The speaker would like to make clear that the views expressed in this presentation do not reflect those of his Company, nor the Universities he is associated with.
Okay well the only thing remaining then is to introduce our very very good friend and guest speaker professor Paul matts please give him a customary algebra vineyard welcome well well well good morning Ellsbury vineyard it’s fantastic to be here and I need to thank first of all our fantastic friend
Stephen Lynn for inviting us to come this morning les of my lovely wife Ally in the front row here Steve and I steve lynn and I and Ally go back must be since the Second World War no it’s so it feels like you but must be 21 25
Something years and across that time you know we’ve we’ve laughed together we’ve cried together we’ve believed together for people we’ve ministered together and what a privilege to calendar and speak at your church absolutely fantastic and I’m sure you know how lucky you are to have these guys by the way wonderful
Couple who just love the law to bits so I think I’m probably that the wild card this morning in terms of your speaker roster for the year really this talk was something that we put on as a church in terms of a series of hot potato subject
Serpent in the evening and by the way we’re from a church called equip as in in chertsey in Surrey and we bring with us the greetings of the church and put on a Sunday night and really we just addressed topics which are I guess controversial by nature and that’s why
I’m here this morning to talk on this subject the great divide can God science and faith co-exist and maybe by word of introduction to me personally my grandfather was a guy called the Reverend perseus Brewster he was a great Elam Pentecostal pioneer my father likewise was an Olympian to coastal
Minister and so of course me I went on in the fine family tradition I’m not wearing a dog collar I’m actually wearing a graduate gang here because I went on to university I remained the only person in my family the whole Matt’s family to ever go to university
And and do a degree i did a degree in microbiology and they went on to do a PhD in biochemistry so in terms of my journey with the Lord really in my teenage years I knew a lot about God but who knows that knowing a lot about God
Does not qualify for being his son or daughter you have to know God and that’s the whole point of why Jesus came that we might know him and understand him and so at age 18 in a pretty apocalyptic night a kind of Pauline conversion I came to know Jesus Christ as my personal
Friend right before I went to university and so you can imagine going off to study science for six years and now 27 years later I’ve spent my entire life in research and development with a large American corporate as a professional scientist a career scientists I have
Explored this theme in and out many many times this question can God science and faith coexist so in case you’re worried I can give you the answer the answers yes it’s really in many ways you are looking at the answer before you today but I am a Christian I love the Lord and
I’m also a career scientist and for me it’s absolutely no problem but what’s interesting is if we go out to the meeting today and we Google God science faith in those terms you’re going to come across things like this this is from the front page of Google international business news at September
2014 so it’s fresh and here’s the headline Stephen Hawking declares that science can prove God does not exist closely followed by lots of stuff from Professor Richard Dawkins The God Delusion i could give you many quotes this morning but here’s a cracker this thing we’ve been reading from this
Morning the Bible is fiction myth anything but reality quite extraordinary and so we have these statements are bounding and and so I want to try and address this morning why it is that some we have these kinds of statements why I even have to ask the question can God
Science and faith coexist and so I really have very little time this morning so please forgive me if I just jump straight in what I want to do is take us back about two thousand years and really trace the path of how it is we’ve arrived
In a world where were even asking these kinds of questions so if that’s cool then let me go back to about 2,000 years ago it’s the time of Greek and Roman scientists philosophers who were trying to understand humans trying to understand the world around them talking about sone Aristotle Plato 4th century
Bc ptolemy second century AD and really these men stood and I was very interested by there with your word this morning looking at a night sky these guys looked at the night sky and they tried to figure out you know what is the place of the earth in the universe and
They came to the conclusion using the instrumentation at the time that the sky rose in the east and set in the West and so it was clear that the earth of course the was at the center of the universe and they call it a terrestrial sphere
And then they figured out there must be a celestial sphere with the stars and the moon and the Sun attached to it and there was a big long axis through the north and south poles of the earth and basically this terrestrial sphere spun around the earth in a regular cycle 24
Hours 24 hours 24 hours and it was called geocentrism which basically geoff’s for earth and so the earth was the center of the universe now you imagine standing other one under a night sky and you’re looking up and maybe in a selfish kind of human way you’re feeling
Kind of pretty good right because you know you’re at the center of the universe and you know man is the pinnacle of God’s creation and so it all kind of felt pretty good and basically this this remit of junior centers and lasted until really the 15th 16th
