Why Do You Care? - September 28th, 2014 sermon

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By Pastor Greg

           You are on a cruise.  Ten miles away from land the ship begins to sink. Everyone needs to abandon ship.  Life rafts are lowered into the water, but the one you are in hits the side of the ship and is damaged.  When it hits the water, it begins to sink.  There are ten of you in the boat, and you all furiously begin to bail water.  It’s determined that with all passenger bailing, the life raft will stay afloat for 5 hours.  After that, the boat will sink and everyone on board will drown.

As you glance around at the other life rafts, you see a friend signaling for you to jump out and swim to his boat, ensuring your survival.  His life raft is drifting away quickly because of the current, and you only have 30 seconds to make up your mind.  If you leave, the remaining people in your raft will not be able to stay ahead of the leaking water, and will only stay afloat for 2 hours.

So, the moral dilemma is this; Do you stay on your current boat and help keep it afloat as long as possible and hope that the rescue will arrive in 5 hours, or do you go to your friends boat, ensuring your rescue, but reducing the chances of the others on the boat being rescued?

          If you’re like me you want to know more facts.  For instance, what kind of Life Raft is it?  And is there any rope or other materials that might be used to keep the raft from sinking?  Couldn’t the other life rafts paddle alongside the disabled one and lash themselves together?  Lots of questions come to mind.  You can’t decide because you are not there.

          This is a classic example of what society calls a Moral Dilemma.  Philosophers have been using these for thousands of years to determine which way society’s moral compass is pointing.  But for me philosophy doesn’t even enter the equation.  For me the fact that humanity even wrestles with Moral Dilemmas points heavenward to God; for among all of creation, only humanity wrestles with a sense of Right and Wrong.  Only humanity would agonize over a decision to abandon others in pursuit of personal safety.  And for the life of me, I can’t imagine how this “Morality” evolved.

          The human mind is an amazing organ.  It takes all the information pouring in from other parts of the body and translates it into actions or memories.  The human mind feels no pain, yet is one big mass of nerve cells.  However, they are not like the nerve cells throughout the rest of your body.  The nerve cells (or Neurons) in the rest of your body have tiny extensions that connect to other nerve cells.  And each of these cells transfers information throughout the body by a chemical process that actually produces electricity.  At rest the voltage in a cell is -70 millivolts.  But when the brain sends a signal or the skin responds to stimulus, the voltage in a nerve cell spikes to +30 millivolts.  A chain reaction begins with each cell responding to the stimulated input, performing its own chemical reaction, and then transferring this voltage spike to the next nerve cell.  In some instances these signals travel over 350 feet per second.  In what seems to be an instant, the hand touches the hot stove, the skin reacts, sends a signal to the nerve cells at your fingertip, which begins a chemical process that causes a voltage spike, which travels at about 200 miles per hour to the brain, which records the sensation as “Hot”, then begins a chemical reaction to the muscles in the arm to jerk away.

          As I said, the nerve cells in your brain are slightly different.  Instead of transferring these electrical charges, they “Store” them.  As best as scientists can tell, a brain cell forms a memory by storing a specific chemical combination.  And as it connects with neighboring cells, who store a slightly different chemical combination, a “Memory” is formed.  One Brain cell recognizes the shape of an object and says “Pen”.  Another cell recognizes the color and says “Gray”.  Other cells send signals to the hand that instruct the muscles how to hold the pen and how to move in order to form letters.   So your memories are not stored in a single cell, but in a grouping of brain cells, each containing a certain chemical combination that, when combined, forms a memory.  In the brain our memories are formed by a combination of Potassium, Sodium, Calcium, and Chloride.

So scientists seem to have discovered how memories are formed and stored in our brains.  It’s actually not too much different than a computer.  Data is stored in your computer as a combination of ones and zeros.  But see, that’s what I’m trying to point out here.  Like a computer, learning our shapes and colors as a child is merely learning information.  It’s only data.  It’s merely a recording of facts.  What I would like someone to explain rationally is how a combination of 4 chemicals can not only store a memory from our childhood, but also bring us to tears or make us laugh.  How can a simple chemical process generate a feeling like love or fear?  How can these chemical storehouses in the brain cause us to think of God when we hear a beautiful symphony or see a beautiful sunset?  How can a chemical process cause us to stay in the life boat in order to save a complete stranger?

