Wonders of Creation Redemption - Part 1 — William MacDonald

I really am happy to meet old friends here, people I haven't seen. It's kind of confusing when you see people in a different context. It's not always easy to remember the names. I've heard of a woman who came up to the preacher and said, Do you know who I am?

And he said, No, but I'll make inquiries and let you know. And I often feel like that. Peter Pell had a good one. People used to say to him, Do you remember me, brother Pell? And he would say, Certainly, I was speaking to your father this morning.

They said, Oh, my father died in 1917. Of course, he was thinking of a different father, wasn't he? Their heavenly father. I'd like to speak to you during our time together here on the wonders of God in creation.

Greater Thoughts of God Through Creation

Providence and redemption. I feel a book coming on. We have a wonderful God, and we take him too much for granted. This summer I was in Germany and Austria all summer, and there was a young fellow who used to drive me to some of the meetings in Austria.

And when we'd get out of the meeting and we'd be driving away, he'd say to me, What was your goal in delivering that message? And he's the first one that ever asked me that question. It's a very good question.

What was your goal in delivering that message? Well, I'll tell you my goal right away. My goal is that here at Turkey Hill Ranch we might have greater thoughts of God. So let's think first of all about the wonders of God in creation, and we won't be able to scratch the subject.

Biblical Praise for the Wonders of Creation

I'd like to read some verses to you. It's not necessary for you to turn to them. They're all in the Old Testament, and mostly from the Psalms. Psalm 104, verse 24. O Lord, how manyfold are your works in wisdom.

You have made them all. All the works of God are marvelous, and they're all made in infinite wisdom. Isaiah 6, verse 3. The whole earth is full of his glory. And how true that is! Every blade of grass is full of the glory of the Lord.

Psalm 9, verse 1. I will praise you, O Lord, with my whole heart. I will tell of all your wonderful works. And that's an eternal occupation. Psalm 111, verse 2. The works of the Lord are great, studied by all who have pleasure in them.

I like that. The works of the Lord are great, studied by all those who have pleasure in them. So many of us just pass through life, and life just becomes a struggle for existence, and we don't stop and look down at a wildflower.

We don't consider the marvels that are around us all the time. Psalm 145, verse 10. All your works shall praise you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you. The works of the Lord really are wonderful beyond description.

Everything that God has created is a marvel. A single cell of your body is just as marvelous in its order and complexity as the starry heavens. You can go out with a telescope and see the glory of God, or you can go in with a microscope and be just as great.

Isn't that wonderful? In design, in size, in number, in excellence, all the works of the Lord are great. All these wonderful productions of his power. And, you know, those who love the Lord delight to study his handiwork and to praise him for them.

The devout naturalist ransacks nature and hoards up the grains of its woven fruit. I suppose that when we think of the greatness of God in creation, we think, first of all, of the human body, because the human body is perhaps the masterpiece of his creation.

The Human Body as God's Masterpiece

Take the DNA, the building block of the human body. If you took all the DNAs in your body, they'd probably compact and fit into the size of an ice cube. But if you were to take one DNA and separate the parts to it and slice them together, they would go from the earth to the sun and back again 400 times.

One DNA. From the earth to the sun and back again 400. Charles Sagan, who's certainly no believer, said, The human cell is a regime as complex and beautiful as the realm of the galaxies and the stars.

I have a friend who read Charles Sagan. He read the books of Cosmos. And he said,. When I finished, I felt like sitting down and writing Sagan and thanking him for making me a greater worshipper than I ever was before.

Now, that wasn't Sagan's purpose in writing the books. He had no room for God in all his deeds. And that's my friend. But I felt like sitting down and thanking Charles Sagan for making me a greater worshipper than I ever was before.

The body is a marvel of diversity and unity. All the different parts and yet one complete whole. It has billions of parts, actually, and they all work together, enabling a person to eat, drink, walk, run, jump, see, hear, touch, taste, smell, learn, think.

Remember that all these marvelous functions. And yet, you know, when we started off in life, we were about the size of the dot over the eye in your hymn book. Maybe a little smaller than that. That's what that started like.

The size of the dot over the eye in your hymn book. And in that dot was programmed everything that you would ever be, physically. Of your chin, the shape of your chin, the color of your hair, everything.

It was all programmed. And of course, it all speaks of a marvelous divine intelligence behind it all. Because many of the things connected with the human body baffle science today. Science has no explanation.

If you take that cell and it starts to multiply in the body, and some cells go to become kidneys, how do they know? Some cells go to become lungs, and hearts, and pancreas, and skin, and teeth. How do they know?

