Episode Transcript
Jesus said in Matthew 28, verse 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, Pastor Lyle Southwell. Okay, so here's what we're going to do today. We're going to begin by obeying a command of God.
Okay? So let's find this command. It's found in Isaiah, chapter 40. Isaiah, chapter 40.
And then we're going to obey what the Bible says. Welcome, Ezekiel. Glad you made it back up here.
Isaiah, chapter 40 and verse 26. The Bible says, look up on high and behold who has created these things. Okay, so for kids down the front here this morning, let me ask you this question.
If you look up in the sky, what are you going to see? Sorry, if you are outside and you look up in the sky, what are you going to see? Okay, you're going to see rain today, but when it's not raining, you'll see the sun. And you might even see the sun for a moment out there today. You never know.
Okay, so when we look up into the sky, we see the sun. If you look up at nighttime, what do you see? Stars and the moon. Okay, so the Bible says, look up and behold.
Look at these things. Who has created these things? Okay, so who created all these things? God created these things. Okay.
Then it goes on. Who has created these things? That brings out their host by number. In other words, there's a lot of them when you look up at nighttime, isn't there? Okay, that brings out their host by number.
He calls them all by names, by the greatness of his might, for he is strong in power and not one of them fails. So I've got a couple of questions for you kids here this morning. First of all, what? Okay, first of all, if you look up in this night sky, how many stars can you see? Thousands.
And the Bible says that God knows every single one of them by name and that God created every single one of them. We're going to find out how God created them as we go through today's Bible study, okay? Within our solar system, how many stars are there? Okay, I've got a lot here. Okay.
Ezekiel 1 billion. Here. Sorry.
Infinity. Over here. Okay.
And over here. I had. How many I have over here.
Harley, you're a little bit old for this group, aren't you? Okay, let me ask the question again. I want you to listen very close to the question. In our solar system.
How many stars are there? The correct answer is one. You see, our solar system is our sun and our planets, including planet Earth, that's the solar system. Our galaxy is what our solar system is a part of, and it has many, many, many stars in it.
Okay, so a galaxy has many, many stars in it. All right, let me find my clicker. Where did my clicker go? There's a photo that I took some years ago of the sun, and you can't quite see it there on the screen, but there's a big storm happening over there on the left hand side.
It's kind of cool, isn't it? The sun? Okay, so we're going to learn some things about the sun today. The Bible says that we are to look up on high. We are to look at these things, we are to think about God, who created them, and they are going to teach us something about God.
So we need to learn. What can we learn when we look up into either the daytime sky, where we see the sun, or the nighttime sky, where we see the stars? So, kids, here we go. Here's some interesting things for you.
How hot do you reckon the sun might be? Okay. Yes, very hot. 10,000 degrees.
You would be correct. Okay, the sun is 150,000,000 kilometres away. If you could stretch your hand, so let's say that one of your kids had a superpower where you could stretch your arm, like really stretch it and you could reach out and you could touch the sun, what would it do to the end of your finger? It would burn it.
How long would it take for you to be able to feel it? Okay, let me tell you. Let me tell you. You would think it would take 1 second, because if you put your finger on top of the stove and you burn it, it's like bang.
You feel that instantly, don't you? But that has to travel up your finger, along your arm, up to your brain before you can actually feel it. If you were to stretch your arm out and touch the sun, it would take you over 100 years before you could feel it. It's that far away.
By the time it travelled all the way down your arm to you, it would take over 100 years. Okay? It's a million times bigger than the earth. And let's say that if you were living on the sun, okay, so let's say that you were living on the sun and you were in the same proportion that you are right now, okay? So right now, let me see, I'm about 6ft tall, right? Let's say I was living on the sun.
But the sun is bigger, so I would be bigger, right? How tall do you think I would be if I was living on the sun? Okay, we got a guess here. As big as a church. A little bit bigger than that.
I would be not 6ft tall. I would be 1000ft tall, 300 metres tall. That would be quite large, wouldn't it? Okay, so we live in an amazing environment here on planet Earth.
Okay? So we need to put this into perspective. And some time ago, somebody came up with the concept of imagining that our earth was a golf ball. We went forward driving the other day with the youth and out in the bush I found this golf ball and I threw it on the back of the ute to see how long it would stay there.
And this morning it was still there. So I brought it to show you all this morning. Okay, so here we have a golf ball.
