 Turning your Bibles to Genesis chapter one. Genesis chapter one. The Bible says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And it's not speaking about a one-time hearing, the tense in the Greek when it talks about faith coming by hearing, it's a continual hearing of the word of God. It's constantly bathing your mind in the word of God. And so it's hearing it over and over and over and over again. And you might come to the place where you go, well, I know the scriptures and I'm sure there are many that especially in a church like this that teaches the word that does know the scriptures. But the Bible says that faith comes by hearing the word of God over and over and over again. And as you hear the word of God over and over again, your faith is being built up. It's being built up inside of you. And Jude exhorts us to build up yourselves on your most holy faith and we do that by hearing the word of God. And that's why I think that attending Bible study is essential. Being a part of a midweek study is essential to your Christian growth. Because you're bathing your mind in the word of God, especially a church that teaches verse by verse through the scriptures. So you're getting the whole counsel of God. Now, when I first started attending Bible studies, I was, I wanna say I was about 15 years old when I first came to Calvary Chapel and began attending Bible studies. And at first it wasn't the most exciting thing I have to admit. There were parts of the Bible that I found fascinating. I absolutely loved the stories in the Old Testament. I loved hearing about the life of Jesus and I'm a thinker. So I loved the writings of Paul. And of course, everyone loves the revelation series, the movies to see Kurt Cameron being left behind. Such a blessing. And then there are parts of the Bible where you're just reading a bunch of names and you're like wondering, why are these names in the Bible and why isn't my name in the Bible? But I stuck to it. I kept going week after week after week. And I noticed that as I did that, I began to develop a hunger to know God's word. And not only did I develop a hunger for God's word, but God's word began to make sense to me. I began to understand God's word. It began to come together for me. And so I noticed that the scriptures would come to my mind throughout the day. That the scriptures that God was ministering to me through that Bible study would start coming into my mind, especially as I was dealing with things and facing challenges. I noticed that I began to worry less. I noticed that I began to pray more. I began to trust God more. I noticed that I felt more connected to other believers, to other Christians. And I felt more connected to my home church. And I also noticed that I began to wanna share the love of God with others more. I began to be a natural part of my life, not something that I had to work myself into to do. It just became natural to me. And then I noticed that my desires changed. The things that I wanted to do, the ungodly things I wanted to do, they became less and less. And I became more drawn to doing godly things and wanting to be around godly people. And this changed over time. It was not something that was like an overnight thing. It happened subtly over time, but it was a definite change that as I look back on my life, I saw a huge difference. And that was 40 years ago. And I've never missed a Bible study. I've always been there. And so if you want to grow in your faith, if you want your faith to be built up, I would really encourage you to attend the Wednesday night Bible study. And this is something I've been sharing with my church. It's just something that's on my heart because one of the things that we see in the last days is a famine for the word of God. There's a famine in the land. And when you look at the counseling load that I have, where I'm talking to people, the first thing I ask them is, are you in, well I know they're not in Bible study, because I know if they go to my church, I know who's in Bible study and who isn't. And it's many times, in fact 100% of the times, it's people that are not in the word that end up in counseling because they're not equipped with what they need to make it through life. And if you think that you can go through life without knowing the word of God, you're deceiving yourself. You really are. Because God's word tells us how life is supposed to work. God's promises to us tells us what is ours as believers. It keeps us from being taken advantage of by the world system and the things of the world or to give in to the lives of the enemy because we know what the promises of God are. And you won't allow yourself to be ripped off. And so I encourage you to attend the midweek Bible study and Pastor David and Marie text me before I came this morning and said, you know, tell everyone how much we love them. I mean, you have a pastor who loves you enough to teach you God's word verse by verse. And I don't need to tell you that you have one of America's premier Bible teaching pastors here at Calvary Chapel Chino Valley. Did you hear that David? No. And man, I also want to encourage you to come to the men's conference this week. It's going to be awesome. You have