reference notes in the Schofield reference Bible, those kind of men came along and said, we don't know enough about science to answer why the world has stuff that looks old in it, so we're just going to say that the world was old and God remade it over again. The problem with that is it puts death before sin because God says by one man sin entered the world and death by sin. So it messes up the entire doctrine of the Bible and a lot of other stuff. So, it's not a biblical doctrine, and it's built on the idea that you could change the translation of the Bible to say that, not that the earth was without form and void, but became without form and void. So, now you're also not a King James Bible believer because you believe your Bible was mistranslated. So, ironically, most of the people who preach that doctrine today are the ones who claim to be the strongest on the King James Bible, and yet their doctrine begins with saying, I could translate it differently, and then it would say this. So you understand it's a very nonsensical doctrine that they would never support if it wasn't for the fact that they got it from somebody they respect. But my point about men like Spurgeon and so forth is that they came along and they promoted this doctrine because they didn't know how to answer scientifically what is wrong with what the evolutionists are saying. They only knew how to tell you the Bible says God created and that's a great thing to know how to say. But the truth is, there is a reason why it matters what you and I believe about this, and it's good for you to know how to give an answer to this. Because there is one event in human history that will answer pretty much every question you will ever get about why is the earth like this? Why is there a massive canyon in the United States, the Grand Canyon, that looks like it was formed over millions of years? Well, because 4,000 years ago, there was a flood, and if you look at the way the Grand Canyon is made, on the other side of it, there's a narrow choke point, and a river runs through that choke point. And on the other side of the choke point is another large cavernous space that looks like a bunch of water built up there and reserved there after the flood. And one day, that little narrow choke point got broke, and it blew out and flooded through the area and washed it out like any mudslide or flood does anywhere in the world. It's just we're talking about a very big flood or mudslide. And it's what happens anytime we see a flood happen somewhere. But what about all the other canyons in the world? It looks like they were formed over millions of years. Well, we have proof from having watched recent volcanic eruptions that those kind of Canyons form within a matter of hours following a volcanic eruption. And most of those canyons exist around areas where there are either large mountains that were formed during the flood or volcanic eruptions have happened in that area. So yes, not remotely surprising. It's literally what we see in the world around us and in the science around us. But my point is, almost everything you ever get about why is it like this, why is there deposits of sediment in places where the ground is different, like you see layers of earth that are different and so forth, well, yeah, it's because when there's a flood and all the dirt's floating around in the water, certain minerals are heavier than others and will deposit to the bottom faster. That's logical. It's also logical that a lot of fish and stuff that we're living, especially like marine life that lives on the bottom of the ocean and those kind of things would have been the first to get trapped when the ground began to break and water began to spray out of the ground and kill everything around it. So it's all logical. The Bible explains it. The flood actually gives a better answer than any science textbook has ever given to these kind of questions. Scientists can't tell you why there's still water underneath the crust of the earth that's spraying out. They can't tell you a lot of stuff. But the Bible answers that there was water. God broke the crust. The water came out and broke everything around it and flooded the earth. And the Bible answers that very easy, very plainly, very well. In fact, I'll give you one out there for anybody who still is a flat earther. The Bible in the flood even gives you a good answer as to why you're wrong about that. Because the Bible says that the water was 15 cubits over the highest mountain on the earth and remained that way for several days. And you may not know this, but if the earth was flat and it could run off the edge and it was 15 cubits over top of the highest mountain, it wouldn't have remained that way for many days. it would have flooded off pretty quickly. So if you want someone to shut down some Flat Earth stuff, there's a good one for you if you believe the Bible. But my point is for everybody sitting in this room, if you say you are a Bible believer, but you do not believe in the literal six-day creation, you are not a Bible believer. You are a fan of the Bible. You like certain aspects of the Bible. But you're so tied to your pre-existing religion that you came to the Bible with, the evolutionary religion, that you got it from a school. It's a religion. You take it by faith. There is no hard evidence for it anywhere in the world. In fact, the same people who ask you, why are there layers and sediment of earth built up like that, forget to tell you that there's fossilized trees sticking through all of those. They forget to tell you that there are trees that clearly fossilized in the same period. Because if you don't know this, if the tree is only partially buried and the bottom of it fossilizes and the rest of it sticking up