Is that smaller than our earth? Yes, it's a lot smaller. So what we're going to do this morning is we're going to pretend end that this is our earth. Okay.
Can you see yourself living somewhere there on the golf ball? You'd be kind of tiny, wouldn't you? You probably wouldn't be able to see yourself if you were living on the golf ball. Okay, so if we think of the golf ball is our earth. All right, golf ball is our earth.
How big do you think the sun would be? About that big. Yeah. Michaela, is it? Michaela says about this big.
Okay. Yeah. As big as your fist.
Okay, so let's have a look here. So we've got the golf ball. And what was your name? Jenny.
Jenny says about as big as your fist. Michaela says about this big. Any other takers? All right, so we got to figure this one out.
I need some help. Who's going to help me? Okay. What was your name again? Okay.
All right, what I want you to do is come and stand over here. Actually, we're going to do it from this side. You come and stand here.
Now, what I want you to do is to pull the tape measure out until it reaches the size of the sun in comparison to the golf ball. All right? You ready? Okay, go. And when do you reckon you're there? You can stop about there.
About that big. You reckon the sun's that much bigger than the earth? Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. And we'll stop about there.
Okay. All right, so if the Earth was a golf ball, that's how big the sun would be. Is that a bit bigger than the earth, guys? Yeah, that's a serious amount bigger than the earth.
In fact, I was measuring at this earlier, earlier. And it goes all the way up to the ceiling. That's how big the sun would be in comparison to the golf ball.
Okay, thank you. Sit back down now. All right, so that starts to give us a little bit of an impression about our solar system.
Okay, now, what does that tell us about God? Do we serve a powerful God? Do we serve a big God? Yeah. Do we serve an amazing God who can create something like that? Okay, so we haven't finished yet. We've got lots more things to learn, okay? You would be able to fit 960,000 golf balls inside the sun if our earth was the size of a golf ball and the sun was an equivalent size.
Okay? Now, the sun is just one of hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. And the sun is a very beautiful thing. Have you ever noticed you get some clouds on the horizon when the sun comes up? The sun goes down.
What does it do to the sky? It paints it the most beautiful colours, doesn't it? So God didn't just make a sun that keeps us warm. He made us a sun that adds beauty to our world, spectacular beauty to our world. But we shouldn't underestimate it, because it is not really a gentle giant.
It's an orbiting thermonuclear reactor with staggering force and destructive energy. The good thing about our sun is that our sun is very stable, you know, has storms on it. There's a photo of a storm over here.
You can come and have a look later. You can just see it there very faintly. Our sun has storms on it, but not like the other suns that we see in the universe.
They have really big storms. And if our sun was not very, very stable like it is right now, we would all die in just a moment. Big storm would come and it would wipe out all life on planet Earth.
So here's what God did. God says, okay, I want to build a planet that people can live on. And so I'm going to give them a sun that is nice and stable.
I'm going to give them a sun that has massive and tremendous force, but that paints the sky with beautiful colours. I'm going to give them a sun that can ripen the tomatoes that are on their vine, just as if it wasn't doing anything else, had nothing else better else to do with its life, but just sit up there in the sky and ripen those tomatoes. Okay, so that's the kind of sun that God has given us to do.
Okay. When it comes to stability of light output, the sun is at the top of its class. Were the sun, instead of being stable, to have huge swings in output, or if it was slightly closer to the earth or slightly farther away from the earth, we wouldn't be alive.
So you think about this. Our earth tilts a little bit, doesn't it? Which is why we get summer and winter. And when our earth tilts a little bit away from the sun, what happens at the poles? It gets freezing cold.
Has anybody ever been to Antarctic or the Arctic? No. It gets freezing cold and you can't really live there. You can't really grow anything there.
So if our Earth was just a little bit further away from the sun, you wouldn't be able to live. Now, while it's getting really, really cold out there, what's happening here when the Arctic is getting really cold, what's happening here in Australia? It's getting hot. You remember how hot it got last summer? We had some scorches, didn't we? We had some temperatures that were in.
What was it? We nearly hit 50 degrees last summer. If it gets very much above that temperature, guess what? You die. It's that simple.
And our earth hasn't tilted that much. So you imagine if Earth was just a slightly bit further away or a slightly bit closer to the sun, we would be all dead. None of us would be here.
But here's what God did. God made a beautiful sun. He made it a very stable sun.
