Video Transcript: Physical Evidence of the Creator

We're going to continue a series of studies in the book of Romans. And today we're going to  be reading from Romans 1:18-25. Before this section of Scripture, Paul has just announced the great theme of his letter, I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for  the salvation of everyone who believes. First for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for in the  Gospel of righteousness from God has revealed a righteousness, that is by faith from first to  last, just as it is written, The righteous will live by faith. And then he goes on to show us why  we need that gospel. So much. God has shown much of who he is, and we have reacted by  distorting and twisting and suppressing what He has revealed about himself. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men, who  suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them,  because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible  qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they  neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claim to be wise, they became fools, and  exchange the glory of the immortal god for images made to look like mortal man and birds  and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts  to sexual impurity, for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the  truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised. Amen. Want to focus today on not so much the wrath of God being revealed,  we'll focus on that in a future message. But on the more basic thing that Paul shows here that  God makes Himself known in the things that he has made. Antony Flew was, the leading  atheist in the world for a long time, Flew taught at Oxford, was a man with a brilliant mind.  And he was the go to guy when it came to debates that promoted atheist thinking. He  published many, many books, defending atheism, and wrote many articles. And in his later  years, he gave up, he said, I have to go where the evidence leads. And the evidence is too  strong, that there is a creator of enormous intelligence, and power. And he said that the thing  that finally forced him to that conclusion was recent study in genetics. And in DNA, he found  that he simply could not continue to believe that the universe and that life in particular was a  merely chance occurrence that could have happened by accident. And it's no wonder that  even a hardened atheist who was perhaps the leading atheist in the world, would change his  mind in light of a piling up of recent discoveries. When Flew announced that he had changed  his mind. There was a lot of laughter among the atheist community because they thought it  was a joke. It was like the pope saying he wasn't Catholic. Antony Flew, not being an atheist.  He's our guy. They thought it was, you know, just one of the internet jokes. But he had  changed his mind. And he said it was largely because of DNA. Just one tiny sample of what is  meant by the design of DNA. In one human cell, one cell. The DNA in that cell contains  enough information to fill 500 books of 1000 pages, each 500 books of 1000 pages each in  one cell. Now, if you were to find a library, with 500,000 pages of detailed writing, and  someone said to you that happened by a bunch of trees falling and getting mushed up and  then a bunch of dark stuff getting splattered on that accidental paper. And now we have a  500,000 page library, shearly by accident, would that persuade you? the fact that you have a  500,000 page library in every cell makes it almost impossible to deny design back when  Charles Darwin, one of the great founders of evolutionary theory was at work, the cell was  thought to be, they called that stuff inside a cell protoplasm gunk, you know, they're inside a  cell, there's some kind of clear gunk and it just kind of came out of the primordial ooze  somewhere way in the past. And so you know, if you were really taking a stab at it, you could  almost believe that cells came about without a creator that they just kind of came from the  gunk came from the earlier gunk. But when you have a when you actually know what's going  on, if there's a 500,000 page library in every one of those cells, then you begin to think, no, I  don't see how a bunch of mud would give me a 500,000 page library. And so you have an  entire movement of scholars who have begun to study the universe in terms of Intelligent  Design, they don't claim that they're teaching a particular view of who the creator is. But they believe that there is a lot of evidence of Intelligent Design in the universe. And one of the  strongest displays of that is simply cell biology, and DNA and biochemistry. One of the leaders

in the intelligent design movement is a biochemist named Michael Beatty. And he points out  that things just don't evolve and and then happen as a minor adaptation. Again, that was part of Darwin's theory, that if there's a minor change here or there, and a new feature is added,  then you get an adaptive advantage and you survive longer. And so that is how things  gradually evolve and add more features. Beatty says, There's something called irreducible  complexity. And he uses a very simple picture to explain that he says, Think about a mouse  trap. Does a mouse does a hammer, if you have the hammer of a mousetrap, does it start  catching some mice. And the if you add a base it's adaptively better, so it catches more mice. And then if you have the holding bar, it gets even better. And it captures even more mice.  