above ground, that part would rot away. The only way it can stick through these various different layers of dirt is if they all deposit it at the same time. And that's not something you find in one place. You find it every single place in the world you begin to dig. Everywhere in the world you find that. That's the reason we say where I'm from that there are no atheists in coal mines is because they see stuff like this, they see what it's like down there in that place, and they come out saying that that's not possible, that there was not a flood. That's one of the reasons we say there's no atheists. Some people say it because they think that if you go through a hardship it means you believe in God. That's why they think there's no atheists in the wars and everything else just because people say, oh, God, please help me. But the people who say, oh, God, please help me and more quickly forget him, that's not what they mean necessarily when we say there's no atheists. That's just what some people mean by that statement. But my point of this is to get to saying this. that God has said that the evidence of Him, the evidence of His power, the evidence of who He is as a person is seen within His creation. And He wants you to take the creation story and read it as He wrote it and learn about Him from it. And when you start messing with that and playing with that and saying, well, Adam and Eve were a metaphor for how people evolved from monkeys and all this kind of stuff. And it's just a metaphor that, you know, before there were people. Or you start saying that it's a metaphor for intelligent design and that God did start the universe with the Big Bang. And then over time, he shaped it and molded it. Well, if you believe the Bible, because that's called many times the day-age theory, the idea that a day is the Lord a thousand years, a thousand years is a day, has nothing in the world to do with Genesis. It's talking about the fact that, to God, time is irrelevant. But, if you wanted to go with that theory, you would have plants existing for millions of years before the sun was ever created, because the sun was created the day after plants and everything else were created, if you read the Genesis account. So my point is any of these theories that men come up with to try to get you to say, well, we can bend the Bible story a little bit to fit in with what the world believes can be easily refuted using the Bible. You cannot put the two together. They will never marry. They will never agree. You have to choose. Do I believe God or do I believe the religion of the school system that I was taught and that the taxpayers paid for for me to get this? Which one am I going to believe, the state religion of Belgium or the word of God? And you have to choose. You cannot have both. They will never go together. Things that are different are not the same. How can two walk together unless they agree? These things will not ever marry nor join together. And when you start messing with creation, it's not just creation you mess with. It's God. It's the Bible. It's everything else. And that's why I'm giving you this thing that seems completely disconnected. It's not because I'm trying to go down another rabbit hole and never get to my message and have another message that's just one big introduction. It's because I want you to understand that the point of Romans chapter number one is that when you start playing with creation and you start denying the Creator, you will have a reprobate mind and you will forget about God and you will follow after your flesh and after the world and all this kind of stuff. That's the warning. That's literally the point. This is the reason why it matters because if you don't get what I'm saying, this is the direction you are going. Like when you read Romans chapter 1 and all this evil stuff that's presented to you, they didn't get there in a moment and in a day. They got there because little by little society said that the evidence of the Creator is there, but we can explain it a different way. Please ignore that. Little by little they said we know that there's a God, but we glorify Him not as God. Little by little they began to reject what God said about creation and what evidence said about creation, what the universe spoke to them. I mean you understand the whole universe is one spoken verse is what it means. I mean it's Latin, it's verse, it's a spoken sentence. It is God's spoken sentence to us about Himself. It is the preacher that preached to all of us that there is a God no matter what land you come from, no matter what language you speak. It is the preacher that everybody has. It is the world around them that testifies and screams with all its might that there is a God. All the heavens, all the earth, all of it declares the glory of God. But man has said, I have another answer. Please ignore the facts. Please ignore the evidence and just buy this so that you can close your eyes and forget about the Creator again. And that's why this matters so much is because if you don't get it, this is the road you are going down. Now, having said that, let's try to get back to what we were trying to show you last week. John chapter number one. John 1, verse 18. It says, No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him. So we're going to get back to what we were trying to say last week before we got very far sidetracked. And that is to understand that you cannot say, I believe in God because I have seen Him with my eyes. You cannot say, I know God because I have seen Him with my eyes. There was a small group of people upon the face of the earth 2,000 years ago who could say, I've seen God manifested in the flesh with my own eyes. and I know there's a God because I saw Him face to face, I