Knowing God Through His Creation

Well, today I'd like to do something a little different than I normally do. It seems like I often rush into a topic and try to get a topic presented. Today something else is on my mind, and I hope to be able to convey it to you in an inclusive way. Maybe as I talk about this, things will come to your mind. I wish we could just take the whole day and have an interactive discussion. But today I'd like to take some time to ponder some aspects of life. It seems like life goes by so quickly. I'm not quite ready for the month of June to be over. And here it is September's already hurtling past. I don't know what happened to August. But time goes by, things pressure us, our days are filled, and we really don't get time to ponder life. We need to take time to do that, to pause, to appreciate, to consider life in general, the physical life, the life that God has made. You know, God's creation can inspire us. But as you sit here today, do you see anything exactly besides the people in the room that God made? I mean, sure, He made wood, but He didn't actually go create lecterns and microphones and wall panels. When you get in your car, you don't see anything specifically naturally fashioned. Nor typically as we go down the roads do we see anything but some well-planted trees and some well-groomed landscapes. And oftentimes in our own homes it's something fairly similar, and the plants sometimes aren't really growing. But they sure look nice and bright and clean. And so, what about taking time to pause and appreciate and consider God's creation? There is much to impress us. We can see the weather that's very impressive. We've seen in the news recently weather events. Maybe you've seen some of those up close and been affected by some, and seen the power that exists in some of the weather. There's also the landscape that God made, this Earth's landscape that can be majestic in the rock formations, the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, so many different things that are in this landscape, both heavenly and on the Earth, that can be very, very impressive.

That would include things like sunsets, and the stars at night, and the moon rising. So many beautiful things. There's the ocean, what is called the Caribbean blue, that color that comes from a sparkling clean ocean that's on top of white sand, reflecting a blue sky.

It's mesmerizing. Those of us who love the Caribbean can't soak up enough. You just you want to go stare, you want to absorb it, you want to go back. It is just incredible. These things also are impressive as we look up into space, and the more we can see in space with color photography and all, the more awed and wowed we can become.

There's been a lot of discussion lately on what are planets, and the small little chunks that are floating out there, and the great big ones that are floating out there, and the various relationships that they have, the stars beyond them.

But let's, those things aren't really life. None of those things are living. Those are inert objects. Let's talk about life for a minute. It's interesting to view the animal and plant life, the flora and the fauna, from a perspective that I hope you'll catch on to as I have of late, and that is that everything you see with your eye is something that God designed.

He sat down and took the time to design every aspect of it, whether it's a common plant or animal or something that's rare and unique. Imagine the time that God could have, might have something that's rare and unique, and the time that God could have, might have spent, as we think as humans anyway, on developing these various life forms and the complexities of them and the reproduction of them, and the function of them and the uniqueness of how they interact with other life forms.

Animals are an interesting thing, kind of captivate us. We like animals enough sometimes we'll have pets, exotic animals and things like that. But I found that the more I think about God as the one, not who made it, God made that, no, but God one day sat down and designed this animal, this particular animal. He designed it, whether it's a prairie dog or whether it's a cricket or some other animal that flies or walks. God designed that animal. And to stop and ponder that animal, learn a little about it, watch it, think about the God who made it, why he made it, why he made it like that, to do what it does, why does it have the characteristics, the personalities, the colorings, the size, the function?

Then we begin to bring God into the creation that's around us. To see a bird come to a bird feeder, which is something my wife and I really enjoy, and then to look at the individual types of birds. Not just a bird, and there's another sized bird, but each bird is totally different.

Some when they walk, their head. What do they see is that head is going back and forth in order to take a step. I was telling my wife the other day, watch this bird, it cannot take a step without bobbing its head. Even if it wants one step, it goes, hmm? It can't do it without, now you try that with your head. What does that do?

Why? And another bird right beside it will have a totally different characteristic. Maybe it'll land a different way or be vertical. When you think about God creating all of these things, you begin to really, I think, appreciate more about what He's done. You know, there are 268 species of birds up in Central California, and one county in Central California. That county includes Yosemite Valley, which is a national park. 268 species, that's just the number you throw out until you see them all listed.

I was looking at them this morning, and my head just spun. I've seen several birds and several species, but 268 different birds in one county. It's amazing how many God made and how unique and how different every one of those species of birds is. All different characteristics. We have common to us here in Arizona, the quail and the dove. Dove sees an open yesterday. Last week I was down at Helen Channing Smith's house in Yuma, and one of these big dust storms came rolling in.

And as I watched out the window of the bedroom, I noticed two types of birds, quails and doves, reacting differently to the strong wind. The dove was flying crazily, trying to work its way through. The quail hopped onto the wall. Four of them looked around, hopped down off the wall, got under the bushes, various student looking around, as they always do, their tails real low, and then settled down under the bush. The doves continue to flap and flail and try to make their way airborne.

Doves like to fly. They don't like to walk. They'll do almost anything not to walk. If they have to go a few steps, a dove will fly a few steps and then come back down. Quails, on the other hand, hate to fly. They'll do almost anything but fly. They'll walk until you almost can step on them, it seems, before they'll get up and fly, kind of like a pheasant or a roadrunner. Roadrunners hate to fly. I say hate to fly. They'll do anything but fly if they have the opportunity. Uniquenesses in these bird species. There's a merganser, which is, you might call it a duck, but a duck has a flat bill, and a merganser is one of those water birds that is very unique.

