 Well, so I was walking over to the breakfast this morning a bunch of people said Hugh you've been working a lot are you ever going to take a vacation? It says yeah, I just signed up Kathy for another mountaineering trip. She hasn't divorced you yet, so But yeah, this is a place where it's really cushy, so that is gorgeous scenery So we're going to be doing that this summer and yeah the 25th. I'll be preaching at Christ's Church of the Valley That's the church that's sponsoring our amp conference and they have me doing the evening and the morning services I think they have eight services there, so We'll see how that goes okay If you we run out of these questions, we have on the book of Isaiah. I got more here Okay, so I think we should have plenty for everybody I'll try to remember to keep bringing those in case you ever forget to bring yours and and You know people were asking me last week, you know, how come you skipped over the song of Solomon? Well, you know people read a lot into that song. I mean I've read commentaries on that book and boy Yes, I've even read commentaries where people saw a lot of science-faith issues in that text Because of how metaphorically it's written you can read almost anything into it you want But yeah, there is actually one text in there that has significance for science apologetics It's actually a scientific prediction of the birth and the development of our state of California And you'll see it right here song of Solomon Chapter 6 verse 11 Okay, so there's California for you And you can read it on several different levels and it still applies Okay So it's one example of how people can interpret the song of Solomon to say almost anything they want Okay What as I mentioned in previous weeks what we're going to do in this class is try to a little exercise and The exercise is this of actually looking at particular issues in the Bible and actually quickly picking up all the biblical texts to deal with that issue and It requires some discipline in the sense that what I'm going to be asking to do as we go through these study questions I've given you is to actually Get into small groups here so I'm going to break up into small groups and Challenge you to read through the whole book within a few minutes and dig up all the relevant passages of the question I've asked Okay, now here's a discipline it requires I tried this on myself a couple of times and Isaiah is so captivating it's filled with all kinds of different topics and It's so easy to get distracted So I thought well You know I'll just see if I can actually go through the whole book of Isaiah in ten minutes and pick up all the passages that do What the cosmic beginning and God's involvement in the cosmic beginning and I find myself being distracted by all the prophecies About the modern nation of Israel I found I'm being fascinated by all the theological issues are being raised issues about the Trinity and so they got to stop So that's kind of what I'm going to ask you to do We're going to give you a few minutes actually try to pick up all these passages But in order to do it quickly you have to blank out everything. That's not relevant to the question And I think it's going to be challenging for us as we get started But the advantage is it's a way to kind of get answers from the scripture texts without taking years and years to get the answer and Frankly, that's how I do a lot of my Bible study is I'll focus on a particular topic and throw everything else and just look for that one thing and Pick up all the passages and you can study the passages in some depth. So that's what we're going to do And so I'm actually going to record them here for you. Okay? So as you pick them up in your small groups, we're going to build a little list here of all the passages relevant to each of these questions we have here in the text and the first question is this What Isaiah passages address the beginning of the universe? Now you're going to find a lot of texts in the Bible that deal with the history of the universe We're going to focus on the text that deal with the beginning of the universe What do these passages say about the universe? How can we use these Isaiah texts to persuade people that God exists and the Bible is the word of God now? It'd be quite easy to go through all these Chapters in Isaiah and pick up the few passages that actually mentioned the beginning of the universe However, that won't really give you the theology of the beginning universe You also need to pick up those texts that talk about how God engages in creating the universe and You know, so I want you to also look at the different theological perspectives because a lot of what you see in Isaiah is God claiming that he's the one who begins the universe. He creates the universe But you'll see several texts that talk about him refuting other ideas from other religions about the beginning universe So he basically will say I don't do this. I do this and I do this in this way and You know, I don't just start the universe. I'm the one who actually planned out how it all be So I want you to look for those texts as well Because as we try to answer this question, we're going to need to know exactly how God Engages in beginning the universe what his purpose is for starting the universe the way he did So pick up those passages as well And I'll give you