In the beginning, God

[0:00] And creation, I know it's a subject dear to the hearts of many people.

[0:18] I know Brother Peter O'Shea, for one, and Barry. And we've got plans to hold a creation seminar over some Sunday nights ahead, God willing.

[0:29] That might take a couple of months to get prepared, but it's in the future planning stages. And we'll get to some of this a bit later on. But imagine a world where God is in communion with mankind, where no sin is, no death.

[0:49] God had a busy week. He designed over 5,000 different mammals, 10,000 birds, 30,000 fish, and over a million different insects.

[1:00] His crowning act was Adam and Eve, man. They were something special, made in his image. Genesis 1, verse 26 through 28, we read.

[1:13] And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

[1:31] So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, created he him. Male and female, not something else.

[1:43] Created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

[1:58] Verse 31, God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

[2:12] Very good. Notice in these verses it tells us that Three times the plural is used.

[2:29] Us, our, and our. God is triune. Father, Son, and Spirit. One God in union as the triune God.

[2:43] And we see the majestic creation of his hand. We can't really put it into pictures, really, in terms of what paradise would have looked like.

[2:53] The Garden of Eden. God's man, God's plan for man, was for man to have dominion. The humankind to have dominion. And in John 1, we read that In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

[3:12] The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him. And without him was not anything made that was made. God's plan was that humankind would rule over all the creatures of the world.

[3:30] And mankind was created in the garden, before sin, in this perfect place. He was created with personality, with reason, with intellect.

[3:41] He was just a little lower than the angels. And yet, some would say now, oh, we're just another animal. It's like, not that we're made a little lower than the angels.

[3:54] We're just a little bit higher than some of the animals. It's like, but no animal ever learnt to cook, to worship, to invent elaborate tools. Man is unique, special, amongst God's creation.

[4:07] And humans are the last and best thing God has created. Whilst we know we don't always look much like it, at one time we were made in the image of God.

[4:18] I know some of you look a little bit more like the Lord Jesus than I do. But at one time, at the beginning, we were made in the image of God. In the image, in his image, believe it or not.

[4:30] Yet, look at some of us and you would think we've come a long way downhill since then. Not speaking of anybody present, of course. But we know that in the beginning we were made in the image of God.

[4:41] Everything was perfect, before sin, before sin. And it's like sin has distorted the image of God. Not much of it is left anymore. It's like an image of a beautiful moon as it is reflected on a still, calm lake on a clear night.

[4:58] It doesn't take much wind to distort the image. The winds of sin, as it were, and of selfishness have blown. And there's very little of the image left.

[5:10] Choppy waves of selfishness and evil have left so little of God's noble image in his creation. Sin has taken much from us, yet redemption can restore that.

[5:21] That was taken. God has created us perfect. We came from his hands, noble, sinless, absolutely the best that he could make us. I believe in creation.

[5:33] Creation. We have been created for a reason. I don't have enough faith to believe in evolution. We believe that God has made us. And he's made all the universe all around us, the expanse of the universe.

[5:47] I wonder, you know, if a man can honestly, intelligently, rationally lie down on a bed of grass on a still, clear night and look up at that starry expanse in the heavens and see the majesty of the heavens and see the wonder of the expanse of the planets and stars and such and honestly say, there is no God, surely that man is a fool.

[6:17] He is a fool. Hebrews 11.3 says the universe was formed at God's command. In Romans 1.20, it speaks of the creation of the world, of God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature.

[6:32] Remember, they've been clearly seen, being understood by what he has made so that no man is without excuse.

[6:43] And our God, the unchanged creator of all things, in Psalm 33.6, it says, By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

[6:53] He did it all. We don't understand how. We just have to believe that he did. Adam did not evolve. The hand of God created us. Your ancestors didn't have tails.

[7:07] They weren't swinging from the trees. You know, I've been looking back at some family photos and I haven't found any that look like this. You know, honestly, we are made by the hand of God.

[7:21] The hand of God. And in Genesis 1.24, it says we are made after their kind. After their kind. We don't see any that is a mixture of kinds.

[7:32] It's a clear fact that every kind is unique and distinct. Now, I'm not wanting to take away from our intention to hold a creation seminar.

[7:43] This is really just whetting your appetite. But think about evolution in contrast. This is what some would reckon as a picture of evolution. And what have we evolved to? Goodness.

[7:54] Evolution is an... Someone has defined evolution as this. Now, get a load of this. You've got to remember this one. An integration of matter and contingent dissipation of motion during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite motion...

