Episode Transcript
Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, go therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Welcome to go teach all nations, bringing you Christ's teachings through australian and international speakers. And here is today's presenter, Professor David Pennington.
Well, good morning and happy Sabbath, everyone. Shabbat Shalom. As pastor's wont to say, I've had a few sermons in Waitara in the past and some of you may remember that on one occasion at least, I asked you to put something on your head and it wasn't a Yamaki.
Anybody remember what it was? It's a bit hypothetical, but your thinking caps. So you're going to need your thinking caps today, I hope, because we're going to talk about a few very interesting things and you can perhaps come away with some stimulation about things that we'll be talking about. But first of all, I'm just going to ask the Lord to be with us.
Bow our heads. Heavenly Father, we are grateful and thankful that you are such a wonderful and such a great God. And sometimes we just do not understand how big and how magnificent you are.
And as we look at your creation and a few other things that we can understand more and more about you, we will appreciate what a great sacrifice you made of and what a wonderful outcome you have planned for us. So let us now delve into your word and we pray that your holy spirit will lead and guide me as I speak and also come into the minds and hearts of those who are here and those who will perhaps hear also online. For we ask it in Jesus name.
Amen. How big is our goddess? Well, we should start, I guess, at the beginning. That's where the Bible starts.
So that's where we should start. And I began looking at this just as an interesting subject because we are told 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. This has been the subject of a lot of speculation, a lot of people trying to understand exactly how this happened.
And we will probably not know exactly how this happened until we can ask God himself. And even then we might have trouble understanding. But these hebrew words without form, the hebrew word is tahu, which means formlessness.
And the other word void, means to be empty. So the earth, if you like, was empty. Not even there is.
What a lot of people suggest is the case that those who believe in creation ex nihilo, out of nothing. And that's a very valid way of looking at the creation. But what does void mean? Well, it really means empty, doesn't it? So, you know, if you have a hole in your bucket, it's empty, or if you tip it over, it's empty, there's nothing there.
That's what void means. Another way of saying it is without dimension. And I thought that perhaps we could look at what dimension really means.
So without form, an empty means without any dimension. So an empty space has no dimension. But what are dimensions and how many are there? There are at least four dimensions.
Some even think there might be a fifth, but we're not going to go into that. The first is what we call the linear dimension. Straight line.
Now, you can draw a straight line and think, well, that's a linear dimension, but it's actually not, because every straight line has a thickness. So it's two dimension already, a line of sight. We talk about a line of sight where we're looking directly at something now that is one dimensional, because it doesn't have any thickness to it, it has only one dimension, and it isn't an object.
A line of sight is not an object, is it? Or a thing. What about the second dimension? The second dimension is that of area. So two dimensions working together to form area.
If it has only two dimensions, if you turn it completely on its side, what happens? It disappears, not there. The third dimension is what we are most familiar with, those sort of things, anything with a solid shape that we can observe. So one dimensional and two dimensional things, they aren't really things at all.
To be observed, the universe requires at least three dimensions. But hang on. The act of observation itself requires time.
That adds the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension is time. Movement is not possible without time, as we can see.
So let's go back again and look at Genesis once more. God said, let there be light. Is that a dimension? I don't think so.
Light is simply a form of energy. And we perhaps know a little bit about energy because we know that it is the mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. In other words, huge energy can come from mass.
And we know about what can happen as a result of perhaps at least these two men, Einstein and Oppenheimer, the man who helped create the atom bomb. But there is a corollary of this, if you like, a reverse of this, that mass is equal to energy divided by the speed of light squared. So when we're talking about creation coming from nothing, we have to talk about both energy and mass.
So in the very beginning, God must have said, let there be energy. And he also must have said, let there be mass. There'd be no earth, no stars, nothing solid if there was no mass, and we couldn't see it if there was no energy.
So both those things are necessary, but what's also necessary is time. We have this saying, time is of the essence. It doesn't necessarily apply to this topic, but I'm going to see if I can.
The creation story begins with the first dimension, time, in the beginning. The start, if you like, in the beginning. So if there's no time, there can't be any beginning.
Now, the mathematicians, fancy mathematicians, sometimes go into this idea of, well, maybe once there was no time, and maybe when the big bang happened, that's when time occurred. Well, I'm not going to try and go into that because I don't understand it. And I think I've got a feeling that some of the mathematicians really not quite sure either.