And then he created an earth. And he says, okay, I'm going to put the earth, I'm going to put it right there about that distance from the sun, because that's exactly the right distance from the sun so that we can live. And then God did something else.
God covered our earth with water so that we could live, because without water, you can't live. But then he realised that the water would go stagnant if it just sat there. You know what happens to water if it just sits, like in a dam or a pond and it never moves? It goes stagnant and smelly and horrible, doesn't it? So then he said, okay, we need something to move the water and to circulate around the world.
So he made a moon. So we got a moon that goes all around the world. And you know what that moon does? It pulls the water and then lets it go and then pulls it and lets it go.
And it acts like a massive hydraulic pump to circulate the oceans so that our oceans don't go stagnant. Don't we serve an amazing God? He thought it all out, didn't he? He set our earth in just the right place. He gave us a moon, and then he's like, well, you know, there's a whole bunch of asteroids that are floating around in space, and it would be a real pest if that sort of damaged the earth too much.
So he surrounded our earth with an atmosphere so that when they come flying into our earth, we see them shoot across the sky, and they're really pretty to look at. They always catch your attention, and they're called shooting stars, but they burn up and they don't hurt us. If you look at the moon, the moon is all pock marked with all kinds of holes in it, where asteroids have been hitting the moon and would do a lot of destruction if they were hitting our earth like that.
Okay, so let's look at a passage from the Bible. Put my golf ball back here. You can all see the golf ball and think of our earth as a golf ball.
Let's see what the Bible says. Let's go to proverbs chapter three and verse 19. Proverbs, three.
And we're going to read verse 19, where the Bible simply says, the Lord, by wisdom, has founded the earth. By understanding, he has established the heavens. So let me ask you all this question.
When you look at our earth, when you look at where our earth is and how our earth works and where our sun is and how our sun works and our moon and all of the things that God has created, God has put them all in exactly the right place so that we can live here. Isn't that so? The Bible says he has done it by wisdom, and he has done it by understanding. Did God understand what he needed to do when he placed our earth exactly where it is? He certainly did.
Did he understand what he needed to do when he put a moon to fly around our earth? He certainly did, because that way he can circulate the oceans of the world. Did God understand what he was doing when he put our sun exactly where it is? He certainly did. Let's go over to psalms, chapter 19, and let's read what the Bible says over here.
Psalms, chapter 19. And then we're going to learn some more things about our universe. Psalms, chapter 19.
And in verse one, the Bible says, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament. The stars show his handiwork. Day under day utters speech, and night under night shows knowledge.
The Bible says that the heavens, the stars declare the glory of God. Okay, so, kids, what we're going to do is we're going to learn something about the stars now, all right? So I need your help again. Someone else going to help me this time.
Michaela, you're next in line. Let's look at the size of our sun again, shall we? Compared to the golf ball right there. Okay, we stopped, right? That's the size of our sun compared to the golf ball.
Everybody sees that. That's rather big, isn't it? If our earth was a golf ball, that would be the sun. Okay, so let's look out a little bit further into the universe.
Thank you. Let's look out a bit further into the universe. And if you look into the night sky, one of the brightest stars that you'll see out there is a big one.
It's called Betelgee's, or beetlejuice. Okay, so let's do this, then. Let's think about Bettelgee's for a moment and let's see what we can find out about this one.
Okay, so let's say that our earth is a golf ball and we want to measure the size of Bettel geese from our golf ball. We can't do it with our tape measure. Our tape measure is too small.
So we need a tape measure that's going to stretch a little bit further. And who's going to be my volunteer? Okay, Ezekiel's next in line. Okay, you can say sitting there because you're just not going to make it that far, mate.
It's like this. You'd have to take measure. You'd have to walk outside the church, and you'd have to keep walking.
How far do you think you'd have to keep walking? Okay. You'd have to go across the road, you'd have to turn right, and you'd have to go up to the New England highway, and then you'd have to turn left. You'd have to keep walking.
And taking that tape measure with you. Is that starting to get to be big compared to this? Yeah. So you got to go all the way up to the top of the hill over here.
Right? You know, the highway goes all the way to top of the hill. You've got to keep walking. Walking.
Is it getting big? Okay, so then you go all the way to the bottom of the hill. There's a set of lights at the bottom of the hill where the shops are. You know where that is? Yeah.
That's a long way away compared to our golf ball. That's a lot bigger than our golf Ball, isn't it? You got to keep walking. Okay? You go past the shops, you go around that big left hand curve, and there's the paddocks there, right? You all know where that is.
