God and Astronomy

All right, here we are. We are ready for this split sermon, which is titled, The Heavens Declare God's Glory. I gave the child's or children's version over there at O'Neill Park this morning. I'm going to give the adult version now, but it is something very inspiring. I love astronomy. I have my own telescope. I have an electronic starfinder that I can look out, and it'll find all the constellations for me. I love to understand the night sky.

It's not there just for the looks. It's not just there for some pretty stars that are shining. They are actually a map of the heavens to give us bearings. If we ever lost, we can find the directions through the stars out in the heavens. Also, we can tell what season of the year we are on. I confess that the first star that I was intrigued was called Betelgeuse.

This is a red giant, and it is 12 times the size of our sun. So you can imagine how tiny the earth would be if we circled around Betelgeuse.

Now, I must have been about seven years old when I read a Disney comic, one that's talked about Donald Duck's great imagination. It had to do with Donald Duck and his little nephews taking a trip. He had an inventor, an uncle that had made this contraption that you put it on your head, and that whatever you imagined, you could travel to that place. Now, one day we're going to be able to do something like that without a contraption. But right now, that, to me, as a seven-year-old, really sparked my imagination.

In this Disney comic, they are able to travel to this star, Betelgeuse.

They must have imagined it as a huge planet, although it's a sun. But as they imagined it, it was a planet that was so huge that everything was large.

And for some reason, I never forgot that name or that star, Betelgeuse. Now, they had a movie that was a sarcastic way of talking about Betelgeuse, which is actually a star. But I thought it was so cool to visit the planets. In that comic book, they also visited the planet Jupiter.

And I didn't know at the time that the Bible talks a lot about the different stars and constellations that are out there. In a way, it talks about Betelgeuse because it talks about the constellation that one of the main stars is Betelgeuse, as we shall see.

It's in the constellation called Orion. We see it here, the constellation Orion. Oh, by the way, how many ever read that Disney comic about traveling to this planet? Anybody ever read that? Okay, we have one person in the back, Diana Cade. There must have been about eight this morning that just for some reason, even Carolina Clark in Peru read that Disney comic.

So it must have gotten people's attention because they still remember having read it. Now, as you can see, this is the constellation Orion, and this is his right shoulder, which corresponds to Betelgeuse. That's the way you see it in the sky. It's a big red giant. In Job 38, let's go to Job 38, verse 31.

It talks about Orion.

Job 38, verse 31. Job 38, verse 31. God asks Job, Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, which is a constellation called the Seven Sisters, or lose the belt of Orion? Orion's belt is very famous. There are three stars that look like a belt, and God is telling them, You've seen that constellation up there. Are you the one that can reorder them this way? Or can you put them apart? Can you loosen them like I can? So, of course, Job feels very small. Continuing on, verse 32. Can you bring out Miseroth, which is actually another red giant of a star? Arcturus is called in its season. Can you guide the great bear with its cubs? Now that's talking about the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, which are in two constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Ursa is Latin term for bear. And so, these have to do with the Big Bear and the Little Bear. So, we see here, this is the Big Dipper, and then we have the Little Dipper, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. He goes on to say, verse 33, he says, Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Do you know how to order them? And all the laws that govern the heavens, can you set their dominion over the earth? Can you establish all these laws that govern the universe? Job fell very small.

So, God speaks of the different stars and constellations. The point is that the stars are not out there at random. When people look and say, oh, what a beautiful starry sky. But actually, it is a map or a book that can be read.

God placed the main stars in bunches so that they would be recognizable to human beings. Notice in Genesis 1, verse 14, He placed the stars in their places for a reason. Genesis 1, 14. I'm going to read it from the Good News Bible.

It says, Then God commanded, and let lights appear in the sky to separate day from night, and to show the time when days, years, and religious festivals begin. So He had a purpose to order the stars, not just the sun and the moon, but also the stars so that people would know what season they would be in. And those that are astronomers, those who study, they can tell what time of the season they are in. And this is very important because you can get yourself out of the woods if you ever get lost by just knowing where the different stars are that can give you the directions.

Where's the north star? Which are the clusters that show you where the east is? All of these things, God gave it as a purpose. Now we have forgotten it as modern people because we have GPS, we have compasses, we have all kinds of contraptions. But a couple hundred years ago, people guided themselves by the stars. How do you think the Polynesians were able to travel in their canoes 2,000 miles and get to Hawaii, which is just a tiny group of islands in the middle of this ocean with nothing around them?

And these Polynesians were able to get to those islands and populate them. It was through the stars. Magellan was able to navigate around the world knowing where the stars are. And he was able to identify the southern constellations and was able to get his bearings on these ships to be able to travel where he wanted to go. For instance, even today, many African farmers, they don't guide themselves with television sets or radio. They go out there and they look at the stars and as they come and they position themselves in certain places, they know it's a time for planting. It's a time to establish the seeds in the ground.

Also, people have known through the centuries in the northern hemisphere where the northern star is, Polaris. You see here in the northern sky, we have this characteristic that the Polaris, which is the star, which is the true north, it doesn't vary. It doesn't matter what season you're at because the axis of the earth intersects.