We have been told in God's word, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Who was the word? Jesus.
This does not mean that God or Christ had a beginning. It says they were there at the beginning. Beginning was understood by most Bible scholars and anybody at the time to mean the beginning of this world.
That was what was considered the beginning. And that's borne out by the fact that the next verse that we've just read says all things were made through him. That is, the beginning was that of creation.
But did God have a beginning? That's a question that a lot of theologians over the many centuries have argued about, particularly with regard to Jesus Christ. Did Jesus Christ have a beginning? And there was a school of thought way back in the 4500 ad time where there was a school of thought called Arianism, who believed that Christ was a created being, which is contrary to what the scripture actually says, because in psalms 92 it says, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are goddesse, talking about God as a person. If God did have a beginning, then who created God? We get into this funny cycle, don't we? Which doesn't make any sense.
That would mean that whoever created the God we know is greater than that God. There cannot logically be more than one universal create a God. The only alternative to a timeless existence of God is that God himself appeared out of nothing.
And I would put it as a suggestion that's even more ludicrous than the universe appearing out of nothing in other words, in the beginning, God was already there. I think that's the best conclusion that we can make now, just going back to our thing about dimensions. Did God create dimensions? Well, we know that design requires dimension.
We have to be able to measure things for design. And in fact, in the book of Job, we hear this where God is challenging, Job says, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding who determined its measurements, surely you know, or who stretched the line upon it. And we have some artists depictions here of perhaps God measuring out what he was about to create.
Of course, that's only an artist's depiction. But who measured this and who set this in motion? This is the constellation of the Pleiades. I remember Pastor Price used to talk about this when job was asked, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades or loose the belt of Orion? Now the cluster of pleiades.
In modern times, with very powerful telescopes, we've been able to work out something about them. They're called the seven sisters. That cluster of blue stars is receding from our galaxy at approximately 15 kilometres per second, or 54,000 kilometres per hour.
Now, how could somebody, way back in the time of job, be able to measure that? Not possible. Only God would know that. This little blue dot, some of you have probably seen this online.
This little blue dot there was taken from 3.6 a photograph billion miles away by spacecraft, Voyager one, which was sent out of our solar system decades ago. And at this point, it's 3.6
billion mile away. And that's our little earth. And what did God say about our earth? He stretches out the north over empty space.
He hangs the earth on nothing. The earth's hanging on nothing there. Now, scientists and astronomers have attempted to measure the width of the universe that what they can see.
And the trouble is that every year they keep measuring, it keeps getting bigger. And I've drawn a graph here. Back in 1919, they reckon it was about 300 million light years across.
And this scale here, you can see up the top, there's 94 billion light years. That's how far it takes light to travel in that time. And this is the graph.
We've seen graphs like that before. It just keeps going up. And that was only 2006.
I couldn't find one since then. But since then, we've actually had more powerful telescopes and more powerful things. And my guess is it just goes.
Keeps going. They can't find the edge of the universe, which is very interesting. So what they knew in 2006 is that was what they reckon the width of the universe was 88,000, 900 trillion kilometres.
That's a pretty long way. And of course, our newer telescopes now, the James Webb in particular, has shown these unbelievable photographs of just some of the stars we can see in some of the galaxies. Here's a question.
Can God see to the end of the universe? Is there any end to the universe? Is another question which we don't know. Now, I was reminded by Ben about this, and some of you maybe have seen this on the news recently. This is an artist's impression of what's called Khazar Jo.
529 4351 shows how many of these they found. But there was an australian astronomer by the name of Christian Wolf at the Australian National University of Canberra. They went back through some data that was produced by a gayer space telescope a few years ago and they found this.
And this is a black hole surrounded by enormous energy that emits 500 trillion times the energy of our sun. 500 trillion times the energy of our sun. So if we were anywhere near that, if we were just the same distance of the sun away, guess what? You'd be vaporised.
If you were a couple of hundred billion miles away, you'd probably still be able to see this very bright. Now, I've always thought that there was a statement in the Bible which was the greatest understatement possibly of all time, because it says this. He made the stars also.