Centuries when we now had much better equipment with which to study that universe around us and so it was the the priest and a scientist and by the way watch out the number of times I say priests and scientists in this dog is kind of interesting nicolaus copernicus who developed really the first
Computational model of the universe in really he kind of figured out it wasn’t as simple as the sky rising in the east and setting in the West there’s a lot more complexity to what was happening the night sky and guess what he came to the conclusion that the earth wasn’t at
The center of the universe that actually that the Sun was the center of our known solar system and the earth was only a small planet one of many that was rotating around the Sun and that Sun was one of many millions that he could see in the night sky so interesting that
Maybe as man now looked into the night sky there was that little thrill of fear that came from or maybe were not so important maybe you may be Who am I and what is earth so this was now called heliocentrism but really this theory didn’t really take hold until this man
Came as I’m sure you’ve all heard of Galileo and this was really a time when we were developing new instrumentation and so this amazing man who’s been called the father of modern physics the father of modern science in many ways he developed new compound telescopes that
Allowed him to look even better at the universe around him and he came to the conclusion that Copernicus was absolutely right in his in his conclusions he was greeted with some skepticism by fellow scientists he was greeted with absolute abject horror by the church as you can imagine and so it
Was in about 16 15 he was dragged before the Roman Inquisition and heliocentrism that the idea that the Sun was the center of the universe it was declared heretical and Galileo was told to stop teaching it and books that taught it were banned this is a dialogue between
The church and science it’s not particularly good is it but of course scientists like myself we can’t unsee what we’ve seen we can’t unmount recount what we what we know to be empirically true through observations so in 1631 you can guess what happened he published another book and in 1632 Pope Urban the
Eighth summoned him once again before the Roman Inquisition so in Rome in 1633 he was made to recant his theory publicly the shame of it and he was then placed under house arrest for the rest of his life is not unbelievable the church did not engage in dialogue than
They simply shut the guy up as a urban myth that I so hope is true that when Galileo left the court to enter into house arrest he must under his breath and yet it moves because he was a scientist he had proven as far as he
Could tell that he was right and he couldn’t unsee what he had seen but the point was this that a dramatic blow had been dealt in terms of this notion that the earth were the center of the universe and so once again as as man stared into the night sky maybe we began
To think you know what is my place what is the place of the earth what is the place of human beings in this in this vast universe but worse was to come so we talked about the universe what about biology what about the stuff of life up
And about this point there was a doctrine called abiogenesis which basically means life from no life and we could also call it spontaneous generation and basically this was the notion that if you just kind of looked at the world around you you know there was spoilage happening and so you saw
Maggots and flies emerging from putrefying meet you saw fungus and mold growing on fruit and it appeared to anybody obviously we had any common sense that this was a daily confirmation of the creative power of God and in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and he brought life from no
Life and this appeared to be a daily confirmation of exactly this going on but it was really about the time of Copernicus little afterwards that we see the first challenge to this notion anthony van Leeuwenhoek who is one of my heroes he’s the first proper microbiologist he once again developed
Instrumentation instra interesting you see Galilei with telescopes who nasa loob and even white with the first popper microscopes he developed a way of producing tiny lenses out of soda lime glass and his little microscopes about 5 centimeters in diameter were now used to study a world that really nobody had
Even been aware of the microscopic world were talking about bacteria and yeast and fungi and protozoa and viruses etc etc and so as he started studying these little creatures that he called anima cules he started publishing letter that he sent to the Royal Society in London
And he became very famous but here’s the interesting thing and let me read to you just a little section from one of his letters that says this a flea or a louse can know or come from dirt than a horse from dunghill these observations we can be fully assured that God the all-wise
Creator of the universe does not create any species of things on the earth but that at the beginning he’s so ordained and constituted all things that his creation being perfect the seeds of plants contain in themselves the future plant and this I take to be a certain
Truth which prevails not only in plants but in all living creatures whatsoever in other words hope you get what he’s saying here basically you know God craters life in the beginning and then really contained within that life was the material the coding by which life then began life begad life began life
And let’s face it you and I are here this morning because our parents gave life to us and if your parent here this morning you gave life to your children and so on and so forth but this was contrary in fact the teaching of the church who even believed that even in