I was watching one recently, as I was praying, actually, sitting on a rock looking at a river, and here came a common merganser, one of the females, with young. And a very attractive bird, even the female species, brown head, and the feathers kind of hang off to the back of the head like that, kind of stick out. This bird likes to swim up fast, moving streams. Now, go figure. I'd want to swim down, or rather float. But this one just loves to go up, and all the babies love to go up only.

They like to go up underwater as much as possible. So you don't see them a lot. You see them coming up below the waterfalls. Next thing you know, they're above the waterfalls, getting a little air back underneath as they work their way carefully. Everybody's always watching for other animals and predators swimming underneath.

I'm not sure what they eat. I assume some small fish, or maybe some little crustaceans or something, or maybe roots. I haven't studied into that bird, but fascinating to watch. The heron, you know, the great blue heron that exists in this area, well, most areas quite commonly, where there's any standing water, loves to fly in so slowly, big wing, put its feet down, and just stand without making any fuss and watch for fish.

And very carefully, it'll put its head down and then boom, it's got a fish in the mouth. Fascinating bird. Unique. Once again, a whole different mentality, not just the structure, but a different mentality. The hummingbird. Well, we all like hummingbirds. I tell you, I forget how many different varieties there are about my wife a book recently.

She loves hummingbirds, and we feed them. But the hummingbird, of course, is famous for its ability to hover and have that long tongue that goes in, and you can watch the little tongue. It does this as it laps up the nectar out of the end of its beak, little fast-moving tongue that flashes in there.

A hummingbird can fly like that, fly forward, fly backward. It can fly all around, find its food, build hummingbird nests. We've had a little tiny hummingbird nest with little tiny hummingbird eggs. Can do all of this with a brain the size of a grain of rice.

That's the size of a hummingbird brain. And these birds migrate. We usually see them most varieties here. We see at the top of the migration, the summer migration from Central America or Mexico.

A hummingbird's a fascinating, fascinating thing that God made with a wing design burning immense amounts of energy. Why did He do that? Why are often the feathers iridescent in various colors?

How long did it take to design the hummingbird? What about the woodpecker? There's an animal that does not like to land on anything that's not vertical. And there's an animal that likes to use its head, of all things, and just bang away with that head.

The osprey, which is similar to a bald eagle, only it has a white chest as well. Bright white head and a white chest that sails, soars, and then flies down over a lake and grabs fish. Well, it doesn't grab fish.

It dives into the lake from about a hundred feet and hits that water with a smack that you wouldn't believe and then disappears.

Now this bird is swimming. This eagle-like bird is swimming underwater. And before you know it, it will come up with its trout or other fish and suddenly work its way airborne.

I had a fascinating encounter with an osprey and a bald eagle last year up at Woods Canyon Lake. And here as I was fishing, you see the dive. Wow! Wham! And it's gone.

Came up with a fish and started to fly away with it and right behind it came in a bald eagle. Bald eagles get their white head after four years of age. So this was a mature bald eagle.

It can fly over, see the fish and grab it with its talons. But for some reason, it would rather get the fish from the osprey.

Now the osprey has this fish in its talons and it's got an eagle behind it. An osprey, it turns out, can out-climb an eagle. Can't out-fly one, but it can out-climb an eagle.

And the eagle is trying to match that climb and get that fish. The last time I saw those two birds, I was at 7,000 feet elevation. They were tiny little specks in the sky that disappeared from view.

That's how hard that eagle was trying to get that fish.

There's so many things that we can learn about God, when we think about God. How many of you have seen rattlesnakes in the wild?

That's good. I've been hiking these deserts and hills for years now and saw, Gordon and I, Gordon Price and I saw our first rattlesnake in the wild.

Well, not counting the one on top of Camelback Mountain. That doesn't count because that one's sort of fed by the hikers that go up there.

And the people up there, the park officials drop it over the side once in a while, but it used to come back. I don't know if it still is.

But this is the first wild one. It's right in our path and tried to get away and I got a big stick and coiled up.

I could really make that thing wind up. And the fangs and the tongue. Rattlesnakes are fairly blind, but they have the tongue and with it they can sense the heat.

And they won't strike things that are not hot, typically, so the stick that I had, he wouldn't strike at, it would just make him mad. He wanted to know where the heat was.

Why did God make rattlesnakes basically blind? Why does something have to be warm for it to be struck at?

There's so many different things about various types of snakes, like the black mamba, the most poisonous snake in Africa.

The lizards. Recently, one of you was on a hike and a lizard kept eyeballing a little branch above it and took a leap and missed.

Fell off the boulder. Took another leap and made it onto the branch. And what was the point? So that it could walk over that branch and take a look at you real close.

And, you know, do its push-ups like they do and look. Fascinating opportunity to see something God made and ponder it.

You know, the more we think about these things, the more I believe that God makes them available to us.

I don't know if it was in Africa or here, but it wasn't very long ago that a beautiful butterfly came by.

And, wow, a beautiful butterfly! And it just flew right over and landed. I guess it was up at one of the campouts.

And it landed right in front of me. And it opened its wings and sat there. Wow!

And then you get to think about butterflies. Why did God create something with, okay, I'm this size. Imagine I'm going to butterfly.

My wings would be as tall as the tallest ceiling and as wide as the walls.