held Him, I touched Him, so forth. Like Thomas touching his side and saying, my Lord and my God. There's a small group of people in the grand scheme of human history who can say, I saw God in that sense. There are none who can say that I've seen God the Father in all His glory and splendor. As we said last week, there are those that at the time of the law when they were making the agreements on the mountain, that they saw the outline of a man setting in the clouds and they knew that God the Father was there speaking to them. There are men like Moses who saw the glory of God's backside as He passed past him in the rock. But nobody can say that I know for sure that there is a God without any faith required simply because I have seen Him. But you have to understand something. God says that there are things that you have seen that declare to you who God is and helps you to understand Him. That was the point of Romans 1.20. The visible things, the things you can see every day when you step out of your house, when you look in the mirror, when you look around you, there are things you can see every single day of your life that scream to you that there is a God and not only that there is a God but who He is. that help you to see that He's not some man with the body of a man in the face of an elephant. That He's not some man, as the Egyptians put it, with the body of a man in the face of every other kind of animal you can imagine. That He's not some strange, foreign-shaped, some elder deity floating in space like what's become common to talk about nowadays. It's not some horror thing. You understand that you can look and see the image upon which He has stamped you with and see God every day in the creation He has made. And it's not just you, you can see it across all of creation that there's things that He has instilled in everything that teach you a little bit about who God is. So my point is that while no man has seen God at any time, God tells us that through His Son and through His creation we should be able to know who He is. Here in John 1 we have a few verses that speak to this. We can read them. Verse 9 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 said the Creator of all mankind came into the world and was a light that everybody could see. It was a source of truth and enlightenment just to have Jesus there with you and said even though He was the Creator of all mankind, men did not recognize Him as their Creator. And that's a sad thing when you think about it, because He says the evidence is all around you, especially considering the people who didn't recognize Him are the ones that had the prophecies, the laws, and everything else that told them exactly who He was. But we won't get into that. We'll get it from a creation standpoint. John 1 through verse 3, it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made that was made. This is talking about Jesus Christ and it says there is nothing that was ever created that He didn't create it. One of the great arguments for why you know that Jesus is not a created being is because He would have had to create it Himself. Because the Bible says there is nothing created that wasn't created by Him. And it's talking about Christ, the One who was in the beginning with God and was God, the One who became flesh and dwelt among us. That's who is the Creator that all things were made by Him and for Him. Colossians would even add to this in saying that all things were created by Him and for Him. Here it says, by Him, without Him nothing was made. In Colossians it says all things were made by Him, for Him in Colossians 1.20. Now, with that though, there is a phrase we find in our text passage of Romans chapter number 1, verse number 20, and I'm not taking you back there because we just read it, where it says that the Godhead is revealed. That in creation we can see and understand the Godhead. That phrase only appears one other time really, and that's in Colossians chapter 2, verse number 9, where we're told that Christ is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Now, if you're asking what that means, a lot of people will put their opinions on it. There are people who try to say that that's a word synonymous with Trinity and that's the Bible word for Trinity. And you can get to that answer, but you have to do some gymnastics to get there. You can't just start there. There are people who would say that it's a word that means just the literal essence, like this is the omnipotence, omniscience, you know, omnipresence, all the things you would associate with who God is. And that's a little closer to what the word probably should mean, because the word Godhead more or less means the idea that God. This is God. Jesus is God manifested in flesh is what it means when it says it about Him. And when it says in Romans chapter 1 verse 20 that the Godhead can be seen in creation, it means, and understood through creation, He means the very idea of who God is. The idea of God was manifested in the flesh. The idea of God can be seen and understood through creation. That's the point he's getting at when he brings out this term. It's God. It's who He is. Now the reason why I say you can use it as a word for Trinity is because Trinity is who He is. God is a triune being. And so you can use it that way, but you have to understand what it really means before you get there. You have to understand that it's more or less a term that means like the idea, the concept of who God is. Like what it should mean to be a God, someone who's all-powerful, all-knowing, all these kind of things. It's the nature of God is what it's referring to. So the very nature of God, who He is as a person can be seen and understood through creation and it was manifested