Then you add a spring, and you're really starting to catch mice by then. No, unless you have  all the parts there at once you catch zero mice, you need the whole mouse trap or the thing is useless. Beatty says that's what's true at the level of cell biology and biochemistry. Unless  that various enzymes and parts are working together, none of it works. And when you start  looking at larger organs beyond the level of just biochemistry and the things that they look  out through a microscope and things too small for microscopes, you get something like the  eye, the eye has an adjustable focus. It has light sensitive elements in it and a whole bunch of things. This is of course, a really detailed version of the eye would have a lot more than just  the labels that you look at in a diagram from a biology textbook. But again, the various parts  of the eye don't give you much of an adapt if you developed a lens without a retina, what  good would your eye be and if you developed any of that without a brain to interpret all those signals, what good would it be, it's all got to work together irreducible complexity, and this is  a little more complicated than a mousetrap. Unknown Speaker 8:54 But it's all got to be there  or it has no adaptive advantage. When I think of the eye said Charles Darwin, I shudder to  suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection seems absurd. In the  highest degree. This is from the founder of evolutionary theory, okay, this isn't from some  enemy of Darwinism, this is Darwin. The eye make him shudder and he didn't know the half of it. Okay. The The fact is that there is in any given cell not just a human cell, but the very  simplest cell that they know of. It requires at least 200 enzymes working together in  coordination for the simplest living cell to operate at all for that many things to develop  independently, and then work together simultaneously, has been estimated to be 40 or it's  four with 40 zeros behind it. Okay, this is truly I don't know what had a number that is,  somebody just kind of summarized it by saying, yeah, it's more likely that a tornado would go  through a junkyard and assemble a modern jetliner than that you would get the simplest cell  possible. The fact is that scientists the smartest, some of the smartest people in the world  have been working on this for decades and decades and decades. They are really happy if  they can get a few of the basic proteins that are necessary for life to kind of emerge from  their bubbling oozes. And they have worked as hard as they can for decades, the smartest  people with the best equipment, and they have not managed to get one living cell. One  simple living cell, I'm not talking about a human being, or even a mouse, one living cell, the  smartest people in the world have been working on for a long, long time, and still have nada,  zilch nothing to show for it. Now. If they ever did succeed, let's suppose they could get some  sort of little itty bitty cell to just kind of be semi alive for a bit. They'd say woohoo! We have  proven that life emerged by chance. After 1000s and 1000s of the smartest scientists put all  their brainpower into it for decades and decades, they would have proved that it happened by chance. Oh, well thank you for that information. Well, at any rate, what does Romans say?  What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For  since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power, and divine nature  have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made, so that men are without  excuse. clearly seen, we'll just take it while we're sticking with the people who oppose the  Creator, I quoted Darwin already the eye makes me shudder. We'll get a few more atheist,  evolutionists here. An eye, an ear, or a hand is a complex mechanism serving a particular  function. It looks as if it had been made for a purpose. This appearance of purpose is  pervading in nature. It is, appears to be made for a purpose, but I'm going to spend the rest of my life proving that that's not so that's what George Gaylord Simpson does. Francis Crick said  the cell is a minute factory bustling with rapid organized chemical activity. He was one of the 

co discoverers of DNA. He describes it as a teeny tiny factory. Anybody ever seen undesigned  factories? Well neither has Francis Crick. And Francis Crick does not want to believe in God. So here is his theory. Crick says that most likely, aliens from outer space, came to planet Earth  and put living cells here because there is no way living cells could have evolved on their own.  Well, thank you very much you believe in UFOs and aliens you just don't believe in the  Creator, but he obviously believes that some sort of vast intelligence created life and put it  here he just doesn't want to call it what most of us call that intelligence Unknown Speaker  13:40 God. And of course, the Big Shot atheist of today who writes lots of books and is  considered to be making a great case for atheism. Richard Dawkins says, Biology is the study  of things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. Okay, just one  after another say it sure looks designed, it sure looks like somebody smart made it. It sure  looks that way. All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind  forces of physics, natural selection, the blind unconscious automatic process, which we now  know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life has no  purpose in mind. We know this. We do? How did you know this notice? All appearances to the  contrary. Okay, he's granting that his point of view runs against every appearance that is  there. This is what Paul means by saying these things are clearly seen in the things that are  made you can look and one after another you can go right down the list of all the Big Shot  atheists and they will say it sure Looks like it was designed. And now we know that it wasn't.  