How could you push a wing through the air? And which would move? Would the wings ever move or would I just go, wham wham wham wham wham?

And I'm not sure how it works for a butterfly. I'm really not.

But I know we hit about 200 of them every time we go to Yuma, because they migrate this time of the year.

And they're full, the fields are full of them around Gila Bend. We have toads, those big old round toads. You know, maybe you have one in your yard. We have one in ours occasionally.

Fascinating the toad that hops around. But that's not all a toad will do. If a toad jumps in the swimming pool, he needs some air.

But if you disturb him, he'll swim to the bottom and just sit down there. Try to out-weight you.

Fascinating creature. Crocodiles are fascinating. We don't need to talk about them, but some of us have seen them taking down some live animals as they cross the river over in Kenya into Tanzania.

The cougar. How many of you have seen a cougar? In the wild. That's great. That's a very re-clues animal. Very well hidden. Likes to hunt at night.

Camouflage. You can get very close to a cougar, maybe even ten feet to a cougar and never see it if it doesn't want you to.

Saw cougar tracks a couple weeks ago in a soft spot on a trail. And started looking for him. Knew they were fresh tracks. And you could see forever, as it were.

He was probably watching me somewhere. Never got to see him. I like to go out walking in the mornings real early and sometimes running. Get to see sometimes some things that God made. Sometimes get on a trail or something.

Always fascinating, though, by the various things that God has made. Sometimes we have dogs. At Floyd and Nancy Bunch's house recently over in California. They're in the Yuma congregation. But they live up in the mountains. About 4,000, 5,000 feet elevation. Close to San Diego.

And Floyd is recovering from a stroke. And he's doing very well. But they were telling him about the dog. They had a yellow Labrador and beautiful dog. Big old head.

And first he wasn't sure that he wanted me on the property. And then they told me the story about him. Somebody dropped him off as a puppy. And here came this puppy up the road one day. And when the puppy got to the house, he decided, you know, I like this house. I like these people. Yep. I'm home.

And whenever they left, no, dog wouldn't go. Just stayed there. He adopted that. It was his territory. It was his area. These were his people. He defends them from coyotes of both kinds. Because they're right on that border area.

And that old dog will come over and park his head on your lap once in a while. And he wants that big old head rubbed. Then he'll leave. But every 10 minutes he'll come back and make sure that you still like him.

What is that about dogs? Why did God create dogs? Why do dogs have such an affinity for humans? And why are they so territorial to where they will come and defend what property and people, children and adults that they think are theirs? Isn't that an amazing thing?

The interaction causes people to miss their dogs. My dogs will say, I missed you, you know. And we're just so glad that somebody on the planet misses us or likes us. We get attached to our dogs.

Some people say, I wonder if my dog will be in the resurrection. I guarantee there will be individuals there that love you a lot more than your dog. But nevertheless, I've never had anybody ask me if they're there.

I think their cat would be in the resurrection. I think there's probably a reason there. Or their lizard or pet snake or whatever. No, we've had cats too, but they haven't had us. That's the problem.

Then there's the giraffe. There's an interesting animal. You might go see a giraffe at a zoo or come over to Africa and see a giraffe and say you've seen a giraffe. But God made that giraffe. Why did he make giraffes? Why did he make the various patterns on giraffes? We have, we name them various names for the four or five varieties that there are. But the giraffe is the tallest animal there that exists. The males can get up to 18 feet tall, 3,000 pounds.

They like to eat a certain type of food that is found in trees. The trees are very tall. But that tree has thorns that are sometimes 2 inches long all the way up. And the leaves are tiny little things stuck in between the thorns. It's a variety of the acacia. Acacia trees have, I don't know, 200-300 varieties. And this is one of the varieties. And they just love acacia trees.

How is it that that giraffe tongue, God made it to be long and can wrap around and work in there among those thorns? Some say, I read somewhere that when it pulls a certain way with that tongue on a branch that the thorns actually will aim a little bit towards it so that it can slip over them as opposed to, you know, poking the tongue.

Now, the funny thing about being 18 feet high, where your brain is, is if you're familiar with water pressure at all, if there's blood going to your brain at 18 feet, your feet, or 18 feet tall, your hooves, feet, whatever, have an immense amount of blood pressure down there.

It is twice or more what exists in any other animal, or most other animals. I can't say that for any other animal, but most other animals. And so the heart has to pump blood up that high, and the blood pressure at the feet is high enough that the blood actually would pass through the veins and even the skin. It's under that kind of load.

Now, God happened to make the legs wrapped with a jacket, a tight jacket, and that jacket prevents the blood from going out of the veins. It's like, you know, you might have heard of these compression stockings for the legs sometimes. Well, they have built-in compression stockings. And when that head at 18 feet takes a drink, if you imagine this, the water level is going to be just below the feet, because it'll be standing dry with the feet, and the head will go down to the water source. So now it's going down 18 or 19 feet from where it was, and imagine what would happen to the brain if the blood pressure is accelerated to that degree. So consequently, I've got to read this to you, in the upper neck, a complex pressure regulation system prevents excess blood flow to the brain when the giraffe lowers its head to drink. Conversely, the blood vessels in the lower legs are under great pressure because of the fluid pressing down on them. So all these issues work, and God worked that out for the giraffe. Plus the food He worked out for the giraffe. A giraffe's heart, by the way, is 24 pounds. It's a pretty good-sized heart. It's got to be a real pressure system going on there.