a hint. You're going to wind up with over 12 passages So if your list has only four passages keep reading and studying, okay? so I Think let's see What probably best Why don't you break up into groups of six six each and if it's five, I'm okay with that if it's seven I'm okay with that but approximately six people each and I'm going to time you I'm going to give you twelve minutes okay to find Literity go through the book of mouth. We're talking 66 chapters. It's one of the longest books in the Bible But it's it's like my Bible It's written. I mean the poetry is lead let out as opposed to the prose and You can actually you can actually quickly skim through the text relatively quickly and pick up all these passages Okay, they might ask the question. How much time did it take you to do this? I got it done in under 10 minutes so It was actually about six or seven minutes. It can be done. Yes Okay, am I a speed reader Here's how you speed read. I Mean the reason why a lot of people are not speed readers They try to get everything out of the text that's there and not miss anything You do that is going to take a couple of hours to get through the book of Isaiah But of all you do is look for one thing You can get through it in a few minutes Now as I already told you Isaiah addresses dozens of different topics So the trick is don't get distracted by everything else that Isaiah is talking about There's a lot of material here for example on how God's going to redeem rebellious people Just shut that out of your mind. Now what you can do Later on you can say I'm going to speed read the book of Isaiah And I'm going to pick up all the texts to talk about how God redeems rebellious people I mean you can do that and you know, that's what I've been you know telling my family members The trick to speed reading the Bible one topic at a time So for example, I have several years ago. I went through the entire Bible Only picking up those passages that talk about family marriage and divorce How much time did it take me? I got through it in three and a half weeks So but it's basically training yourself not to look at the other stuff only look at that And you say well the Bible is going a lot more. Yeah, but you're going to read the Bible more than once So yeah, you could actually read through the entire Bible in under one month if you pick a topic And I was literally reading every word. I read it really quickly say hey if it's not doing with family marriage and divorce I'm just going to skip it and keep going and what I would do is every time I found a relevant passage I would write it down Now again, I didn't try to understand what the text said about marriage family. I simply collected the verse That's another principle. I'm going to try here as you try to find these different passages Don't try to understand what it's saying Just record the passage So don't try to understand it just so that's what we're doing here We're going to collect all the passages then we're going to go back over them and try to understand what they're saying about the universe So step one just collect the verses and yeah You should be able to easily do it in 10 minutes or less and that's your only goal is to find the verses so don't try to understand it just find the passages and then I'm guessing as we go through all different groups They're going to come up with say 10 passages in one group 11 another group You'll probably come with different passages and we'll figure out which ones belong on the list and which ones don't belong in the list and Really the trick is you're better putting more verses on the list than less You can go over it again when you study it in detail say you know what this verse wasn't relevant We'll take it off the list So again, don't try to decide too much whether it belongs on the list or not right now Just get the passages down and the later on we'll figure out which passages are relevant and which ones are Okay Oh Pardon me Me Gone now I do thank you. All right Okay Yeah, isn't it wonderful of being the 21st century where you don't have to bring your Bibles to church All you need to do is bring your smartphone and you got 40 translations instead of just one And you can make the print as big as you want or as small as you want Yeah, wonderful time we live in but you got to keep your smartphone charged so Really frustrating you have a dead smartphone. You can't get at your Bible passages And yeah, some of you are taking a shortcut where you're going on Google search to find these passages That's something else you can do in the 21st century However, I can tell you from experience because I actually tried this I tried to come up with the passages through Google search Google search will not pick up all the text It does pick up some It's pretty pretty good at that and Bible gateways another one where you can actually pick up quite a few passages But there's really no substitute. I'm actually reading through the book yourself. Okay survey number one I'm going to ask each group. I presume you got a spokesman for each group If not pick a spokesman, okay All right Question number one in each group How many passages you find relevant to the beginning now? I was kind of listening into some of you a lot of you are picking up passages to talk about the end of the universe We're going to study that later. So guess