          Some have tried to explain this biologically; that it is part of our DNA.  And maybe they are on to something.  Research Biologist John Evans has popularized what has become known as the “God Gene”.  “Compare a strand of human DNA with that of a chimp, and you’ll notice a striking difference”, he says.  This difference is what gives humanity our morality, love, spirituality, and all things that make us appreciate the world we live in.  This finding may be true.  It may not.  But before we completely dismiss is, consider what the Creation account has to say about the birth of humanity.

          In reference to the Man, Genesis says, “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.” (Genesis 2:7).  We are not just alive, we are living beings, says God.  And because of this God set Mankind above the rest of the world as stewards.  We are to care for this world because, apart from the rest of creation, humanity CAN care.  We feel responsible for this world and all that is in it not because these feelings evolved, but because God cares and He “breathed” that same spirit of caring into humanity.

Like the rest of creation, we are physical beings.  Like the rest of the animals we have intellect and personality (our soul).  But apart from the rest of creation, God formed Man in His own image and in His own likeness (Genesis 1:26).  We alone have a spirit; something intangible that has been given to us by God.  And whether humanity wants to admit this or not, we all have a spirit breathed into us by the mouth of God.  We are beings that have been granted a sense of right or wrong.

The universe does not function with an Ethical code of conduct.  It does not struggle with issues of Morality.  But humanity does.  Men and women are people born with a spirit; a spirit that causes us to laugh and cry and care for others and struggle with issues of morality.  And I am convinced that this spirit side of humanity is evidence of God.  In the human spirit I see the thumbprint of the Creator.  I see God when I look at the behavior of men and women.

The human body is an amazing thing, especially when we look at the human nervous system.  And when we explore the human mind (its ability to take a few basic elements found in the earth and combine them to form memories), who could not help but stand in awe and wonder at the Creator.  What an amazing God we have.  What a powerful Creator we worship!  And yet the Father did even more.  He did far more than merely combine chemicals and elements to form life.  He granted humanity a spirit.  He breathed a part of Himself into us.  Is it hard-wired into our DNA?  I don’t know.  But what I do know is that the Father granted us the ability to laugh, to cry, to look at a sunset and think of God.  In His love and mercy He has given us the ability care about what happens to this earth.  He has given us the ability to love one another.  And every time I see someone lift a hand to help a stranger, I see the thumbprint of God.

Baby’s First Breath - September 21st, 2014 sermon

By Pastor Greg

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          Not long ago Bill Nye the Science Guy debated the Theory of Evolution with Ken Ham; a Christian who believed God created life.  The media mad a lot of fuss over this debate, but truthfully most of us have heard it before.  Debates like this have been happening for years.  Facts are presented, points are made, but eventually patience wears thin.  And when it’s evident no one will be changing their mind, people resort to insulting their opponent; calling them simple-minded idiots.

          Often, those who embrace evolution become quite frustrated with those who embrace God as the creator.  And sadly, someone who holds fast to the Creation story is claimed to be denying the scientific evidence.  Only a silly idiot would believe God grabbed a handful of dirt and simply created Man.  “Simply” created Man?  Is that what you would call these bodies of ours?  “Simple”?

          Actually, it seems to me that those who embrace evolution are the one’s denying the evidence.  To me it takes a greater faith to believe that somehow a handful of proteins, water, and basic elements of the earth one day combined in just the right way and in just the right amounts in order to become alive.  That takes more faith than to believe God stepped in and created life.

          The biggest flaw I see in the evolutionary argument is in their claim that life began on its own; that in a disorganized and chaotic world somehow things became more organized; that out of the mud something suddenly sprang to life on its own.  But in order for this to happen life would have to break one of the basic laws of physics; a law which demonstrates that things move from an organized state to disorganization.

The 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics basically states that in a closed system things move from order to disorder.  Life breaks down over time, not improves – unless something acts against it.  The research indicates that life began somehow, but Evolutionists want us to believe that life broke the Law; that over time things improved or became more organized.  Creation, on the other hand, says that life began because of God.  For example, in creating Man God took what was unorganized (the dust of the ground), reorganized it and set life in order.  “Then the Lord God formed (organized) the man from the dust of the ground (disorganized). He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person” ^[1] (Genesis 2:7).  In other words, God intervened; He took the foundational elements of the earth and created something absolutely amazing.  He created human life; a life too complex to be simply attributed to chance.