It's almost a throwaway line. It's almost like. Well, that's just a side issue.
He made the stars also. Trillions of them. Amazing.
And the planets as well. This is the biggest planet they've found in the universe. It's what's called an exoplanet.
It's on another galaxy and is 23,000 kilometres across. Now, Jupiter is only 14,000. That's the biggest one in our solar system and Earth's about 4000.
So you can see there, this is a massive planet as well, and there are probably billions of them. We just can't see them all. Now, let's go the other way.
Let's go from the super macro to the super, super micro. What about life? I thought this was quite a funny little cartoon that came up on the CMI website. The scientist with his massive big machine saying, if I can just synthesise life here, then I've proven that no intelligence was necessary to form life in the beginning.
Oh, really? The estimated chance of all the RNA or DNA that's required to form the most basic life form like bacterium, capable of independent existence. Remember, the viruses are not capable of independent existence, so they weren't the first life form. They can only exist if there's other life forms for them to grab ahold of.
There's been various estimates of this. Probably the smallest one is that just for a protein to self assemble itself using all the molecules in the universe coming together in some pool, was one in ten to the 240th to make one protein, to make all of the complex stuff that would create life, they've even estimated the chance might be one in ten to the 5000th part. I can't put that many zeros on the screen.
It's ridiculously small insofar as it's equivalent to zero. Okay, let's move on a little bit more. This is what's called a four dimensional model of DNA.
Now, four dimension means that it moves and I can't show you it moving, but that is the information in every one of your cells that makes everything that keeps you alive. And we used to think, oh, it's just static. So it just sits there and it makes things.
No, all of those little strands of DNA there in your chromosomes are moving around all the time and locking in and then unlocking and checking out where they are in order to make the correct proteins rather than to make too many or too few. Really looks like a pretty complex design to me. So in each human nucleus of every cell and other animals and even bacteria, but mainly in the nucleated organisms, there's two metres of DNA.
So two metres at least that, more than that, packed into something that is absolutely tiny. And this thing here talks to you about how everything moves around, but how do you fit two metres of DNA into a cell nucleus that is 100,000 times smaller than that? Have you ever been going on a holiday and you had your bags ready and you had your stuff to put in the bags, and guess what? You had more stuff that you could get into your bags. Anybody had that experience.
I think it's pretty common, isn't it? And then we've got a cull, we gotta say, I mean, we can't take that, we can't take this, we've got to push it all in there. How would you like to try and put two metres of something into something 100,000 times smaller? This requires unbelievable engineering and this is how it works. The DNA strands are turned into coils and the coil is made of a protein, that red thing, a protein coil, that's like a template for it, and it aligns itself around it.
And then it folds itself once and then that folds itself again and then that folds itself again. So we have a very, very complicated way that all of this is put together in order to get into that tiny little nucleus. You can't tell me that happened by chance.
It's just not possible. And there's also this. This is a little bacterium that has these tails that thrash around and some of you might have seen this, particularly if you've done any biology and they try to figure out, well, how does the thing thrash its tail around? I mean, does it have some sort of motor? Yep, it does.
That is a motor inside the cell of a bacterium that actually goes around and around and around and it makes this tail thrash around and it's powered by cell power, by molecules inside the cell that give it its own power. Unbelievable. Wish we could harvest that for the electricity grid, eh? And getting even smaller, the smallest known subatomic unit, although they keep on thinking they're finding smaller ones.
But as far as we know, the smallest one is called a quark. It's ten to the -18 metres in size. It's a hundred million times smaller than an atom and it makes up the neutrons and the protons that make up the atom.
Unbelievably small. Can God see that? I can't now for something completely different to consider. It's not totally different, it's a little bit different.
And here I have to bring in what I call a disclaimer because I'm going to go on to some things which people might want to argue about and discuss. And that's why you need your thinking cap. You don't have to accept everything that said because it's not cut and dried.
But it's of interest. I think it's of interest anyway. God, omnipotent, omniscient and everlasting.
You know, Ezekiel's vision of God was unbelievable. What he saw became man. And Christ is born as a baby, morally and physically weakened by 4000 years of sin, knowing nothing in comparison to God and condemned to mortality.
God became man. That's something that we will never fully understand, but it is critical, it is so important for our salvation. And the Bible says this.
