 questions. We've only handled up to two or three hundred, so if you're missing one, they're here. Okay, and for those of you that are new, we're going through all the major creation texts of the Bible. We're now in the book of Isaiah, and this is not going to be a commentary of the book of Isaiah. We're just focusing on those texts of Isaiah that have to do with science creation. However, of all the books of the Bible, Isaiah has more to say with the exception of the book of Job, so we will be spending some time in the book of Isaiah. Last week we were kind of collecting the scripture passages that will help us with question number one. What does Isaiah say about the beginning of the universe and how God brings about the universe? So we're collecting some passages and we'll be studying each passage in some depth, but I was using this image as a background for my slides last week, and suddenly came up and said, what are those things that you see up there? Okay, quick question. Well, does anybody recognize what these objects are? Pardon me? They are galaxies. Do you know which ones they are? Very far away. Well, actually not so far away. Okay, you're all forgiven because these are objects you can't see in the Northern Hemisphere. You can only see them if you're in South Africa or Australia or down towards Argentina or Chile. These are the large and small Magellanic clouds, and they rank as the fourth and fifth largest galaxies in the galaxy cluster, in which our Milky Way galaxy is located. This object right here, I should be going over here because of the live streaming. I'm sorry. I keep reminding, thank you for having that little orange tab there that tells me. This object is actually part of our galaxy. It's 47 Tucani, which is the second largest globular cluster in our Milky Way galaxy, and it's the oldest of the globular clusters in our Milky Way galaxy. So that's a foreground object and small Magellanic cloud and large Magellanic cloud. Now, for those of you who have been with us for over a year, remember we actually had a little talk about the significance of these galaxies? Anybody remember that? Oh, we do have someone who remembers that. Yeah, what's so important? Yes. Okay, they happen to be in the precise position to guide much smaller dwarf galaxies in the local group into the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and that's critical for sustaining the spiral structure of our Milky Way galaxy. The spiral structure you see has been stable literally for 10 billion years, and it's because of the large and small Magellanic cloud. So this Sunday, when you want to thank God over a meal, you might want to add the small and large Magellanic clouds as things you can thank God for because we wouldn't be here if the small large Magellanic clouds weren't exactly the mass that they are and positioned the way they are so they can act as the fine-tuned funnel to bring in these tiny dwarf galaxies into the Milky Way and give us the spiral structure we need for advanced light. Okay, we can turn the lights back on. One other thing I wanted to talk about before we jumped into a lesson on the book of Isaiah. I wanted to thank some of you for jumping in on the debate that happened on my Facebook page, and frankly I did not think there'd be any debate. What I did is I just posted an article on water baptism, and you know it's like what could be what could be controversial about that? Well what I discovered is and I was kind of alerted to this by someone else that there's a growing movement within Christianity to abandon the sacraments, and so they basically are churches where they don't do water baptisms and some of them don't do communion either, but the new thing where they basically say, well that was for the book of Acts Christians, it's not for us today that that's literally been gone away, and so I was making a comment on that in my little piece while I was aware a big debate happened. People say we shouldn't be doing baptisms at all, and of course there's another whole group of churches who insist if you're not water baptized, you're not saved, you don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and you're headed for hell, and water baptism is not, you know, it's a command. There was a big debate where people said it's a symbol, and said no, no way, it's not a symbol, so okay. I want you to be at least prepared for this because I was caught off a little bit, you know it was fun though, I just let the debate run, so I had all these people who thought, you know, baptism is not important at all, we shouldn't be doing it, other people saying you got to do it to be saved, and several of you jumped in and said there's a middle position here that you need to pay attention to, and yeah I love the way people cited scripture passages, basically making a point that there's two baptisms the Bible talks about, okay. What's the other baptism besides water baptism? The baptism of the Holy Spirit, right, and what is the importance of water baptism? It's a symbol, but it's more than just a symbol, what I put in my little pieces, it's a symbol and a down payment, a guarantee, and you know an analogy I use, and a lot of people didn't like my analogy, is that you know when I do weddings I have the couple exchange rings, in some countries only the bride has a ring, but I think it's really good that both exchange rings, and when we do the ring part of the wedding ceremony I explain to the bride and groom, these rings that you're giving to one another are a symbol and a down payment, a down payment in the same way that the baptism and the Holy Spirit is a down payment, it's the Holy Spirit giving you this spirit baptism as a guarantee that God will fulfill all the promises he has made for you in this light and the life to come, and so it's something that's of value, and that's why it's important that the rings you know costs more than you know a few nickels, because you're basically saying to the person you're marrying, this is a valuable ring and it's a down payment, a guarantee, a symbol that I will fulfill all the commitments that I'm making to you this day, well likewise that's what spirit baptism is, but let's turn the corner around here, water baptism, it's a symbol and it's a down payment, and incidentally what also happened on my Facebook page is another debate worked out, and this is a debate over what's called Jesus