Pastor Raul Reese is going to be here. Yeah, Pastor David Rosales will be interpreting. And of course, when I was on a trip with Pastor David to the pastors conference in New York, we got to hear Bill Page and what an incredible blessing he is. And also, yeah. And to see Brennan Beeler and hopefully he'll have achieved puberty. And his voice will come down a little bit. Most people don't know, he's like 40. No, I'm just kidding. But it's going to be an awesome time in God's word. And it's just an opportunity for you to hear the word of God and have your faith strengthened, have your faith built up and have you grow in your faith and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, today I want to bring your attention to Genesis chapter one. And I want to talk about the greatness of God, the greatness of God. And we're going to look at the greatness of God through creation, because it says we see how great and marvelous creation is. And then we understand the God who made this creation. Then we understand that the God who made creation is the same God who loves you and has given everything for you and has brought all the power of the kingdom of heaven to bear here on earth in order to destroy the work of the enemy in your life. It just gives us that perspective. And so in Genesis one verse one, it says this, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now in the Hebrew, it actually doesn't say in the beginning, it says in beginnings, God, the word the is not in there. It's in beginnings, God. And it speaks of multiple beginnings. You say what do you mean multiple beginnings? Well, the book of Genesis is a book that tells you the beginning of daylight, the beginning of land, the beginning of animals, the beginning of man, the beginning of sin, and also the beginning of redemption for sin. There's many beginnings that are listed in the book of Genesis. But those three words in beginnings, God created the heaven, well, that's more than three words. But in beginnings, God, those first three words are the most attacked words in the Bible. Because if Satan can get you to disbelieve this fundamental truth that it all began with God, then he can get you to doubt anything else the Bible says. Now, it's interesting also to note that the Bible never seeks to prove the existence of God. It always assumes the existence of God. In fact, there are no arguments in the Bible that seek to prove the existence of God. Because God is clearly seen in His creation. You cannot look at the world around you and not think how did it come into being. In Psalms 19-1, it says, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. In Romans 1.20, it says, for since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse. If you notice here, it says through creation the invisible attributes of God are clearly seen. What are those invisible attributes? His power, His wisdom, His knowledge, His understanding. How else could you explain the complexities of the human eye apart from God's infinite wisdom? The wisdom that would design such a thing. How would you explain the intricacies of the brain, the human brain and how it functions? It's still a mystery to man, really, how the brain works. And yet to God, God understands everything. He's infinite in His wisdom and understanding. You can't explain it any other way. How could you explain how vast the universe is apart from the infinite power and greatness of God? In fact, man doesn't really know how big the universe is. All the scientists talk about is the known universe because that's as far as they can see. It has nothing to do with whether there's more beyond that. It's just they can't see it. So to them it's just the known universe, but it goes even beyond that. The evidence for the existence of God is so overwhelming that the Bible assumes only a fool would say, there is no God. And so man is without excuse. God's creation is overwhelming proof that God exists. Now for the person who says, well I have to see it to believe it. I have to see God to believe in God. Well I think it's interesting that God made the universe out of things you cannot see. And the Bible tells us this, that God made the universe out of invisible things. For instance, how many of you have seen an atom or how many of you have seen the components that make up an atom? The proton, the neutron, the electron. And yet the chair that you're sitting in is made up of these neutrons, protons, electrons, these atoms that are held together by what very educated people have told us and they've gone to multiple degrees, many years of university, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to define exactly what it is that holds everything together. And so this chair that you're sitting in that is made up of countless numbers of atoms are held together by what the experts tell us is called atomic glue. Exactly. They have no clue what the atomic glue is. But what about DNA? Have you ever seen your DNA? I know you can go get a test and find out what it is, find out what part of the planet you came from, what your ancestry is, but how many of you have seen your DNA? And yet it's your DNA that's responsible to tell you your eye color, it's responsible to tell