Creation Concepts (Part 1)

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Creation Concepts (Part 2)

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We've been in Hebrews chapter 11 now for, I guess, four or five weeks, maybe even more than that.
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And we're just now getting to verse 3, because we spent a lot of time examining verse 1 and verse 2.
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And we talked about the fact that Hebrews chapter 11 has been known as the great faith chapter.
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Some call it the great faith hall of fame, that it lists for us a group of individuals whom the Bible refers to as faithful men and women.
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And it begins with that wonderful verse that faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
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Now, before the list of names begins in verse 4, we have somewhat of a caveat verse in verse 3.
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Verse 3 takes the opportunity to say, now, there's something that you need to understand about faith.
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Faith begins with a very simple foundation, and that is that God is the creator of all things.
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That's sort of the foundation for a theistic worldview, that you have to believe that God exists and that He created all things.
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So this morning, we are going to be looking at what I have entitled creation concepts, ideas about creation that we draw from the text here in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 3.
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Now, I invite you to stand as we read Hebrews 11, 3 to introduce today's message.
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It says, by faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
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Father God, as we examine this text this morning and we look at the concept of creation and why it is so vitally important to our faith.
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Lord, I pray that you would just use your Holy Spirit's power and remind us of the importance of these truths and that you would forgive us, Lord, for our shortcomings.
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Particularly mine, O God, as the mouthpiece.
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I pray that you would keep me from error, as I pray always, and that you would open up the hearts of your people to the truth.
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All these things, Lord, we ask in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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For centuries, the concept that God created the world was a popularly accepted theory of how the world came into existence.
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Even if a person didn't believe in the God of the Bible, there was still an acceptance that the world did not come about by natural means, but some sort of supernatural means.
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That is, until the mid-1800s, when the works of men like Charles Darwin and another man who is probably less familiar to most of you, a man by the name of Charles Lyell, began to introduce scientific hypotheses that remove the acts of God from the scientific model.
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This has led to the time that we live in today, wherein many in the scientific community mock the idea of any inclusion of the work of God in the realm of scientific discovery.
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In fact, oftentimes, if you even try to bring the concept of there being a supernatural being up in the concept of science, you will be laughed away from the table, or at least will be ignored.
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A few years ago, actor Ben Stein, who is not a Christian, Ben Stein, I believe, is a Jewish person by faith, and he did a movie on the subject of this issue, and it was called Expelled.
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The reason for the movie was to demonstrate how, within the scientific community, people who say that there is another way to look at the evidence, other than Darwinian evolution, that there is another way to look at the evidence, another interpretation of the evidence, that those people were not being allowed to continue to teach in major universities and schools.
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And that's where the word expelled comes from, that they were expelled from the schools.
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And it was interesting because even though Ben Stein not being a Christian, he aligned himself with many Christian groups in the making of that film because he said it's obvious to him that the world has a creator.
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And even though it's obvious to him, we do know still that for many, they mock the idea that the world was created by God.
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However, the Bible makes no apologies.
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The Bible is very clear that God is the creator of all things.
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It is a truth upon which the whole of Scripture rests.
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It is found in the very earliest verse of the Bible, and it is repeated throughout.
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It says in the very first verse, In the beginning God created.
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And I always think that we miss the importance of the fact that when it says, In the beginning God, it doesn't try at any point to rationalize God.
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It doesn't try at any point to explain God.
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It doesn't try at any point to say, well, this being God, He lives outside of time, and He is a different type of being than we've ever seen.
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And He's triune in His nature, and He's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together in one, and three, and one, and one, and three.
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It doesn't go through that.
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It simply says God.
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In the beginning, God was already there.
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And He is the one who created the world.
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It did not come about through random acts of mutation and uncontrolled evolutionary processes.
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Or undirected evolutionary processes.
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But rather, it came because God created it.
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That truth mustn't escape us.
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And that truth must never leave our minds when we consider who it is that we are worshiping.
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Beloved, when I consider God's majesty and His sovereignty, the very first thing that I am reminded of is that He created all things.