as Savior versus Jesus as Lord, and so it's what's called you know lordship salvation versus grace salvation, and it's like you know the church has been debating this for a long time, but again there's a balance, becoming a Christian is making Jesus Savior and Lord, and there's no work that's necessary to make him a Savior, but part of it is basically saying hey, I'm making Jesus the most important person in my life, I'm committing myself to serve him, and therefore he's not only your Savior, he's your Lord, you're basically saying this is something that hit me when I gave my life to Christ is realizing God knows better than I do what's best for me, and so it simply only makes rational sense, I put him in charge of my life because he knows better than I do what's best for me, and so and water baptism basically is that very thing, it's the first command that God gives to the new believer to be water baptized, but what's interesting in the Facebook debate realizing a lot of churches really don't do water baptism the way I think the New Testament is talking about water baptism, and of course there's a big debate, do we go fully immersed or do we just sprinkle people, and infant baptism versus adult baptism, so yeah five different debates were running, so you can imagine why there's so many comments there, but again what I kind of like to do, I do jump in a little bit once in a while throw my two cents worth in, but I think it's great just let these people debate one another, if they debate long enough they'll probably figure it out, and a lot of them did, so that was good, but yeah, yes, yes our Milky Way galaxy because it is consuming the food of eating tiny dwarf galaxies is getting bigger and bigger, you know today it weighs in about one trillion times the mass of our star the sun, but the galaxies it's consuming are quite small galaxies, it doesn't really make that much difference to its total mass, it's like consuming point zero zero one percent, but it keeps doing that on a regular basis, now if it were to consume the large Magellanic cloud it would distort the structure of our galaxy and make it uninhabitable for advanced life, it's critical that we be consuming tiny dwarf galaxies, not the ones as big as the large and small Magellanic cloud, and a good example of that is what happened to the Andromeda galaxy, there is a nearby galaxy actually smaller than the small Magellanic cloud, and it passed through one of the outer parts of the spiral arm structure, warped the entire spiral arm structure of the Andromeda galaxy, and almost all spiral galaxies look like the Andromeda galaxy, in fact I think it was a Sunday about a year ago I showed you a montage of spiral galaxies that look as close as possible to our Milky Way galaxy, every one of them is distorted, distorted sufficiently to be uninhabitable for advanced life, so I don't know if you're a Star Wars fan where it says a galaxy far far away, I can tell you we astronomers have looked far far away, we don't see any candidates, so I think the next Star Wars movie they got to put it inside our Milky Way galaxy because it can't be some other galaxy, we've searched and they're not there, but the reason why ours is unique is that it's been getting this diet because what happens if it doesn't consume tiny dwarf galaxies, the spiral structure collapses and you get what's called a spherical or elliptical galaxy where the stars are too close together for advanced light to be possible, but if you consume a somewhat larger dwarf galaxy it distorts the structure enough to make it uninhabitable for advanced light, but that's one of the miracles of our Milky Way galaxy, it's had this very regular steady diet of tiny dwarf galaxies, for example if you consume three or of course of a hundred million years and you go a half billion years without consuming any that's bad news for the galaxy, but we've had this regular steady diet sort of put another way our Milky Way galaxy is like a human being having three meals a day every day at regular times, but it's thanks to the large and small Magellanic cloud and the fact that we live in a unique cluster of galaxies, there is no cluster of galaxies like our local group, it's got two big galaxies, no giant galaxies and about a hundred dwarf galaxies and that's what's left right now, it had more in the past, but it's because of the unique cluster we live in and the large and small Magellanic cloud that we can actually have the Sunday school class today, all right Jim, well that's another unique feature of our Milky Way galaxy, all galaxies that are relatively large in fact all galaxies period have a black hole at their core and galaxies that are size of our Milky Way typically have a central black hole that weighs in anywhere from 30 to several billion times the mass of our star of the sun, what's unique about our Milky Way galaxy it's a big galaxy with a tiny central black hole, our central black hole weighs in at only two to three million times the mass of our star of the sun and because it's so small relatively speaking it doesn't disturb the spiral structure of our galaxy and it doesn't throw out radiation that would wipe us out, however if our star were any closer to the center of our galaxy than it is then we would be in trouble from the radiation being emitted from that central black hole but if we had a black hole it was slightly larger we'd be in trouble even where we are right now it does a black hole is getting bigger and bigger because it's consuming gas and every once in a while it consumes a star and when it consumes a star you get a big blast of deadly radiation now what protects us too incidentally all of this is in the book improbable plan at the first four chapters but the other unique feature is when our sun goes around the center of our galaxy in its orbit it has very little up and down movement and because of its very tiny up and down movement it gets shielded by the dust that exists in the plane of our galaxy and that prevents us from being exterminated by the deadly radiation from the central black hole you see well couldn't god put us in a galaxy without a central black hole it wouldn't be large enough to have the spiral structure we need for advanced life so yeah everything's just right and we're a little off topic so let me try to bring us back yes okay black holes are not holes what they are are highly condensed clumps