Though he was a son, son of God, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered. So as a man, Christ learned things through his life, even things that were not very pleasant and in the end, things that were terrible. Now we've seen this statement in Philippians before.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Now I have to say here that the mind here is the most important thing. The body is one thing, but the mind is much more important when it comes to salvation issues was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation.
Taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. But was that all? Let's consider what is involved here. What was the form of God before Christ became a human being? Was it just his appearance and not his substance? Surely not.
He wasn't just in the appearance of God. He was God. So what was the form of man after Christ came as a human being? Was that just his appearance but not his substance? You know, in early Christianity, there was a doctrine that was developed by some who were saying that he was just an apparition, that he just appeared.
He wasn't really a mandeh. And there were other doctrines. And in the first 300 years after Christ, there were so many different ideas about Jesus and how he was incarnated, became man.
We'll go a very little bit into that, but we do not believe it was his appearance only. It was his substance when he came to this earth. Because both times in the Greek, in this chapter, Paul uses the term for form morphe, which can mean shape, appearance, or nature.
And Ellen White, over 400 times mentions Christ taking human moral and physical nature in its fallen condition, or words to that effect. But she was always careful to state that despite taking our nature, not once did he fall into sin. Now we could ask ourselves the question, if Jesus came as a baby, you remember that shortly after he was born, Herod put out an edict.
All the young children up to the age of two, I think it was, should be killed. If Jesus had been killed, then would he not have been our perfect sacrifice? That's a very deep question, which it's interesting to think about, because we have to ask ourselves, what was the mission of Christ? And we'll come to this later. Was it just to die for our sins, or was it more than that? And we'll come to that shortly.
Christ was fully human as well as being fully God. And in Hebrews, we see this written, for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathise with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. And Ellen White had this to say.
By taking upon himself mans nature in its fallen condition. Christ did not in the least participate in its sin. He was subject to the infirmities and weaknesses of the flesh with which humanity is encompassed.
And she also says, he, the majesty of heaven, disrobed himself of his glory and clothed his divinity with humanity, that he might pass through what humanity must pass through. Now, here's a question. How small can God become? Well, that's a human egg.
Pretty small, but you can just see it. And we now come to the genealogy of Jesus. This is quite interesting because there's two genealogies of Jesus.
One traced through the line of. They both come through King David, but one traced through the line of Maryland, his mother, and one traced through the line of Joseph, his adopted father, not his biological father. Why? Why do we have those two different genealogies? Well, we have to have a short biology lesson.
I was privileged to write three chapters for this textbook. I didn't write the one about what we're about to discover, though, or talk about. We're going to talk about genetics.
Now, genetics is a very interesting thing. You know, Adele and I have been watching this tv programme called DNA Family Secrets, where they find out various things about people's ancestry by looking at their DNA. The human genome, that's all your genes, is contained in 23 chromosomes, and most of you have done any biology, will know that 22 chromosomes of those are called autosomes and are contributed equally by DNA from mother and father.
So that's why you can see attributes of father or mother in children, often both the child's genitalia. Gender, though, is determined by the presence or absence of a special chromosome called the Y chromosome, which can be contributed only by the father. So if you got a Y chromosome, you're going to be a boy.
If you don't have it and have an x instead, you'll be a girl. The father has both the potential to contribute either a Y or an X chromosome, so that's why father's going to have daughters, but he can contribute either one or the other. So how might this have contributed to the miraculous conception of Christ? Because there's some issues here that are interesting to look at.
For example, in a typical, what we call an autosome, the autosome chromosomes are the ones that determine lots of physical things, like how big you are, what your muscles are like, how good your vision is, what your heart's like. All of those things are contributed by the autosomes. They determine, basically, most of you, the large amount of you, and it's a mixture of the male and female DNA that come from mother and father.
So that's why every brothers, sisters and so on, well, they don't necessarily look like each other, unless they're twins or triplets, identical, because they're mixtures and different mixtures happen, each different type. Okay, so who made up the mix of the genes in baby Jesus? What was the form of man that after Christ came as a human being? What was it like as far as genetics concerned? Well, here we'll have a look at a little bit more science. This is the normal male, what we call karyotype of 23 human chromosomes.