Science has no answer to that question, whatever. It baffles the very depth of the human psyche. What a wonderful thing to be able to bow the knee and worship the God whom we know as Father. Think of billions of people who've lived upon the earth, and are living at the present time, and yet no two of them exactly alike.

Criminals run up against this inescapable fact because it's their fingerprint, don't they? Imagine what it would mean to use a sit-down with a pencil and paper and start designing fingerprints and never re-feature them.

And of course, now they have genetic fingerprinting, where chemical sequences of the DNA found in a person's blood, or sweat, or saliva are analyzed. Think of the extraordinary coordination of mind, and bones, and muscles that enable people to break these world records in running and jumping and all of the other feats that you see in the Olympics.

Of course, the body needs energy for all of that, and the food is chewed and assimilated into the body, and some of that food becomes flesh, some becomes fat, and some becomes energy. But how does the food know?

How does the food know what functions to fulfill? Think of the marvel of human sight. Have you thanked the Lord recently for eyesight? I must confess that I thank him all the time, because I'm supposed to be blind.

I'm not supposed to have any sight at all. And I often think of that as a mystery to me of eyesight, how you look upon the thing, and I know you have so many rods in your eyes, I know there are explanations of it, but how does what I see, how is it converted into an image in my mind?

The connection between the eyes and the brain. How is it that what you see is actually upside down, but the brain performs a neat little trick and turns it right-side up for you? Marvelous, isn't it?

The Marvels of Hearing, Speech, and Touch

The marvel of human sight, and the photosensitive pigment which is so important for vision. I think it's marvelous how the ear operates, and how the inner ear takes noise in the form of words and converts it to nerve impulses, and transmits these impulses to the brain.

I think it's marvelous that a sister sitting in the meeting can hear a baby squalling in the nursery, and she knows it's her baby. How does she know? They all sound the same to me. Yet she has that wonderful power of hearing and recognizing.

And it's marvelous, isn't it, that the baby recognizes the mother's voice. Why shouldn't the baby recognize the mother's voice? She's been hearing, the baby's been hearing it all the time. She's in the womb.

It's a very familiar voice to her. By that time, by the time she's born. Think of how God brings all of these things to pass. People seldom appreciate their hearing until they lose it. But the ears are also quite essential for maintaining equilibrium.

And when the inner ear is out of sorts, the whole world can move around in a crazy... I think of the marvel of human speech. How God has designed our vocal cords so that air coming up from our lungs starts these cords vibrating, and we can speak, and we can yell, and we can sing.

Marvelous, isn't it? Marvelous to me that you can turn on the radio, and you hear a voice, and you say, that's George Beverly Shea. How do you know? It's a distinctive, and no two voices exactly. It's tremendous, too, when you think of the potential of the human voice, when you think of how that voice can be used for the glorifying of the Lord Jesus Christ.

How it can also be used for very evil purposes, swaying multitudes into evil. We take it about as a matter of fact. Take it for granted. It's as natural to us as breathing. But how do we do it? I think of the skin, and the whole sensation of touch, how God has designed it.

How he's given us skin over our bodies, and it will let water out, but it won't let water in. Isn't that wonderful? Be thankful for that when you go down on the river today. And the power of touch that God has enabled us, we can tell whether we're holding two sheets of paper or one, or two dollar bills, or one dollar bill.

And how our touch can discern pressure, distinguish between heat and cold, shaking hands. Simulation of our sense of touch is really essential to a normal birthday suit that God has given us. We wear it throughout our whole life.

It's about two square yards, six pounds, and your skin is your largest organ. And every single square inch of it tingles with a thousand nerve endings, and these are sense perceptors by which you probe the world around you.

Smell, Food, and the Goodness of God

It's enough to know God as God who designed all of this. You know, the Old Testament, especially the Psalms, are filled with the wonders of God in creation, the creation of the human body, Psalm 139. I was thinking this morning, you know, the New Testament wouldn't be complete without the Old Testament, because you really don't read so much about the wonders of God in creation in the New Testament.

You have to go back to the Old Testament to find the promise dwelling in that subject. Think of the marvel of the sensation of smell. The average person can distinguish about 4 ,000 different odors. Some people with unusually well-trained sense can distinguish 10 ,000 different odors.

What a marvel, isn't it? It's interesting as you get older, and some odor comes, and you haven't smelled that since you were a child. Maybe some food, something like that. I was in a home in Italy, and we were waiting for the supper to be served.

What it was, they were cooking a big pot of, I think you'd call them caribou, they're these little things that stick to the rock on the shoreline. Most of you haven't even eaten them. You probably wouldn't want to either.