I'd like to turn with me over to Job, chapter 39. As we spend a little time thinking about God's creation, let's listen to the One who made this creation. Just some of the words about the time that He took, or the systems that He created, from His viewpoint. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, verse 4, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

In verse 22, Have you entered the treasury of snow? Snowflakes, they say they are no two the same. And if you go out to where the snow is falling and it's very dry, like where some of you are from originally up in the far north, in the prairie country you'll see dry snow coming down and the flake patterns are very unusual. And you can run around with black clothing and hold out an arm and try to find some that are different. But you're almost spellbound just by the way each crystal is formed and radiates out from the center. It's just fascinating. And so God knew that, God designed that, and He mentions this here. Have you seen the treasury of hail? Hail is formed somewhere up perhaps at 50,000 feet. It is when a thunderstorm starts to rain, you get this build up, what happens is this moist ground air goes up to where it's cool.

Where it's cool, you start to see clouds forming. And if there's enough upflow, this cloud will continue to build up through its center. And the top will grow and grow as long as this suction is going up through the middle. Well, at some point, this cloud gets really big and precipitation begins to fall. Well, most of the precipitation is going to fall through the middle where the air is coming up. And this is the reason why thunderstorms only last for probably 45 minutes in their most active phase. Because the bigger the storm gets, the more rain it shoots down. And the more rain it shoots down, the more it sucks itself back down to the earth and pulls the clouds as it were with them, leaving high clouds up in the high... well, anyway, they're called cirrus clouds. They become ice crystals. They get up to 60,000-70,000 feet sometimes.

But as the rain is falling down, at some point, it can get sucked back up, and then it gets heavy and falls back down and gets sucked back up. And what happens is that raindrop will freeze, and every time it goes up, it freezes. Every time it comes down, it gets coated again with rain, only to get sucked back up and freeze and coated again with rain. And so it's doing this up, down, up, down, and a hailstorm is layered like a tree ring. If you cut it in half, you'll just find it's full of layers. Figure out how many trips it made up and down, until finally the thing gets big enough that it'll break its way through, and the storm will rain itself out. Incredible things that God made. In verse 1 of chapter 39, do you know the time when the wild mountain goats bear young? The wild mountain goats. Gary Sims was telling me recently that out at Canyon Lake, he and his family have seen the bighorn sheep. But you don't tend to see bighorn sheep, because they blend in with the brown landscape pretty well. And he says, what gives them away is the flickering white tail. Watch for a white tail! My wife and I have seen bighorn sheep at another lake, and they're fascinating. That and mountain goats. Unique, very, very unique individual who like the rugged country. They like the rocks. They like the difficult places. And he says, do you know the time when the wild mountain goats bear young? That whole process that God made, the process of life, of reproduction, the time, the seasons. Can you mark when the deer gives birth?

Again, another animal.

Verse 5, who set the wild donkey free, and why can't you do anything with wild donkeys? Like the zebra. You can't tame a zebra. You can't ride a zebra. You can't do anything with a zebra. Get your teeth knocked out, maybe, but that's about it. Why did God create that in a zebra, but a willingness of a horse to be a pack animal or a mule to be a pack animal?

Some of the other animals?

In verse 9, will the wild ox be willing to serve you? There's another animal that's never been tamed. The wild ox. We call it the Cape buffalo. Mean critter. Big. It could really haul a load, but there'll be no loads being hauled by that. Just a crazy wild animal that's probably good to eat. Actually, I think we've had buffalo, but not good for much of anything else.

Will he bed by your manger? No, he won't, actually. Can you bind the wild ox and the furrow with ropes, or will he plow the valleys behind you? Will you trust him because of his great strength?

And so on and so forth.

Talks about other animals. Verse 19, have you given the horse strength? Have you clothed his neck with thunder?

Verse 26, does the hawk fly by your wisdom? If I were going to create a hawk that eats animals running around on the ground, I wouldn't send him up to 5,000 feet to fly around all day. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Why do some of these birds, first thing in the morning, they're all out waiting to go skyward? We have vultures, turkey vultures in this country, and turkey vultures are independent flyers. You'll see them up in the skies over Texas, Arizona, almost everywhere. They're way up there oftentimes. But you know, turkey vultures actually are familial, and they like to get together in the evenings. They all come down and find themselves in the evenings. They get together in large groups, sit around, hang out overnight, next morning, still waiting. They say, why don't you get out there? Well, because the thermals aren't going. Wait till the sun comes up. One or two of them will test. Pretty soon they'll start taking off, trying to find some thermals. They'll go way up high and soar. Why are they up there when they eat dead things on the ground? Does it spread its wings towards the south? Does the eagle mount up at your command and make its nest on high? On the rock it dwells and resides, on the crag of the rock and in the stronghold? From there it spies out the prey. Its eyes observe from afar. They've determined that some of these birds of prey can see better at a distance than they can up close. Almost telescopic eyes. If they get up high, where the animals down below are not disturbed by them, they can actually go along and see close up what's happening down on the ground. And they do it effortlessly because they're flying on thermals in the warm weather of the day. I don't know why the...

What are those cruiser birds called? Not herons, but not storks. Hmm, forget. There's some... Oh, I don't even go there.