Thank you for that information. We'll continue with Richard Dawkins for a moment. Even if  there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in  preferring it over all rival theories. Now we're getting somewhere. This is called hey it's called  trust regardless of evidence. Or if we move from Oxford, and go across the ocean to Harvard  to the geneticist, atheist, Richard Lewington, he says, we have a prior commitment, a  commitment to materialism, that is that everything is matter. That materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. This again is called faith, not science. This is simply  saying we are committed all appearances to the contrary, we are committed to the idea that  there is no creator and no designer because we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. Now  this is what Paul means by they suppress the truth. In unrighteousness, it is right in front of  their noses, and they have a prior commitment that will not allow it so instead, they will  believe that 500,000 Page libraries occur by accident. CS Lewis once said that we live in the  kind of age that he said the poet's believed in evolution before the scientists did. And he said, if no evidence had been found, it would have been necessary to invent it. Because there was  a mindset that wanted to think that we were rising and getting better and moving on to  greater and greater things when the truth of the Bible is God made us in His own image and  displayed all of His glories. And we fell. We haven't been moving upward, but we want to  believe we have and so that preference that faith preference, is what moves people to say,  we'd still prefer the Darwinian theory, even if it didn't have a lick of evidence. Though, the  basic mindset goes this way, you are told to investigate and to use all of your skill to find out  what really happened. Now, let us say that you discover a body, a dead body with a knife  sticking in its back. And with one set of fingerprints all over that knife, and you are told to  investigate what happened. And you're told to use all of the powers and research tools at your disposal. And there's just one little itty bitty limit on your research, you are to prove that this  person died of natural causes. And you're not allowed to consider the possibility that someone actually intervened and stuck that knife in his back. And you're not allowed to conclude that  from those fingerprints, that the one who did it is the one who killed the person no, he died of  natural causes. Now it's your job to figure out how that knife got there. And how that  fingerprint those fingerprints got there and explain all of that without saying that this was a  homicide. Now again, you could have a mastery of DNA, be an expert on fingerprints. But  every once in a while, if there's a body with a knife in its back, you should consider the  possibility that somebody stabbed the guy. Unknown Speaker 18:41 Every once while if you  stumble on a 500,000 page library, you might want to consider the possibility somebody  wrote it. But that is the rule. We are going to explain everything no matter what we find it will  be explained in terms of natural causes, because we know that natural causes can account  for everything. Well, if that is your basic rule of procedure, then you're never going to find 

what really happened. God has left his fingerprints all over the world. He has made it very  obvious that he is real, and has made very obvious something of his vast wisdom and power  and intelligence and glory in the things he has made. And the only way to deny it is to  suppress the truth and to make up your own ground rules that natural causes explain it all. So when we think of physical evidence for the Creator, one is simply looking at this whole area of Intelligent Design and the obviousness in the appearance of design and everything that is out  there. Another simply the fact that there is being in life something instead of nothing, you  know, that may not sound real bright, but why is there something instead of nothing used to  be that unbelievers would say, well, the universe has existed forever. And it's just kind of  mosey down from this to that. And that's why, you know, even those who believe the Big  Bang Theory, many don't like it very much, because it entails a beginning to everything. It  entails a beginning. what Christians call this is creation ex nihilo, something out of nothing.  The Big Bang Theory itself says that everything that exists came from something smaller than a point. Sometimes you can call that nothing, if you wish, and the creation of everything out  of nothing, there must be a vast and great intelligence. But the notion that something can  come from nothing, that life can come from what is not living, that intelligence can emerge  somehow, from what is unintelligent, this is just a faith doctrine of our age. And it is used to  suppress the truth. Really, when you when you get right down to the intelligent design  movement, you know, I've talked about the studies in DNA, and that studies of various  complex things in organs like the eye, you if you're three years old, you already know,  intelligent design, you already see splendor, you can't help it. Whittaker Chambers was a  noted atheist, Whittaker Chambers, did not believe in God. And when he saw the ear of his  little baby, he quit being an atheist. You know, it wasn't complicated, you know, he didn't  study 500,000 pages of DNA he just looked at that year. And he thought atheism is a crock  that you know, so again, you can study these things at the complex level and, and the design  the Intelligent Design theorists, it's good that they do what they do. But you don't need to  know all of biochemistry and all of that look around you. Look within you. There is a maker  and, and a great maker at that. And, again, it's not just that he is a great engineer and  designer and a genius. Look at what he's made. Just that that's really what Paul is saying. Paul doesn't really have even biochemistry and all that in mind. Although it involves all everything  he's made shouts his reality. But look at the wonders he has made, whether it's Victoria Falls  or Iguazu Falls, the Matterhorn or the other magnificent mountains of the world. Look at the  starry starry skies, The heavens declare the glory of God the skies proclaimed the work of his  hands day after day, they pour forth Speech Night after night, they display knowledge there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth,  their words to the ends of the world. That's what Psalm 19 says, God is speaking in what he  has made. He has made these vast galaxies when Paul says eternal power and divine nature,  the more you know, the more staggering it gets. with the naked eye you can maybe