[8:13] Sorry, to a definite coherent heterogeneity and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation. So, that's evolution in a simple definition.

[8:24] It's a lot easier to believe in the beginning God created heaven and the earth. That God created Adam. And what scientists can understand and explain where matter came from, there's no explanation for that in science.

[8:40] You know, think of it, the evolutionary theory. It's not based on any known scientific laws or scientific evidence. Scientific creation, in contrast, as described in the book of Genesis, is perfectly consistent with all known laws and evidence and such evidence is overwhelming.

[8:59] Evolutionary doctrine is built on false assumptions and poor science. It's been called the greatest deception in modern history. Darwin's theory of evolution is the notion that all life is related and descended from a common ancestor.

[9:15] The birds and the bananas, the fishes and the flowers, somehow they're supposedly all related. And you think, what? How can you believe that?

[9:26] It's mind-boggling, really. And, of course, of recent days we've got, you know, in relatively recent times, we've got the discovery of the more and more intimate complexity of life as it's found, for example, in the digital code called the DNA.

[9:43] And each human DNA molecule is comprised of chemical bases arranged in approximately 3 billion precise sequences. Even the DNA molecule for the single-cell bacterium, we're talking a tiny micro unit, an E. coli, it contains enough information to fill all the books in any of the world's largest libraries.

[10:07] So evolution is quite a fanciful idea. Some talk about the big bang, boom.

[10:22] What was there that banged? And where did that come from? Nobody can answer that. The big bang. Sure, those billions and billions of stars that you see as you lie back on that grassy field and look into the expanse of the heavens, that came from a boom, as if something good comes out of an explosion.

[10:43] Usually, if you explode something, it just makes it a big mess, doesn't it? But rather, in the Bible, it says that there is a designer behind the design.

[10:54] In Psalm 104, verse 5, it's talking about God. It says, He set the earth on its foundations. It can never be moved. Who put the earth there?

[11:05] God did. It says He hangs the earth on nothing. In Job 26, 7, God created, and it will not be moved. God created Adam and Eve.

[11:16] That's how it happened. And the creation-evolution debate, it's not about dinosaurs and DNA. It's about a debate between two competing world views.

[11:29] The world is in His hands. He has set the earth on its foundations. And there's these world views. It's how you look at things. It's those specks that you wear. The lens that you carry as you look at life and you look at the goings-on, and it's about the world view, how you view the world.

[11:46] And evolutionists, at their heart, see that the world is entirely naturalistic. It proposes a universe without reference to God.

[11:58] No one to answer to. That would be much easier, wouldn't it? It's how you see the world and your reason for being.

[12:09] And the evolution world view leaves God out of it. It's much more convenient that way that we don't have a God to answer to. Either He doesn't matter or He doesn't exist.

[12:22] It's convenient to have no God to answer to. But as believers in the Bible, as Christians, we know that the Bible is reliable. That it shows us our reason for being.

[12:35] It shows us why there's sin and trouble in the world. It tells us of how God made us in our world. It's a foundational doctrine, creation.

[12:46] And in the first few chapters, it not only tells us how He came to be, but also the basis for our accountability to our Creator and for the fact of our sinful nature.

[12:58] I know there was a saintly old gentleman this morning who was telling me he still has trouble with sin. I can't believe it. He looks like a saint to me. But we have trouble with sin no matter how old we are or how young we are.

[13:12] The Genesis creation account tells us why. It tells us about sin. It tells us about our responsibility before God. The Bible tells us that He knit us together in the womb.

[13:23] He had a purpose even before we were born. And Romans 14.12 says we do have a God to answer to. It says every one of us will give account of Himself unto God.

[13:35] Brothers and sisters, friends today, there's a universe that's been made for a reason. And sin started in the garden and is still a fact today.

[13:46] We're still suffering the consequences today. Whereas in contrast, you think about Darwin, what he proposed. And thinking back to that DNA, the complexity of it, Darwin had no idea of that in his day.

[14:03] And Darwin said, if it could be demonstrated, I'm quoting here Darwin, if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

[14:19] Now I brought here tonight, today, a scientific example. I brought here a technological invention of man.

[14:32] A very simple one. A very simple one. We're talking about irreducible complexity. I know it sounds like a fancy, difficult word, but could one of my able attendants get me a couple of those texters off the top of that?

[14:46] There. Irreducible complexity. Darwin said, if it can be demonstrated that a complex, any complex organ existed, off the top, sorry.