of matter where if you get a big enough clump of matter that contracts enough it reaches a point where gravity just keeps it shrinking forever almost forever and so you know black holes are just collapsing under their own gravity so all black holes are getting smaller and smaller but they keep sucking in gas and stars so they get bigger and bigger in terms of their mass but eventually they get so small that they reach the diameter of say a proton and when they get that tiny everything that got trapped into that black hole quantum tunnels out and it becomes a white hole now one reason why we know the universe is not extremely old we don't see any white holes we only see black holes the universe is not old enough for there to be any white holes say how long do you have to wait well the bigger the black hole the longer it takes to become a white hole the smallest black hole we observe has a white hole time period of 10 to the 66 years so since the universe is only 10 to the 10 years old there are no white holes so universe is not old enough and also what we notice is our universe is so young there are no black dwarfs there are no completely burnt out stars the universe isn't old enough for a star to completely burn out so we got brown dwarfs we got red dwarfs but no black dwarfs we got white dwarfs all white dwarf stars will become black dwarfs if you wait long enough but the universe isn't old enough for that to happen okay let's see if we can get back on top yeah we're talking about water baptism weren't we okay and we're gonna get to Isaiah so let me try to wrap this up quickly oh yeah Isaiah right yeah one of the things that I used to be the fellow did the baptisms in this church but what we would do in the baptismal services before we would actually do the baptisms we would look at all the New Testament texts on water baptism and spirit baptism which took about you know 12 to 15 minutes to go through those texts but what's interesting about those texts number one let me read the ones about spirit baptism Ephesians one refers to it as a down payment and a guarantee and you know what is the baptism in the Holy Spirit it's God filling you as it says in the book of Philippians with a desire and the power to do the will of God it's not how many times you attend church or much prayer you do or much Bible study you do but yeah the sign of someone really being truly born again is that they had new desires and new powers they didn't have before and so they have a desire for example to study what God's word is all about and it's much more illuminating and joyful for them than it was before and I tell new believers when you experience that and when I became a Christian it was an immediate experience the new desires and powers were really evident even before I really did much in the way of these Christian practices and that's basically God saying that's the guarantee that you're in with me and I will fulfill all the promises that for your life now in the future and in the future life to come but likewise and then when you go to first Peter 3 verse 21 it refers to water baptism and notice it says in first Peter 3 21 that water baptism is a symbol that actually uses the word symbol and makes the point that it symbolizes the baptism that does save you it's not the removal of water and dirt from the body so it's basically making the point the water baptism is a symbol of the baptism that does save you on the other hand it's critical in that it demonstrates I am committed to make Jesus Christ the most important person in my life that's the first command he gives me I'm going through with it however it's also an opportunity to testify and to me that's what's so significant about both communion and water baptism it's an evangelistic tool that God gave us because of the powerful symbolism and so in this church we do deep water baptisms why because the water when you go down into the water it symbolizes you saying no to your old life you die to the old man but you don't stay at the bottom of the tank you come up and that symbolizes the resurrection we have in Christ where we've come the new man we're no longer am I the boss of my life running my life I put Jesus Christ in charge that's a new life I have in Christ and so it gives you a very good object lesson of what salvation is all about but I'm convinced of must be accompanied by a testimony and it needs to be public so I don't do private baptisms when I do a baptism say you want you need to invite your friends your relatives and especially your unsafe friends and relatives in fact we would actually print invitation cards okay you want to get water baptized here's an invitation that you can hand out to different people invite them to come because there are people that will never darken the door of a church but they'll come for a wedding or a funeral or a baptismal service or a baby dedication so take advantage of that so I hand out these invitation cards get them to come and then you know when I would do these water baptisms I would sit down with the people who want to be baptized and said let's work on your personal testimony because when you're in the tank I'm going to have you give your story of how you came to faith in Jesus Christ and that's your opportunity to have a significant impact on your unsafe friends and relatives and probably the most dramatic one I remember it was a 10-year-old boy he was the first one to come to christ in his family he invited all of his relatives to come and they're about 40 they're over there in the old nor church that came to hear and you know we worked on his testimony but the day of the baptism he said do you mind if I give a longer one than what I gave to you and said yeah that's fine take whatever time you need well he took 10 minutes powerful testimony he had people in tears and many gave their life to christ just from the testimony of the one 10-year-old boy and the doctrine that he built into it's just an incredible message that he gave and what I tell people is don't blow the opportunity so you know and again it's you basically publicly saying this is Jesus Christ the most important person in my life so I'm basically telling people you know all this debate you're having about whether or not this is necessary it's like look at the fact that this is God giving us an evangelistic opportunity why would you want to throw that away take advantage of it