you your hair color, whether you have hair or not. It's part of your DNA. Your height, even your weight, potential weight, and even the size of your nose is all determined by your DNA. And yet no one has seen their DNA. By the way, did you know that your ears and your nose keeps growing until you die? Imagine if we were in the Old Testament and you lived to be like a thousand years old. You would look like Dumbo. I mean, I think there was some good things that happened there. We lived a little bit shorter, I look good. But there are plenty of things that we don't see and yet we believe that they are true. We believe that they exist, we believe that they are real, even though we don't see it. It's only when it comes to God that I say I have to see God in order to believe in God. That's the only time that man ever says that I need to see it in order to believe it. Every other time he just accepts it as fact. And so God says my eternal power is clearly seen by the things I've made. So every person is without excuse. In Hebrews 11.3 it says by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. So again, the Bible's telling us the things that we see are not made of things that are visible, they're made of things that are invisible. The Bible says that all the way from the beginning. And so real science really is there to observe and draw conclusion from observable facts. But what we're often told in school is that there is a scientific method and that scientific method starts with what we call a hypothesis. And a hypothesis is basically a belief that you have that you either want to prove or disprove. It's not true science actually at that point because you begin with a bias. True science actually looks at what is and observes what's tangible and what's real. And God has shown himself real through his creation. In Genesis 1.3 for instance, God said let there be light and verse four tells us how God divided the light. Now think about this for a second. How did Moses know in his what we think is limited technological scope of things in his brain? How did he know that God divided light? How did he understand the concept even of dividing light? But we now know through modern science we have the ability to discover that light is in fact divided. It's divided into light, color, and sound. And so you have light, color, and sound and light and color and sound are basically operating on the principle of vibrations vibrating at different frequencies. So when you slow light down and you do it at a lower frequency, you have sound, audible sound. But when you speed light up, you have color. And when you speed up light even faster still then you have what we call light. And within the light spectrum, depending on how fast the light vibrates you have everything from ultraviolet to infrared light and everything in between all designed by God when he divided the light. And here's the incredible thing about frequencies and vibrations because being a musician, having that heart of a musician, I understand that basically sound tones, musical tones is just different frequencies or vibrations. That's all it is. And so think about this. Everything you see is vibrating at a different frequency and every frequency has a tone, has a musical tone. So everywhere that you're sitting right now there is a musical tone being generated by the atoms that are surrounding you. And so all creation is vibrating with the symphonic sound of worship that never stops, that never ceases, that is eternal, that is ongoing. And so that means whether you like it or not whether you believe in God or not the atoms inside of your body are vibrating at a frequency and they're declaring the glory of God. So you can sit there and say, I don't believe in God. Stop it, stop it, stop it. And then it's gonna be ignored because God created you whether you recognize it or not. And so the Bible tells us that the things that are seen are not made of things that are visible and we understand this by faith. And so science again has proven what the Bible has said all along that all matter is made up of things that cannot be seen and we call those matters atoms. We call that matter atoms. Now, this is what your textbook says and atom looks like, right? And we all believe this is an atom, right? In fact, if you go and you see the atomic things that has this logo on it, this picture and we just have all come to believe that this is what an atom is. However, even with advanced technology man still cannot see what an atom actually looks like. And so guess what? This is made up. Someone told you this is what an atom looks like and by faith you believe them. You put your faith in their words to say this is what an atom is. The latest theory is that an atom doesn't look like that at all. That there really aren't orbiting parts around the atoms, the proton, the newtons, the electrons don't actually orbit around an atom. What an atom actually is, is the nucleus itself is made up of protons and neutrons and they're held together tightly vibrating with incredible energy. Again, nobody knows what's holding them together. It's this atomic glue. It's kind of holding it all together, right? And then this field of electrons is around