It's the north as the earth is tilted and so as it goes around, the Polaris star is always in that region. Now, different constellations will vary because as we go around the sun, we're going to see different stars that we wouldn't otherwise. But the Polaris star is right at the top and it's very easy to find because one of the most interesting and easy to identify constellations is the Big Dipper.

This one here. See, it looks like a big pot with a handle and the two farthest stars of that pot always point to Polaris, which is the first star of the Little Dipper of the handle. And once you know this is the Polaris, then you can get your bearings. You know that behind you is the south, to the right is the east, to the west, to the left is the west. That is the way people were able to know the sky.

Also, from time immemorial, probably from the time of Adam forward, when God gave these instructions that he placed these lights in the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, that they would be for signs. They would be identifying markers for us to see it. And the Hebrew people organized. They observed looking at the moon when it starts. It's important. And also the time of the year. The Babylonians were the ones that ordered the examination of the skies through what they call the zodiac. Zodiac means little animals because they gave the constellations. Most of them are animals. And as you go through the year, you have one main constellation that you see northward, and that's the one that dominates.

That's why if you're born, for instance, in January, like I was, they said, well, you're Capricorn. I had no idea. What does that mean? Well, it just means that that constellation appears at the top of the sky in this ribbon of the sky that Babylonians divided into 12 parts, 30 degrees each part of the sky. And so that's the way you're able to identify the different constellations and the seasons of the year.

Now, the Bible also expected people to know the directions of what these stars can point to. Notice in Job chapter 9, Job chapter 9, verse 9. I'll read it to you in the Good News Bible. It says, God hung the stars in the sky, the dipper. You see the dipper? So the Bible talks about the dipper. God created this. He placed certain stars of first and second magnitude, which are the brightest in the heavens in such a way that you're able to identify them and also get directions from them. So here it talks about Job 9.9, that he hung the stars in the sky. The dipper, Orion, which is another one of the easiest constellations to find because of the belt, Orion's belt, and then Betelgeuse on the right shoulder. The Pleiades, it mentions here in Job 9.9, the Seven Sisters. It's another very easy to identify constellation, which is east of Polaris. These were the key stars to get our bearings with the North Star and the Pleiades at the east of us.

And so the stars aren't just out there. They have a pattern. Now, God didn't have to organize stars that are so far out, we can't see them. But the main stars, there's about 2,000 that can be seen with the visible eye, and out of those probably 100, our first or second magnitude stars, those are the ones he wanted in such a way for them to guide a person if they were lost in the desert or out there in an ocean. Even Christ's disciples, when they were on those boats in the middle of the Lake of Galilee at night, sometimes you can't see the shores. They didn't have electric light then. It was all pitch dark, but they could look and they could orient themselves by the stars. If they were all bunched together, you could not make sense of them. But they aren't that way. They are carefully organized so that it's easy to make figures of them. A curious fact about astronomy was the birth of modern astronomy.

You actually have to go back to the first printer of books, which was Johann Gutenberg back in 1452, when the first books were actually printed in movable style.

He was a German and he invented this, and he printed the Gutenberg Bible. He printed several hundreds of them first, and then later on, as more printing presses were created, they had thousands of Bibles that just inundated Europe. As a result, it cheapened the prices, and now people could read their own Bibles. They were also eventually translated into their own language, so people could compare what the Bible said to what the Catholic Church would say. After about 70 years, when Martin Luther came along, people had their own Bibles, and they were saying, this isn't what the priests are teaching us, and so they started a revolution. It wasn't the top of the class. It was the middle and the bottom classes, because they had a thirst for reading, for knowledge. That all had to do with Gutenberg's invention, because before that, basically only monks copied the Bible. It could take them one year worth of labor to finish one book. It was so expensive, only a king or a pope or a bishop could afford it, and so most people were ignorant. But now, with this printing press, you could print thousands of books.

But there was one problem, and that was since people weren't accustomed to reading, once they started reading the Bible, especially if you're a little older, they found out they were farsighted, which means they could see good far, but they couldn't see up front. And so, they started creating lenses, reading glasses, which people didn't really have a need for before, because you didn't have anything to read. But now, you had reading glasses, and so all of these shops arose, especially in Holland, where they're very meticulous, and the Dutch started creating these eyeglasses, and people could read! They were happy! They could read their Bibles and other books. And then, in 1600, in the shop of one of these Dutch glassmakers, some of their kids were playing around, and they took two of the lenses, and they put them in front of the others, and they looked at this bell tower, and they said, hey, this bell tower looks closer! And so, the Dutch fellow said, this is a good idea! I'm going to get a patent on this! And then, he got a tube, he put the two lenses together, and they got a telescope! And so then, that started a new revolution! Not only were people reading their Bibles, but now people could have their telescopes, and there was one Italian scientist by the name of Galileo Galilei, who built his own telescope.