The sexual act of union for human beings that there was some kind of mystical thing that takes place now I totally believe that man has a spiritual origin and so there is a spiritual creation of human beings but the church believed that there was some kind of mystical
Thing that happened in terms of the physicality and biology so we have this interesting situation now where we have a challenge to this doctrine of abiogenesis and largely this went by the wayside and was ignored until the late 19th century and it was only then that this man this great microbiologist was
Honored with a medal after his name the third recipient of that medal was none other than the great Louis Pasteur I’m sure you’ve heard of so if we can jump now to the late 19th century where’s a lot more action taking place Louie pasta this gentleman chemist
Scientist he’s regarded as the father of modern germ theory in other words once again like the van leavin who I proposed that putrefaction fermentation disease itself and this was the key that that was the key to kind of his central scientific theorem the disease itself was not some mystical event it wasn’t a
Punishment that it was actually simply down to the invasion of microbial species bacteria yeast fungi viruses and in a very famous experiment which I don’t have time to take you into this morning but involves elegant flasks and boiled meat broth he proved once and for
All that it is not mrs. ISM it’s not magic but actually it’s down to microbes and once again we see proof of this this theorem omne vivo x vivo all life from life and that’s important because it now means that we have a very different view
In terms of life upon earth and also of God himself whatta man whatta man pastor was he instituted they a research house in Paris and 8 and 88 which you can still visit and really from this we see amazing discoveries the benefit of which we are living in today my friends and so
We see pasteurization the fact that we can drink milk safely without getting brucellosis we see vaccines for anthrax and rabies we see treatments for flu diphtheria polio tetanus chipper kilos this yellow fever and plague and then finally amongst many other things in just in the last few years out of the
Same Institute we see also the AIDS virus HIV they identified for the first time what an amazing legacy the benefit of which we live in today and believe me none of us wanted to live in a time with with no aseptic technique where you probably died on the operating table so
We have a lot to thank from from this man so this notion of life from life from life was really the starting material that got this man interested anybody know who this is this is a young Charles Darwin without that big heavy beard that we associate with this guy
And Darwin was the grandson of Josiah Wedgwood you know the great industrial Potter abolitionist and his father sent him to study medicine first of all at Edinburgh University where he got his love for biology and living things but he got a bit bored and so at the end of
It he was far more interested in natural history his father said son they’re going to be a naturalist you’re going to go to Christ College in Cambridge and you’re going to study a Bachelor of Arts in in theology and he was a trained in fact to become an Anglican cleric but at
The end of his degree because he was a bit naughty and he kept up his dalliance with natural history he was approached by Captain Robert Fitzroy and he was invited on a two-year voyage to chart unknown territory around the coast of South America his father said son you’re
Going into the ministry but actually it was Darwin’s father-in-law jazz I went with a second who convinced his father and so off he went on a two-year voyage that turned into a five-year circumnavigation of the globe on the famous HMS Beagle and really for the first time they came across some islands
Very very remote islands where they saw famous now famous species like the giant turtles that have become so familiar in the context of evolution and the mockingbirds that again formed a central part of his theories and basically what he saw was species that became uniquely adapted to the environment in which they
Lived and he came up with a notion that he called natural selection that in this series of life to life to life to life to life to life if you had enough time then you could have small variations that ultimately produce the massive beautiful rainbow plethora of species that we see
On planet Earth during this time he was sending letters back to the Royal Society in London and by the time he returned in in 1836 he was already a celebrated scientist and he became a fellow of the royal society in 1839 he was now a self-funded gentleman
Scientist out of his fame and it wasn’t really until 1859 with the publication of the the origin of species but I’m sure you’ve heard of subtitled on the natural selection that really his fame was made complete because really this was the the publication that remains one of the essential tenets of the so-called
Evolutionary theory this was greeted rapturously by science I can tell you that it was not quitted rapidly by the church that’s how familiar Galileo and the the theory of the Seelie ascend resemble rest of it well here we go again and so instead of entering into a
Dialogue with sides once again we see a confrontation and it got pretty ugly and despite the fact that clearly you have a man here who is not trying to trash God he’s not trying to trash a religion in fact some Darwin is quoted as saying I