You'd just take a little head and a chin and pick out the meat and eat it. But that odor had been in my mind for quite a number of years. How come you were the owner of a robe? It's pretty marvelous, isn't it?

And all the food, the fragrances of food. Isn't it wonderful that God has created food with fragrances? He could have created all foods like father. He didn't. It greatly adds to the pleasure of the food that we eat the way God has made it.

I tell you, he's a wonderful God. Really a wonderful God. He made us so that we might worship him and enjoy him forever, and use all the powers that we have for him. You know, life is like two kinds of boats, right?

Loving God With Every Faculty and Strength

There are these sailboats that go around. People go out in their sailboats, and they go around the lake, they go around the bay, and they're not going anywhere. And they're not particularly accomplishing anything.

And then there's a freighter that comes chugging along, and it's filled with cargo, and it's going somewhere definite, and accomplishing somewhat something definite. That's what God wants us to do. He doesn't want us to be pleasure sailboats.

He wants us to be freighters, accomplishing something. And didn't the Lord mean something like that when he said, I shall love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, heart, mind, strength. God wants us to love him with all our souls.

That's with all our emotional powers. With all our mind. That's with all our intellectual powers. With all of our affectionate powers. With all our strength. That's why he gave us these marvelous bodies, that we might use them for his glory.

The Hand, the Brain, and Divine Design

Something as handy as a hand. And that's a poor pun. But it's too just the same. Much more handy than a hand. Think of all the tasks that this hand has to accomplish in life. If somehow you could feed all of those tasks into a computer, and if you had the right kind of software, and then you say to a computer, please design something that would do everything the human hand has to do, you know what would come out, don't you?

Something just like that. Perfectly designed. And you know, in the human hand, this thumb is distinctive. God has reserved a place in the brain for the thumb, quite apart from the rest of the fingers, because of the tremendously unique place that the thumb has in the accomplishment of tasks in life.

Can you tell me it all happens by chance, by an accidental converging of, you can do better than that, the brain, the human brain. Job, chapter 38, verse 35. Who has put wisdom in the mind, or who has given understanding to the heart?

What a marvelous question. Who has put wisdom in the mind? You speak of the human mind. The average adult brain weighs about three pounds, and it enables the owner to learn. The animals can do that. It enables the owner to think.

Animals can't do that. And that mind can understand, it can memorize, and it can retrieve information. You tell me now how ten or twelve watts of electricity and some chemicals pumped in by the blood.

Although they've learned much about the brain in recent years, man knows only the barest outline of its operation, and some philosophers feel that we'll never be able to fathom how mind and body operate in this convoluted organ.

The brain is biology's ultimate, it has been called an enchanted loom. It takes the electrical signals from 252 million rods and comes in the eyes and leaves those bits of information into a tapestry portrait of what is before you.

I like to read what scientists who are not Christians say in this regard. Let me read a couple to you. National Geographic had it as the incredible complicated structure in the known. Dr. Michael Jensen, in his book Evolution, A Theory in Crisis, says it would take an eternity for engineers to assemble an object using remote-educated engineering.

And then, after Professor Rogers, the author of the book The Emperor's New Mind, he cautions against comparing the brain to a computer, against stating that the human brain is just a complex computer, or that a computer will ever be able to think.

He said, quote, The very fact that the mind leads us to truths that are not computable convinces me that a computer can never do the same for mind. These are men who have no place for God in their scheme of things.

Someday they'll have to face it. Why don't they? I think Romans, chapter 1, gives the answer. In creation you see the Godhood of God, you see his invisible power, and his Godhood. Man does not want to acknowledge their God, because if they acknowledge that there is a God, then they know they're responsible for him.

He says that in man is a three-pound grain, which as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe. And, going back to Carl Sagan again, he said, The information content of the human brain would fill some 20 million volumes, as many as the world's largest library.

And, of course, Christians have been saying this for many years, but they're locked out of court when they say it. Think of the faculty of memory. You get to be my age, your memory is something you forget with.

But, Toscanini was able to memorize the complete score of a symphony and file it away in his memory. Robert Dick Wilson was proficient in over 13 different languages. I had an aunt in Scotland who had memorized all the time.

Heredity, Artistic Ability, and Human Emotion

What a wonderful thing to be able to use your mind to memorize the treasure books. Think of the marvel of heredity. I think of this all the time. What a wonderful thing heredity is. You see a child, sometimes you can see the mother in that child, sometimes you can see the father in the same child.

Is that right? They vary from time to time, but it's all there. You see a young fellow walking, you say, he walks just like his father. You can trace it. It's actually the way the person walks. But, you know, how is it that a person can inherit poetic ability?