          Have you ever studied the human body?  Peer into a microscope once and you’ll never forget what you see.  Even in that tiny world the hand of God is not too large to be seen.  Take white blood cells for example.  Unlike red blood cells, the white ones can mold and bend their shape.  They wander aimlessly through the human body without any purpose until, of course, the body is invaded.  From fixing punctured skin to attacking invading bacteria, this army 50 billion strong wage warfare daily against anything that invades or attacks the body.  Within 30 seconds, a white blood cell envelopes a germ, completely surrounding it.  In about a minute the white blood cell will detonate a chemical explosion killing the germ that has become trapped inside, most of the time killing itself as well.  Not to worry though.  Inside your bones there is a factory making more white blood cells each and every day.  And these white blood cells develop a “memory”.  They remember the last invader and the threat becomes “imprinted”.  That way the next time that flu virus invades the blood stream, the white blood cells are ready to attack.  Think about it; a defense system in our body that “learns”. 

          Consider the human eye as well.  There are over 107 million cells in the human eye.  7 million of these are called “cones”.  This is what enables a person to perceive color.  As the wavelengths of the light spectrum pass across these cones, each one of them fires off a message to the brain, enabling us to distinguish a thousand shades of color.  Humans have three, responding to red, yellow and blue.  Most animals have none.  Cats and dogs have two.  The remaining cells in the human eye are called “Rods”.  Rods do not distinguish color, but help us perceive light.  Rods are so sensitive that their range of perceived light is a million points broad.  Every moment our eyes are opened millions of signals travel to the brain, which combines each individual signal into an image that is recognizable.  In an instant we can tell that two colors are different (we just don’t know that one is called pink and the other salmon).  I’ve often wondered why humans developed three “cones” while most other animals did not.  Why make the color scale so much more broad for us?

          The human ear is just as amazing.  Strike middle C on the piano and your eardrum will vibrate 256 times a second (or 256 Hz).  These vibrations on the ear drum are transferred to tiny bones in the inner ear known as the Hammer, the Anvil, and the Stirrup.  They, in turn, send electrical signals to the brain which translates it into sound.  Truthfully, the piano does not make a “sound”; it generates waves of compressed air that pound against the eardrum.  It’s the cooperation between the ear and the brain that allows us to perceive sound.  Incidentally, the human eardrum will react to a sound so faint that it moves no more than a billionth of a centimeter.

          The most amazing part of creation, at least to me, happens at birth.  As a baby grows inside the womb, its lungs remain deflated.  Babies do not breathe before they are born.  Oxygen for the baby’s body comes through the umbilical cord.  An artery travels from the belly button to the heart, mixing mother’s blood with the baby’s blood.  Inside the heart there is a special valve that allows blood to flow directly from the left to right Atria (the two upper chambers of the heart).  Only moments after the doctor cuts the umbilical cord, the blood pressure changes in the baby’s heart, closing that valve.  In that moment, blood is diverted to the lungs, and the baby takes its first breath.  A baby’s first breath is not a cry of protest, but a cry of life.  And as I think about this amazing transformation I am dumbfounded how this process could have evolved.  Without these things in place, a baby would die either in the mother’s womb or suffocate shortly after birth.

          The complexity of the human body alone is just as amazing as the complexity of the universe we live in.  All the elements necessary for life are woven together with amazing precision; each designed to function as part of the whole.  Wiggle the small bones in your foot.  These bones are about half the diameter of a pencil, and yet they support us when we walk, or run, or play soccer.  Rub your finger across the back of your arm.  What you “feel” is the result of electrical signals being sent to the brain by specialized cells (450 of them in one square inch of skin); cells so sensitive that they can feel a line 2,500th of an inch deep.  Marvel at a chemical called Keratin.  It’s a complex protein that oozes out of pores to become either a fingernail or a hair.  In birds, this same protein pushes its way out of a follicle, grows erect and proudly unfolds as a peacock feather.  Chemistry becomes beauty.[2]

I do not feel like a silly idiot who blindly accepts the Creation account as revealed in the Bible.  I don’t have to reject science to believe in Creation.  The evidence indicates that things moved from disorder to order, which is exactly what the Bible conforms.  The Bible simply says that it was God who did the organizing. 