and I think communion is the same way and so you know when we would do a bible study retreats up in the sierras we would have communion and people would walk by and say what's going on here say well let let us explain it to you what this all means I won't go into that because I know we need to get to the book of Isaiah okay he got the study question there let me just read the question for you and there's 10 questions we're going to be getting at as you go through this study set what Isaiah passages address the beginning of the universe what do these passages say about the universe and how can we use these Isaiah texts to persuade people that God exists and the bible is the word of God and what we did last week I challenged all of you to break up into groups of five five or six and what we did is we read through the entire book of Isaiah in 15 minutes because and basically it was an exercise okay there's so much content in the book of Isaiah it's easy to get distracted I mean tons of subjects are there and if you try to assimilate it at all you'll never make it through in even a few hours let alone 15 minutes but the challenge I gave you is this I want you to speed read through the book of Isaiah and pick out all the verses that you think are relevant to the beginning of the universe or how God creates a universe in a way that sets things up for the future because we got a follow-up question what does the book of Isaiah say about what God's plans to bring to an end to the universe so I said skip those parts only look for those texts to talk about the beginning of the universe and how God brings about the beginning of the universe and try to be reasonably exhaustive and what I notice is you're all able to pull it off every group finished in under 15 minutes although a lot of you were kind of using your smartphone saying okay I'm going to search for heavens and earth and you collected a whole bunch of passages that way look for the word create collect a bunch of passages that way didn't speed read you just google yeah right well that's what's wonderful about being alive today in fact I was actually doing a little study as you were all in your small groups 60 of you were doing this survey with smartphones not with real print print bibles so incidentally I always think it's best to do both so yeah I like my smartphone it's got 40 different translations on it so that's great and you've got links to different bible aids we do live in an amazing age and you can make the print as big or as small as you want which is something I can't do with my printed text here so there are advantages but I've also noticed it's easier to remember where things are when you're looking at a print edition than say an electronic edition and that's something I've noticed that reasons to believe people want both the e-book and the print book and there's a reason why and that's what I like to do and I get books I get both because there are advantages to having both of them on an airplane it's great to have it all on a phone and be able to access it at any time but if I want to kind of remember and take notes I prefer the print edition and we're going to be doing that in this class looking at these questions basically speed reading through the book of Isaiah collecting the passages and came kind of what we're going to be doing this morning I've got all these verses here here's a few of them we actually found up about 30 that's actually 29 different passages you collected and I told you to be you know a little more generous and conservative so if you've got any doubts about whether this passage sticks or not included because what we're going to do now we're going to go through all these texts and we're going to throw away the ones that have no relevance we're going to keep the ones that have relevance then we're actually going to study each text at a time and that's kind of how we're going to be going through these questions but it's basically kind of a training exercise because this you know how do you actually you know study the text in depth focus on one topic only you know this is a critique I've got of people reading through the bible in one year or two years they read through it in one or two years trying to get everything out of it they possibly can and you can't there's too much in the bible rather you need to have a different goal I'm going to be reading through the entire bible 30 different times but each time I read through it I'm going to be looking for one thing and that's kind of how this whole class study began reading through the entire bible looking at all the texts relevant to creation and then going back over it in some depth so that's what we're doing here in the book of Isaiah but yeah you collected 29 passages and we did all that in 15 minutes and so we got the verses I told you don't try to understand the passages just write them down later we're going to go back and actually see what they say so that's how you're able to get through it quickly just simply collect the passages and once the passages are collected you go back over it you trim the list down then you study it in depth okay so what we're going to be doing now is looking at these texts and you know you notice I put them all in order because last week we just had them all jumbled up but now we've got them all in order we're going to go through these one at a time and say ask the question does this belong to study question one or does it belong to one of the other nine questions that we ask which case we'll pick it up later and if it belongs we keep it if it doesn't belong we take it down and I'm guessing we're going to run around somewhere around the low 20s of the passages that we keep and we study in depth so the first one is Isaiah four five is that a keeper or do we not include it I have a volunteer who wants to read Isaiah four five for us hey you got all your smartphones here this shouldn't be difficult so a volunteer for Isaiah four five all right okay nice and loud by the way why don't we have the people come up here so we can get this for the live streaming Isaiah four five a little closer to the mic then the Lord will create over the whole area of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day even smoke and the brightness of a flaming fire by night for over all the glory will be a canopy okay is that something we include is it relevant to the beginning of