what? We're going to do another exercise where we go through the book of Isaiah and find all the passages talk about the History of the universe and the end of the universe I think one thing you're going to notice a lot of the passages you've picked up for the beginning of the universe are Also relevant to the history and the end of the universe So it's going to make our job easier as we go through this and I purposely started with a question about the beginning of the universe Because a lot of the text we pick up for the beginning of the universe will be relevant to the follow-up questions We got and so save those passages because it's going to save you a lot of time when I ask you to pick up all the passages Relevant to the subsequent questions, but let's start in this side of the group at the very back How many passages did you find in the 15 and a half minutes? I gave you yes? Eight very good. Okay. What'd you guys find? Ten okay good eight ten How about this young couple in front? How many did you find? Not many All right Eight nine. All right in the back here. How many did you find that counts as one? Five okay. How about this group here? 12 all right, okay There's no prize by the way for the one who gets the most How about this group here 12 so 12 and 12 good group in the back Nine how about this group over here nine over here 23 all right, we should really come up with a prize for them right now Okay, I got a question for the group that found 23 Pardon me. I need to go back into the camera. Thank you. All right. Sorry Forgot about the live stream. I should ask the live streaming group. How many did the live streamers come up with? three okay Probably because well, you know what I should have made a special assignment saying all of you who are live streaming I want you to participate in this as well. That would have been a good thing to do But I'm glad at least somebody I gave it a shot. Okay the group that found 23 How did you find those 23 and 15 and a half minutes? Okay, so you know what they did they actually did the equivalent of a Google search Basically looked at the book of Isaiah search for the word heaven search for the word earth. That's how they came up with 23 now What we're going to do is we're going to as a group assemble all these passages and Then we're going to see which ones are actually relevant because I'm guessing some are relevant and some aren't as I mentioned earlier. It's good to put down some you think might not be relevant if they have a possibility For being relevant put them down. We can always get rid of them later Okay I would imagine probably some of your 23 will fall into that category Because you've actually did a search on the word heaven and the word earth You will probably come up with a reasonably exhaustive list Although probably good to put in the word Lord as well or Yahweh Because there's some of the passages where it doesn't mention the heavens and the earth but God actually says how he brings them about One passage talks about stars for example, okay But I'm guessing that some of those 23 will be relevant to the history and the end of the universe Rather than beginning, but we'll figure that out So if you want to know how many I came up with it was 20 so But I'm going to guess that a lot of yours Don't overlap and which means we'll probably as a group come up with probably both 30 different passages And then we're going to go through the exercise of eliminating the ones that Rudy aren't relevant Then step three we're going to study in depth the passages that are relevant and find out what it's saying About the beginning of the universe so basically what I'm doing here is showing you a technique For discerning from the Bible What is teaching on different topics collect everything you may think might possibly be relevant Then sift out the ones that really aren't relevant then you study them in depth The temptation is to start studying in depth right away And so and what happens when you do that you wind up missing critical biblical Contributions to the subject so just that's kind of what we're doing We're just disciplining ourselves get the data first Don't try to understand it. Just get the data and the database is big. We can always trim it down Okay, so we're going to do next I took you off the thing here because I got a little texture I can actually write down the relevant text So I'm going to begin with this group. Oh, but you came up with what four or five A little slow and trying to figure out that smartphone so Okay, but what we're going to do is we're going to start collecting the passages if there's a passage It's not on our list. I want you to speak up. Okay, you're next. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Oh Isaiah six three to four Okay, let me write that down Okay, next one 42 5 I'll bet you a lot of you had 42 5 Yeah, I'm going to show you in the screen, but I can't do that and type at the same time So you'll get you'll get this a bench. What's the next one? Yeah, it's a lot in 45. So it's versus five to seven Okay, five and 45 12 and what was the other one? 45 18 Okay, anything else? 48 I'll put 12 to 13. Okay 51 13 and 51 15 15 and 16. That's right Yeah, it's really about the end. So why don't we just skip that one because we'll pick that one up later 66 one chapter 40 That's all right 40 22 Wait a minute So 40 22 and 40 26 and 28 yep That's pretty good So that's 26 and 28 right Okay, group behind you. Do you have any passages that she didn't list? 13 10 13 13 14 12 13 Okay 44 Chapter 40 verse 4. Okay. Okay That's it. Okay. How about you guys? 37. Oh, I'm glad you got that one 37 16 or 26 Okay, what was that the last one? Yeah, it's more about the history in the end. I don't think that qualifies as beginning 40 if hold on that was chapter 40 what versus what? 12 to 17 We already have that one. Yeah, I'm guessing that's more of the history in the end Yeah 66 1 yeah 42 5 we already got all right. We're already up to 28. I Only created two slides, so I'm going to do a third slide 64 8 and let me check and again I think there's probably more to do in the end but Tell you what I'll write it down anyway. We can always look at it later and see so I was 64 8 Okay Yeah, we have that one Yeah, I'm up to 29 already, so 51 13 let me check. Yes. Yeah, we got that one in the back 38 8 no, we don't have that one Yeah, we've eliminated that one because it's not really relevant to the beginning. Well, we'll write it down. Wait a minute. Whoops You delete that Okay, what was the passage? 40 40 15. Yeah, I think we got that one already. Yeah, we got that one That's it. Yes, that's correct. Yeah, correct Yeah Well, I could have given you a shortcut just look at chapters 40 to 52 and skip the rest That's about 90% of everything. It's got to say in the beginning of the universe Yeah, and we're also going to find out those same chapters are the ones that say about 95 percent of everything Isaiah's got to say about the Trinity So yeah, if you want a shortcut and see if you've read the Bible a few times you kind of picked that up Okay, I know that's roughly where Isaiah deals of that subject So you kind of start there first then you flush it out So in the back 40 Do we have that one? We got 12 to 17 Okay, what's that passage again? Okay, we'll put that down and we'll check it out. Oh well we do have 22 already. Yeah But as 20 to 26, we'll see how relevant that is. Okay Yeah Let me see if we got those We got yeah, we got those two Okay, okay the rest of you any other texts that we've not I mean that group that found 23 What do you have that we haven't got on our list yet? Oh the guy who had the list is gone You're supposed to have a vice Spokesman so All right Yes, well, there's only two chapters in the Bible that talk about astrology Isaiah is one of them. You'll actually see a text that talks about the astrologers and what God thinks of them It's not very favorable towards the astrologers so Astronomy is addressed in fact some of these texts that you've picked up you're going to see that it explicitly talks about astronomy So but yeah, you will see a passage about the astrologers And so you mean a very good point the reason why there's so much content in Isaiah about the universe He was writing at a time when people were looking at the heavens the wrong way and You know kind of what Isaiah saying the heavens really do declare the glory of God, but not the way you think so So yeah, I mean it's partly polemical against all this emphasis on astrology and It wasn't just the astrologers within the nation of Judea The surrounding nations were much more heavily invested in astrology So much so there was a time in the history the Egyptian Empire when 25% of their national income Went to support astrology Now it's because of that enormous investment We astronomers today are able to take that ancient Egyptian emphasis on astrology and use it for astronomical purposes In fact, I wrote a blog article G about six months ago Mentioning the fact that the Egyptians Had recorded the timing of variable stars with such great precision We're able to use their timing data to actually come up with superior models for the interior physics of stars Why because we have a three thousand year database We got our measurements today and we got the measurements of the ancient Egyptians and they're a little bit different We're able to use those differences what amazes me without any advanced clocks the Egyptians were able to time the events of variable stars with sufficient precision that they could give you the period of the variability to five significant figures All done without clocks And it's because they observed these things over generations And so they had averaged the data over generations It could come up with a number that accurate that we compare with measurements today that are good to eight place of the decimal We look at the difference and we're able to come up with a better model of the interior physics of stars So as an astronomer, I'm grateful the Egyptians were quote focus that much on astrology and put that much money into it because of the astronomy That was kind of the byproduct of their efforts and even a Christian like Kepler Johan Kepler How we funded his astronomical research was through astrology He said I don't believe any of this stuff, but if people willing to pay me all his money for it I'll take advantage of it and Use that to support his research in astronomy and actually there's evidence that ancient Egyptian astronomers Actually employed the same tactic. Hey, the pharaoh is all interested in this stuff and wants to give me all his money I'll take it, but the real motivation was to understand the actual