See no good reason why the views given in this volume should not was should shock the religious views of anyone and in fact he went on to point out that God could equally have used the mechanisms he was describing to to everything in terms of the you know creation of the
World the universe and humans live dinners but we have a situation where the church refused to engage and so for example in 1816 Oxford a meeting of the British Association Bishop Wilberforce one of the leading lights of the church engaged with Professor Thomas Huxley and insulted him by basically saying you
Know where you derived from an ape on your or your father’s side rude unbelievably rude I’m afraid this sun set the scene for many years to come it was in 1871 that Darwin published the descent of man and in it he coined the term evolution which has now become part of everyday
Life so once again like pastor I mean what a what an amazing man what a legacy to leave behind and there was a life of adventure it’s a life of also tragedy he lost three of his ten children a life of sickness he became very sick through his
Constant voyaging but in the end he was laid to rest next to his hero sir isaac newton in westminster abbey amazing now the only problem with Darwin’s theory of natural selection is that the vast number of changes life to life to life to life required a lot of time and
Notion of time was some driven by the so-called Usher chronology and archbishop james ussher who was a cleric in the church he was archbishop of armagh and all island but also he was a scholar and really through studying the chronologies in the Bible but also extant text from history at the same
Time came up with a with an approximate age of the earth of 6,000 years and here is a statement that you’ll find still in bibles printed really up until the end of the 19th century says this in the beginning God created heaven and earth which a beginning of time according to
Our chronology fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd of October in the year 4004 be seen now you know we can maybe snigger at that and say well whatever but the fact is that at the time using the materials he had available to him it was it was a pretty
Decent guess but 6,000 years of world history is simply not enough to produce the amount of changes needed to support Darwin’s theory and so it was that it was Sir Charles Lyell who gave him the time needed and basically this some gentleman geologists and a scientist published a book called principles of
Geology and he came he coined the phrase the present is the key to the past and really through studying events taking place in the in the in the earth today he was able to deduce therefore what must have happened in ancient past to have produced what we see today it’s
Called the theory of uniformitarianism and he was the first man to estimate an age of the earth of about 300 million years old but we now guessed the earth is at least 4.5 billion years old and so Lyle gave Darwin the time the theory needed but what about the mechanism that
Was given by a man called Gregor Mendel who was again look at the look at the dog collar he was a augustinian friar also a great scientist and hint in his well published well-documented experiments in plants he gave birth to what is now known as the theory of Mendelian inheritance which since has
Been proven and proven and proven again and explains really how the coding inside every single one of ourselves is able to combine with cells of another gender and then produce the offspring with somewhat predictable results and so we have Lyle giving the time and then Mendel giving the mechanism by which
Natural selection evolution could occur but there’s some other things taking place as well and so to complete the story and bring it up to date we have 22 great scientists Monsignor Georg Lynette Rowe who again is a cleric by the way he’s a priest but also a fantastic
Scientist and really at the time he was working we had emerging theories of a cooling and expanding universe and so he theorized that at one point if that was the case then maybe the universe was in one place at one time and it was really the origins of the so-called big bang
Theory that Edwin Hubble supported and finally Fred Hoyle in a 1949 BBC interview he coined the term the Big Bang which was so familiar with today so Wow we’ve been on a bit of a tour but you can hopefully see isn’t interesting isn’t it how the last 400 years in this
Amazing scientific revolution is amazing scientific Renaissance how we’ve gone from an understanding of the earth at the center of the universe and of course is not an understanding that God is creating new things from nothing every day and of course he’s not he’s placed life and life and life and the coding
For that in all of us and maybe we should ask the question should this trouble us are you troubled laughter after hearing all that this lady’s not and I’m not either not troubled in the slightest did you hear any insult to God I didn’t personally and so really why
Then are we seeing the publication of books like this for example and these are all scientists by the way and any of us can go out and order these books on Amazon after this service breaking the spell by Daniel Dennett the end of faith sam Harris letter to a christian nation
Sam Harris six impossible things before breakfast the evolutionary origin of belief god is not great how religion poisons everything moral minds the natural origins of right and wrong amazing these are all scientists but may I suggest you’d my friends this morning that these scientists are straying way beyond their remit of describing the
World and asking questions that science cannot possibly ever answer why is this that symbol there I’m not saying this is the only reason but I’m putting I’m saying to you maybe go and Google this term humanism because this little symbol here is called the happy human and it’s the International symbol of secular