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Some people have a problem with God's sovereignty.
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They say, well, I don't think God should have power over all things.
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Why not? He created all things.
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All things belong to Him.
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Where do we have the problem? You would not even be if God did not exist.
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You would not exist if He didn't.
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That concept punched me in the face one day.
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And by that I mean philosophically.
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It didn't really come to life and punch me in the face.
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But I had a philosophic punch in the face one day because I was thinking about my existence.
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I was thinking about what being is.
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What does it mean to be? To be or not to be, that is the question.
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Whether it is noble or not.
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But I was really thinking, kind of considering the concept of being.
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And I got to thinking about what it means to be a dependent being.
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I got to thinking about the idea of God being an independent being and me being a totally dependent being.
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Now I may be running away from some of you.
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But I hope I am hitting your heart because this is what really came into my mind.
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If God in some point ceased to exist, I would cease to exist.
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Because my being is dependent upon His being.
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My very existence is dependent upon His existence.
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And if God chose at any moment to take away my existence and to say you no longer exist.
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I would cease to be.
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My very person and nature and being is wrapped up in God.
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Now that gives you a new way to worship right there.
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It gives you a new way to look at God.
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You know so many people look at God like He is some kind of celestial Santa Claus.
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Or some kind of a supreme people watcher.
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God is the God of this world who created all things in this world.
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To Him be the glory and power forever and ever.
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Amen.
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When we come to church, do you really think about what you come to church for? Do you come to church to see and to be seen? To see others and to be seen by others? Is that why you are here? If it is, go home.
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This is not why you come to church.
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Oh, that is mean.
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No, it is the truth.
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Sometimes the truth hurts.
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If you come here to worship the God who created you with other like-minded believers, then you are here for the right reason.
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But beloved, I think so many of us come for the wrong reasons.
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And with the wrong attitudes.
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And we forget who God is.
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We forget what God is.
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We use that word so often that it becomes so innocuous.
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God.
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People say, well, television is my God.
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Or Aerosmith is my God.
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Or whatever.
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That is ridiculous.
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Because that doesn't even address the concept of who God is.
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Or what God is.
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And beloved, when I read this verse in Hebrews 11.3, It says, by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God.
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It strikes to the very heart of who I am.
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Because it reminds me that faith begins with a belief in God's creation.
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Now, I have three concepts that I want to talk about this morning.
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That is why it is called creation concepts.
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I don't know if I am going to get through all three.
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I may only hang with the first one.
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Because honestly, it just doesn't matter how fast we go.
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It doesn't matter.
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What matters is that we understand what we say.
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And we understand what we are being taught.
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I heard a guy one time.
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He says, I took a speed reading course.
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He says, my reading went up to 40 pages per minute.
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He said, but my comprehension plummeted.
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He said, I can read it, but I don't have an idea what it is saying.
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That is the same way with the Bible.
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I hear people say, I read the whole Bible every year.
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That is great if you can read it and comprehend it.
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But if it takes you ten years to read the Bible.
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Because you need to read that slow to understand it.
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By all means, take the time.
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There are three concepts that I think are found in this little short verse.
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One verse, I think, gives us three important concepts.
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If you are taking notes, I will give them to you.
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I don't know that I am going to get to them all today.
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I am going to be out next Sunday.
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If I have to return to this, I will return to it the week after.
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I am going to be preaching for our American Heritage Girls next week.
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I am really excited about everything except for sleeping on the ground.
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I just want to make that very well known.
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Every part of it excites me except that.
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Somebody says, camping is a tradition in my family.
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I say it was a tradition in everybody's family until we invented the house.
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Anyway, decide the subject.
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The three concepts.
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We are going to look first at the concept of creation science.
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Even though you might not see it, it is in here.
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It is in this verse.
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The second thing we are going to look at is the concept of creation from divine fiat.
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That is spelled F-I-A-T.
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It is not the car.
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There was a car one time called the Fiat.
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This is not it.
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It is creation from divine fiat.
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The third we are going to look at is a Latin term.