in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, if I can put it like that. That's what it means when those words are thrown out at you. Now saying that, one of the places where God is showing us this then is to understand that God is a triune being. Like any religion that comes to you and presents to you that we believe there's one God, but doesn't understand that God is a triune being, it tells you that it is a man-made religion. Now, the other side of that, people who show up and believe in multiple gods, millions of gods, hundreds of gods, tens of gods, however many gods they want to throw out there, it's also very evident to you that it is a man-made religion. Because if you ever look at them, they're presenting to you gods who have very little extra power beyond that of what men have. They don't have power to create. They're created beings. They always have an origin, that they have a father and a mother and so forth, and it just keeps going back and back. until eventually they were born from the earth and its elements, so that they're not the creators, they're created by the earth, and earth becomes the God eventually, or the universe becomes the God eventually. And so you can always look at those religions and see that the ones who are polytheistic, you have more than one God, are false religions built in the mythology and stuff that men used to believe, of the idea of a universe bringing forth powerful beings. And probably, if we're being honest, it's probably a lot influenced by the fallen angels, by the devils. I mean it would make sense that they would have some impact and influence in that kind of stuff. It would also make sense why many of them are people with bodies like humans and face like animals. It would explain a lot of stuff really. But that's almost irrelevant because the point I'm getting to is any religion today presenting itself as some descendant of the Abrahamic religion and the Abrahamic God who says we believe in God but we don't believe in a Trinity is not believing in the God of the Bible. They are taking their human understanding and throwing away what the Bible says about God. And the reason for that, why it's hard for them, is because it is a hard concept to fully understand and appreciate. That's why God says that the Trinity is evident to you when you look at creation. When you look at creation, you can see God's DNA and evidence and fingerprints and all of that upon the way He has created the universe. Now before I get there, I want to show you the Bible is very clear that God is a trinity. That there's not multiple gods, but there is a God who is three in one. He is a triune being. And I want to show you the Bible teaches that. So one verse I would take you to is Genesis 1, 1, and 2. And maybe you want to mark your place there because that's where we're going back to in a moment. But Genesis chapter 1, verse 1 and 2. It says, 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. So you have God the Father and God the Holy Spirit in verse number one. If you take God at His word and believe the creation story and you read it, you already have two members of the Trinity just in the first two verses. So you at least have to have a diune God, a two in one. You at least have to believe that He's two persons because you have two persons just in your first two verses. Now where you begin to understand and appreciate this more is when you study the Bible as a whole to understand that the Bible is very clear that Jesus Christ alone did the physical act of creation. Now the Father was Lord over creation. The Father is the One who is the real power and the Lord over it, the One who designed and so forth. But in terms of the One who by His finger stretched out the heavens, well that would be Jesus. The One who by His voice spoke and the worlds came into existence, that would be Jesus. And the reason we know that is because we just read John 1.1 that all things were made by Him. There's nothing that was made that wasn't made by Him, talking about Jesus Christ. So, we know now that unless we want to say, well, God the Father is not real, that God the Son and God the Holy Spirit both must have had to have been present at creation. Because we're told that Jesus was the one who carried out the physical act of creation and the Holy Spirit was there moving upon the face of the waters. So, we know Jesus and we know the Holy Spirit were there. The only one left for you to deny if you don't want to believe in part of the Trinity is God the Father. And I've never seen anybody foolish enough to say they don't believe in God the Father. It's always the other two they try to deny. So at this point, I don't think any normal person can disagree and say that there's not evident that there was a Trinity there at creation. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. And in terms of what they were doing, I would throw out Isaiah 45, 12, where it says, mine hands, mine own hands have stretched out the universe, Jesus talking about himself. I would throw out what we just saw, that the Holy Spirit is moving upon the face of the deep in Genesis 1-2, and I would bring Proverbs 3, 19 and 20, the Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, and so forth, to show you what the Father's part in all of this was. That it's His design, that the Son is always doing the will of the Father. And the more you understand that, the more you'll understand the Trinity. The more it'll help you to appreciate this idea of a triune being when you understand that one is the Father in the sense that He is the head of all of this, and the other is the one carrying out His will and His physical acts, and the other is His Spirit moving in everything. It'll get you on the right path, at least, to