the universe what do you think some say no some say yes we got a debate going on here so how do we settle the debate so those of you who say yes why do you say yes okay okay those of you who say no why do you say no in the back okay okay yeah go ahead okay you're making a good point because we know if you just look at that one verse I can see why some would say yes and some would say no okay look at the verse before look at the verse after look at the whole paragraph what is the context is the context anything relevant to the beginning of the universe yeah okay do we have the consensus okay so we can take Isaiah four or five and incidentally that's the rule you do when we're going to have so that's kind of how we're going to proceed with this whoops let me go back well I'll just remember that okay next one Isaiah six three to four and do we have a volunteer to read Isaiah six three to four and part of what we might be doing you'll notice that some of these texts like Isaiah forty twelve to seventeen what I'm going to be doing is saying how much of that is relevant or can we drop a verse or two out of that passage so we're going to be looking at that too or you might come on and say you know what Isaiah forty twenty three is also relevant we should add that to twenty two so that's part of the exercise we're going to be doing but Isaiah six three to four okay yeah go come up here thank you Isaiah six three to four this is from the easy easy read version the angels were calling to each other holy holy holy is the lord all powerful his glory fills the whole earth the sound was so loud that if it caused the frame around the door to shake and the and the temple was filled with smoke okay no a lot of you thought that that should be included so can you give me a reason why you think it should be included I see some of you shaking your heads we got another debate here you know we're going to get to some texts where there's no debate but uh Isaiah six what do you think because I can see arguments on both sides so I'd like to hear the arguments okay I saw a hand somewhere yes I'll take either one whatever you want yeah it's giving you the date when he had the vision so you might make an argument maybe we should drop verse three and just keep verse four that's a possibility but what about verse four yeah okay yes yeah and notice it talks about how the glory fills all of this creation so you could argue hey that's a significant theological point that God creates the universe in such a way that his glory fills everything that he creates so that could be a good argument for including it yes yes right so that'd be a good reason that maybe you want to chop verse three from it so do we chop verse three keep verse four that's a possibility you want to kill the whole thing okay saying none of that is really relevant anybody else want to jump in on this it's talking about heaven so but it does mention earth explicitly yes well okay that's a point we can make from a 21st century perspective the earth didn't exist at the beginning of the universe but I've heard people argue on this text that this is implying that God created the universe with the earth in mind so the very actor creation was for the purpose of making the earth possible that's a 21st century concept as well correct and people have made the point notice that there is no word in biblical Hebrew for universe you got this phrase the heavens and the earth then you got the phrase heaven and earth which heaven and earth is a reference to the physical creation and the spiritual creation but people have pointed out that in that context there are places in the Old Testament where earth refers to more than the earth so this gets complicated so in the back well that's part of the challenge we're going to be facing again I'll make the point there is no biblical Hebrew word for universe you got this phrase chamayana rests with the definite articles and that's used nine times in the Old Testament every time you see the heavens and the earth in the English translation it's referring to the entire universe it's wrong to take it as galaxy stars and planet earth no it's referring to matter energy space and time and so this is where we get into some difficulty when you see this word earth exactly what is it talking about and you got to look at the larger context to get an idea okay I saw another hand somebody no okay over here yes what's a good point but it might be relevant the angels are basically making a statement about how God created so you know kind of what I'm hearing is that you know we're having this debate that's probably worth keeping the verse just because it does explicitly mention earth talks about how God creates in a way that his glory fills everything so I think we probably ought to include it but maybe we drop verse three because verse three really doesn't tie in to creation and yeah it is in the larger context of Isaiah being commissioned for his ministry but yeah I got the angels making a declaration about creation it's about the foundations of the threshold it seems to me that they're talking about the thresholds of the temple were shaken right they were shaken but then we got this comment about the earth and the glory and you know pardon me well I'm thinking it's probably verse four is worth keeping and you know what here's how we're going to perceive with a study if we can't settle it we keep it okay because it might be relevant when we start digging into the other passages yeah okay read verse three okay holy holy holy is the lord almighty the whole earth is full of his glory yeah see what you mean we ought to keep both and you know what we're blood forgo okay but here's the principle we're going to apply if we can't settle it where we're kind of unanimous about what we should do with the passage we keep it because we could always throw it away later but you know as we look at the other verses we may discover that there's links that we didn't see in which case you're better off keeping it and then so I think we ought to keep it and we can prove it it doesn't work later and then we can let it go okay Isaiah 14 12 to 13 let's turn to that question yes okay rare medium well yeah we could do that put a number system on it but you know I think we ought to hold off on that because the way scripture is there are verses across reference other verses and we may see some links that we're