And he looked in the night sky, and in 1609, he spent two months looking at the skies, and he saw that Jupiter had four moons, and that these moons were going around Jupiter, just like our moon goes around the Earth, and he says, why the Earth can't be the center of everything? Because look at these moons! They're not going around the Earth, they're going around Jupiter! Copernicus must be right! And then, he started a scientific revolution that caused him, of course. The Pope basically put him in a house arrest. The Inquisition was ready to execute him, and he had to recant. He had to say, well, no, I really don't think that the Earth goes around the Sun. And then, after that, they say he's walking back, and they heard a mumble, but it still goes around. So, he was under house arrest for the rest of his life, but at least he didn't die over there. But this was the way modern astronomy came about. And while the Bible speaks positively about learning the patterns of the stars, like I said, it took a lot of work for God to put all these constellations together. We hardly know any of them. At least we ought to know the big and the small dipper and how to find Polaris, because who knows? Someday we might run out of gas in the middle of a desert, and you better know where to head. Knowing north, you can at least know you better start heading west again, and not going into Death Valley in that area.

While the Bible speaks positively about astronomy, it condemns astrology. Astrology is the worship of the stars, thinking that the stars somehow influence people. So astrologers, they come up with these ideas that, well, okay, so now you have this main constellation up there, like in January, it's Capricorn, and he says, well, now this is going to affect what you do. And you have people that read these horoscopes. They're actually horror scopes, because they're ridiculous, but people make their decisions based on some movement of the stars. Like it has to do with your own personal volition and decisions. God condemns that. Notice in Deuteronomy chapter 4, Deuteronomy chapter 4. By the way, I'm glad that Brennan is here because he's over in Colorado, and he gets to see the stars a lot better than we do. Don't you, Brennan? Yeah, now you're going to be able to appreciate them better, hopefully, when you go back. I've got some maps to give to you, star maps here. Deuteronomy chapter 4 in verse 14. It says, And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments that you might observe them in the land which you cross over to possess. Take careful heed to yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire. That's at Mount Sinai. Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai. So he says you didn't see any form of how God looks. He didn't show himself materially to them. It says, Lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, or the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, or the likeness of any fish that's in the water beneath the earth. So he's saying, don't make any religious statues that you think represents Jesus Christ or God, anything like that. He says, do not, because God wants us to look and pray to him as the invisible God. He's made of spirit, not made out of matter. So he doesn't want us to be making figures and statues of wood or of pastor Paris or anything else. Like in Latin America, it's full of that idolatry. Verse 19, and take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage. That's the tradition of everybody else. He says, but the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace out of Egypt to be his people and inheritance as you are this day. He has given you the truth that you are not to worship the heavens. They don't have any special power. They're just sons out there with planets that have no influence over us. So he is revealing that although astrology is a very powerful force today. One astronomer I read says that there are more people into astrology now than there were at the time of Babylon. Babylon had less astrology nuts than they have today. Here we are 21st century and people are still deceived by this. Notice Isaiah 47. This is a very important verse. It's good to highlight it. Isaiah 47 verse 11.

God is going to punish Babylon and so he says to them in verse 11 He says, Perhaps you will prevail. You are weary in the multitude of your counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, and the monthly prognosticators stand up and save you from what shall come upon you. Behold, they shall be estable. None of that is going to serve. God's going to carry out his will. And so he's mocking them. He's saying all of these ideas astrologers have, they're not going to do any good when my will is going to be carried out. Babylon fell just like God said and all of these astrologers weren't worth their salt at all. And those prognosticators, monthly prognosticators, see according to the sodeac, they had all of these things that said are going to happen. So God condemns that. I just mentioned something that Mr. Massé mentioned in the first message about Manasseh. He was one that worshiped the host of heaven in 2 Chronicles 33 in verse 3. Notice 2 Chronicles 33 verse 3, and God punished him for that.

2 Chronicles chapter 33 verse 3, talking about Manasseh, said, For he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down. He raised up altars for the bales, and made wooden images. And he worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. He built temples for them, temples to the moon, temples to the sun, temples to the different stars.

So I encourage you to appreciate what God has created up there, the stars with their constellations. Appreciate more on God's handiwork. Go out and pick out the two dippers. See where the Polaris Star is. And also, my beloved Betelgeuse, which at seven years old struck my imagination, fired it up to study more about the stars. Let's finish in Psalm 19 verses 1 through 7, the tribute that David gives to the starry heavens, giving thanks to God. Psalm 19 1 through 7.

He says, the heavens declare the glory of God. Now, he was a shepherd, so he was out there. He knew the stars intimately. He could see God's handiwork, how he fashioned for man's benefit to put all of these stars that man could know what seasons he would be in and how to guide the sheep at night by just looking at the sky, being able to get back home safely. He says, and the firmament shows his handiwork day unto day, utter speech, and night unto night, reveals knowledge, all the things we can see day and night to appreciate the wonders of nature. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard, their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tabernacle for the sun. The sun goes from one end to the other, and it lights up everything. He says, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. Have you ever seen a tired sun? No. At the beginning, it shines with a tremendous brightness, not like people. They get worn out in the morning. They just don't have the pep and energy they had before. Not so, the sun. It gets up like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices like a strong man to run its race. Its rising is from one end of heaven and its circuit to the other end, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. It warms the entire earth. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. So, yes, God's laws are not only written in the Bible, they're written above to give Him the glory. So this is why I love astronomy, because the heavens truly do declare the glory of God.