it and it's not circulating the atom. It's actually pulsating and so it's moving back and forth and all you see is you see it here, then you see it there and you see the boundaries of where it's bouncing to but it doesn't circulate because if it's circulated around the atom basically what that means is the natural flow of the gravitational pull would slow the atom down and it would stop eventually. But in order for it to go for eternity it can't circle, it pulsates. And that's what they've recently discovered. And so this atom picture that we have doesn't even look right. But we've accepted it by faith. But the Bible has always said visible things are made out of invisible things. So why not put your faith and your trust in the word of God that has never lied to you, that has always been sure, that always tells you what is right, that always tells you what is real, that always consistently is proven to be true. Why not put your faith in that and not put your faith in what someone else made up and now has been proven to be wrong? Science. I know I just offended a bunch of people. My name is Raul Rees. Evolution begins with the premise that God does not exist. It's a hypothesis. It's not a statement of fact. It's a statement of belief. Evolution is not a scientific method of research. It's a system of belief. It's a faith system that denies the existence of God. I believe God doesn't exist and therefore I will interpret the world and my existence in light of my hypothesis that God doesn't exist. And so this is not true science. It's a belief system. And then the hypothesis is that God is not real. And yet Genesis says in the beginning, God created. Those who say the universe was created with a big bang, you have a problem because you have to explain who created the elements that caused the big bang. A big bang doesn't just happen. They'll say, well, there was these gases. Well, who made the gas? I know if you're in my home and I know the big bang system doesn't work either, the theory of it, because I've tried it. I went out in my parking lot. I blew off a bunch of fireworks. No Porsche appeared. Did not happen. There was a bunch of cars with flashing lights that appeared because you can't have fireworks in Orange County. Those who say that we emerged from primordial ooze, you have to explain who created the primordial ooze. Those that said we began as single celled living organisms, you have to still explain who created the single celled living organisms. And so every theory of creation begins with unexplained matter that somehow was pre-existent. But Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth. And that word created means that God created out of, or made something out of nothing with materials that had never existed before. That's what it means. God created something out of nothing with no materials whatsoever. He spoke it into existence. And thus God spoke and by his eternal power created everything that exists in the universe today and not just our universe, but the infinite number of universes that exist in space today. It reminds me of a scientist that came to God and said, we have now advanced to a place man has to where we no longer need you. We no longer believe in you. You're no longer needed. We can create man on our own. And so God says, well, that's very interesting. I'd like to see how you do that. Could you show me how you create man? And so the scientist went over and he grabbed a big pile of dirt. And God says, now wait a minute, you need to go get your own dirt. Richard Dawkins, who's a noted atheist, defines evolution as the idea that all living forms arose as the product of an unguided purposelessness, material mechanism, chiefly natural selection acting on random variation or mutation. And he called this unguided purposeless material mechanism, the blind watchmaker. So that's your hope as an atheist, the blind watchmaker. Now it's interesting because he leaves some big gaps in his theory. Namely, let's assume you're right. There is a purposeless unguided material mechanism called the blind watchmaker who made the mechanism and who turned the mechanism on and got it going. Because in order for you to have a mechanism that is so complex that without any guidance, without any purpose can randomly kick out any kind of life that it wants to, it requires an advanced intelligence to design that sort of system. It doesn't just happen randomly. And so his creator is unguided, purposeless and nameless. But my creator says this. He says that he has created you and I with intent and purpose. That you didn't just happen on the earth by mistake. That you didn't just show up one day as an afterthought. And it doesn't matter how you began in this life. Because I know if we were to take a raise of hands that there's many surprises in this room. And sometimes you can feel like, oh, I wasn't planned. Maybe I wasn't wanted or intended. But God has always wanted and intended for you to be born and you were made with purpose. And God desires to fulfill his purpose. And my creator has a name, his name here in Genesis one one is Elohim. And so that is the problem you have when you believe the premise that God does not exist because it leaves