You got to keep walking. You know where you get to the turnoff to Maitland on the right hand side. Next set of lights when you get there.
That's how big battle geese is. Compared to our Earth being a golf ball, that's rather large, wouldn't you say? That is a large, large planet, sun. Thank you, sun.
Okay, so battle geese is twice the size of the Earth's orbit around the sun. So if you think about the distance we are from the sun and how big of an orbit that makes around the sun, battle geese is twice the size of that. You could fit 252,000,000,000,000 earths inside battle geese.
Okay, so we got some pictures up here. Let's see if we can find some pictures. I did have a clicker somewhere.
What did I do with it? Where is it? Okay, so here's our sun. All right. Okay, kids, can you see our sun here? That's the sun.
See that? Can you see that little dot, little pinhead? That's us. That's the earth. The sun's a bit bigger than the earth, isn't it? All right, so let's continue on.
Let's see what else we can find. Okay, so here's our sun. Here's the earth.
Yep. Oops, going too fast. All right, so let's say we make the sun smaller.
So that's our sun there now. And then we have Sirius Pollocks, Arcturus. We're going to have to shrink these down again.
And let me see, here's Arcturus. Now, here's Betelgee's. And then, Taras, does this start to give you an impression of the size of these big suns that are out there? They are massive.
In fact, if we were to put our earth on the screen right now, it would be smaller than a. Smaller than smaller. You would not be able to see it.
Even with a microscope, you would hardly even be able to see our earth if it was on the screen beside these ones right here. So, just working our way backwards, here's Arcturus. We go back.
Here's Arcturus. And here's our sun. And going back.
Here's our sun, and here's our Earth. Anybody starting to feel a little bit small right now? Like we live on a little bit of a speck of dust? Okay, Ezekiel's got a question. Go for a man.
You got a question? You thought the sun was the biggest star. It's the closest star. That's why it looks like the biggest one.
But now we find the sun is kind of small star, isn't it? Okay, let's find out about Arcturus. Where did Arcturus go? There he is. Here's Arcturus.
The Bible speaks about Arcturus. And Arcturus is an interesting star because it is the speed demon of the skies. It's a maniac.
This is one that needs to be booked for speeding. You see, this particular star right here is hurtling through space at the speed of 150,000,000 kilometres per hour. That's a little bit fast, isn't it? And it is so big that it has dragged in with its gravitational force a whole heap of other suns that it is dragging through space at this incredible speed.
If we turn our bibles to the book of Job, it's interesting what it says. You see, Arcturus has been doing this for a very, very long time. We don't know how long ago that God created Arcturus, but when he created Arcturus, he's like, yeah, I'm going to create a fast one here.
Because he knew that there would be some people who would appreciate speed. Okay, job 38. The great thing about when God creates things that speed, they don't crash.
Job 38 and verse 32. There it is. Can you bring forth Mazdaroth in his season or can you guide Arcturus with his son? So here you've got Arcturus.
He's a massive star, hurtling through space at an incredible speed. And as he's hurtling through space, dragging all these other sons with him, and yet he never crashes into anybody else. Why? Because God is guiding him.
And when God is in control, God doesn't lose control. God doesn't crash, God doesn't mess up. And the thing that interests me is, this was written a long, long time ago, long before we ever really knew and understood what it was that was taking place with Arcturus and his sons.
Okay, now my kids have all deserted me, except for these two. Congratulations, guy. Brooklyn and.
Sorry, Jet. Brooklyn and Jet, well done. Okay, so, Brooklyn and Jet, here's what we're going to talk about next.
We talked about Arcturus, which is the really fast one. We talked about Betelgee's, which is a really big one. So how far did we make it with Betelgee's from here all the way to.
Yeah, traffic lights, turn off to Maitland. That was big. What about if we talk about a big one now? How about that? Let me see what we've got here, Museffi.
Okay, where's our golf ball? Again. Once again, we can't use our tape measure this time. You're going to have to walk out of the church carrying your tape measure.
You're going to have to turn left, turn right and then turn left. Head out along the New England highway. You go all the way over the top of the hill down into the dip around the corner.
You come to the set of traffic lights where geese was. You keep going. Come to the big roundabout, you keep going.
You go over the train tracks, you keep going until you come to Talara Lakes. You don't quite make it to Bunnings. And that's Museffi.