not seeing right now so unless it's clearly something that's not relevant we ought to probably keep it okay Isaiah chapter 14 you got it fantastic well king james how art thou fallen from heaven elucifer son of the morning how art thou cut down to the ground which did us weak in the nation for thou hast said in thine heart I will ascend into heaven I will exalt my throne above the stars of God I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north right okay how many of you vote that we should keep this passage not a lot of votes okay we got one here how many think we ought to toss it out a lot of you think we ought to toss it out okay those of you think we ought to toss it out why yes yes the topic's really satan and although satan does refer to heaven and earth it's really not talking about creation now here's how I think this passage got included it was somebody with her smartphone doing a google search on heaven well not all the passages to talk about heaven are talking about the beginning of the universe so however we might get a different story on isaac 1424 do anybody want to take a look at that volunteer to come up here and read it you know and I'm reading it right here I think we can settle this quickly I'll rise up against him declares the lord almighty I will cut off from Babylon her name and survivors her offspring and her descendants declares the lord I don't think that's relevant okay it's basically talking what's going to happen to the Israelites when they're in Babylon what about verse 27 for the lord almighty as proposed and who can fort him his hand is stretched out and who can turn it back yeah I think that's how it got included and I heard people talking about it because Isaiah speaks more about the stretching out of the heavens than any other book of the bible and this may be a significant cross-reference it may not be but it might be worth keeping just to see what all the other passages about stretching out saying yes it talks about God's omnipotence of his hand not being short being able to stretch out to do anything I don't stretch it right on this hand well in that case it's relevant independent of that God expanding the universe so I'll be another vote for maybe keeping it in and again if it proves not to be relevant we can drop it but it'd be interesting to see if there's other texts that make the point that when God creates he's displaying his powers greatness is glory which would be an argument to keep it or if we see that it has connections with the expansion universe that'd be another argument to keep it and it's neither we can throw it away well you know looking ahead as to where I think we're going to go with this study it begins with God's statements about the beginning of the universe and yeah basically what Isaiah's bringing out okay God displays his glory and everything that he does about the beginning of the universe but you're going to see that through everything he creates is a pervasive principle but that principle is established in the beginning of the universe in which case we probably ought to keep this text because you know it'll be part of that argument okay okay Isaiah 18 for do we have a volunteer to read that one 18 18 for for this says for this the Lord has told me I will look for my dwelling place quietly like dazzling heat in the sunshine like a cloud of dew and the heat of harvest okay what do you think relevant or not okay a lot of people are shaking their heads does anybody even think there's a possibility it should be included okay that one's gone Isaiah 37 16 thank you oh lord of hosts god of israel enthroned above the cherry of them you are the god you alone and all the kingdoms of the earth you have made heaven and earth yeah that's pretty explicit isn't it oh we got somebody okay somebody's kidding us here all right so 37 16 stays what about 37 26 we have a volunteer for 37 26 I know you're all reading I just want something to actually come up here you're gonna come up okay great thank you 37 26 here use the microphone 37 26 has that not heard long ago how I have done it and of ancient times that I have formed it now have I brought it to pass that thou should us be to lay waste the feast cities into ruinous heaps okay I think that one's gonna have a lot to do with what it refers to the previous verses are important okay mark so what's it okay you need to get your smartphone up and ready all right yeah this passage would definitely be included if it actually referred to the the universe but if you look at the previous passages what is it referring to yeah talking about the idols that were set up and how God is going to be judging that rivers of Egypt the forest etc so yeah probably that one does not get included and what about Isaiah 38 8 anybody want to read 38 8 for us okay thank you pardon me yeah that's fine behold I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of a house turned back 10 steps so the sun turned back on the dial the 10 steps by which I had declined which it had declined okay what do you think keep it or not somebody wants to keep anybody not want to keep it it's not about making universe what is it all about okay yeah I mean to really settle this you got to read all of Isaiah 38 and all of Isaiah 39 Isaiah 38 and 39 what is the story that's going on and incidentally you also see it in the in the historic books as well it's about Hezekiah's illness okay and now what's the story about Hezekiah's illness yeah he was going to die how old was he when God told him you're going to die 39 he was 39 years of age I could all ask you a question how many of you are older than 39 but I won't do that but at least a few of you here are over 39 or can you imagine being 39 years of age and God telling you get your household in order you're going to die it's like hey I got my 401k it's not really ready yet and so I really want to be around to see my sons and daughters married see my grandkids and none of that's going to happen and so and more over was Hezekiah a good king or a bad king a very good king and what did he say to the Lord he says I want to live because I want to continue doing good for the kingdom of Judah and on your behalf and you know I've been a worthy servant why God aren't you giving me more time to fulfill your purpose and so what did God do he says I'm going to give you 15 more years now I could ask the question how many of you here