you with all kinds of holes in your theories. The greatest of which is to believe in evolution you have to deny the laws of physics. You have to deny the natural laws of thermodynamics. You have to deny the natural order of the world because nothing in the world supports the theory of evolution. And yet according to the National Academy of Sciences, really smart guys, evolution is a scientific fact. And it's taught in our schools as a scientific fact. Even though there are no current examples of evolution happening, even though there is no proof evolution has ever happened in the past, even though they have not yet found the missing link that connects man to his past. You might be like the student in our church that came up to me and said, Pastor Holland, you keep saying that Adam was the first man but my school book says it was Lucy. And I can imagine that. Ricky Ricardo over there going, Lucy. And she showed me this thing in her textbook and we actually went back and we saw Lucy. We went to the Creation Museum at the Ark in Kentucky and it was just a phenomenal experience to see this massive built to scale Ark to see how Noah would have done it and it just makes so much sense. But we went and saw Lucy. And what's interesting, what the scientists do is they'll take oftentimes one bone and they'll create an entire skeleton from one jaw bone. In Lucy's case, they have like 37 bones that they have created into what they believe to be a humanoid species out of 200 plus bones, they have 37 of them. But with further research, what they've discovered, if you don't go at it with the assumption that this is a man, that you're trying to prove a case, but you actually just go at it from a scientific viewpoint, open and observing and looking at what it is, what they found is that actually Lucy closely resembles an extinct species or cousin of the orangutan. That's really what Lucy is. And so the girl said, why would they put this in our textbook? I said, because they're liars. They're lying to you. But God has never lied to you. He's always told you the truth. Now you have to think about this for a second. If you were gonna devise a system to explain where you came from, wouldn't you devise something that was a little bit more intelligent? Like you wouldn't say, oh yeah, we came from purposeless misguided people. I would want to come from someone who was highly intelligent. That was amazingly brilliant. That was this advanced form of human life or something that would make me feel a little bit better about myself, wouldn't you? I mean, you have to ask yourself, if they tell the kids that they came from monkeys, why are they upset that they're acting like animals? It doesn't make sense to me. To be honest with you, it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in intelligent creator who created the world. And I don't have that much faith. Genesis says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The name used for God here is Elohim. And it's the name used of God when it represents God as the God of power, who has the power to create out of nothing, the power to keep his word, the power to fulfill his promises. It's the God of eternity who is infinite, boundless, who exists in eternity past before time and space, existed, God is. And this is the same God that says to you, I have loved you with an everlasting love and I will pursue you with everything that is within me. That's the God of power that's after you. That's Elohim. The same God who created the earth. This God that we worship is huge. Listen to what the psalmist says in Psalms 8-3. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, the work of your fingers. In the ESV it says this, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. That God is the one that with his fingers set the moon and the stars and the sun in place. Placed every one of them where they are. Just think about that for a moment. How big must the hand be to put the sun in place? To put the moon in place? To put the earth in orbit? How big of a hand would it take for that? And I want us to meditate on that for a minute. How big, how great our God is. Let's take the closest star in our solar system. It's the sun. The sun is 93, we got a picture of a sun? There it is, that's the sun. It's mean looking isn't it? It's 93 million miles away. Light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. It takes eight minutes for light to come from the sun and to reach the earth at 186,000 miles per second. Now I want you to imagine this for a moment. If the earth was the size of a golf ball, how big would the sun be in relation to that? Okay, I thought you guys would be more on it than first service. So I got props. I got a pink golf ball for the girls and I got a white golf ball for the boys and boys if you like the purple pink golf ball I won't hold it against you. But imagine for a second, this is a golf ball. If the earth was the size of a golf ball, the sun would be like two people standing on each other's shoulders, like actually two and a half people. So if you imagine you put the golf ball on the ground, you stand next to it, you get like an, I'm not a full-sized person. I'm half Japanese. You know, if you have a