They do. Many of the hymns we sing in our worship hymnal were written by J .T. Dex. Well, J .T. Dex's great-granddaughter lives in California. She's a poetess. She came down through the line. Poetic ability is not something physical at all.

I think of August van Rijn, whom some of the older ones here would remember as servants of the Lord. And he was a bit of an artist, and as well as being a very good preacher, he was an artist. He was a lineal descendant of Rembrandt van Rijn.

How can artistic ability be transmitted? You know, we should stand in awe. I think of the whole area of emotions in the human body. Emotion of fear, very helpful emotions sometimes, can be very destructive.

Fear, anger, sorrow, depression. It's marvelous, isn't it, how in times of crisis the body pumps adrenaline into the system as it needs it. A car trips over and something spins under it, and a man can come and lift that car.

Ordinarily, even, you have trouble lifting a hundred-pound sack of potatoes. But that adrenaline pumps in, and he's able to lift the car and relieve the pressure on the person's skin under his hip. The body's designed to be a human body at this point.

The Heart, Circulation, and Reproduction

Think of the circulatory system. Think of that heart beating hundreds of thousands of times a day. Hundreds of thousands of times. If your automobile engine isn't there, you'll never hear of it. I brought my stepmother from Nantucket, California, when she was 96, and she died at over 100.

Now, you can think of that heart. All of you, faithfully eating, never miss a sip, eyes of your fists, a masterpiece, the human heart, beats more than 2 .5 billion times in 75-year lifetimes. It drives five quarts of blood in a minute to every cell of the human body.

That's pretty complicated, isn't it? Five quarts of blood, every minute, to every cell in the body, and it's constantly cleansing the body and constantly nourishing the body with its ebb and flow. And I think of the wonder of reproduction as well, which I already started off, beginning with that fertilized egg, the formation of the baby in the mother's womb, and then the miracle of birth itself, and what a miracle it is.

God's putting it all together, and it's beautifully described there in Psalm 139. And scientists today will acknowledge that the appearance of life in the womb cannot be completely explained, even by our scientific knowledge.

Biologists have identified the sequence of reproductive events, yet they know merely what happened, not how it happened. I'm glad that God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent. I'm amazed that the relation between the mental, the spiritual, and the physical, you worry, you get ulcers.

How does the body know? The doctor once, I remember, and I forget even what ailments I had, and I said to him, I said, Doctor, could tension cause this? He said, Mister, tension can cause this. He said, tension can cause this.

Biblical Wisdom for Health, Sin, and the Body

And that's why the Bible, you know, the Bible is good for us. It's good for our health. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

I've often said, you have Christian liver, and Christian kidneys, and Christian lungs, and really, what good for those things is the life that's laid out through the word of God? Sin often brings on sickness and death.

I often think of that. I think of the lifestyle so many are living today. They're living as couples without being married. Living in immorality. How does the body know? And yet, sex within marriage is conscious.

And unconscious. God has built these laws that we do need to keep. And they've never been established. And that's why it says in 2 Romans 1, deceiving in themselves. Sin, uncompassionate, unforgiving.

For this cause, many are weak, as you see among you. I think of the marvelous mechanisms that God has placed in the human body, the immune system, the defenses of the human system against disease. How God has placed within our bodies the power to fight many diseases.

Not all. Many. We've been praying for a little fellow on our way who has leukemia, and that fellow cheated so close to death. Many bone marrow transplants, and all kinds of complications, kept us on our knees, wearing out our knees praying for him.

I called his grandfather just before I came away in the 50's. Marvel. It's a well-known medical secret. All doctors know it. You call the doctor and you tell him what's the matter with you, and he says, take two aspirins and call me in the morning.

Why did you say that? He knows it. He thinks it's better in the morning. Just let the body go to work and fight. The body does. Take two aspirins, and call me in the morning. The body has mechanisms to fight fever, viruses, and infections, and the body does it very, very efficiently.

Think of how the body gives out warning signals when things are not well. Fever and inflammation, pain and bleeding, for example. They're only red flags. Parts of the body's way of combating trouble. And think of the difference between the organs in my body and the organs in someone else's body, and how, oftentimes, if an organ is taken out of another body and put in mine, my body doesn't check it.

How does it know? It doesn't know. That's why they have to lower the immunity of the body, in many cases, so that it will accept it. My colleague just had an operation for a new heart valve, and they put a heart valve made from a pig.

And a pig is, in that sense, most compatible with the human body. I'm not sure I'm elated by the idea, but... And I can't help wondering that you can have that operation, because there are no kosher pigs.