are older than 54 but I won't do that either because you know 54 yeah that seems pretty young to be told hey you know it's going to go away so but yeah God said I'm going to give you 15 more years and then he said what sign do you want that what I'm doing really is a miracle and Hezekiah said I don't need a sign your word is good enough for me but God says I'm going to give you a sign anyway and he says the shadow of your sundial which way do you want it to go and Hezekiah said well if you're talking a miracle make it go backwards I mean after all it's going forward all I gotta do is wait 40 minutes it's going to go forward anyway and so God actually has a shadow go backwards as if it's backwards 40 minutes in time now is that relevant to the creation of the universe no okay but it's a great story right okay before we leave that great story why was God upset that Isaiah prayed so bitterly give me more time okay because God knew what would happen if he let Hezekiah live another 15 years or even another 10 years now during those 15 years Hezekiah lived his life before the Lord he fulfilled his promise to God he was a righteous king led the nation in righteousness turned many interdependence but there was one significant factor during those 15 years that proved a disaster for the kingdom of Judah Manasseh Manasseh was born during those 15 years if Hezekiah had gone when God told him to go at age 39 there would have been no Manasseh now Manasseh reigned longer than any other king of Judah and he was an evil king except for his last couple of years the wonderful thing about Manasseh he repented of all the evil he did before he passed away had a complete change of heart and it's a remarkable story of how Manasseh turned around and how God blessed him however it was catastrophic to the Jewish nation because during those five decades that Manasseh had reigned a lot of people were led away from the Lord and never came back Manasseh came back but most of the people that he had steered in the wrong direction did not come back so yeah and it literally took generations for the kingdom to recover well it took us a little bit off topic yes well that was it because uh after Manasseh passed away there were several more kings of Judah only one of them was a good king that was Josiah and some have argued of all the kings of Judah he was the best I mean maybe David but I mean once you had the kingdom split into two nobody comes close to Josiah and being really committed to the Lord but it was like uh too late so much damage had happened he was not able to turn the nation around which I think is something about our nation today I mean we need to look at what's happened to our nation and say hey you know it's getting to the point where it might be too late to turn things around I was just reading a report uh the other day now more than half the population of Americans are born at a wedlock never before in the history of the United States has that been true we're half the people that are born are born at a wedlock also then our interesting statistic uh we are now have the highest unemployment rate of the men in the history it's even higher than it was during the depression so now we have employment but it's basically women working and a lot of men not working so yeah I mean we have a low unemployment rate today but there's a lot of men who are choosing not to work at all excuse me okay back to the text moving on to Isaiah 40 as you can see we got a lot of passages in Isaiah 40 how many of them are relevant Isaiah 40 verse 4 every valley shall be raised up every mountain and hill made low the rough ground shall become level the rugged places of plain and the glory of the lord will be revealed and all mankind together will see it for the mouth of the lord is spoken that's Isaiah 4 and verse 5 incidentally uh there was a famous composer that used this yeah it's in messiah's handle right if you're familiar with messiah uh and that part of the uh the uh yeah is this relevant to the universe okay which verse I'm reading out of the 1984 internet new international version uh but yeah as you look at the context of these first few verses of for Isaiah 40 this is a prophecy and that's why it's in handles messiah because he looked at this as a prophecy so and incidentally it's cited in the new testament this this particular text but yeah it's a prophecy it's not referring to the beginning you might make a case it might have a reference to the ending but not the beginning okay moving into Isaiah 40 22 40 12 pardon me 40 12 to 17 sorry about that okay and the challenge here is are all of these verses relevant some or none that's the challenge now i'm gonna want someone to come up and read 12 to 17 my asthma is kicking in so i'm not going to be able to do it come on up who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens by the span and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure and weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales who has directed the spirit of the lord or as his counselor has informed him with whom did he consult and who gave him understanding and who taught him in the path of justice and taught him knowledge and informed him of the way of understanding verse 15 all 17 behold the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales behold he lifts up the islands like fine dust even Lebanon is not enough to burn nor its beasts enough for burnt offering all the nations are as nothing before him they are regarded by him as less than nothing and meaningless okay so do you think all of that is relevant or just some okay 12 is definitely relevant yeah because 12 talks about if not explicitly about the beginning universe is actually talking how God creates so that how component is important so definitely verse 12 anybody want to argue for some more verses besides 12 what about 15 good point gary make your case okay that's a good point in other words as God creates the universe it's making the point of how carefully he goes about it actually has this measuring stick and so everything is basically making a fine tuning argument you know it's not just God put throwing it out there this is something he carefully fine tunes for a benefit and so verse 15 yes i'm voting for verse 17 okay you are counted by him as less than nothing which sounds like a line out of talking or Lawrence Krauss right so no you don't think so