Humanism and I’m saying that it’s gained far more hold in our society than we could ever expect the roots of humanism can be traced back to Eastern Colts from about five bc to ancient Greece but really it was only in a 19th century that we saw that
The real rise of secular humanism the British Humanist society was founded in 1896 the American human society was founded in 1929 and the point is here humanism is really a theistic in its basic tenets it rejects any kind of faith based analysis of the universe and really is all about empiricism that is
Measurement of the world around us and so maybe if we start to see the kind of people that are signing up to humanism so for example we see names like a professor Julian Huxley Isaac Asimov Albert Einstein interested in the after the second world war three main sections
Of the united nations were taken over by very well-known humanists maybe if we look at today’s society it’s no surprise that men like Professor Richard Dawkins fellow of the royal society is also vice president of the British humanist society and maybe you remember this campaign in 2009 where he personally
Paid out of his own pocket for Anna headlines to be pasted on the sides of London buses and billboards there’s probably no God now stop worrying and enjoy life amazing this man is a fellow of the royal society and he’s clearly got some kinds of problem with the God
That I believe in so as far as I’m concerned you know as we start bringing up these kinds of sentences that I think of right damaging by the way you know setting up God versus science I say really really because he’d need to be very clear who’s asking that question
Who’s who is asking that question and what is their belief system because I don’t believe that we have a problem with God vs. thongs but I do believe that we have certain scientists who have a problem with God and so this is what I believe I believe that science and faith
In God are just two sides of the same coin they are two expressions of the same visceral impulse that’s inside every one of us this morning to understand the universe to understand who we are what we are our place in that universe and to wonder at the beauty surrounding us see you know
We humans were created inside a continuum of space and time you know we have senses sight and smell and touch that are able to make sense of the world around us but as Christians this morning we also believe that around this time and space continuum that we also have a
Spiritual dimension right we are both physical and spiritual beings and so if we look at these two monsters science and faith and we then say you know what other valid questions that these two things can ask I think it’s pretty clear science by its very nature it’s the
Study of material things is able to ask questions like what and how and really everything I’ve talked about this morning that 400 year Renaissance was all asking mechanistic questions about what and how about the world around us it’s only faith that can ask questions
Like who Who am I who created me why why am I here why God does stuff admin this world and i would suggest you that as soon as science strays into these questions or faith straight into these questions then we see the kinds of problems and so is science strays into
Asking who and why we have problems and so as a scientist you know I i would love personally to understand God using scientific mechanisms you know it’d be great to take a you know little microscope and to study them I knew sure I’ve got your great to take you know one
Of Galileo’s telescopes and study the bigness of God it’d be great to run some experiments like pastor did and you know try and parameterize God multum Utley I can tell you i would love to make a goddess cope you know when they be great you know
Just to measure God strap him down to a you know a piece of wood like a lab rat and you know and finally understand who God is but of course that’s impossible isn’t it by very nature because because God is spirit using Peterson’s fantastic translation if the same verse is this
God is sheer being itself spirit isn’t that beautiful God is sheer being itself how can science study sheer being itself it is it is impossible from first principles and so the way science works is by Posey hypothesis and then you do a whole bunch of research and then you
Basically publish that research and basically then you have a never-ending circle where the new research posts new questions you make me have ah disease and then you do some more research and really this is the the the way in which science has progressed right from the
Beginning and and is going on right now but this process cannot study God by very nature and so I come back to this this statement that science and faith are only two expressions of the same visceral human impulse that’s in every single one of us this morning to understand the universe to understand
Our place in it and to wonder at the beauty surrounding us so that’s what happens when science strays into faith but what happens when faith strays into science I think it’s equally disturbing and I’ve heard it said that this word here has done more damage to the credibility of the church than anything
Else in the 21st century I’m not a big fan of this term creationism if I’m being totally honest and you’re welcome to talk about that with me over coffee afterwards if you stare differently I’ve got no problem with that but personally you know really is the church what is
The church’s remit to teach cosmology and to teach physics and to teach chemistry in to teach biology that’s nonsense the last time i looked at the remit of the church the remit of the church was too he the sick to open the eyes of the blind
To preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and declare the year of Jubilee the lordly of the Lord’s favor that’s the remit of the church and so we need to be very careful my friends you know in pointing out the problem with science when actually we need to watch that we don’t
Stray into the very same thing and so I told you at the beginning I have no problem with being a Christian and a scientist and I want to put this to you as well that some however God did it if you only get hold of this Genesis 1
Verse 1 it’s no coincidence it’s the opening verse of the Bible in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth so there was a beginning and God ordained it and moreover God was responsible for everything that we see around us including ourselves and again i love this word at the beginning of
Staring into the night sky it’s absolute absolute lee spot on because as we stare at the night sky we can either be completely freaked out by the fact that in every galaxy and we’re in one galaxy now and our son is only one star of between 10 million and 100 trillion
Stars in our galaxy and our galaxy is only one of a hundred and seventy billion galaxies in the known universe and by the way we’re discovering more every year you can either be totally freaked out by that and wonder or who am i what am i how can God notice me having
Got no me or you can be freaked out by the pictures coming back from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field telescope these little thingies here are not stars they’re galaxies is none incredible you can be freaked out by that or you can stare at the night sky and you can be totally in
Awe of our God look at this again it’s using peterson’s translation of Psalm 19 verse 1 imagine David looking into a middle eastern night sky and look at this translation God’s glory is on tura in the skies God crafts on exhibit across the horizon Madame de holds classes every morning professor
Night lectures every evening it’s not beautiful and you can look in the night sky as a as a Christian human being and you can say my god is responsible for all this and actually this is what I believe as a scientist I think it’s really cool that every day I get to
Report in to my boss God the scientist because let’s face it genesis one of us one if God is responsible for everything that we see if God is responsible for space and time itself he is the ultimate scientist he is the ultimate anatomist the ultimate cosmologists the ultimate
Physician and I’m in awe and wonder at my boss God the scientist and so we come back to these two things here and please get hold of the valid questions that these two things science and faith can ask what how who and why now if we still
Have questions and all of us will have questions this morning right I have a whole bunch of questions I can’t wait to ask my boss in heaven about how it all actually happen but the fact is that that’s also cool don’t have to know everything because God does not ask us
To understand him but he does ask us to trust him and the job life turned turtle he lost everything he lost his family he lost his wife he lost his kids lost his job his old career he’s he’s berating God how could you let this happen to me
God and there’s a great passage you should go read it in chapter 38 to 40 one where where God goes a joke were you were you there when I laid the foundation of the earth were you there when I cast the stars into the feminine you weren’t oh well maybe if you can
Trust me to do all that then maybe I’m just big enough to handle the problems that you’re going through right now and of course it all comes good for job in the end but the point is this job didn’t understand what was happening to him god only asked him to
Trust him and so if you got a whole bunch of questions this morning Genesis 1 verse 1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the fact is maybe you need to trust me this morning when I tell you that every single one of you here this morning is
Planned and significant every single person here this morning you were planned and you are significant once again david prostrate before God says this you created my inmost being you knit me together in my mother’s womb I’m just maybe thinking that there’s people here this morning and maybe your parents
Told you even as a joke hahaha you know you’re you were a you an experiment you know you’re a bit of a whoops you know that’s not true and you need to think differently about yourself because you were planned maybe not by your parents but God planned you before the origins
Of the universe and you are significant I chose this version of this story by the way because Luke was a scientist as a doctor and let me read this to you ultimately I hope everything on this stage I’m sure it does comes back to Jesus and so I’m bringing us back to
Jesus right at the end last five minutes this is a story about Jesus says this keeping a close watch on him the Pharisees sent spies who pretended to be sincere they hoped to catch Jesus and something he said so that they might hand him over to the power authority of
The governor so the spies questioned him teacher hmm right how slimy teacher we we know that you speak and teach what is right and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth is it right is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not
This was a this is a tricky question because basically if if Jesus was forced into a corner I had to say well yes it is right then he would have alienated every Jew present because obviously at that time it was an occupied land but if he had said no it’s