Compared to our earth being a golf ball, it is so big that you could fit 2.7 quadrillion earths inside that one star. I'm not really even sure what quadrillion is.
But anyway, if you want to understand quadrillion, here's a way of understanding quadrillion. If you were to go back in history 2.7 quadrillion years so we can try and get our heads around what a quadrillion is, this is going to go back in history 2.7
quadrillion. Sorry, 2.7 quadrillion second.
So we go back in history 2.7 quadrillion second. That is equal to 104,000,000,000 years.
That's the long way back. That's pretty big. Okay.
All right, so that's Museffi. And then I thought to finish off with, we will talk about a really big one. How about that? So let's talk about a really big one.
This one is called Canis Majorus. Okay? So if the earth was a golf ball. If the earth was a golf ball and you wanted to measure canis majorus, here's what you would do.
You would start with your tape measure at the bottom of Mount Everest and you would climb with your tape measure all the way to the top of Mount Everest and you wouldn't even still be there yet if the earth was. So next time you climb Mount Everest, take a golf ball with you, okay? And when you're standing on top of Mount Everest, then look out and think about Canis Majorus. Our earth is this big in comparison to that star.
Okay? An easy way to do that might be to go flying with David Jeffvick sometime in his airline. And when he gets to cruising altitude, you can look down all right, take a golf ball out of your pocket and think, our earth is this big. And that's how big Canis Majoris is.
Is that big? That's a massive one. Okay. You could fit 7 quadrillion earths inside Canis Majoris.
Okay, so it's like this. You could probably cover half of new South Wales about this deep in golf balls and still fit them all inside Canis Majoris. Okay? That's a big star.
And what we need to understand, what we need to figure out is if we have things that are this big in our universe, how did they come to be there? Where did they come from? How did they end up there? Well, we need to find out the answer to that question. Before we do, let's think about a couple of other statistics, some information for you. Okay, so they've recently updated the statistics on the number of stars in our galaxy and the number of galaxies that are observable.
And as of 2016, there are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. That's our galaxy. That's our home.
Our sun is one of those stars. There are 400 billion of them in the observable universe. There are lots of galaxies, some of them 50 times bigger than ours.
But there are over 2 trillion observable galaxies as of last year. 2 trillion observable galaxies. And as I mentioned, the largest one is 50 times bigger.
So where did they all come from? Where did all these stars come from? Where did all these galaxies come from? Okay, your kids, you can tell me. Where'd they all come from? How did God make them? By his word. Okay, let's read this in the Bible.
Let's go to psalms, chapter 33, and verse six. Because what I want to do this morning is to give you all a picture of who God is. Often, because of sin, we puff ourselves up and we make ourselves a little bit more special than what we actually really are.
And we think, yeah, we're pretty special here in this world. And we can do amazing things, and we can do amazing things, but we need to remember who we are in relationship to God, because when we understand who we are in relationship to God, then we will truly be able to understand the love of God. Okay? In psalms, chapter 33 and verse six, the Bible says, by the word of the Lord.
So here comes Ezekiel. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, the stars were made, and all the hosts of them were made by the breath of his mouth. Okay, I want you to think about that for a moment.
God comes along, and God says, you know what? I'm going to make a new star today, and I'm going to make it so much bigger than planet earth. Then it's going to be the equivalent of going to the top of Mount Everest or cruising altitude for David. All right, I'm going to make it that big.
Okay. How will I make a star that big? Well, I'm just going to make it. And he makes it.
The Bible says they were made by the breath of his mouth. Okay, kids, have you ever made bubbles? How do you make them? You make them with the breath. You just blow them out, don't you? And all of those bubbles go out floating around.
That's how God makes stars. Is that power? Is he powerful? God? He's a big God. He's a massive God.
It gives you a different impression of who God is, doesn't it? The universe in which we live, is our earth kind of small in this universe? Yeah, it's a little speck of dust, isn't it? It's tiny, tiny little speck of dust in the universe, and it's the earth that we call home. It's where we live. Okay, one corinthians, chapter two.
You see, the Bible says that one day we will go to heaven to be with God. And, kids, when we go to Heaven to be with God, will we be able to explore the universe? Yes, we will. Okay, first Corinthians.
Do you think there's going to be some new things out there that we have never seen before? Yeah, I think so. First Corinthians, one Corinthians, chapter two. And we're going to read verse nine.