[14:58] Any complex system existed, that couldn't have been formed, you know, by bits and pieces happening at a time, then that would totally blow my theory. It would absolutely break down.

[15:08] Absolutely break down. End quote. Such a complex organ would be known as an irreducibly complex system. Now here we have an irreducibly complex system. Now this morning, I must confess, our little chook is a bit of a carnivore.

[15:29] And she's got a liking for mice. Eating them. And yeah, and mousetraps come in very handy. Very, very handy.

[15:39] This is a mousetrap. It's composed of multiple parts. She had four this morning. That's four mice. And it's made of five parts, the mousetrap.

[15:55] And if even one part is missing, the whole thing breaks down. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't function. So that's what we mean here by irreducibly. Reduce.

[16:05] You can't reduce. You can't take one bit out of it without it failing. And it's complex. Now this is complex. Five bits. Five components.

[16:18] If one part is missing, the whole system fails to function. And here we see, this is a non-biological example of irreducible complexity. You've got five basic parts.

[16:29] You've got the catch that holds the base. You put the cheese in. You've got the powerful spring. Ouch. And you've got the hammer.

[16:42] So the bit that hits the platform. That's another bit. And then you've got the holding bar that holds it into place. So I'll give you a simple demonstration here now.

[16:56] And that is an irreducibly complex system. Okay? Bang. It works because all the parts are there. All the parts.

[17:07] But if I was to take one part out, it would not work. Now think of the world of yourself. There's some highly technological pieces of equipment sitting on these chairs here this morning.

[17:20] You're a highly technological, you're a highly advanced creature there, Mick. You know, you're very, very special. And there's tens of thousands of irreducibly complex systems on the cellular level.

[17:35] It's been said that the tiniest bacterial cell, incredibly small, you know, hard to define to describe it in words we can understand, but even in one tiny, weeny, insy-weensy little cell, so to speak, to use the technical terms, that there's the micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery made up altogether of 100,000 million atoms far more complicated than any machinery built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.

[18:14] Irreducible complexity. The eye, the ear, the heart. These are all examples. And Darwin confessed, I'm quoting Darwin again, to suppose that the eye, with all of its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus, for different distances, for emitting different amounts of light, for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

[18:44] Darwin himself said that the eye could have been made by just mere chance and just by gradual processes is laughable.

[18:56] Absurd. Absurd. Now, I've been in the process of buying myself a camera. I've been looking at the shutter speed and the ISO and all of these technical things to do with the focus and the aperture and whatnot, but your eye is much more complex than any man-made camera.

[19:15] It's an astounding piece of technology in the front of your face. And we should give glory to God to that. That's irreducible complexity. Irreducible.

[19:29] The average human body. Think of it. Some of these astonishing pieces of equipment. The Bible says that man was taken out of the ground, Genesis 2.7.

[19:42] And if you analyse the 15 basic chemical elements in the human body and compare to the 15 major chemicals in fertile soil, they're almost the same. So it's an actual factual thing.

[19:55] God's word is true. You're made out of the dust of the ground. And the average human body, of course some of you are more than average here, of course, today, that the average human body contains enough iron to make a three-inch nail, enough sulphur to kill all the fleas on an average dog, enough carbon to make 900 pencils, enough potassium to fire a toy cannon, enough fat to make seven bars of soap, enough phosphorus to make 2,200 match heads, and enough water to fill a 10-gallon tank.

[20:28] So you're an amazing piece of equipment here today. And what are we made of? We're made out of the ground, the dust of the ground. What did God do? He gave us the gift of life.

[20:40] He breathed into us, and Adam became a living soul. And then, of course, we know sin entered. And that wonderful place of communion was destroyed as man faced the result of his sin and was banished from the garden.

[21:05] And we come to see the thorns and weeds and thistles and the pain of childbirth, the difficult things of life that stem back to Adam's choice at the garden.

[21:16] But think of human life now. In all of its complexities, we see the thorns and thistles, but we see that human life, even its simple form, even a single cell, it's amazingly complex.

[21:32] And within that cell, one cell, one human cell, are transportation systems, communication systems, and factories producing energy. Thousands of miles of arteries are in the body, veins and capillaries to distribute the blood.

[21:48] And there's a brain and nervous system to record countless numbers of events and experiences and recall them and analyse them and make decisions about them and then cause the body to carry out that decision.

[22:04] The human body, think of it. Even that is astounding that your heart beats 2.5 billion times and pumps 100,000 million gallons of blood in an average lifetime.