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We are going to look at the concept of creation ex nihilo.
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That is spelled E-X-N-I-H-I-L-O.
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When we get there, I will explain what that Latin phrase means.
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It is an important phrase to know.
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Let's look first today at the concept of creation science.
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For years I was fascinated with the movement called creation science.
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Nathan and some of the kids in the youth group that grew up there and have gone through studying under me for years, in that respect, remember the times when that was a big part of everything that I was working on.
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When I was in seminary and I did my master's thesis, my master's thesis was on the subject of science and the Bible.
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That was my work.
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The title was The Failure of Uniformitarianism as the Presupposition of Anti-Supernaturalism.
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That was the name of the paper.
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I am not going to go through what all that means, but I was truly committed to the idea that creation science was worthy of our time to study.
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And for those of you who don't know what creation science is, there are men like Ken Ham, who has the Creation Museum, where he has produced a museum which is based on the scripture's view of history rather than on the humanistic view of history.
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And he gives a very different interpretation of the same evidence.
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It's the same pictures, the same evidence that you have in all the other ones, except for the one of the men coming up from the eighth.
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He didn't have that picture, of course.
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But he gives a different interpretation, a biblical interpretation of the history of creation.
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And I absorbed works from Ken Ham and from Kent Hovind and from the Answers in Genesis movement, which is a big movement.
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And that was just a big part of what I studied for years, for a couple of years.
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I was fascinated with how when you look at the scripture, when you look at the evidence of science through the lens of scripture, much of science comes into an entirely different light.
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Things that never made sense before, like God creating the world in 24 literal days.
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Before I looked at the creation science model, I didn't understand that.
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But they helped me come to an understanding of that.
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I became passionate about teaching on those subjects.
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And I don't know how many of you remember, but I remember I did a couple weeks worth of teaching in my Sunday school class on the concept of creation science.
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It was a very big deal early in my preaching ministry.
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And today, I'm going to tell you, I still hold almost all of the same views that I held back then on the subject of creation.
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I still believe that the world was created in six literal 24 hour periods.
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I think that we can make that attestation from the text.
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I still believe that the universe, and in particular the earth, is not as old as it appears to be.
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Now that we can argue a little.
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But I just tend to believe that God created the earth and the universe for man.
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The Bible says he created man to have dominion over the earth.
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And if the earth existed for billions and billions of years before man ever came on the scene, it seems as if it was billions and billions of years that lacked the purpose for which it was created.
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That, again, is my perspective.
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And I'm not trying to impose that.
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I'm simply saying that when we talk about creation science, that's one of the things that is discussed.
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I believe Noah's flood was a global catastrophe that encompassed the world.
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In a few weeks, I'm going to preach three sermons through the Noahic epic.
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I'm so excited.
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I wish I could preach it today.
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Y'all want to stay? I do all three of them this afternoon.
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We've got a meeting tonight.
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We just stay.
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The Noahic epic is one of the most exciting passages of scripture for me in view of creation.
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Why does the world look like it does today? The world doesn't look today like it did when it was created.
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It has gone through a washing period.
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And I don't know about you, but if you take and you build a sandcastle, and then you take water and pour it all over the sandcastle, it don't look the same.
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Well, the earth is similar.
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The earth went through a period of a tremendous washing.
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It didn't look the same as we did when it was created.
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And I still deny the teachings of Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell on the subjects of uniformitarianism and what we call macroevolution.
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And that is that one species of DNA can mutate itself and become a new species of DNA.
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Dogs becoming sheep rather than just a different type of dog.
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That's what we call the difference between macro and what's called microevolution.
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Microevolution means there's subtle changes within a species.
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Everybody agrees we see that happen all the time.
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That's how one bird might have a different crooked nose than another bird or a different shape beak rather than have noses.
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But now I'm being real scientific.
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See that bird with the nose? No, no.
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The beaks can be different colors and the moths can be different colors, but they're still moths.
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They're still birds.
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The DNA is still the DNA.
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Doggy DNA doesn't become sheep DNA.
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And somebody says one time, well, but wait a minute, Pastor.