physics of the heavens. Yes Not really. I mean it is true that the ancient Babylonians were into astrology and They were actually as it says in the Bible text They built this tower as a way to unify the peoples of the world under one government And kind of a way you can look at the history of the Old Testament It's God stepping in to stop one world government Realizing if we have one world government because humans are sinners The leaders of that government will use their power to oppress the citizens of the world and so what you see in the The post flood era it's God basically setting up a free market competition among nations We're not gonna have one nation anymore We're gonna have multiple nations and they're gonna have to compete with one another for citizens And that actually motivates the nation not to oppress the people too much because you oppress them too much They will leave But notice that the really oppressive nations in world history They build walls to stop the people from leaving and so I read you know I'm old enough to remember When you had the Berlin wall It was built to stop the East Germans from leaving and unlike other walls where you got the soldiers facing outward The soldiers faced it inward so Rather than trying to defend they were basically trying to prevent people from leaving And I actually grew up in a neighborhood With a lot of East Germans who in spite of all the efforts of the Soviets managed to escape But a lot of them lost their lives just trying to leave one nation and go to the next nation Well, I Think what if you kind of read the history of this they were really trying to you know We really don't need God we can do it all ourselves And this is going to an amazing technological marvel. And yeah, it's the pride of humanity When we think we can do anything we want and fail to realize we wouldn't be here without God And I run into that a lot of my speaking where they think look at the amazing technology we developed But hey, but wasn't God creating certain animals? We wouldn't have gotten out of the Stone Age and so we fail to give credit where credit is due We think we did it all on our own Or you got people like Stephen Hawking today is saying my goal in life is to know everything that God knows To know the mind of God Well, what you're really doing is saying, you know, I'm like God and That causes problems and you know after all in the context what you see in Genesis We already had an episode Where there was one people one place and what happened? Evil ran out of control people were killing one another and the human race was in danger of self-extermination Keep in mind the flood not so much a judgment was a rescue It was God intervening to prevent humanity from self-extermination But basically what we saw right after the flood the peoples of the world were repeating the mistake They made before the flood we're gonna be we're not gonna be divided We're gonna be one people in one place. We're not gonna scat or the face of the earth We're gonna stay here one nation and we're all gonna be part of one people one government prescription for runaway oppression and evil and So God's always been in the business of trying to have free market competition among the nations Whenever any nation threatened to become the dominant power of the world God stepped in and put a stop to it. So I It would be a problem if the United States became a nation that ruled the world Yeah, we're a democracy when you put that much power in the hands of a few it will be abused and So an incident a the Bible does predict some time in the future There will be a return to one world government, but when that happens just like it happened in the past Evil will run out of control and so You want to see one of the most dramatic examples of that the book of Daniel the book of Daniel talks about a God stepped in and Stop the Assyrians then he stopped the Babylonians Then he stopped the the Persians then he stopped the Greeks and he stopped the Romans Those are all attempts to establish one world government and God stepped in and put a stop to all of them So that his message can go out. Hey, we're a little bit off the topic Okay Let me pop this up Okay, let me pop this up for you So these are all the texts. They're not in order. I didn't have time to put them in order I'll do that for you next week But these are all the texts that we came up with So no, you don't have to write them down. I'm gonna give them all to you okay and So it's 32 in total you can skip those because I just had to duplicate the slide in order to save time So yeah, we got 32 texts and What we're going to do next is actually go through those 32 texts one by one I'll ask you the question is this really relevant to the question I gave you if it is we keep it on the list if it's not we drop it and then once we got our Lists we're going to go starts going through each passage one at a time and say What does this text actually say about the beginning universe now? One of the things you're going to discover in this in this exercise You're going to come up with one conclusion based on one text and you're going to go to the next text and say oops We need to adjust what we thought was coming through that particular passage That's what the integration of biblical text is all about Realizing that God communicates truth and nothing but