You can see them all there. Some are bigger, some are smaller. And you ladies and young women, if you have a look down there at the bottom xY, you'll notice that that y male chromosome is much smaller than the x.
We must be inferior, us blokes. I guess that must be something like that. And that's contributed by the father and that one comes from the mother.
That's the x. What about a female? 23 chromosomes, that's the x contributed by the father and that's the x contributed by the mother. They're both equal and quite good.
So what makes a boy and what makes a girl? Well, if you have a Y chromosome and matches with an X XY you are a boy, and if you have two X's, you are a girl. Now the reason why there's this mixture is that what happens during fertilisation is that the chromosomes actually cross over and they link with each other and then break apart so that you've got bits of from each side. But that doesn't happen with the Y chromosome.
It stays pure if you like, it doesn't change at all. Now this brings up some enigmas. None of the Y chromosome, Christ was a man.
A male could have come from Mary, his mother. Women don't have them. That's interesting.
So did God make a human person from Mary's DNA alone? Particularly, did he make a male from Mary's DNA alone? Well, scientifically that's not possible, but we have to look at things that are beyond science. So problem number one, Christ was male and Mary had no male DNA, no Y chromosome. Problem number two, Christ was fully human as well as being fully God.
So does this mean that half of Christ's DNA was that of God and half was human? Does God even have DNA? I don't think so, not in his heavenly presence. But I would stand corrected. Now, this king of England, you'll all recognise who this is.
Henry VIII. He went through this many wives trying to get a male heir, but didn't succeed. Not a very nice person having bumped them off.
But anyway, Jesus was the adopted son of Joseph, and you can find that in Luke. So why is Joseph's ancestry recorded in Matthew if he wasn't Christ's natural father? The common argument is that it was to establish Christ's right to David's throne, but actually it come from David through Mary as well. So that argument is not that strong.
Another question is, was there any right for an adopted son to inherit kingship in Israel? I asked our pastor if he knew any examples and he couldn't find any. I can't either. No, you had to be the actual son of the king.
So why is Joseph's ancestry recorded in Matthew if he was not Christ's natural father? There's a possible explanation. This is. I grant you, this is speculative, and I'm not saying that this, anybody has to believe this, so I asked that question again.
Did God make a human person of Christ from Mary's DNA alone? Mary's DNA couldn't have done it fully because she had no Y chromosome. Did God make a synthetic, perfect DNA to add to Aries with the Y chromosome? There are those who believe that Christ took the nature of Adam before he fell. That's a big theological argument, has been an argument in our church for many years, and it's an interesting argument because it has very significant implications.
If God made a perfect DNA to add to Mary's, would that make Christ truly human? Not really. That would give him some sort of advantage, wouldn't it? Even if it was Adam's DNA before he fell, it would still give Christ an advantage. Now, here's a question Jeremiah recorded when God said, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.
How did God know him before he was formed in the womb? Here's a possible answer. That's human DNA, a DNA sequence, the whole sequence of what makes a human being. Did God have a perfect knowledge of Joseph's DNA sequence? Yep.
Did God have the power to use a copy of Joseph's DNA to add that to Mary without them coming together? It's a question. Would such a combination be consistent with scripture and explain the use of Joseph's genealogy in the line of Jesus? Possibly. Is this a rational explanation of Christ being fully human? So to be fully human, he had to have human DNA because he had the same genetics as us? Is this possibly the best explanation of how Christ could be our example in leading a life of victory? Overdose.
Sin, despite inherited human weaknesses? So Ellen White once again says this. He that is Christ, had clothed his divinity with humanity. And in every period of his life, through infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood, he had suffered every phase of trial and temptation with which humanity is beset.
In fact, even more because he was tempted as God as well. So the temptation of Christ that's mentioned here says he went through every phase of temptation that we do. Christ could only suffer the trials of human manhood if he was an actual human and possess the Y chromosome if we're talking about male temptations, and only if he was to be made a male and the firstborn.
And that's another study, because the firstborn was to be dedicated to God. You'll find that in deuteronomy. So any synthetic or perfect DNA, even that of Adam, before the fall, would give him an advantage over us and negate such passages as tempted in all points like as we are, yet without.