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The DNA of the monkey is like 98 point some odd percent.
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It's the same as the DNA for human beings.
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And I say, OK, well, the rat is like very similar too.
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That's why we do scientific testing on rats.
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It's because they're so close.
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So are we really going there? Because here's what's in that one and a half point whatever of DNA.
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The ability to create symphonies, go to the moon, drive a car, produce gasoline from oil which came from dinosaurs.
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I think that's a pretty big one and a half percent.
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All of the things that are in that one and a half percent of DNA are a lot.
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Or maybe it's because we were creating the image of God.
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Maybe that's the big difference.
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Yeah, I think that's it.
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But you see, without the Bible and without Scripture, we wouldn't be able to go there.
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We wouldn't be able to have that very basic answer.
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Now, as I was saying, I still hold too much of what I held to about creation science when I first went through my studies.
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And I still at times will re-study those subjects just so that I can spend time with them.
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However, there is one area.
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And this is going to be the focus of the morning, I think.
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There is one area of creation studies that I have changed my mind about in the last, I guess, seven years.
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One major area of creation science that I have totally changed my mind about.
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And those of you who were with me then may remember.
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But when I was young, I was naive enough to believe that as long as you proposed the evidence to someone, that people would accept that God created the world.
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I was naive enough to believe, at least partly, that all people needed to do was to be confronted with the facts that supported God's authorship of creation and that they would simply then believe that God created the world.
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All they needed was the evidence that I was greatly mistaken.
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Over the years, I have concluded that the war over the worldviews of theism versus atheism will not be won by the evidence alone.
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Because all evidences will always be interpreted through the lens of the presuppositional bias.
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All evidences will be interpreted according to the presuppositional bias.
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It is impossible not to.
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And the only way to overcome a presuppositional bias is by a supernatural act of God whereby He opens the person's heart to believe.
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You can take all the evidence in the world and you can propose that evidence to Richard Dawkins, the great high priest of the atheistic movement right now.
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You can take all the scientific evidence in the world and you can lay it at the feet of Richard Dawkins.
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And until God opens his heart, he will interpret it according to his presuppositional bias.
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You can take all the evidence in the world and you can lay it at the feet of anyone whose heart is stone and their heart will still be stone.
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Until God removes the heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh, that heart will buck any evidence you produce.
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Which is why I personally have moved from what is called an evidentialist perspective to a presuppositionalist perspective.
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And some of you have no idea even what I'm talking about.
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But years for years, I said the evidence is enough to change the heart.
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The evidence will never be enough to change the heart.
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It just won't.
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And this text says that.
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It says by faith, we understand God created the world.
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By faith, we come to that understanding.
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It is not by the evidence.
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Now, do I dare say that the evidence supports everything that I believe? I think so.
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I think that the evidence supports that man is not a monkey.
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I think that evidence supports that the amount of mutations necessary to take a single celled organism to the wonder that you see before you in the mirror is impossible by random chance.
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Happenings and mutations and undirected evolutionary processes.
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However, this is the answer that you will be given.
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And prepare yourselves, because if you ever try to produce just the evidence and say this evidence says that the evolutionary process is wrong.
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Here is the answer you will likely receive, because I have heard it myself.
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As I said, I spent many years here.
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They will say, well, the evidence for evolution is difficult to believe.
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But God is impossible to believe.
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That is the answer I got.
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Because I said, look, there was a guy, there was a mathematician who showed the mathematic impossibility from a single celled organism becoming a complex living being like the human body.
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A mathematician showed the impossibility of random occurrences creating that.
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He said it would be like taking 50 monkeys, giving them all typewriters, letting them sit in front of their typewriters and expecting to get the works of Shakespeare.
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He said that is tantamount to a single celled organism, undirected evolutionary processes, bringing about the constructed bodies that we see before us today with all of their intricate parts.
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He said that is how much.
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But you know what the evolutionist says? He says, yes, it is very hard to believe.
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But I cannot believe in God, so I must believe in the ridiculous rather than the impossible.