Not right then he would have been arrested and that would have been the end of his three-year ministry so how did Jesus answer he says this is says he saw through their duplicity and said to them show me a Denarius now a Denarius was a the common penny the common coin
At a time and this is actually an exact representation of what somebody would have dug out their pocket and held up to Jesus and it’s a Denarius in the time of Tiberius on one side it says pontus Maximus other words big boss ultimate bloke other side it says or Augustus son
Of the Divine sorry Tiberius son of the divine or Gustus and then Jesus goes on imagine some little person who isn’t Denarius and then Jesus goes on and he says this is so whose image and inscription are on it suppose it wasn’t it was a trick questions I suppose is
Caesar’s and Jesus says that he said to them well then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s they were unable to trap in the worid said and astonished by his answer they became silent what a cracking reply unbelievable reply give back to Caesar
What is Caesar’s how did how do you know what belongs to Caesar what clearly it has his image and inscription on it it’s obvious if it’s got as his head is his name will give about to Caesar but in the same way jesus said we’ll make sure
You give back to God what is God’s can you see it coming how do we know what belongs to God because it has his image and has his inscription on it look at this Genesis 1 verse 27 so god created mankind that is an image male and female
You are created with the image of God in you amazing looking this morning at a whole bunch of human beings I’m also looking at a whole bunch of human beings with the image of God emblazoned stamped upon your lives I’m talking about things that separate us from the animal kingdom and
Things like the power of rational thought which obviously is the origin of science God’s creativity is in each one of us is the origin of the Arts we were made in the image of God and just in the same way as that coin ultimately belongs to Tiberius and actually the coin in
Your pocket this morning is not even yours it belongs to the Reserve Bank of the Bank of England so by rights you belong to God every single one of you but the fact is this we look at the world around us we see the image of God
Has been besmirched and dirties I don’t need to tell you what’s going on in the world today horror upon horror but God can change that I grew up in the country and Wiltshire and I know if he lived on some kind of coin dump but so used to
Turn up Victorian and Georgian coins all the time and I took my mother’s brasso and he used to you know the luck delight me beyond measure to kind of polish away and get rid of all than all the rubbish on the surface and then their wonder as
You know a little bit of a glint here or there and then you see the script starting to emerge you know Victoria and the date and then maybe the glint and then finally you see the image come through and in the same way God can take
Anyone and maybe the image of God has not been seen for many years maybe the image of God is completely obscured by the lifestyle they’re living and the sin they’ve committed but God can take that person and if they choose to put their faith in God if they choose to believe
In in the sacrifice of Christ to bring them back and make them the person they always were meant to be then God can restore that image in their lives what does that mean it means that that you will become more you than you’ve ever been before what will happen to me you
Say well stuff like joy and peace and patience this doesn’t sound bad right you will become more you you’ll come the person that God originally intended you to be so my friends I come back to this vision of the night sky at once again you know your word was absolutely spot-on as we
Look into the night sky we don’t have to fear we don’t have to feel insignificant I don’t have to feel alone because Jesus is Emanuel he is God with us you are special you are significant God created you for a purpose he has a great plan
For your life Genesis 1 verse 1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth should we pray together and let’s just you know as every eyes closed and every every head is bad probably i’m speaking to you know two types of people today maybe the first type is it’s just
People who you have felt insignificant and you have felt you know God’s busy in the Middle East or God’s busy with my best friend or God’s busy with somebody who I just think is better than me and I want to tell you this morning that that’s not true that God loves you he
Died for you and that you are significant you are special he planned you before the origins of the universe and you need to let that sink into your soul this morning need to let that settle in your spirit and then secondly there many people here this morning and
You come along because a bloke speaking about God and science it’s kind of interesting and maybe you just heard for the first time that you don’t know the Lord but also I’m telling you you are special and your significant in fact so special and so significant that God
Himself came to earth and he sent his son to die so that you may be the person he always intended you to be let that settle this morning as well so Lord Lord God creator of the universe we love you this morning thank you Lord that you made us thank you that you
Think was special thank you that you sent Jesus for us I father I just pray by your Holy Spirit take my words this morning and bring them to life in the life of people this morning may we see people Lord just knowing their significant knowing their special going
Out of here rejoicing this morning because of our Great Creator God in the name of Jesus thank you amen