[22:19] And each day, this 11-ounce pump beats 100,000 times. Boom, boom, boom, boom. In only one minute, a human body will produce about 100,000 kilometres of DNA.

[22:35] Your stomach secretes hydrochloric acid, a corrosive compound used to treat metals in the industrial world. You know, you get some hydrochloric acid for your pool and you can see, drop a little spill of it and that's toxic.

[22:51] That's corrosive. It can pickle steel but the mucus lining in the stomach wall keeps this poisonous liquid safely in the digestive system.

[23:02] That's astonishing, isn't it? Every human spends about, every human spent about half an hour as a single cell. Wow. Wow.

[23:13] And the human body has about 2.5 million sweat glands and you have about 5 million hairs on your body. Now, I've probably got a few less than some of you here today. Think of that.

[23:24] It's astonishing, isn't it? And it counts the hairs on our head. Your nose can identify over 10,000 different odours. About 2 million blood cells die in the human body.

[23:35] Every second. 2 million blood cells. Wow. That should make us worried, shouldn't it? No, because God replenishes them. He replenishes them. 300 million cells die in the human body every minute.

[23:47] You're dying. But God is putting you back into life again. He's replenishing those cells. It takes about one minute for a red blood cell to circle the whole body. Red blood cells make approximately 250,000 round trips of the body before returning to the bone marrow where they were born to die.

[24:06] And red blood cells may live for about four months circulating through the body. feeding the 60 trillion other body cells. About 1.5 litres of saliva are produced each day.

[24:18] And a human loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day. I won't make any more jokes about losing hair. But when God put the world together, He put you and me in it, didn't He?

[24:30] And God was there making it happen by the hand of God, by His speaking it into life. He's put us here just the way that we are.

[24:41] Just who you are. And He fashioned your arms, your bones, your organs. He knitted you together in the mother's womb. He made you as you are.

[24:53] He made me with brown eyes, brown hair once. He's supposed to laugh at my pathetic jokes. God made me just the way I am, just the way I am.

[25:05] I'm not as good as I was when I was born, I don't think. I'm gradually falling to bits. But I'm a designer original. I'm made by the hand of God and so are you.

[25:16] You're a limited edition. There's only one of you. A limited edition. You're as unique as any snowflake that ever fell to the earth. God made us just the way that we are with all the quirks that we might have.

[25:29] And for me, there are many. As unique as every snowflake. Every snowflake is unique. Isn't it? It's just an amazing, beautiful design.

[25:39] You're designed by God. He's made you who you are. Has science ever made a living body? No. It's too complex. It's so complex.

[25:50] Suppose you had to, if you were a scientist and you were given the job of making a piece of skin the size of a small postage stamp. Could you do it? No.

[26:01] A piece of skin. In one piece of skin there's three million cells. Could you make even one of them in one yard of blood? It is one yard of blood vessels in that skin.

[26:14] Four yards of nerves. 100 sweat glands. 25 nerve endings. 15 oil glands. All this plumbed up and ready to go. Just one little piece of skin. Could modern science even begin to make one of the oil glands?

[26:26] No. If they could, they would harness it for producing oil. We know it's not possible. Friends, we think about the laws of science and of the evidence that we have from scientific knowledge and laws.

[26:44] For example, the first law of thermodynamics says that the total quantity of matter and energy in the universe is constant. It doesn't change. It always has been, always will be, the same extent of matter and energy.

[26:57] The second law of thermodynamics says that matter and energy always tend to change from complex and order to disordered. So if the universe had created, sorry, if the universe could not have created itself but could have, but could not have existed forever, it would have run down long ago.

[27:17] Thus the universe, including matter and energy, apparently must have been created. And the evidence shows this. And it shows the evidence that the Bible tells us of the biblical flood.

[27:28] The geologic data shows rapid and catastrophic flooding. It shows fossilized tree trunks standing straight up and down in sedimentary layers, fossilized logs, whole trees.

[27:41] In one area there's a petrified forest, a national park that is a petrified forest that was buried in one mass, rapid, catastrophic flood.

[27:53] and we know that these are all signs that the Bible is true. Soft tissues and traces of blood cells have been found in what people have found in dinosaur fossils.

[28:07] Supposedly, if you believe some of the fanciful dating technology which has all been quite discredited, of 70 to 250 million years old, how could soft tissues and traces of blood cells be found in such fossils, fossils of dinosaurs, when soft tissues and red blood cells have relatively short lifespans.

[28:30] Fact is, our loving creator made Adam in this place of matchless beauty called the garden. And Adam would have been in that close and sweet communion with his maker.