understand that there is a Trinity. Now, another verse I would give to you to show you that in the Bible God is a triune being, that there is a trinity, is 1 John 5, 7. And there is a reason why, if you're not using the right Bible, you don't have this verse in your Bible right now. So, if you're reading a Bible and you don't have 1 John 5, 7 in it, I would recommend you throw it away when you get home, unless, of course, I will put a clause in here. If you are reading your Bible in a language that is not English or Dutch or Romanian, You may not be able to find a better version in your language, and if you need to read the Bible in your language, I will never discourage you from doing that. Just understand that it was probably translated from the same manuscripts as the Catholic Bible and all the modern perversions of the Bible, and know that you can't trust it fully. There will be times where you need to lean on the King James Bible to show you what God really said. But I'm not going to tell you to throw it away in that sense. But I am telling you, if you're an English speaker and you're listening to this and you don't have 1 John 5-7 in your Bible, then it's not a Bible. It was a potentially perverted manuscript. Take it and throw it in the trash. I'm saying if you're reading in Romanian and you don't have 1 John 5-7, you have much better options. Even the bad options are probably better than whatever you're using. So contact me and I'll tell you which one to get. I have Fidela Bible sitting on the shelf. I'll give you one for free. It's nice and leather-bound. if you need that. Stop retelling, I'm out, because they always seem to go about as fast as we get them, but I'll get you one and I'll be glad to buy it for you if you need it. But if in Dutch you are missing 1 John 5, 7, I will gladly help you get a Bible that's not missing it. My point is to say this, that the reason that is missing from many Bibles It's because the man who was the curator of all the books in Alexandria, Egypt, did not believe in the Trinity. Calvinism didn't exist by that term at the time, but he was what would become a Calvinist. He was a fatalist that believed that there was no free will, and what will be will be, and God already determined everything. So verses like where it says, Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost, he took them out of the Bible. I'm going to switch microphones, I guess, because this one's making some noise. Difficulties. This one is the problem. Can you put me back on this one? I'll fix it. All right. So we had that problem before with this one. So that's why I immediately guess what it is now after trying something else. But the reason why those verses are missing from your Bible is because a man who did not believe in the Trinity cut them out and made sure that he tried to get rid of them. The Catholic Church has tried to make sure that everybody gets his version of the Bible and that that's the one that modern translations and a lot of foreign language translations and stuff are based on. or it's using that manuscript wherein he took out verses like where it says Jesus came to seek and to save because if God already determined and there's no such thing as free will, he doesn't have to seek and to save. And if there's no Trinity, then you can't have 1 John 5-7 in your Bible. So he took them out and they've just continued to keep them out. Some of them will add them back in sometimes or put them in parentheses or some kind of note because they don't really believe it to be the Word of God. But it's because they're translating from a bad manuscript in the first place, one that we know to be corrupted, one that's very clearly and evidently corrupted, as opposed to the one that we know to be true and the one that has been historically proven. So now saying that, 1 John 5.7, it says, there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. Now, you don't have to read your Bible much to understand that the word Word is a title for Jesus. So you understand He just said there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. You cannot be a Bible believer and say, I do not believe in the Trinity, unless you took that verse out of your Bible so that you can continue to believe the parts you do like and ignore the parts that you don't. So that's why people change the Bible, so they can get rid of stuff like that. But the Bible is clear. We have a triune God, but I'll give you another one that actually Leah brought up this week that I think is very good, and so that's why I went ahead and threw it in my outline. I think I even actually had part of the verses in here, but not the part she asked about. So Isaiah 48 and verse number 12. Because God speaks about creating with His own fingers, that's why I wanted to reference it, but it's actually better if we read a little bit more than what I wanted. So Isaiah 48 and verse number 12, it says, It's just a whole other way of saying the same thing. Alpha being the first letter of the Greek alphabet, omega being the last, and therefore I am the first and the last, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. It's all the same thing. So we know who we're talking about right now. It's not a debate for us as Bible believers who this verse is about. It says, My hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and My right hand hath spanned the heavens. When I call unto them, they stand up together. So this is Jesus saying, it was my hand that created the heavens and the earth. This is the part I already planned on mentioning, but Leah pointed out something that was very good that I couldn't leave it out, because it shows you the Trinity and the Old Testament very clearly as well. But there's a lot of passages, and we quote it from Psalms and other places as well that do this. It says, in verse 14, all ye assemble yourselves and hear, which among them hath declared these things. The Lord hath loved him, he will do his pleasure on Babylon, and his arms shall be on the Chaldeans. I, even I, have spoken, yea, I have called him, I have brought him, and he shall make his ways prosperous. Come ye near unto me, hear ye this, I have not spoken in secret from the beginning, from the time that I was, there am I, and now the Lord God and His Spirit hath sent me. Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, I am the Lord thy God, which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. So somebody who's declaring himself to be God, who has spoken to Israel from the beginning, who's taking responsibility for Babylon coming in and doing their stuff and all of that, and saying that one day he's going to come as a savior and a redeemer to Israel, who is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. I mean, God gives it to you about 15 different ways that this is Jesus. Even talking about by the right hand, that's a term that's usually applied to Jesus throughout. He's the right arm of God, he's referred to, or the arm of the Lord many times referred to in the Old Testament. So that it's again about 15 different ways. It's saying this is Jesus. This is Jesus. This is Jesus But I want you to pay attention to what it says in verse 16 When it says come you near unto me hear you this I have not spoken in secret from the beginning from the time that it was there am I and now the Lord God and his spirit has sent me So this is, in the beginning the Word was with God, just rephrased in a whole other way. This is saying from the very beginning I was always there and God and His Spirit at this time is sending me. It's a prophecy about Christ coming into the world, the manifestation of God in human flesh. So it's a prophecy about the first coming of Christ and it's saying God, as in God the Father, and His Spirit hath sent me. So do you understand that then, that this is the Trinity being shown to you about as clear as it can be shown in the Old Testament if you're willing to believe the Bible? So I'm showing you that so that first we understand the Bible is very clear that our God is a triune God. How does creation help us understand that? Creation shows us His power. We'll talk about that next week. Creation shows us His wisdom. We'll see that when we talk about His power, I guess. But how does it help us to understand who our God is in terms of like the Godhead, like as a person, who is God? How does creation show us that? Well, creation shows us what a trinity, what a triune being is. Let's go back to Genesis 1. I apologize, it looks like I'm running late. I didn't notice what time it is until now, but I need to finish this today. We can't come back to it. So Genesis 126 says, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So how can a God who is singular, He's one God, behold the Lord our God, He is one God, and that's what He says of Himself. How can a God who is singular speak in the plural? How can He say, let us? How do you do that? How do you say let, when you're one person, how do you say let us? There's no other gods. He's not consulting with the other gods of heaven. You know, Osiris and Zeus and all of them are not there and He's saying, okay, let us work together here and pull our power together to make a man. This is one God saying, let us make man in our image and in our likeness. Who is the are? Who is the other people he's referring to? He's referring to the other parts of who he is. He's referring. This is the son and the father and the Holy Spirit communing together about making man in his image. Now there's a lot of ways you can take that. According to 1 Corinthians 11, it would seem that the actual physical appearance you have, and according to the fact that God looked like a man, the outline of a man sitting in the clouds would also confirm this, that God physically, His appearance is likened to that of a man. I mean, He has ten fingers, ten toes, all that kind of stuff just like we would have. So, that is part of what he means by it, but it's a lot deeper than that, and I believe that's why he speaks in the plural here, to make it clear that you are also a triune being. God says in 1 Thessalonians 5.23 that for you to be sanctified wholly, you would have to be sanctified in your spirit, your soul, and your body. So, all three parts of who you are would have to be sanctified. So, I'll use Jared as my example today, because he's the one in front of me. Jared is a person. We may debate it sometimes, we're not always sure about it, but he's a person. And he does have a soul, and he does have a spirit, and he has a body, you can see it. It's kind of strange looking, but it's his. But he has a body, and inside of that body is a soul and a spirit. If you remove the soul from the body, he is dead. If you remove the spirit from the body, he is dead. If you remove the body from the soul or the spirit, he is dead. They all three have to exist together at the same time or else he is dead. That's what death is. It's the separation of one of those members from the rest. And so you understand that that's normal. That's how it goes. You also understand that each of those three parts are very important and have their own role they play in who He is. His body is the physical part of Him that carries out the will of His spirit. His spirit is the innermost part of Him that defines who He is as a person. He's weird because He has a weird spirit. I don't know what He is. Whatever He is because He has that kind of spirit. He's that person inside in His spirit that's who He is. His feelings, the reason why