Recently, we did a little nature walk up near Sholo with the congregation, just to see what some of the things that God made, and a little fuzzy red bee showed up. And I put him on my finger, and he was sitting there, and fuzzy, just bright, brilliant, crimson fuzzy. Why did God make this? And his back was just... Pow, pow, pow, pow, with this little stinger, just... Only it was stinging me in the fingernail, so it was having no effect. But it was really an interesting bug. I was beginning to realize that God made that thing to really want to sting. Probably ought not to be holding that on my finger too long. God designed that. God designed dragonflies. You know, there's different kinds of dragonflies. Dragonflies, to me, are just unbelievably fascinating. Not only do they fly around, but some of them have a mono wing, and they hover. Some of them have dual wings, like a biplane, running four wings at the same time. But when dragonflies mate, which they are at this time of the year, the tail of one sticks in around the head of the other one. And then they are linked together for some time. And now you have two flying and doing everything as one. Only one of them ever touches the ground. The other one is always up in the air, standing on top of the one below it. Now here's the deal. Who steers? Who says, let's take off? What if one takes off and the other says, nah, I don't really feel like flying today. Is it just a dead weight hanging there? How do you know where you're going to go? Here comes two dragonflies together. The one in front, interestingly enough, can't see the one below behind. You know, you see him looking down there, and he's still there? Where do you want to go? Who determines where you're going to land? Takeoffs, landings, that would be interesting. When you're holding another dragonfly above you, stuck to your head, you know, this could be a little wobbly, so they do a three-point landing. The one on the bottom puts its two legs down, or four, or whatever it has, and then the tail curls, curls down, and becomes a brace. Very curious. The thing is not about dragonflies, it's about God. God designed all of this stuff. If you go up to any of the waterways, even maybe in your area this time, you'll find almost anything floating on water has many, as many dragonflies as can get on this thing, doubled, and they're sitting there, hanging out. It just makes you wonder. Not wonder, but I guess wonder, appreciate.

Tropical fish are always amazing. They come in so many different crazy shapes and colors, and some of them are funny, and some of them are just inspiring.

The first time I remember seeing tropical fish, Edna Martin in Yuma, and I were students at college, and we were in a place called Elat down on the coast of the Red Sea.

There with the student body, we had been given the opportunity to go snorkeling. The waters are so, so clear. You could see the tropical fish, but as I was paddling out and looking down, I got out in some deeper water, and they're down probably a hundred feet below, really far down. You could really see clear. It was a manta ray, big manta ray, slowly cruising. They have the wide open mouth that opens, and they slowly cruise and filter plankton. That's what they eat. And they have eyes out here. It's kind of a scoop front, an eye on this side and an eye on that side. But here's the manta ray. And it was then I decided, no, I want to be a scuba diver. So when my wife and I were dating before we were married, I think we were engaged. We both got certified as scuba divers, and we've done a lot of scuba diving. We've been scuba diving through the years, the last 32 years, in various places. And it's always fascinating the things that are down below, and the animals that are down there, and what takes place down there. I've never seen a hammerhead shark, but a hammerhead shark, I think, is one of the most bizarre things that God made, one of them. It has a wing for a head, and this wing comes out about that far, and on the ends are eyes. In this wing are... let me read this to you. In this wing are electro-receptors. And what these do is, by having not a small head with a few electro-receptors, which some animals do to perceive prey, it has this broad wing covered with electro-receptors, and it scans the ocean. It's like a radar. It scans the ocean for maximum prey. It would be one thing to cite one, but I learned this last week, that manta rays off the coast of South Africa every year come together in thousands, to see the water just from maybe a hundred feet down, just broiling with thousands of manaree in one place. And then all of them begin to migrate up the west coast, east coast of Africa, chasing the dolphins. Thousands of dolphins that just make the water go white with froth as they chase small fish that are migrating up the west coast. And the shark, I say manaree, I'm not talking about manarees, I'm talking about the shark. That shark, all those sharks chase the dolphins, because that's their food source. So you have the dolphins chasing the fish, who are migrating by the billions, just swarms of fish under the water that race and move. And dolphins that are chasing them and thousands, tens of thousands of manarees, not manarees, hammerhead sharks, chasing them.

And here God planned all of this. God made all this happen, just like the fish who are in the ocean, since they're little, they go out in the ocean. And they spend two years out there in the ocean, and as adults they come back and swim up the very rivers, jumping up through the waterfalls and everything it takes to the pond that they were spawned in.

Just to give birth and die there. My wife and I have seen that up in Alaska.

These things that God does should make us appreciate and understand. There are plants, there are flowers, the little insignificant flowers that are growing. God made every one of them. Ever take one, take a magnifying glass and look at the detail? Ah, it's just a little flower, just a little weed flower, just a little nothing flower. Well, God designed that. He designed the plant, the whole process, the purpose of that plant, the purpose of that flower. There's something called lichen. Many people don't know what lichen is, but lichen actually covers... ...it is the most dominant living thing in 8% of the world's environment. There are hundreds of types of lichens. I didn't know that. Here in Arizona we tend to have a lime green kind of lichen. It looks yellow at a distance. It colors some of our hills and mountains. But there are lichens that would just blow you away, as it were, with flowering pods.

Lichens are things that God made, and He made many of them, and they are very, very complex. It's a fungus that has a symbiotic union with an algae. The fungus has an algae growing with it that it eats. And the two, using photosynthesis and a weird variety of styles and even flowering pods and all kinds of things, God made these things to perform certain functions. There are 88 varieties in North America.