[28:44] The fields were living green. The trees had fragrant blossoms. The forests were filled with joyful life. Birds sang and he could see the wolf play tank with a small lamb.

[28:57] Everything was perfect. Adam saw those lovely mountains. He saw the crystal lakes. He saw the beautiful creatures abounding in harmony and joy. He was in paradise.

[29:08] What a wonderful place to wake up and to be in. Now that's what's going to happen to us one day. we're going to wake up and be in paradise someday.

[29:20] When Adam had this utopia he didn't know it. He didn't know. If only he had been more careful he wouldn't have lost it. If only Eve had trusted God instead of blowing it.

[29:35] And more than being a mere body man has a spirit. We have a spirit. We've got self-awareness. We've got sense of purpose. A search for satisfaction for beauty and longing for peace.

[29:49] Feelings of love and tenderness. The capacity for self-sacrifice. Man has this urge found in all races cultures. The urge to worship.

[30:03] To look to God. Adam had all these things to enjoy. Only one tree was withheld from him. That tree belonged to God. it wasn't necessarily a bad tree.

[30:16] It was that God said don't eat of that and Adam did. Adam had freedom of choice and he made a wrong choice. Sin. And all was spoiled as a result of Adam's foolish choice.

[30:30] Now we're talking much about creation. Let me just spend a few moments on evolution and I just picked this up recently and I thought it was really really good. How to disprove Darwinian evolution without even talking about the Bible necessarily.

[30:51] And we get this acronym called false. F-A-L-S-E. Let me show you how you can answer and counteract the false theory of evolution by this acronym.

[31:04] and the first one is F. F is for fossils. Fossils. Fossils. There's a few fossils here this morning.

[31:17] A fossil is the preserved remains of a living thing. The fossil record around the earth extends an average of one mile deep. And one such fossil is a trilobite.

[31:30] I'm probably saying that wrong but a trilobite. It has complex eyes like those of flies with hundreds of sophisticated lenses connected to the optic nerve going to the brain.

[31:43] And a trilobite is up to a foot long with a distinctive head and tail. A body made up of several parts and complex respiratory system. Now if Darwin's theory of evolution is true you see lots and lots of transitional forms of fossils between the species.

[32:01] Darwin was concerned that the thousands of intermediate stages between creatures needed to prove his theory were not in evidence.

[32:12] The fossil record has none of them. They were not found. He thought they would eventually be found but thousands of missing transitional forms are still missing.

[32:23] There's no fossils of creatures who partly scales and changing into feathers or his feet are changing into wings. No fossils of fish getting legs or of reptiles getting hair.

[32:36] Thousands upon thousands of missing links. They're missing, they're not in the fossils. So that leads us to the next one, assumption. Assumption.

[32:51] Evolution is based on assumption. Assumption. You assume. When there is no real evidence, evolutionary scientists simply make assumptions.

[33:05] They assume. Where is the evidence of cats, dogs and horses gradually turning into something else? We do see changes within species, just minor things, but we do not see any changes into other species.

[33:21] In Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, there are some 800 subjective clauses with uncertainty. 800 uncertainties. Words such as could, perhaps, possibly, right through the book, Darwin's book.

[33:36] It's filled with assumptions. It's still called a theory, a possible explanation or assumption. Evolution in no way fits all the facts available.

[33:48] Evidence does not support evolution and in many respects runs counter-suit. assumptions. Next one is life. Life. I'm going to get these thick so you can see them.

[34:06] Life. Life is another factor. The law of biogenesis. In biology class, you're taught only life can produce life.

[34:20] Death cannot produce life. life. You've probably heard the famous question, what came first, the chicken or the egg? It's a real dilemma for the evolutionists to answer this one. An egg comes from a chicken.

[34:36] Plop. It comes out of the chicken. I've heard it many times. An egg comes from a chicken, yet the chicken comes from an egg. How can there be one without the other?

[34:50] You cannot. What's more, a chicken has to come from a fertilised egg. It has the mixture of two different genetic strains from the mum chook and the dad chook to make the baby chook, the egg.

[35:06] The problem of the origin of life and of initial reproduction is still a mystery that evolutionary signs cannot adequately answer. Yet if you believe in a creator, there's no dilemma because God made the male and female chickens to produce the first fertilised egg and the rest is history.

[35:25] So that's the answer to the chicken and the egg one. Next one is, now I've got to make sure I spell this right, symbiosis. I'm sure you all know what that is. Symbiosis.