he gets sad when I say stuff like that about him, are because he has a soul. And that soul is his part of him that's reacting to everything else around him. It's the part of him that feels and interprets all of that stuff. And his body is the part of him that carries it all out. It's the physical expression of who he is. That probably sounds familiar to you because while the terms are flipped a little bit, When we talk about the Holy Spirit of God, He reacts more like how we would think of the emotions, like the soul. And God the Father is more like the Spirit, the one who's the wheel behind everything, the Father, the Master behind it all. The soul, being more like the Holy Spirit, is the one that we feel. That's how we feel God and connect with Him in those ways. And the Son was the physical manifestation and expression of who God is, the one who carries out the wheel of the Spirit. And so when you look at it in those terms, understand it's not perfect because there's no perfect illustration, but it's the one God gave us. And so it's as good as you're going to get. God says that you can understand that He's a triune being because you were one. And every time you cry, it's your body being told by your soul that it needs to do something. So why did God speak to God? Why did He pray to the Father? Why does your soul tell your body to cry when you get sad instead of just bottling it up inside of you and controlling it itself? Why is it that your spirit has to push you and drive you to do things you don't feel like doing sometimes because your body or your emotions don't agree with it? Because there's communication between all three parts. So why did God pray? Because you also pray to yourself and communicate within yourself when your body communicates to your soul, and your soul to your spirit, and all that kind of stuff. Why does God, how can He be in multiple places? Well, you're putting God in a box. So you can't be separated body, soul, and spirit without dying, but God's not in the same box that you are. You understand that like all those questions you have about God, especially about the Trinity, are answered just by looking at how you exist. And the universe itself is no different. I mean, you understand the universe is time, space, matter. It's three different things that exist together to make one universe. Like without time, where would you put all the space and the matter? When, I'm sorry, would you put all the space and the matter? Without space, where would you put all the time and the matter? without matter and without time, or if you don't have matter, what are you gonna put in those things? Like you have time, you have space, but you have nothing in it if you have no matter. Like they go together. Matter exists in three phases, liquid, solid, and gas. And people can argue plasma and all this other nonsense, but that's just you trying to split hairs and separate what constitutes a liquid and so forth. We're talking about traditionally, as we understand it, it exists in three phases. And each of them are similar in that sense too, that they're different. They have their similarities, and they need each other. But my point is, I could go on and on about that all day, how that when we look at the universe, things tend to just exist in threes. And those threes tend to come together and make one. And that one seems to function requiring all three parts to be one. That's normal. It's what we see every day. It's not strange at all. And it helps us understand who God is. So if we're Bible believers, instead of arguing with the Bible, instead of debating with the Bible, we should understand when God says we're fearfully and wonderfully made, it's because the very nature of who you are and how you are designed teaches you who God is. Now I could get into the power and wisdom and all, and maybe again next week we'll do that, or next time. But today I'm way past being out of time, so I have to just leave it at this. that when I say to you, you are fearfully and wonderfully made, you understand that the very DNA of who God is, like the identity of who He is, the Godhead, can be seen through you because He's made you in His image and He's left part of that stamped upon you. So it's the reason why everywhere in the world, wherever you go, bar some genetic deformations and things of that nature because of breaking down of genetic information, we all tend to bear the same resemblance of God in some degree or another. And everywhere we go, we can all understand the Trinity because it's not like people in China don't have a soul, contrary to what Sophania might say about it. People in China have souls too, and they can understand the concept of a triune being because they have a body, a soul, and a spirit too. I picked on China to not pick on any of the rest of you, so be glad. Don't get too offended that I picked on another country. But my point is, wherever you go, people will always have that, and it teaches them who God is and shows them who the real God is. It's the one who created you as a triune being, and He Himself is a triune being. Any God who doesn't have that is not God. Any religion who doesn't have that is not the truth. And we need to get back to believing the Bible and letting God be God, and let Him, through His creation, show and reveal Himself to us as He said He would, and not deny Him and go after what's seen in Romans 1 with a reprobate mind. Father, we thank You and praise You, God, for what You do. We pray that You watch over us and help us to serve You. Thank You, Lord, for Your blessings and Your goodness. I pray, God, that You speak to us through all these things, that Your will be done in all that's said and done here, Lord. We ask it in Your Son Jesus' name. Amen.