Perhaps it's not unreasonable to think that the Y chromosome and other genetic material from a father was God miraculously replicating Joseph's DNA out of nothing and combining it with Mary's in an active creation that reminds us of Adam's creation. Exactly how God did this is way beyond our human understanding. And I can quote this passage, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Now, this was written back in 900 bc. The heavens were higher than the earth, as far as you can see. But think of what I was saying before.
The heavens are higher than the earth now. Wow. A lot further away than we ever thought possible.
That's how far away God's thoughts are from our thoughts and his abilities beyond our abilities. The last question to ask is, and Ellen White quotes this when Christ's divinity flashed through his humanity. And she quotes this on several occasions when he was tempted in the wilderness and other places, on occasions, his divinity came through.
Was that divinity just his bodily form, or was it something else? Or was it his godly character that flashed forth the godly character that he had been given by his father? So why is any of this important? We know Christ is our substitute. Without him, there is no hope of salvation. Christ is our substitute.
He's also our example. So this is why Christ was not just taken out, if we can use that terrible term, as a child or a young man before he began his ministry, because he was still perfect. He was still a perfect sacrifice.
So why did he have to go through this? 33 years of a lot of the time, temptation and troubles it wasn't just because he was our sacrifice. It was because he was our example. He's also our leader.
So Christ said to many people, come and follow me. Many of them did. We know of one who didn't.
For the rich young ruler, that was just too much to ask. Come follow me. Because following Christ is not just physically following him.
It requires a lot more than that. 100% commitment is a big thing. The scripture says, God is not mocked.
So if Christ calls, come follow me, as he did in Galatians six, seven, or as reported by Paul. Is he asking something that's impossible because he was so much genetically superior to us when he lived among us? Is that it? In Christ? Object lessons, chapter 25. And I'd recommend this book to you.
And you can download this easily, just download on your phone the Ellen White from the website, and you can get all of her writings on your phone. And she makes these statements, never should we lower the standard of righteousness in order to accommodate inherited or cultivated tendencies to wrongdoing. And she says, all righteousness, attributes of character, dwell in God as a perfect, harmonious whole.
And everyone who receives Christ as a personal saviour is privileged to possess those attributes. And she also says, after she's quoted John 15 five, without me, you can do nothing. Ellen White put it this way.
As the will of man cooperates with the will of God, it becomes omnipotent. Whatever is to be done at his command may be accomplished in his strength. All his biddings are enablings.
That's one of her most famous quotes. All Christ's biddings, he gives you power to perform to the one who overcomes. And this is right at the very end of scripture.
I will grant the right to sit with me on my throne just as I overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. Jesus words in revelation, and Christ will finish all things. And this is possibly the best known quote of Ellen White, because this is the universe recreated, if you like, at least our world recreated from him who created all flow, life and light and gladness throughout the realms of illimitable space.
Here she's saying that space was illimitable even in the time when she said this, they didn't think it was. From the minutest atom to the greatest world, all things animate and inner animate in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love. How big is that God? And how big is that love? I've asked Ryan to sing a song which is all about how big God's love is.
And how big God is the man may strive to go beyond the reach of space to go beyond the distant glimmering star. This world's a room so small within my master's house. The open skies but a portion of his yard.
How big is is God how big and wide his vast ome to try until these lips can only start. He's big enough to rotten hash his mighty universe yet small enough to live within my heart. As winter's chill may cause the tiny sea to to lie asleep till waked by summer's rain the heart grown cold will warm and throb with life on you the masters.
His touch will bring the glow again. How big is God? How big and wide his vast domain to try and tear these lips can only start. He's big enough to rule his mighty universe yet small enough to live within my heart.
Yet small enough to live within my heart. Heavenly Father, we are so impressed by your wonderful power and your wonderful love is something that we will need eternity to come to know a little bit more about. And we are just so humbled by the fact that you are such a big God and your love is so great.
And as we leave now youre sanctuary, we pray for blessings upon all those who are travelling and we ask that you will be with us through this coming week and help us to be able to share that knowledge of our wonderful and big God with those whom we meet. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.
This message was made available by the Waitara Seventh-day Adventist Church. For more resources like this, visit waitarachurch.org dot au.
hi, I'm the two tip lady with tips to help make your life more simple.