God’s hand in creation is seen from the telescope to the microscope.  There is nothing too large that might diminish His glory, and nothing too small that does not bear the mark of God’s craftsmanship.  Actually, the more I study life the more I see the thumbprint of God.  The more science I learn, the bigger God becomes.  Just learning the basics of human anatomy or even cell structure make me fall at the feet of our God in awe and wonder.

Evolutionists claim someone is an idiot to believe God simply picked up some dirt and formed Man.  “Simply” does not seem to describe the human body.  There is nothing simple about it.  Actually, as we study the evidence, as we look at creation, we should stand amazed at a God so powerful, so majestic, so awesome that in the moment it took Him to grab a handful of dirt, He could create something as marvelous as the Human Body.

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^[1] Tyndale House Publishers. (2007). Holy Bible : New Living Translation. (3rd ed.) (Genesis 2:7). Carol Stream, IL.

[2] For further reading on the complexities of the human body, I suggest a book written by Dr. Paul Brand and Phillip Yancey entitled Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.  Many of the facts shared in this message came from this book

When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth - September 14th, 2014 sermon

By Pastor Greg

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           When we lived in Shippensburg, a family of Red Tailed hawks moved into the neighborhood.  They built a nest high atop one of our white pine trees.  We became so fascinated with them that we actually built a bench out back so we could sit and watch the birds come and go.  The most fascinating part was watching the adults teach the young how to fly.  The parents would take a mouthful of food to the nest, but not give it to the chicks.  Instead they would fly to another tree, dangling the morsel of food from their mouth.  We watched as the chicks first climbed up out of the nest, then walked to the edge of a branch, and finally made their first attempt at flying.  It was an amazing scene.

          I have always marveled at creation, both the heavens and the earth.  As I look at the wildlife in this world I am amazed at the incredible beauty and diversity of the animals on this planet.  Have you ever stopped to wonder why some creatures were created?  Have you ever wonder why God put them here?  Why make the Armadillo curl up in a ball when it’s scared?  Why put quills on a porcupine but not a groundhog?  And why are emu’s just so darn ugly?

          As I mentioned last week, the fossil record indicates that plant life and animal life began to exist; life exploded into existence (Genesis 1:24-31).  The Bible meshes perfectly with the evidence.  Life began to exist because God spoke.  And what He created was very good (Genesis 1:31).

          As we look at the Creation account in Genesis chapter 1, we see that God prepared the earth to support life, but keep in mind that it was life as He originally designed it to be.  The earth and all that God created was very good, much different than the world we see today.  So don’t try to imagine simply a younger version of what we see in the world now.  The world was different then.  In the world, as it was first created, plants were given for all the animals to eat (“And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—everything that has life”. Genesis 1:30).  It’s also clear from Genesis that death was not a part of God’s creation.  How else could death become the curse of sin (see Genesis 2:17)?  Adam’s sin caused death, says the Apostle Paul (Romans 5:17).  Because of that sin, that “Fall”, the earth changed.  It was no longer the same earth God had originally created, especially after the flood.  The world which God had created very good became very bad.  In this fallen world the relationship between Man and animals changed (“All the animals of the earth, all the birds of the sky, all the small animals that scurry along the ground, and all the fish in the sea will look on you with fear and terror. I have placed them in your power”. Genesis 9:2).  After the flood it appears both Man and animals were now permitted to eat meat (“Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant”. Genesis 9:3).  In Genesis 9:5 God talks about what to do when a wild animal actually kills a human being; implying that up to this point, this wasn't an issue.  Even the vegetation and the soil became a curse (see Genesis 3:17-19). 

So the Genesis story teaches us that before the Fall and before the Flood, Man and animals got along quite nicely.  Both Man and animals were vegetarians, and there was no death.  After the Fall there was death.  After the Flood both Man and animals began eating meat, and both began to fear one another.   After the Flood this world changed, possibly causing things that used to exist to become extinct.  We know this because of the evidence found in the fossil records; records which indicate there used to be some pretty awesome animals that lived on this planet.  Yes, I’m talking about dinosaurs. 

          Dinosaurs always seem to be a big stumbling block when we consider the creation story.  That's because it’s very difficult to clear our mind of what we have been sold over the years.  Most of the dinosaurs depicted in movies are not correct when compared to the fossil record.  Take the blockbuster series Jurassic Park for example. The Velociraptor was actually only 3 feet tall and weighed about 35 pounds; not the six foot terror that chased Doctor Grant all through the visitor’s center.  Most of the dinosaurs were about the size of a chicken.  There were exceptions, of course.  Some of the more famous ones were quite large, but they were just animals, not monsters that terrorize humans.  Dinosaurs were not monsters, they were animals.  