[35:38] There you go. Look that one up in Wikipedia. Symbiosis, that means when one living thing needs another different living thing to survive. It's called a symbiotic relationship.

[35:51] Now a good example of that is the bees. The bees and the flowers. The bees need the nectar from some types of flowers to feed while these flowers need the bees to pollinate them.

[36:06] They need each other, they depend upon each other to exist and to survive. The question for the evolutionists is how do these plants exist without the bees and how did the bees exist without the plants.

[36:20] Yet if you believe in a creator who specially created the forms of life on earth, the flora and the fauna and all the complexity of it, all the interrelationships of what animals feed off of what animals and insects and such, the answer is simple.

[36:38] both were created at about the same time. Another one is E, engineering. Another way you can answer the evolution is this one.

[36:54] It's a good little acronym I think. Engineering. All living things are exquisitely engineered or designed. So a bacterium is majestically built for its purpose as a human body is for its function.

[37:11] Living things are multifunctional. They do so many complex things at the same time. Something evolution with its step-by-step process has never been able to demonstrate.

[37:22] One example of a living thing with exquisite engineering is a tree. It provides breathable oxygen for us while processing carbon dioxide which in high amounts in the air would be toxic for us.

[37:37] It supplies wood, housing for birds, roots to limit erosion, fruits and seeds to eat, is biodegradable and gives shade. In fact the US Department of Agriculture said a healthy tree provides a cooling effect that is equivalent to 10 room sized air conditioners operating 20 hours a day.

[37:58] So don't go and buy an air conditioner and plant a tree. How could something so complex arise from random undirected evolutionary processes? Again, you need more faith to believe in evolution than to believe in an all knowing creator who designed the marvellous tree in the first place.

[38:18] Special creation is true, evolution is false. And we didn't even use the Bible to tell you that really. So look, just to come to a conclusion here, we see Adam had a freedom of choice.

[38:34] In that beautiful paradise, that garden of Eden, all was lost and spoilt as a result of man's foolish sin. All of the wonder, the majesty of it was lost.

[38:46] All of the creation that was perfect in its early stages was lost when Adam fell and fell into sin. I'll just get to see that.

[38:58] And that's why we've got the situation of life at the moment where we see sin has still an impact today. The problems on planet earth are man's doing ultimately.

[39:10] And God is allowing time for man to come to the saviour. Adam and Eve didn't trust God. They disobeyed him. They said, we'll taste and see what this tree is like.

[39:24] But rather better that we taste and see who God is. That we get an appetite for God. That we learn to trust him. That we believe him. That we realise that there's this ultimate chasm between man and God.

[39:42] And it's called sin. And it leads to eternal death. On the one side we have man's problem sin, sin's penalty death. On the other we have God's offer and promise and invitation to eternal life.

[39:56] And we need to cross from man's problem of sin to put our trust in Christ. It's Christ at the cross that bridges that gulf, that gap, that Christ died for man's sin.

[40:11] As we put our trust in his saving grace, our risen saviour can truly give us life. It's his purpose, it's what his plan always has been for us, that we come to know the one by whom we've come to be, to come to know our creator, our mighty God.

[40:29] And friends, let's think of that, the irreducible complexity. Five pieces can't operate without one. Think of your body, think of the universe, think of the whole system of life on planet earth and it's irreducible.

[40:43] You can't reduce one tiny bit. I mean, it blows my mind just to think, well, if you believe in evolution, you've got to believe that a creature with all of its multiple functions inside the respiratory, you know, the reproductive, the skeletal, the nerve systems, that all kind of came to be and all had to work together to make that creature be, and not only the one, but you had to make a male and a female, but it had to be a male and a female at the same point in time so that then they could further have progeny and reproduce.

[41:23] And this has to be true of all animal kind and then of plant kind as well. Again, it's interrelated to the pollinators of bees and such, that these all had to happen at the same time otherwise they wouldn't have existed.

[41:38] So it's irreducible. You can't reduce one bit, otherwise the whole thing falls to bits. But in the Bible it says they were made in one week, God made the heaven and the earth.

[41:50] So let's have faith in that creator today. Know him personally, that's his plan, his purpose for us to come to know him. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that we can put our trust entirely and squarely in your word, in who you are as our maker and creator, and Lord, that we can find that purpose and meaning of life in putting our trust in you.

[42:12] We pray that each one here present, that each one would personally know what it is to put their heart's trust in you as saviour and Lord, as master, maker, as designer, and our purpose is to trust and to follow you and to tell others while we can of your saving grace and love.

[42:32] In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.