full-sized person on top here, although I will tell you this, I was the center of the basketball team in Japan. I am a giant amongst my people. And so if you can imagine two and a half people tall, right, that's two men and a midget. If you had two men and a midget tall, you had the golf ball looking down, that would be the size of the sun in comparison to the earth. Now I want you to understand this. The sun is so big that you could put 1.3 million earths inside the sun. 1.3 million earths inside the sun. If the earth was the size of a golf ball, that's enough golf balls to fill a giant school bus. For those that remember what giant school buses was, I grew up in the south in the 60s. We were part of the force busing program. So I grew up on a bus in my elementary school year. So I could tell you how big a big school bus was. And if you filled that school bus up with golf balls, that would be how many golf balls if the earth was the size of a golf ball you could fit inside a sun. And that's just one star in our universe and it's actually not the biggest star. The sun is actually one of the smallest stars in the universe. The second star I want to bring your attention to is a star called Beetlejuice. It's a red super giant star. It's located in the Orion constellation. It's 642.5 light years away. And so if you were going at 186,000 miles per second for 642.5 light years, you would get to Beetlejuice. I figured it out if you were to go at 65 miles an hour, it would be like 6.2 quadrillion years that it would take you to get there. Or if my wife was driving, it would be there overnight. But if you look at the picture up there of Beetlejuice, it's actually, you can see the circles around the star there in the middle. That's actually the orbit of planets. And so if you were to take Beetlejuice and put it where our sun is in the middle of the solar system, Beetlejuice is so big it would go beyond the orbit of Jupiter. That's how big Beetlejuice is. It's 700 times bigger than our sun. Now imagine if you could fit 1.3 million Earths inside the sun, you could fit 1.6 billion suns inside of Beetlejuice. That's how big this star is. Now if Earth were the size of a golf ball, that's enough golf balls to fill up the super dome in New Orleans 3,000 times. But that's not the biggest star. The third star is called Musifi. Now Musifi is called a red super giant also, but it's much bigger. It's located on the edge of the IC 1396 nebula. And if the Earth were the size of a golf ball, Musifi would be the width of two Golden Gate bridges, side by side, that's 3.4 miles. So how many of you have gone to see the Golden Gate Bridge? Okay, a few of you. So all the rest of you, what you have to do is you have to go to the Golden Gate Bridge, you have to take your golf ball, you have to put it on the ground, you have to walk across the bridge and walk another 1.7 miles across the bridge and look back and try to find your golf ball. That's how big Musifi is. That's how big this star is. But again, it's not the biggest star. It's 1,260 times bigger than the Sun and you could fit two billion Suns inside Musifi. You could fit 2.7 quadrillion Earths inside this star, Musifi. 2.7 quadrillion Earths. Now, like me, most of you don't know what a quadrillion is. I'm still waiting for my first million. I don't know what that is either. But to help you understand and grasp for a moment how big a quadrillion is, everyone knows a thousand thousands is what? A million, right? And a thousand millions is a billion, right? A thousand billions is a trillion and a thousand trillions is a quadrillion. That's what a quadrillion is. So if you took a million inches, how far would that be? Well, I figured it out for you. A million inches is 15.78 miles. That's how far a million inches is. Now, if you were to take a billion inches, how far would a billion inches be? Well, I don't live in Chino Valley, so I didn't figure it out from Chino Valley, but I did figure it out from San Clemente. And a billion inches from San Clemente takes you all the way to Shreveport, Louisiana, almost all the way across the United States. What about a trillion inches? Now, I know what you're thinking. I got this one, China. It's gotta be in China. China's the farthest place from everywhere. So it's gotta be somewhere in China. Well, actually, a trillion inches is if you took the Earth Equator and you went all the way around the Earth six times, that would be a trillion inches. What about a quadrillion inches? Well, a quadrillion inches is if you go from here, actually not from here, you have to drive all the way to Florida. Unless you're Elon Musk, then you can go anywhere. You send a rocket into space, you go to the moon and come back 66 times. That's a quadrillion. That's how big a quadrillion is. And this star can fit 2.7 quadrillion Earths inside of it. Now, I don't know about you, but when you see how big the universe is and how big the God of the universe is, doesn't it sound a little foolish when we go to God and we start complaining about things? When we start trying to tell God how we think our life should run, and we start telling God what we think the best things for us is, it really brings me to the point where I