          If we chose to believe the creation account, and that is a choice we will have to make because both Macro Evolution and Creation can’t be true, then God created the dinosaurs.  The Genesis account says that everything that swims in the ocean, walks on the earth, or flies in the sky was created by God.  And since the fossil record indicates that dinosaurs did exist, then God had to have created them.

This is where the Word of God will challenge the fanciful imaginations of Man.  This is where many people stumble and fall away from the creation account because they have been ingrained to believe that dinosaurs existed long before Man roamed the earth.  In order to believe what the Evolutionist tell us, we must deny the entire Creation story as found in the Bible.  But, if you chose to believe that the Bible is true, then what we’ve been sold has been a lie.

          Chose to believe the Creation story and you’ll find that at one point all dinosaurs were vegetarians, as we saw in Genesis 1:29-30.  Dinosaurs could not have existed before Man and simply gone extinct because the Bible clearly states that death was not a part of God’s creation before Man sinned (again see Genesis 2:17).  And Man and dinosaurs probably got along quite well at first, considering that it was only after the flood that things changed (again, see Genesis 9:2).

          I think part of the reason many Christians have a hard time meshing Dinosaurs into the creation story is because we've been led to believe they are not mentioned in the Bible.  This is probably the biggest objection heard over the years.  If God created the dinosaurs, why are they not mentioned in the Bible?  Well, God doesn’t use the actual word “dinosaur” because that is a relatively new word.  But the Bible does talk about Dragons and about two large creatures called Behemoth and Leviathan.  If you’ll turn to Job chapter 40, I think you’ll see a vivid description of two creatures you and I would call dinosaurs (Read Job 40:15-41:34).

          God mentions several familiar animals in Job 39, but in chapter 40 & 41 he mentions two very impressive and immense creatures that you and I don’t know but were apparently familiar to Job.  And honestly, if Job had no idea what kind of creatures God was talking about, the whole conversation would have been pointless.  Job would have said, “What’s a Behemoth, what’s a Leviathan?”  Instead God describes two creatures that look nothing like a Hippo or a crocodile.  And considering that there was fear of these creatures, they must have existed after the flood (again, see Genesis 9:2).

          So, when did dinosaurs roam the earth?  I know this is going to shake the foundation of what we’ve been told, but if we chose to believe in the creation story then dinosaurs were created on day six; the same day Man was created.  And when Man sinned and the earth was cursed, something happened that changed the world.  Something happened that caused the dinosaurs to become extinct.  Perhaps it was the Flood.  Perhaps it was a change in the environment.  We simply do not know.  But what we do know is that dinosaurs did exist at one point in the past.  And it appears we’ve been led to believe something about those dinosaurs that simply is not true.  According to the Bible dinosaurs did exist, and they roamed the earth with Man.  And the two got along at first because things on earth were different back then.  And we know this because that’s what the Bible says.

For too long Christians have made up their minds about dinosaurs based upon what is being sold, not on facts.  Without going into lengthy detail, just consider the petroglyphs we find carved in stone; ancient drawing of dinosaurs etched long before modern archaeology “discovered” the age of the dinosaur.[1]  We are left to wonder how these ancient people knew so much about the dinosaur in the first place.  One can only surmise that they had seen creatures like this (see http://creation.com/messages-on-stone for more information). 

The main point I’m trying to make here is that the archaeological evidence supports the sudden appearance of animals; many that are extinct, but many which are still alive today.  The archaeological evidence also supports the sudden, cataclysmic destruction of life on the earth.  Yet it is obvious that some life survived.  This evidence does not discredit the Bible.  Actually it confirms just what the Bible says.  But today I also wanted to talk a little bit about the dinosaur.  I have to tell you that if my preacher had talked about dinosaurs when I was a kid, I’d been on the edge of my seat.  When I was a kid dinosaurs and the Bible just didn’t mix.  And it became a big stumbling block for me.  I wish someone would have cleared things up for me back then, which is why I’m sharing this today.

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[1] D. Swift, Messages on Stone, Creation magazine 19, 1997