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I've heard that I got to believe in the ridiculous because I can't believe the impossible.
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Again, the heart of stone must be changed.
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And if it's not, do not expect evidence alone to change a heart.
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Never expect that just by presenting someone with the idea that we have complex bodies, that that's going to be enough to change their heart of stone.
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Never expect that just presenting the idea that the earth itself is in just the right spot between the sun and the outer bands of the universe, that we have a water table.
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I remember that used to fascinate me because I used to talk to people.
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I would say, isn't it amazing that the earth is in just the right spot to have a water table, that we have or to have a water cycle, not a water table, water cycle? I says, we have ice and we have steam and we have water, H2O in its three formed parts.
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If you get any closer to the sun, it all becomes vapor.
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If you get any further away from the sun, it all becomes ice.
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But we sit at the right place where the the the water itself is, is in a perfect state where it can both create shade and create places for us to bathe and create something for us to drink and create ice.
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We get all three, it's an amazing thing.
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But it's not enough.
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It's not enough to change your heart, no matter what we say.
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No matter how good Kent Hovind is at explaining the history of creation.
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And he he's an interesting guy to listen to.
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And if you ever listen to Kent Hovind, he had some issues a few years ago and kind of fell out of out of out of popularity.
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But he was really funny to listen to because he talked 90 miles an hour.
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And if you didn't have any idea what he was talking about, you didn't when he was done either.
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You had to kind of go in with some idea.
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But when Kent would teach, you know, he taught all these these evidences for creation.
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And I appreciated his ministry.
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And as a person whose heart had been changed, I still think creation science has a wonderful blessing for the world, because I still think that there are those of those like me whose heart had been changed very early on.
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You know, as a 19 year old man, my heart had been changed.
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But I was looking at the world around me saying, how how did God create this? And people like Kent Hovind, Ken Ham and others, they come along and they say, here is what we believe the Bible teaches us based on the evidence that we see based on what the Bible says.
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And I think those men did do a wonderful thing in my life.
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But you have to understand it was God who took out the heart of stone.
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It was God who put in the heart of flesh.
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It was not the evidence that changed my mind.
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By faith, you believe that God created the world.
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You know what faith is? Faith is the evidence of things not seen.
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Guess what? You weren't there.
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Anybody there when God created the world? I know some of you feel old.
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I feel old.
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But you know, you weren't there then.
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None of you were there when God created the world.
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So the only thing you can say is I believe God created the world.
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And beloved, that's enough, because this text tells us by faith, we believe God created the world by faith.
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We understand means in our knowledge, in our head, the understanding part of us.
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By faith, we understand God created the world, not by evidence.
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Now, do we have evidence? Yes.
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Can we talk about the evidence? Yes.
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But did the evidence convince us? No.
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That's my point.
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Is that if we have become convinced that God created the world is because God opened our heart to that, he opened our heart to that understanding.
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And by faith, we believe it is not a blind faith.
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It is not an ignorant faith.
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But it is faith.
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And it is a gift from God to him, be all the glory.
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Father, as we come now to the time in our sermon where we draw to a close.
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I pray that the things that have been said in this message will resonate with the heart of the congregation.
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I pray that as this week we begin to consider you and your power of taking out our heart of flesh, heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh.
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That God, as we consider that power, that we consider your creative majesty.
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That we would not shrink back from worship, but that we would be inspired to take steps forward for you.
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I pray that.
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In the coming week, we just continue to resonate with the truth of the word in our heart.
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That we understand that we can present evidences to people and we should present a support for the hope that is within us, as scripture teaches us.
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But Lord God, at the end of the day, your spirit will change the heart.
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All we can do is testify to what we have seen and heard.
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Give us the desire, O God, to testify to that truth, to lift you up in praise, to seek you in all things.
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And Lord, if there is one here today who is lacking that faith.
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Lord God, we leave them in your hands, trusting you to do with them as you will.
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We pray for open hearts, O God, and we trust you with that.
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In Jesus name, Amen.
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Stand with us now as we sing, and if you have a need to come forward, please come.