The Bible says, but it is written, eye has not seen, neither has any ears heard, neither has entered into the heart or the mind of man, the things that God has prepared for those that love him. In other words, the Bible says you can't even begin to get your head around the things that God has created out there. And when we look out into the sky with our telescopes and we observe what is taking place out there, we really get an impression that you cannot wrap your mind around the kind of God that we serve.
He is so big, he is so powerful, and yet somebody who can wake up one morning and say, you know what? I'm going to create Canis Magnus today. It's going to be a big one and just speaks it into existence, and bang, there it is. Somebody who has the power to do that also has the power to create you.
Not only does he have the power to create you, he loves you, he knows who you are, and he knows everything that there is about you as an individual. Okay, so, kids, here's a question. How much does God know about you? I mean, hey, it's a big universe out there, right? Full of big things, exciting things.
And if I was God, I would be distracted by all the exciting things that I've created in the universe. And there's a little speck of dust called our planet. How much does God know about you here on this planet? A lot.
Let's find out what the Bible says. Let's turn our bibles to Matthew, chapter ten. Let's find out how much God knows about you.
Matthew, chapter ten. And we're going to read in verse 29. So, Matthew ten, verse 29.
The Bible says this are not two sparrows. You ever seen a sparrow? Little diddy birds fly around? Yep. Are not two sparrows.
Sold for a few cents. And one of them will not fall on the ground without God knowing. He goes on and he says, but you, the very hairs of your head.
He knows how many there are. Now, do you care how many hairs you have on your head? Some people do, but most of us don't. Some people have a few less.
But we don't care about how many hairs we've got on our head, do we? But that's how much God cares about knowing everything that there is about you. He is that interested in who you are. He knows how many hairs you have on the top of your head.
So here is a God who can speak canis majorus into existence. That is just impossibly big, and yet he cares for you so much, he knows how many hairs there are on the top of your head right now. So let's think about you for a moment, and we're going to need to.
Let's just think about you. Okay? So all of you are here because of two cells that came together, one from your dad and one from your mum, carrying dna from each of your mum and your dad. That's why you look a little bit like your mum and you look a little bit like your dad.
Okay? So two cells come together. They carry this dna, and we're going to learn a little bit about this as we work through. They merge.
They become one cell, and that cell then becomes two cells, which then becomes four, which becomes eight, which then becomes 100. And how many cells do you have now? Yeah, around. Let me see, let me see here.
I've got it written down. Somewhere around 100 trillion cells. That's a lot of cells, isn't it? So it starts off with just one.
Okay, now some of those cells, like the cells in your hair. Let's think about. The cells are in your hair because God knows how many hairs you have on top of your head, right? How big do you think those cells are? That big.
That's bigger than your hair. Okay, so we're going to need something else. Here's another kind of measurement.
So I brought my callipers. I need some help. Who's going to be my volunteer this time? Okay, back row, Jet.
Can you all see how far apart those are? Don't touch it. It's pretty close together, right? Yes. That is called one millimetre.
That's one millimetre. That's really small, isn't it? Okay, if you were to get some cells from your body and put them all side by side in a row, how many do you think you could fit across that millimetre right there? A trillion? No. That's probably a little optimistic, but I'll come back to that number.
Okay, so jet's going with 100. That's a fair few to line up between there and there. All right.
Isaiah. Ezekiel. Sorry, Jeremiah.
No, sorry. Zero. No, you can put a lot more than zero.
Michaela. Probably 30. The answer is 1000.
1000 cells. 1000. You were about to say, I'm sorry, man.
Okay, so you can put 1000 cells end to end across that millimetre right there. So that makes cells kind of tiny things. And your whole body is made up of.
Out of cells, isn't it? Okay, do you think when you think that something is that small that you could put anything inside a cell? Yeah, you can. So let's think about this. Okay, let me see here.
Does anybody know what cells are made out of? They're made out of atoms. Some cells are germs. And how many atoms do you think there are in a cell? So let's think about this for a moment.
There are. Let me just get this right here. There are 100 trillion cells in your body.
So then how many atoms are there in a cell? Okay, we've got 100 over here. We've got 200, 200. Over here, 1 billion.
Over here, 1000. You're all wrong. You're way too low.
Way too low. There are 100 trillion cells in the body, and there are 100 trillion atoms in a cell. There are the same amount of atoms make up a cell as there are cells in the body.
Okay, we started to get. And you can put a thousand cells across that millimetre. Things are starting to get rather small now, aren't they? Okay, so what are atoms made out of? Atoms are made from protons, neutrons and electrons.