truth at conclusion you get from one text Must cohere with a conclusion you get from another text But what we're going to do is go through the passages one at a time Figure out what it's saying, but be open to making adjustments based on what else we've learned from the text Then we're going to have a final wrap up, but I think what you're going to see through this exercise I think it's going to blow your mind just how much the book of Isaiah says About the beginning of the universe and how God brings about that beginning in such a way That we humans can actually live within this incredible universe Okay, so that's kind of a figure out where we're going to be going with this I got three minutes left. So what we're going to do is actually start I think the first passage we looked at was this one Isaiah 6 Let's actually look at Isaiah 6 and see if it's relevant to our text And yeah, I think you all notice just how many of these passages come from Isaiah 40 through to 51 That's a good 90% of everything we got here. Okay, Isaiah 6 Verses 3 to 4 it says holy well, let me start here and They were calling to one another Holy holy holy is the Lord Almighty the whole earth is full of his glory At the sound of their noise the doorposts and thresholds shook and a temple was filled with smoke and so it's talking about what happened the year of King Isaiah and how these Angels were coming in and this is what they said and isn't it interesting that when holy angels speak of Frequently you get a phrase like this Emphasizing the holiness of the Lord Almighty the whole earth is full of his glory Now do you think this is relevant to a question or not? Okay, it's relevant in this sense that God created the universe in such a way that it would all of it would be full of his glory So it's basically making a point. There's nothing irrelevant in the universe Something for us astronomers to be concerned about now we find an exo moon or exo planet Hey, that's relevant to declaring the glory of God If we find a little meteor is relevant to the glory of God a speck of dust If we find a neutrino particle, it's relevant to the glory of God All of it counts and when you think about how vast the universe is with 200 billion galaxies Each with an average of 200 billion stars and there's other stuff besides Wow And all of it's relevant to the glory of God. So I'm voting we keep this text Okay, you can vote against me by the way Now I'm not sure about the angels saying what they said is relevant so what we could say is that Well, no, I think we've got it in order to keep the context Yeah, we got to keep those passages so we actually understand what's going on so Isaiah 6 3 to 4 as a keeper and then we move on to Isaiah I think it's 13 is the next text we pick up Here it is Isaiah 13 10 and then we're gonna have to wrap up Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do them one at a time. Oh Actually, we did start reasonably on time but Yeah, Sony was asked me can't we have the class go to one o'clock There's actually a church that uses his room at two o'clock So and I know you guys all like to talk to one another the fellowship time after the paradoxes class I think is really rich. So I don't want to cut into that But then there are times when I go five minutes over anyway Okay, verse 10 the stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light The rising Sun will be darken and the Sun will not give its light Okay, I think you could make a case that this is more relevant to the end of the universe than it is the beginning of the universe So don't throw that passage away. We're gonna get to it but maybe it's one that we drop from the list just because It's really focusing more on the end than it is the beginning Let's see if we can jump to 13 Therefore, I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the Lord Almighty And the day of his burning anger. I Think you could make the same case there that it's really referring to the end than it is the beginning But hey, thanks for picking that up because that's going to actually help us answer Question number two that's on your study list So what we did we keep Isaiah six But we drop Isaiah 13 and hey, it's time to close the class we'll pick this up next time and We're all going to be able to go away with a complete list of relevant scriptures on the beginning of the universe And so I'll prepare that for you But I want you to go through the exercise that helped me get this list together And winners is a sea of the 32 texts how many we wind up with but now we're down to 30 texts. So I'm guessing we're going to be somewhere in the 20s. All right, Father in heaven. We thank you for this time We've had in class today Lord, we thank you for Josh and the sermon he gave this morning and father We pray that this would be the third time at the church is picked up and began to grow Through new converse coming to faith in Christ and father pray as we leave this and go our busy ways throughout the next week You'll give us opportunities to be a witness for you and to show people Your love your truth in your life and fathered by the work of your Holy Spirit And we see these people receiving more of your love life and truth as we receive more of your love life and truth And may we actually see people come to faith in Jesus Christ in Jesus name. We pray. Amen Thank you