gary yeah talking about the nations 17 and 18 should not be included but they give a good overview of what this section of 40 through 55 chapters are about 18 to whom will you like and God compared to us puny people and it uses the universe to explain this yeah so that's a good point because basically making a point hey look at you look at me look at what i've done can you do this i mean can we humans create a universe i know they're trying to do that at the large hadron collider that's a joke you'll see that on the internet yeah yeah people worry they're going to make a black hole or bring a new universe but not the case and that's a rumor running around the internet by the way that we are on the verge of actually making a universe in the lab here's how you can dispel that we astronomers routinely observe parts of the universe where the energy densities or orders of magnitude greater than anything that's achievable in the large hadron collider and we don't see black holes coming into existence we don't see new universes coming to existence we don't see any new spacetime realms so don't panic about what's happening there in switzerland it's not going to be the end of the world it might be the end of some of your tax dollars but it won't be the end of the world yeah let's not go there okay but you're making a good case that there's some relevance in verse 18 so that's great well i think we can definitely make a case for 12 and 15 yeah and maybe we should let the rest go so and chances are that point that you're raising is going to be found in other passages we'll see okay that which brings us to 4022 hopefully there won't be a lot of debate on 4022 so i'd like to read that for us thank you um and ivy he sits enthroned above the circle of the earth and its people are like grasshoppers he stretches out the heavens like a canopy and spreads them out like a tent to live in so i think that's a slam dunk okay that gets included okay uh verse 26 yes yes well what's interesting about that passage and we notice we got a question that deals with whether or not uh what isa has got to say about the shape of the earth because you know something new on the that's been around for the past year you actually got both atheists and christians arguing for a flat earth well i think the atheists are role playing and what's interesting is that both sides will cite this text and so the flat earth people will say yeah a circle that's two dimensional it's not three dimensional and so and then people who say this shows that the earth's spherical is saying well if you've got a god above looking down on an object only a sphere looks like a circle from all perspectives what we're going to discover is the Hebrew word there it can mean circle it can also mean orb okay so a lot of these debates that go on are based on the fact people reading the english translation and not realizing the Hebrew word definitions are a lot more expansive than we see in english and once you recognize that it can settle that yeah so it could just as well be translated god sits above the earth and looks down on the orb of the earth which would be an explicit statement that it's a sphere but it's either a sphere or a circle but yeah only a sphere looks like a circle from all perspectives above so i mean you look at the moon it always looks like a circle right whether you're on the backside the front side sideways whatever astronauts have been around it always looks like a circle the only way it would always look like a circle is if indeed the moon is spherical so okay we have another circle it's got another circle it's always round it never goes backwards yeah and the clock just keeps advancing and we're out of time but you only covered almost all of these today yeah so and here the rest we need to cover so we're going to get through this and then we get to study it and kind of what i'm going to be doing i'm actually going to show you slide by slide the different passages and then we're going to have a discussion and i'm going to kind of keep this up i'm going to be throwing questions at you to try to get you to analyze these texts but here's the exercise we start going through the actual texts the challenge is how do we integrate all these passages in isaib about the beginning of the universe to get a biblically correct picture of what the bible is saying about the beginning of the universe because you're not going to get it from just one text and isaib really does give us a complete picture of what the bible says about the beginning universe of all the books of the bible isaib says more about the beginning of the universe more detail about the beginning of the universe than literally the rest of the books of the bible combined so that's why we're going to be spending some time on isaib because it's got a lot to say about these specifics and was really amusing to me just a couple weeks ago i was on a university campus debating another christian research scientist who said the bible is silent on the universe well i think isaib says otherwise and i brought up isaib he said well it's all poetry but you know what hebrew poetry is not like english poetry it's very powerful we're going to see just how powerful hebrew poetry is in giving us specifics about the doctrine of creation and especially the doctrine of the trinity the most definitive texts of all on the doctrine of the trinity are on the book of isaib and my friend uh david block who has raised an orthodox jew and became a christian he became a christian through studying these isaib texts on the trinity and i said well why did you study those texts he says those are the texts my rabbi forbid me to read and as a rebellious young orthodox jew i says hey i'm not allowed to read these texts i'm gonna look at them and see what they got to say so and that brought them to faith in christ anyway let me close in prayer father in heaven we thank you for this amazing prophet that you raised up and lord how you called him to an incredible ministry over several decades of his life under four different kings and father how you had him experience great persecution that lord used that persecution to have a powerful impact on the nation of his time but not just his time we're thank you for raising up isaia to be a prophet to all generations even here in the 21st century the lord i pray as we go through these texts it'll equip us in a powerful way