And protons, neutrons and electrons are made out of fermions, and we don't know what fermions are made out of because we can't actually get down that small. So we've gone from cells, which are incredibly small, to atoms, which are unbelievably small, to protons, neutrons and electrons, which are smaller, again, to fermions, which we don't even know how small they are. We can just kind of vaguely tell that they are here.
And what I find is interesting is this. Here's something to observe. Our universe is made up of galaxies that are all rotating around a central point.
So we have a central point with stuff around it. If you look at a galaxy, a galaxy is rotating around a central point, so you have a central point with stuff around it. Our solar system is rotating around a central point, being the sun, so you have a central point with things around it.
A cell is made up of a central point. It's called a nucleus with things around it. Guess what? An atom is made up of a central point with neutrons and electrons.
No, neutrons and protons with things around it. Do you see that? God has used the same model for the universe as he's used for the atom and everything in between. And cells, of course, are the building blocks of life.
It's the same model all the way through. So God has thought something up. He has come up with this model and it is absolute, pure genius, and he's just used it the whole way through.
Bible says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And indeed we are. Okay, we were talking a moment ago about how you came into existence.
Two cells. You had DNA from your mum and you had DNA from your dad, and DNA is information. And so you get half the information from your dad and you get half the information from your mum, and it comes together and it makes one tiny cell.
That's all, just one cell. But inside that cell is DNA. Now, how many letters are there in our Alphabet? Sorry? 26.
26 letters in the Alphabet. If you were Chinese, how many letters would you have? About 30,000. Depends on.
Depending on who you ask, how many letters do you think the DNA Alphabet has? Sorry, did you. The DNA Alphabet has. Wait for it.
Four. Four letters. That's it.
Four different characters. So that would mean that it would be fairly simple. Right, okay, so let's think about it, then.
When that one cell came together, that was you. You used to be just one cell. That's all you were back in the day.
There was DNA. DNA from your dad, DNA from your mum. And it began to write, that DNA began to write a new form of DNA.
And as it began to write that new information, that information was you. So you were written down. Everything about you was written down.
Okay, so let me see here. When Brooklyn's DNA was written down, it said, brooklyn is going to have brunette hair. And when Kay's DNA was written down, Kay's DNA says, no, she's going to have fair skin and blondeer hair.
And all of the information about who you are was written down in that DNA. And it began to write, and it began to write. And it began to write.
And then if you were to take all that information that it was written in that DNA, there are 3 billion different character descriptions of who you are. Does that make you a complicated piece of machinery? You imagine if I made a piece of machinery and then I wrote a book describing how that piece of machinery was made, and I used 3 billion characters to describe how that machinery was made. Okay, that would be a complicated piece of machinery, wouldn't you say? So you are an incredibly complicated piece of machinery.
Okay. To put that in a little bit of perspective, if a person was to read your DNA, one word per second, night and day. So that's a rather large book to read.
We're going to read. We're going to take. Let me see here.
Who am I going to pick on? I haven't picked on you yet. What was your name? Oh, you're Brooklyn. You're Michaela.
Okay, I'll get it right here. Okay, so let's say that we take Brooklyn, we bring Brooklyn up the front, and we're like, let's read Brooklyn's DNA, shall we? So we can read all the things that there are about Brooklyn, right? And we start to read at one word per second. That's fairly fast reading, but we can probably accomplish that.
And we read all of the things that go to make up Brooklyn. Guess how long it's going to take us if we don't stop reading day and night, to read everything there is about it? It's going to take us 96 years to read all of the information that makes Brooklyn, are you special, Brooklyn? That makes you pretty special. Right? You can go sit back down now.
Thank you. Okay. All right, so let's put this all into a bit of perspective.
We serve a God who can breathe the stars into existence. Just speak and boom, there they are. Massive stars that we can't even begin to comprehend.
At the same time, we serve a God who knows how many hairs there are on top of your head, who knows every single character of your dna so that even if you die, doesn't matter. He's got the record right there. Just reproduce it.
And back there you are just as you were before. Because he has the record of who you are. Perfectly saved.
We snow of a God who knows every letter that there is about he because he is the God who wrote those letters to create you. So when that DNA started to write and started to write down, this is who this person is, it was God writing down you. DNA is like the language of God.