just wanna hear what God has to say. Doesn't it do that for you? And the Bible says that God put Musiphi in place with his fingers. But Musiphi isn't even the biggest star. There's another star called Canis Majoris. It's a red hypergiant. It's located in the constellation Canis Majoris. In other words, it's so big, it's just its own constellation. Some guys think like that. I'm my own constellation. It's 2,100 times bigger than the sun. And if the Earth were a golf ball, Canis Majoris would be the height of Mount Everest. And so what you would do is you would go to the bottom of Mount Everest, you would put the golf ball down, you would climb up the mountain, you would stand in line. Hopefully you would make it to the top. Apparently there's a line up there. You know, and so you'd be up there for a few days trying to get to the summit. Once you got to the summit, then you would look down and you tried to find your golf ball. That's how big Canis Majoris is, the height of Mount Everest. If you, you could fit three quadrillion, 729 trillion Earths inside Canis Majoris. That's enough Earths that if the Earth was the size of a golf ball, you could cover the state of Texas, 22 inches deep with golf balls. That's a big star. But it's not even the biggest star. They just found one that's bigger. It's called the UY Scooty. And you can fit four quadrillion, 801 trillion, 860 billion Earths inside the star. And they think that there are bigger stars out there, they just haven't found them yet. And here's the point, no matter what you're going through, no matter what you're facing, no matter what the mountain is, no matter what giant is in front of you, no matter what challenge you're stressing out over, there is a God who is bigger than all of it. And God placed these stars in the heavens with his fingers. And just think about this for a moment. Imagine the size of the hand that hung the sun, the moon, the stars. And then imagine yourself in the palm of that hand. You see, God's hand is so big that even if you tried to run off of it, you couldn't. Even if you ran for your entire life, you couldn't get to the edge of God's hand. That's the definition of predestination, by the way. Prohorizo. The best view of predestination is the horizon. You look at the horizon, and everywhere you look on the horizon, you can go to the horizon and there's more horizon. You can't, it's like anywhere you go is ocean. You can't get away from it. And God is so big that no matter what you're facing, and God is so big that no matter where you go, no matter how far you run, no matter what you do, you cannot escape the love of God. You cannot go beyond the love of God. You can test the love of God all you want. You'll never exhaust it because you'll never get to the edge of his hand. David says, even if I go to the farthest place of the earth, you are there waiting for me. That is how big God is. And this God says to you, I love you, and I've given everything for you. Jeremiah 32.17 says, Oh Lord God, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for you. Nehemiah 9.6 says, you alone are the Lord. You have made heaven the heavens of heavens and with all their hosts, the earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them and you preserve them all and the host of heaven worships you. And the NIV says you've given life to everything and the multitude of heavens worships you. And so Jeremiah says there's nothing too hard and Nehemiah says you give life to everything. What are you looking to for life? What are you looking to for strength? What are you looking to for importance? How much more importance do you want than to have the one who created everything you see say, you belong to me. You're my special one. What are you holding on to? What are you pursuing? In light of God's great love for you, what else matters? I love what it says in Deuteronomy. It says the eternal God is your refuge. And underneath are the everlasting arms and he will thrust out the enemy from before you. Underneath you are his everlasting arms. And maybe you feel this morning as if your life may be falling apart and raveling and even if it does, you're falling apart in his hands and he's not gonna let you go. This year we were blessed with two grandchildren. This is a shameless grandparent plug. They're the most beautiful babies in the world. Even if I see your baby and it's more beautiful, it's ugly. And my grandson, I keep saying he's learning to walk. He's actually just learning to crawl but I like to think ahead. And he'll teeter and I'll grab him and I'll just tell him, I got you. I got you. Falls down he cries, I got you. And I just want you to know your father in heaven, he's got you, he's got you. You don't have to catch yourself. You're resting in his hand. And this morning perhaps it's a time for you to acknowledge that. Lord, I've been stressing out. I've been trying to figure out how things are gonna work. I've been trying to sort out my future. Sometimes even as single people it's like, Lord, I don't know, I've seen what's around here. I'm interceding. I don't know what my future holds. And I don't know what your future holds. But I know who holds the future. And he says it's a good one.