see  10,000 stars on a very clear night in the right location, with the telescopes that we have. And  the telescopes keep getting better. The vastness of the universe, the billions of galaxies. And  the Bible says and these are the outer fringe of His power. Unknown Speaker 23:41 So  because eternal power, just the sheer vastness and power are enough to astound and  astonish. And it's not just the power in the design. But when they look into outer space,  seeing sites that have never been seen before, by a naked eye, they see things like the  nebulae and and there are people who aren't even believers who say it's the greatest artwork  in the universe, the nebula. So you see this tremendous splendor and beauty and artistry and  this too is telling us something about the Maker of all things. When you look at the vast  variety of life that God has made. And you know, the all the different species that he's  created, we really can't begin to look at them all here the creation preaches this sermon.  Basically, this sermon should is needless Paul says, it's obvious. He's just explaining what's  going on when people suppress the obvious because the obviousness of it is there, if we  simply pay attention to the things that God has made. If you look at plant life, also just the  wonder, the beauty, the complexity, again, it is a witness to the creator and to who he is. You  have these stunning wonders and God's revelation that it is not just that he is a stupendously  brilliant engineer, or an extremely powerful person who can make something as vast as all 

those galaxies, but that he is a beautiful and splendid artist, you learn something of the great  artists when you see their masterpieces, even if you've never seen them. You hear the music  of some of the great masters, or you see the paintings of some of the great masters. And you  

think yourself what genius there is a film called A Beautiful Mind. What do you think is the  most beautiful mind of them all, the mind that came up with all the beauties in the first place. So the the physical evidence that you find in the stunning wonders, you don't need to even  have intelligent design theory when you stand before a mountain or a waterfall or when  you're out under the night sky. When that all comes upon you, it is the voice of God. And then  of course, the Bible also speaks of those experiences that we have every day. Ice cream is a  religious experience. And I'm not being irreverent. The Bible says he fills your stomach with  food and your hearts with joy. And he does this so that people will reach out for him and find  him. Every time you lick an ice cream cone, you're getting a message from God. Every time  God puts stomach, it puts food in your stomach You're getting a message from him. you might use the message wrong, or you might twist it, but you're getting one. And every time you're  hanging out with family and enjoying people whom you love, every blessing comes from his  hand. And these are not just meant to make us focus on those things and worship them  worshiping physical pleasures, or worshiping family. Or if we love the joy of accomplishing  something in our work, you don't worship your work. But it's a gift. And all of those blessings  and pleasures, filling your stomach with food and your heart with joy is a testimony to the  Creator. The design, the wonder, the reality of being in life, and just the just the pleasures and the good things that come our way. Well, there's a story told by British author John Young  about some mice. And the mice happen to live in a spot right off a room that had a grand  piano. And they would hear music, beautiful music coming from that piano. And the mice got  into an argument. Some of the mice said, Where there is that kind of beauty, there must be a  musician. And others said, No, it all happens by accident by chance. It's just random noises.  And others said, Well, we're agnostic on this matter, we just don't know. And one day, a very  enterprising mouse left and actually went into the room and crawled up on the leg of the  piano and looked inside. And then he rushed back to fill his fellow mice in on what he had  discovered. He said, I have seen how music is made. There are little tiny hammers, striking  tight wires, I saw no musician. And the atheist mice said told your so and the other mice were  kind of disappointed and it made life a little less boring, but at least now they knew the truth.  Unknown Speaker 28:29 There's just one little problem. You see, when you have looked at the  mechanism, you really still don't understand everything about it. If all you have done is look  inside the piano. Do you really understand how music is made? Somebody made that thing.  And somebody plays that thing. And when we look around, we're never going to find God by  looking around because God is not part of our observable creation. But because everything on Earth in our observable creation is made by him. There is ample evidence of him. The visible  things says, Paul, tell us about the invisible attributes of God his eternal power, and His divine nature. And so there is physical evidence of this non physical, great intelligent being the  intelligent design of the universe. The fact there's something instead of nothing, that there's  living things and not just deadness, that there are these stunning fabulous, beautiful wonders  that there are the daily delights like ice cream, all these good things are physical evidence of  God and we cannot avoid it. Their voice goes out into all the earth their words to the ends of  the world. And so we've got to do something with it. And if we will not glorify Him, and if we  will not give Him thanks. We will do something else. Although they claimed to be wise they  became fools. Their thinking became futile. their foolish hearts were darkened. That's what  happens when you suppress the truth. It's there, but you've got to keep fighting it. And the  man who said, We cannot allow a divine foot in the door is in a losing game of Whack a Mole.  You know how Whack a Mole works, you've got to knock one down then it pops up somewhere else. If you are going to try to suppress the evidence of the creator, you have got a problem  on your hands. Because it's bursting out at you everywhere. You just managed to get a theory to shut this part down. And then up comes something else. You said, Oh, that protoplasm just  came from the ooze and protoplasm turns out to have a phenomenal amount of information  packed into every bit of it. So again, they they claim to become wise they became fools they  exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped served created things rather than the 