There are trees. There are at least 200 species in the Americas of trees. Why didn't God just create a tree? Why, when you go into a forest, don't you just see trees? Instead, there are so many varieties, if you stop to examine them, most people don't even know what they are. I don't even know what they are.

Various types of trees. Various species of trees, deciduous trees, conifer trees. What's with that? Why do some trees lose their leaves while others do not? There's hardwood trees, there's softwood trees, there's palm trees, there's fruit trees, there's nut trees. So many different kinds of trees. God made every one of them. But every time I see something new in creation, I try to stop and tell myself, God designed this. God spent time designing this. I need to take time to observe, to see God.

In Romans 1, verse 20, it says, For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen. Clearly seen. Being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal Godhead. And if we're not looking at these things, then guess what? We're not seeing His invisible attributes and His eternal power in Godhead. We're just in our concrete jungle, and we don't take the time to appreciate and think about what God has made. We're missing something. There's something else that God made, and that's the human body.

I find it fascinating to watch people and children, people of all ages, and see how they interact, and see how, even in watching movies or other individuals, see how a certain pattern forms of boys and girls when they're young, from infants, and then older, and as they mature, as they go through phases in their life, how what we think is us and me, and it's all mine, no, how it is so copied from individual.

There are certain behavioral patterns, certain desires and needs and wants that are common to males and common to females, and how it all works in harmony when God's way is applied, and how it all falls apart when God's way is not.

The systems of the human body are incredible. So many systems. We just think, oh, it's my body, and that's it. But if you just take one small element and put it out of balance, it can mess you up or kill you. Just one small element. Some of the systems involved in the body are the digestive system. The digestive system. And all that goes along with that, with our desires of eating and drinking, things that we enjoy, appreciate, how the digestive system really works, and you realize that what you put in your mouth never becomes you. It's really never part of you. It's not really in you. It is inside you. But as one doctor told me one time, you have a hole at this end, and you have a hole at that end, and whatever you send in this end comes out the other end.

And that's kind of the way it is. That tube, that long tube, where you don't throw a steak in there and suddenly, there it is. No? No? Your body just sort of breaks it down, throws acids into it, all kinds of things, and runs it through a whole bunch of things that will sample it. If it wants some of it, it'll take it. The rest goes on out. Hmm. That's one system in the body. We don't like to think about that, but there it is. There are other systems. The immune system. Very complex system to protect us. The immune system and how that works.

There's the lymphatic system. There's the pituitary system for growth. There's the vascular, the blood, and the lymph. Let me read you something. Blood is transmitted from the heart to the lungs, where it exchanges carbon dioxide for oxygen. Then this oxygen-rich blood is then carried back to the left side of the heart, and it's pumped out to the rest of the body.

As the blood travels, it enters smaller and then smaller blood vessels, reaching every cell in the entire body, and they're dropping off nutrients and picking up waste products and carbon dioxide. The blood then starts the trip back in the veins, entering larger and larger veins as it goes.

Along the way, it passes through the liver and drops off waste products. The blood eventually arrives back at the right side of the heart, just to start the trip all over again. Heartbeat. How many of you have made your heartbeat today? How many of you got up this morning and said, Okay, time to get started here. Okay, heart. Why is the heartbeat?

And what about that heart rate? How does the heart know to be faster? What tells it? Who tells you? Okay, be faster. We're going to start working out here, or I'm a little nervous. What about muscles and tendons? Take your hands like this, if you will. Bend your elbows up. Make a fist. Now, wiggle your fingers up and down. Okay, put your hands down. Do it again. Put your fingers. Who's doing that? How are you doing that? What tendons are you using? What muscles are you using? Do you know? You know, actually, you're viewing something from your brain.

You're not even actually seeing it. It's actually upside down, as far as your view. But your brain actually is in there, and you're thinking, and you have a couple of nerves that come out to some eyeballs. And these eyeballs are pretty much clear, and on the back of the eyeballs, the image of what's out there, upside down, and the nerves are sending this image, not a picture.

You're not actually seeing a picture. It's actually just electrical transmission that's going back to your brain, and you're making a picture out of it somehow. And you saw your fingers and your hands moving, but you don't really know how you did that. You didn't say, okay, outside tendon from this muscle here going up to there, and ascend from this nerve down the nervous system through the back, through the arm to there to have this tendon pull on that muscle a little bit, not too far, hyperflex, just a little bit.

And not at the same time, let's do it independently. We just, we don't even know, do we? We just, he said, do that, okay, and... It's curious. It's curious. God made these systems. We have a skeletal system. We grow. How do you grow? How do things grow? Why do things grow? When do they grow? They grow when you're sleeping. Why do they grow when you're sleeping and not... Why do kids sleep so much? Well, you grow when you're sleeping. Growth hormones are produced during sleep. We have repair systems. Repair happens when you sleep.

You injure your body as you go along to the day, and when you sleep, all the repair systems come out and start working. You have a nervous system. You have a brain. You have a mind, mental patterns, attributes, male, female, phases that you go through, personalities, emotions, and instinct. Yes, you have instinct. Many different forms of instinct that we have. Like breathing. Fear, self-preservation, romance, some type of an instinct for parenthood. God also put in us memory, creativity, artistry, relaxation, recreation, various skills, challenges. You know, sleep. Sleep is an interesting thing. Sleep goes like this. Sleep is triggered from a certain amount of exertion, a certain amount of light, daylight, the enzymes in the body, and your body clock.