God writing out what kind of a person you are going to be. And God sat up in heaven and God looked down and he said, okay, I'm going to bring a new person into this world and I'm going to bring this little girl, what was your name? Okay, bring her into this world. And so God says, here's what I'm going to do.
Bring these two cells together and I'm going to start writing. And in just a moment he wrote out everything that there is about you and the reason that he wrote you and everything that there is about you because you stopped and you thought, okay, who do I want to spend the rest of eternity with? Okay, I want to spend the rest of eternity with this person right here. So I'm going to create them just like this.
And every single one of us here is an individual creation of God because God wanted to spend the rest of eternity with you. That's how special we are and that's the kind of God that we serve. Let's go to psalms 139 and verse 14.
Psalms, psalms, chapter 139, psalms 139 and verse 14. I will praise you. The Bible says, why? Because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Marvellous are your works and that I know right well. So God's works are truly marvellous. Every single one of you kids here, and the other kids, I should say, who are not sitting down the front, you are just as special and you are just as marvellous.
And everybody else here today, you are just as special. You are just as marvellous. You are just as fearfully and wonderfully made.
God created you. God brought you into existence because he loves you and he cares for you. The Bible says, for he spoke, it came to be.
He commanded. It was there from heaven. The Lord looks down and he sees every single one of us from his living place.
He watches all who live on the earth. He doesn't miss anyone. He who forms the hearts of them, and of them and of them all.
And is intimately acquainted with everything they do. You know, when you think about that and you think about how many people there are on this world, and you think, how is it possible that God could know about every single person that there is on this planet? How is it possible that God could know everything that there is about me? How is it possible that God could write out everything there is about me in just a few seconds? Write it onto dna, put it inside me so that I become who I am? How is it possible that God can do that? Well, you got to remember that you are serving a God who can speak and canis majorus comes into existence. And so if you're serving a God like that, it is not hard to imagine he knows everything that there is to know about you.
Isn't that so? The Bible says, of those who hope in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death to keep them alive. You know, it reminds me of the statement that Ellen white made. From the minuteest atom to the greatest world, all things animate and inanimate in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy declare that God is love.
And when you start to stop and think about the universe in which we live, and you look at the huge things that God created, and you look at the minute things that God created, like fermions, that we're all made out of, and you look at everything in between, we find that everything there declares that God is love, everything there declares that we serve a powerful creator God, and that you are here for a specific reason. And then we want to think about one more thing. And that's what Calvin was sharing with us in his children's story this morning.
And that is about the cross of Jesus. And I want you to think about this for a moment. You see, God takes us out of the physical world to the spiritual world, through the cross.
But I want you to think about this. God is out there in the universe. He is creating massive things all the time, speaking them into existence.
That would be pretty exciting. I'd be, oh, I'm looking forward to one day watching God just sort of breathe out stars, and a whole stream of stars come out, just speak them into existence, and that would be super exciting. And somewhere in the universe, there is this tiny speck of dust that we call the earth.
It's only very, very small, isn't it? Our earth. And on this tiny speck of dust we call the earth are us here today. And God looked at us and God saw us, and he recognised that because of sin, our earth was lost in the universe.
And God left all of that behind, all of those massive stars and universes and galaxies and planets and whatever else that there is out there. And he came to this earth because you kids were here. And 2000 years ago he could see you in his mind's eye.
He could see jet, he could see Brooklyn, he could see Michaela, Ezekiel, Katie, Caddy. I'll get it right here in a minute. And all of you other kids, he could see all of you kids.
He could see all of us. 2000 years ago, he could see all of us. And what did Jesus do? He came to this earth and he hung on a cross and he died on that cross because he could not bear the thought of spending eternity without you.
That's how important you are to God. That's how much he loves you. We would think, well, why would Jesus come down to this ugly little planet that we call earth, full of evil and pain and sin and suffering? Why would God, who creates massive worlds, be interested in us? But the fact is that he is, he is so interested in you.
He knows every atom there is in your body. He knows every hair that there is on your head. He wrote every detail that there is about you.
He brought you into existence for one purpose only and that is so that he can spend eternity with you. Friends, we serve a wonderful God who has created the universe. Don't you want to serve him back? I know I do.
Praise God, Father in heaven, as we realise the kind of God that you are, the things that you have created in this universe, and yet the care and the interest and the love that you have for each one of us as individuals, we truly, truly love you. Now may our experience grow and deepen our experience of loving you. We ask in Jesus name, amen.
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