Creator. The cosmos is all that was or is or ever will be. That's what Carl Sagan said in his  program that's called worshiping the cosmos, not the maker of the cosmos, and he was  deliberately echoing the the Gloria Patri as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be  World Without End, amen, amen. But that starts out with glory be the father, and to the Son  and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, he says, The cosmos is all that was or is, or  ever will be. So they worship and serve created things, rather than the Creator. And this  needs to be said, even though it's evident in the creation around us, the apostle Paul says it  because it still does need saying even though we don't listen very well, it needs saying,  because we ignore the truth of God, and we suppress it. And we sometimes are intimidated  by others who have become experts at suppression. You look at somebody with their  advanced degree, he teaches at Oxford, he teaches at Harvard, and you say the great  geniuses of the world do not believe in the Creator, his creation only for morons to believe in.  And then you scratch a little below the surface, and you find that they're saying, we start out  by not allowing God in no matter how obvious it is, we cannot allow a divine foot in the door,  we would be justified in preferring Darwinism even if there were no evidence for it. Well, that  kind of puts things in a little different light, doesn't it? But you need not to be intimidated  because of what the Bible says they claim to be wise, and they became fools. And they are  suppressing obvious truth that any little kid can see anybody looking at his daughter here can see. Unknown Speaker 32:50 The Belgic confession is one of the confessions of the church  written by one of the reformers who was killed after being imprisoned for his faith Guido de  Bres and he wrote, we know God by two means, first by the creation, preservation  government of the universe. Since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book, in  which all creatures great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of  God, God's eternal power, and divinity. All these things are enough to convict humans and to  leave them without excuse. Second, God makes Himself known to us more clearly by His Holy  and divine Word, as much as we need in this life for God's glory, and for our salvation. What  does this great revelation of God and creation do? It shows his glory, but it also leaves us  without excuse. And it doesn't save. Because what God did in creating is only something  we've managed to suppress or to mess up the what is going to be done about us who  suppress it and mess it up. Well, the Bible says the wrath of God is revealed. And because the wrath of God is revealed, we need the gospel, which is God's power to save a bunch of people who are in a world that shows his splendor, but who don't thank Him and who not do not  glorify Him. The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands,  the angels of heaven cry out, holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of  his glory. The whole earth is full of his glory. Oh Lord, my God, you are very great. Goes Psalm  104. And it goes through a bunch of the different animals and things that God has made,  whether it's the water or the seas or the animals, oh, Lord, my God, you are very great. You  are clothed with splendor and majesty, how many are your works O Lord in wisdom, you made them all. And so we we realize that apart from being saved in our Lord Jesus Christ, we're  gonna have a tendency and more than a tendency to To suppress the truth to ignore it to hold it down. But when we're redeemed by Christ, then we should be led into the opposite of what  Paul says. He says they neither glorified God or gave him thanks. That's your clue to how you  ought to respond to physical evidence of the creator, you say, Glory, the whole earth is full of  his glory, The heavens declare His glory. And thank you, God, thank you for making such a  universe. Thank you for making me. Now, let me be who you intended me to be. So we glorify God, we give Him thanks. And as I said before, these things are stated in the Bible. But this is  a part of biblical revelation, which doesn't actually need to be told to us, for us to know it.  Very, very many people all throughout the world have known that there is a great and  powerful and intelligent, eternal being, they have known it simply from the things that have  been made. The Bible speaks more clearly. But creation itself speaks volumes. We thank You,  Lord, for such a great creation. And for such a great God we marveled Lord at some of the  things you've made. And then we think, What must you be and who must you be, to have  made such things such power, such wisdom, such beauty and we glorify you, we thank you.  And we also confess to you that we are among those who have sinned and fallen short of the  glory of God, who have so often violated what we know to be true. And so we ask for your 

forgiveness. We thank you that in our lostness you have sent us a savior, that in our confusion and in our suppression of the truth, you've given even clearer revelation written in the pages  of the Bible, and we prayed for that saving revelation of the gospel may indeed be the power  of God for our salvation, that we may rejoice in you as our Savior, and glorify and magnify you and thank you as our great and eternal Creator. for Jesus sake. Amen.