All those things make you sleepy after a certain amount of time. Sleep begins with the near disappearance of what are called alpha waves and the appearance of theta waves. That is when the body begins to enter sleep. As we begin to enter sleep, we lose our muscle tone. We lose conscious awareness. We lose the ability to move, becoming almost paralyzed. That's why in a bad dream you don't punch anybody.

That's why you don't really scream. You go, ugh! As you're just punching madly away, defending yourself from the wild bears. But you can't move much. You can move a little bit, usually not very much. The brain begins to have spiked waveforms, shooting waveforms in the brain. Delta rhythms begin, very slow waveforms with spikes. The body enters what is called delta sleep. It's a slow wave sleep. After about an hour and a half of that starts rapid eye movement, where a person with their eyes closed, you see the eyes just dance around, moving very rapidly back and forth.

After 90 minutes of that, on average, you flip back into delta sleep. And 90 minutes later, back into REM sleep. Back and forth, cycling and sleep. Our ancestors' sleep patterns were different than ours. Your great-great-grandparents didn't sleep like you and I sleep, actually. For them, sleep began near sunset. And then during the night, they would wake up. Several times, oftentimes up for a few hours during the night would be quite common. And finally, getting up early in the morning.

Very different. Let me read this. Psalm 63, verse 6, notice what David said. When I remember you on my bed, I meditate on you in the night watches. That could be referring to a different type of sleep pattern that people had before the modern era, which I'll get to in a second. Psalm 119, verse 148, my eyes are awake through the night watches that I may meditate on your word.

See, 20th and 21st centuries are a little different. Since the mid-1800s, sleep patterns have changed significantly everywhere. And that is because lighting has been introduced. In general now, people start sleeping later and sleep in a concentrated burst through the night and sleep much later in the morning than our ancestors did.

We tend to think of going to sleep and sleeping all night, sleeping in, and waking up with an alarm clock. Whereas before the electric light, people tended to go to bed quite early and wake up. It punctuated times during the night, sometimes for maybe a couple hours. We'll go along even with what David said. One thing that's common to all life forms is reproduction. Plants and trees, seeds, mazing flowers, nuts, hulls of those nuts.

Incredible things. Why did God make a certain type of pine tree that the pine cone is so tight, no squirrel will ever get the nut out? Of course, this pine cone also will never release its nuts unless it gets into a hot forest fire. And only then will the thing finally break open and release the nuts. You find that kind of pine tree up in Wyoming. Fertilization takes place by wind, by insects, by birds. But then the seeds have to become dry. They become separate remote capsules that fly off, move off somehow through wind, rain, water, food, fur, feet, somehow. They're transported somewhere else, maybe waiting to become a new life.

Mammals are triggered by seasonal and hormonal changes that reverse resistance into some kind of passion all of a sudden. Things different. There's this mentality or idea of parenthood, and it's an unusual compellingness to interrupt and inconvenience one's course of life. That's what parenthood is. It's really an unusual from a selfish individual animal human to want to interrupt their life and inconvenience themselves for much of their adult life. That's something that God has put into us. It starts shortly after birth in some ways.

See, girls specifically love to help out with babies. They love dolls. They're all about kids. They go through a romance stage, boys and girls will. The girls are big boy crazy. It's a pattern. It's something that God created from within inside, that a girl would be eager to find and to please a mate someday and to have children. And boys, that would crave the challenge of being able to provide for a spouse and for a family.

It's just a crave challenge. The harder the better. Give me something hard to do. Let me after it. Let me fix it. In Psalm 30, verse 18, it says, There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yes, four which I do not understand. All of these four things have unique ways or paths or manners.

They're never the same. Verse 19 of Psalm 30, The way of an eagle in the air, the word way there in the Hebrew means the road, the journey or the manner of an eagle through the air. Why does an eagle take the route that it does and why will it never take the exact same route through the air?

What was it that put it on that way, that path, that course, the way of a serpent on the rock? Why does it go where it goes? Why is that path so unique? The way of a ship in the middle of the sea flying over to Africa tomorrow and the next day will be on the airplane as well. It's just an overnight flight. It gets in in the afternoon. And part of that is over the Atlantic Ocean. And the Atlantic Ocean is a huge body of water, typically very windy and violent, and the waves down below are just an infinity of hours of flying over and looking down.

And you can watch little swells come up and then wave forms on the swell. But the waves often are not going in any particular line. Sometimes they're just crashing into each other. Some of them get large. You can see white ridges form, and then great white areas are white. But from 40,000 feet you're not seeing a lot of detail.

And just it makes you wonder, you know. And then it's not a shipping route, so you don't tend to see ships. The ships follow the current, which goes up along the coast of Canada and around England and down. So the ships don't tend to just go across that part of the Atlantic. So, but you have a ship down there. Why does the captain decide which way to go? What is pushing it?

What's driving it in that certain way? Back then it was a ship that would have been either oared or under sail. Always unique. Things that are unique. Things that are different. And then he says, the way of a man with a maid, or with a damsel, a young woman.