The Human Person as Spirit, Soul, and Body

Then I think of man's tripartite being. And we are a tripartite being. We're composed of spirit, soul, and body. And yet they form one complete whole. The body is the tent in which the spirit and the soul dwell, and when the spirit and soul leave, the body is dead.

The spirit is that part of me that enables me to have somersaults in the sun. My body goes into the grave, but I don't go into the grave. I go to the Lord. The person is home. Marvelous, isn't it? And you know, I believe, and you can discuss this over your lunch, I believe that the spiritual intelligence, apart from the human brain, no human mind will ever be able to comprehend the wonders of the designs of the human body.

The Starry Heavens Declare God's Glory

God's greatness is not only seen, of course, in the human body. It's seen in the wonders of the starry heavens. The psalmist said that. He said, When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars, the universe, what is man, that you are mindful of him?

What is man, that you are mindful of him, and the stars? What is man, that you are mindful of him, and the stars? It's in the context of the starry heavens. It's interesting that some years ago, Life Magazine came out with an article on astronomy that said there's no science more calculated to impress upon man this insignificant creature.

The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his candor. Day unto day utters speech and night unto night reveals knowledge. There's no speech or language for their voice. I love Psalm 147, verses 4 and 5.

He counts the number of the stars and calls them all by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power and understanding. And then Amos 5, 8. He made the Pleiades and Orion. The Persian said that any part of God's creation has more wonder in it than the human mind will ever be able to exhaust.

But the celestial realm is especially rich in spiritual. If it cost a penny to go a thousand miles, going to the moon would cost only $2 .38. If you wanted to go to the sun, the one-way ticket would be $930.

And it would be a one-way ticket. And a trip to the nearest star would be, hold your hat, $250. Scientists today tell us that there are 200 billion galaxies in the area of Georgia, and I've been talking about the sun and its glory.

Well, it makes my brain fire when I think of 200 billion galaxies and 200 billion stars in each galaxy. With the human eye, we can see about 5 ,000 stars and with a home-style telescope, a Palomar telescope.

Sir James Dean, and incidentally, Carl Sagan says the same thing, Sir James Dean says that there are probably as many as there are grains. And we look up, and we don't entirely, not in private, we've got to bluff one another.

No, they're not, they're like lonely light ships in an ocean of major stars. I wonder why he made so many on a Sunday of the night. 200 billion stars, and for his pleasure, they were created. 10 billion light years.

Remember, light years is the distance light travels. I think it's awesome to realize that when I look up into the heavens at night, I'm not seeing current events, I'm seeing distance. I'm not seeing the stars where they are now, where they were light years ago.

Years ago, we see the star called Eagle where it was 540 years ago. It's taken all that time for the light to get here 540 years from Eagle. And the galaxy seems to be galloping away from us at enormous speed.

If any of them are going at the speed of light, we won't do that. In other words, it's the greatness of our, the mystic of our planet, and how insignificant it is. This planet we live in, it's just a speck of dust in the cosmic universe.

It would take 1 ,300 ,000 Earths to make one Sun. 1 ,300 ,000 Earths to make one Sun. 1 ,000 Earths to fit inside. Scientists believe that we stand with our largest telescope only a billionth of theoretical space-time of the Milky Way.

If we were somehow projected into the cosmos, the chances that, boy, we could just be shot into outer space. The chances that we would hit anything would be infinitesimally small, not worth mentioning, because the stars are on the average twice bigger.

Sagan says, the study of the galaxy reveals a universal order and season. I love this one by as I know a non-Christian scientist, Alan Sanders. He said, galaxies are to astronomy what happens. The universe is inspired because the intricate and subtle way is to fit.

You think of the order in the starry heavens and how men as it's so steady from sure men can navigate. Actually, the universe is so great that it requires human comprehension. Elegant fact, exquisite relationship, and subtle machinery greater than human...

I will never be able to tell who is greater than human mind. We'll go on in the other meetings and think more of the graces of God in all of these realms. And I suspect that it will draw out our hearts and worship it as we have never worshipped.

From Creation to Redemption: A Call to Worship

Father, we stand in awe of your greatness today. Forgive us that we pass through life so cowardly. We don't pause to look up at the stars and adore you. We don't pause to look down at that wildflower clothed more gloriously than Solomon himself.

Pause that we don't think about the human body and the functions that we perform every day in real life. How marvelous each one is. Most of all we remember you are not only the God of creation but God of redemption.

Why you would ever care we do not know. Why you would ever pay such a tremendous price to redeem people so unworthy, so... we don't know. Help us to be worshippers and fulfill our real function in life that we might be changed by beholding your glory.

May I ask you to say these words?