And I've got a question for you. Have you ever stayed awake at night because a phrase was going round and round and round and round in your head like a cracked record? I surely have. The other day I heard someone say something that did just that.
You can't have happiness by chasing happiness. So that got my think tank working on overdrive. So now I want you to imagine that I've got a big handful of sawdust in my hand.
What's sawdust? Sawdust is a byproduct. It's a byproduct of woodturning, isn't it? Sawdust is created as a consequence of the wood being chiselled, shaved or sawed. Well, I've come to the conclusion that happiness is a byproduct too.
It's a byproduct of being healthy. And I'm thinking about health in four different areas of our life. If we're suffering with poor health, we probably don't feel too happy.
If our relationships with family and friends are fractured, we don't usually feel too happy about it. If we're psychologically unhealthy, for example, if we say to ourselves, I can't do anything right, I'm too dumb, I'm absolutely stupid, I'm just no good. Well, then we're not happy either.
If we're full of guilt and shame and we're spiritually unhealthy as a consequence, we don't feel happy either. So I reckon it makes sense to say you can't be happy by chasing happiness. Yes.
So therefore, what do we do? Okay, we need to get healthy in those areas. Physically, relationally, psychologically, spiritually. And when we're healthy, then we naturally find the happiness that might be eluding us.
At the moment, there are tonnes of ways to do a health cheque, but one simple thing I do is ask myself, am I doing what I know? So there's tip number 01:00 a.m. i. Doing what I know to be healthy.
Hmm. That makes me think, am I doing the simple things? Drinking water, exercising, breathing in fresh, pure air, eating simple, wholesome food, getting out in the sunlight? Nothing better than growing fresh fruit for your body and flowers for your mind. Am I going to bed early enough to get good sleep? Am I enjoying some relaxation? And am I trusting in God's loving care for me? So, am I doing what I know? Am I open to learning new ideas that might teach me about things I don't know? Do you think if I simply do the things I know, though, that physically I'm going to reap the rewards and find new happiness? Then how about I do a relationship cheque too? Am I holding grudges? Am I forgiving? Am I being kind? I remember once upon a time when a relationship was sour for me and I was bemoaning the fact, and a lovely lady asked me a simple question, she simply said, are you being kind? Phew.
That hit me right between the eyes. I knew I wasn't. And when I focused on being kind instead of critical, wowee, that relationship was transformed.
It became a source of happiness. Hmm. So what about a psychological cheque? Well, I'm no psychologist, but I've learned that I need to think about how I talk to myself.
Oh, yes, indeed, it's okay to talk to yourself. When dear husband hears me sometimes exclaim, oh, I'm so silly. Oh, how dumb can I be? He says to me, hey, don't put yourself down.
Words can destroy happiness or generate happiness. So let's focus on words that help us grow. Do you think then that our happiness will grow too? Then what about a spiritual health cheque? I ask myself again, am I doing what I know? Am I connecting with my heavenly father each morning first thing? Or am I waking up and surfing on my phone and forgetting that God is simply wanting me to be thankful that I've woken up and tell him so and that I want him to walk with me through the day? Do I make some time for walking in nature every day? For looking for the beautiful things God has made? I'm reminded of the words of a song.
Oh, he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own. Hmm. What a way to think.
Perhaps we need to apologise to someone. Then let's just do it. I've had to do that.
Oh, wow. It's sure made me a lot more careful about what I say, because apologising is super duper humbling. But the freedom and joy that comes is worth the embarrassment.
It's more embarrassing to need to apologise than to refuse to be humble. Really? We can walk and talk with God all day when busy with home, business, family and friends. And if we do these simple health cheques, we will find happiness, guaranteed.
Because happiness is a byproduct of being healthy. Want tip number two. He he he.
Here it is. Am I doing what I know? The same tip as number one. Why should it be different? Because that's a great tip.
Am I doing what I know? This is an enormous key to being happy, because happiness is a natural byproduct of taking action on these simple health principles. Does this mean that we're never going to have health challenges in all these areas? No, we're not in a perfect world yet. But even with challenges in these areas, we'll have more smiles, love, laughter, joy and tonnes of happiness to share, guaranteed.
That's it from the two tip lady today who loves to help make your life more simple.
This programme has been brought to you by 3ABN Australia radio.