The Bible commentary, Bible knowledge commentary says it refers to a man's affectionate courting of a woman. Why is that? Everyone is different. Every time is different. Every expression is different. God created all of these uniquenesses. The way the wind blows across the ocean and the track that you'll take, and the way the birds will find their way, the way a snake will find its way, the way that human beings relate to each other, man and woman, in that affectionate relationship. But God has made all of these things that we've talked about today.

And God has made everyone perfectly. Another fascinating thing is, these creatures and plants are just the same today as they were the first time God made them. And they just keep coming back perfectly, perfectly, perfectly. You might not think a dandelion weed is a wonderful thing to have in your yard, but it does a great job of growing there.

And having babies there. All the common things just keep going. Every time I see the quail run, and the quail has this little attitude, it's just so prim and proper, all of them running along in that little thing sticking out of the top of their head at quail, and they just buzz, and they do this, and the little babies along with them, you know, they can't hop.

You know, the first time I saw a little baby quail this spring, they were too small to actually focus on. They looked more like shadows. I guess they were kind of gray in color or something. A bunch of little shadows, about 18 shadows running along behind two quail. And the mom and the pop hopped up a curb that was that tall. And I thought, what are these babies going to do? Well, the next thing I knew, babies were up here. I never saw them hop. It was a funny thing.

They were there, and now they're up here. How'd you do that? They're still doing that. Everything still works perfectly. God has made them perfectly. Psalm 89, verse 5. As we close this, I'm almost to the start of the sermon. You see in my notes here, it says, specific purpose statement. That's just finished the introduction. So we're not going to get actually the sermon today, but... Psalm 89, verse 5 says, And the heavens will praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness also in the assembly of the saints. In other words, God's wonders, His faithfulness, is not going to be lost on the saints.

They are going to praise Him for this. Verse 6, for who in the heavens can be compared to the Lord? Remember what we read about the physical creation shows us about the invisible attributes of God. Well, then we see with the heavens and the things that inspire us, what of that can be compared to God, to the one who made all of this?

Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened to the Lord? God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints and to be held in reverence by all those around Him. Notice those who are around Him, those who are of a mind to recognize Him, to appreciate Him, to love Him.

As Stephen Tuck said in the opening prayer, with all of our heart, that we really do love God. You know, brethren, we are an assembly of the saints, the Church of God, and we are to consider God. Creation is very important, yet we need to get out of town sometimes. We need to take walks. We need to see God more carefully. We need to do those things so that we can be the assembly of the saints, who is greatly respected, admired, who prays God for His wonders.

We're to consider God. You know, we live near the Grand Canyon. How many of you have never seen the Grand Canyon? The Grand Canyon was recently listed as, in the 10 wonders of the world, number one. Number one, it's five hours from here. If you haven't been to the Grand Canyon or haven't been there in a while, I would encourage you to take the time. You know, we're always so busy about things, but take the time to go to the Grand Canyon.

And maybe if you have the physical stamina to take a hike down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, or walk around the top of the Grand Canyon. This year, Challenger 2, which will take place in December, won't be rock climbing. It will be a hike from the north rim of the Grand Canyon down to the Phantom Ranch for the night, and then up, climb out the south side. It will be a fairly ambitious climbing program.

How many of you have never been to Yosemite National Park? How many of you have been to Yosemite? Good. Look, 150 years ago this year, the first European settlers found Yosemite. So it's the 150th year. And I'd like to read to you what one of them said. Quote, None but those who have visited this most wonderful valley can even imagine the awe with which I beheld it.

As I looked, a peculiar, exalted sensation seemed to fill my whole being, and I found my eyes tear with emotion. Yosemite is about a 12-hour drive from here, and it's something that my family and I try to do whenever we can. We often get there every few years, or every year.

We're headed that way. We try to find a reason to get over and get into Yosemite. Some people say it's the prettiest place on Earth. That's the prettiest place I've ever found on Earth.

But you know, there's also some other things that are a lot closer by. There are some lakes, like Canyon Lake over on the east side, that if you can get up into the canyons, or Apache Lake, or if you can get up in the mountains heading up towards Weaver's Needle. Jerry Frayer introduced me to a number of years ago some of the hiking trails back in there. To spend some time just getting out and seeing what God made. Or if you have opportunity to travel, to get away from some of the man-made things, and get out and see what God has made. Then we can not only revere His creation, but we can revere the God who made us. Brethren, we are created by God. He is the great God who loves us, and He created us for a fabulous creation. And it's not just about being alive and admiring the wonders out there.

The festivals that God made, which we are entering the fall season for, tell us about another creation, and an ultimate creation that He is about to involve us in. If you'll turn with me back to Revelation, Revelation 21, verse 1, I'd like to close by looking forward to the creation that is really important, because this one is fading away. You and I are fading away. Everything around us is fading away. But some day, a new heaven and a new earth, in verse 1 it says, will be here. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. They were gone. As much as God has put into this, it's going to be gone.

The mountains are going to be gone. The earth is going to be gone. The animals will be gone. The water will be gone. Everything will be gone. The people will be gone. But they'll be gone to a different place, because here's a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea. But then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. This is what's going to happen, and this is why God has made this very, very intricate creation. Brethren, let's be involved with appreciating life, the life that God has made us enjoy now. And let's also be appreciative of life, which Jesus Christ has come and shown us the way towards. As we proceed towards these holy days, let's appreciate this God more by the things that he made, and then come to really desire to be one with him forever in the family that he is making.