I first heard the chorus sung at the bright hour in Lisburn Baptist Church over 40 years ago. We now sing it on a fairly regular basis at our children's meetings. It goes like this. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the wealth in every mine. He owns the rivers and the rocks and rills, the sun and stars that shine. wonderful riches, more than tongue can tell. He is my father and they're mine as well. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. I know that he will care for me. Despite the empty objections from the evolutionists and atheists of the world today, this book reveals God as the great creator and Lord of the whole earth. He owns it. That's a consistent message coming from its pages. It all properly belongs to Him in every feature and aspect of its existence. And our God, He reigns over the universe that He has made. That's why we can turn to Psalm 50 and to verse 10 and we find noted there the words, For every beast of the forest is mine. and the cattle upon a thousand hills. And it's not merely what is on the surface of the earth. that belongs to the Lord. He owns as well and operates upon everything in the seas and in all of those deep places of this globe. In Psalm 135 in the verse 6 we read, Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did Him in heaven and in earth, in the seas, and on deep places. And when we read there about the deep places and in the seas, that of course includes the oceans. I'm sure you know that oceans cover about 70% of the Earth's surface. Up until the year 2000, there were four recognized oceans, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian, and the Arctic. And then in the spring of the year 2000, they decided that they would delineate and delimit another ocean not of course that they were making another one, but just dividing one that previously existed, and they added in by name the Southern Ocean, which is surrounding Antarctica. To take, though, the Pacific Ocean, it covers an area of greater than 64 million square miles. Average depth, 15,215 feet. But it drops down to its deepest point in the Mariana Trench, and when you're down at the bottom there, and I don't really think you'd want to be as far as that, you're down 36,200 feet. News channels, I'm sure you noticed, they were buzzing at the beginning of this month, October 2010, as they were relaying the information to us that 5,000 new species had been discovered in the depths of Earth's oceans. Mike Swain, science editor for the Mirror, wrote with some degree of excitement about what, of course, is a milestone of marine science. He said the mysteries of the deep have been revealed after a remarkable 10-year surveying of the world's oceans. More than 2,700 experts spent 9,000 days at sea on more than 540 expeditions, recording everything from microbes to whales. Altogether, the International Census of Marine Life counted 201,206 different species, of which 5,000 are new. But then they go on to add in that while they find another 5,000 new species down there in the oceans of the earth, experts estimate there are A million species living in the sea, so a mere 20% of the huge totem have been discovered so far. But no matter how many they find and have found and have been able to record up until this point in time, we are assured from the word of God that all of these species in the deep places of the earth have been placed there by the superintendence of God. And of course, all the precious metals, the riches, the gold, the copper yielded by the earth are his as well. In Job 28 verse 2 we have the word, iron is taken out of the earth and brass is molten out of the stone. Well who does this belong to? Who is put in there? Psalm 95 verse 4 ascribes ownership and control as well when it says, in his hand are the deep places of the earth. The strength of the hills is his also." Now, when we read in the word of God that in God's hand are these deep places off the earth, this includes that small gold and copper mine in the Atacama Desert to the far north of Chile that became the center of attention for the world's medium over the course of the last few months. And we were told about a billion people were tuned in watching the rescue attempt and... of those Chilean miners who were down trapped in the depths of the earth. 33 of them. I said they were Chilean in the interest of accuracy. One among the number was a Bolivian. And they became trapped, as we know, in this San Jose mine, some 2,300 feet below the surface. And there were 700,000 tons of rock that came crashing down, collapsing around them on the 5th of August, 2010. As we began with that little chorus, he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the wealth in every mine. He owns the rivers and the rocks and rills, the sun and stars that shine. In God's mercy and grace, he permitted those miners to be preserved in that mine and rescued from it to once again sample the shining sun and stars. Psalm 71 verse 20 seems very appropriate in the context. Thine which has shewed me great and sore troubles shall quicken me again and shall bring me up again from the depths of the earth. Notice here to begin with the position in the depths. According to the Psalmist who wrote Psalm 71 He had come to a point in his experience where he felt, I am right, as far as I can go, I am in the depths of the earth. Thy which has showed me great and sore troubles shall quicken me again and shall bring me up again from the depths of the earth. of the earth. On Tuesday night passed when Brother Alan Dunlop was here from the FAME organization, Friends of Africa Missionary Endeavor, and taking our harvest service. He showed a DVD on the wall of the church here. It outlined the progress that they had made in that missionary work over quite a number of years. Initially when they went they sunk a well 60 feet down into the earth. in the hope that that would be all the water supply that they would ever need out there. And in that DVD that he showed, he and others were featured being lowered down by a rather unsafe looking rope and pulley system down the 60 feet into the earth. And as he went down there, it seemed like a colossal distance. Actually, it's the height of the church as it sits above the ground to its highest point outside. But to put all of that in context, these Chilean miners were almost 40 times deeper than that. into the ground, half a mile down into the earth, an incredible distance of 2,300 feet underground. I know that's difficult to get our minds around and appreciate skiing. Well, most will follow football. will know the size of a football pitch. And if you take seven regulation association football pitches at round about 345 feet each, put them all together, all seven of them, that would be the distance down into the earth that these miners were. And they were also about five kilometers, three miles from the main entrance to the mine when they became trapped. Now when that caving occurred, Two groups of mine workers were in the mine. One was near the entrance, and they escaped immediately without any incident. But the second group of 33 men were deep inside the mine. And those trapped miners, they initially tried to escape through a ventilation shaft system. But the ladders that by strict mining codes were meant to be in those ventilation shaft systems, they were missing. And those shaft systems later became inaccessible to the rescue teams because there was more ground movement after the initial rockfall. The company that they were working for had a notorious reputation for dangerous practice. Between 2004 and 2010, that company received 42 fines for breaching safety regulations. The San Jose mine was shut down in 2007, when relatives of a miner who had died in an accident sued company executives. But it was reopened the next year, despite still feeling to comply with all regulations. And that reopening is still under investigation. According to an official with the Chilean Safety Association, eight workers have died at that mine over the course of 12 years. No real surprise then, given the record of failures and shortcomings, that they had not installed those escape ladders that were stipulated that if you're ever going to reopen this mine, these ladders will have to be installed. Fact is, they weren't. However, the miners themselves would have known of the risks involved in mining in general, would have known in particular of the extra risks in working for this particular company. In fact, Chilean copper mine workers are among the highest paid miners in South America. And those that were toiling on the depths here of the San Jose mine with its lower safety standards, they were paid about 20% higher wages than other Chilean mine workers. They were happy enough to go down into the earth working with precious metals, earning a good or comparatively good living, happy enough until the cave in and their entrapment came. Is this not as true of men above the ground as it was of these men below it? Because we live today and we all realize that in a materialistic world, a world that revolves around money, it's a hinge around everything, will move and people are making it, wanting to make more of it. Money talks, they say, and certainly it does, and when it does, it generally chooses not to whisper, because not only does money talk, it shouts. It screams, and that scream is a piercing scream, and it schemes as well, and it embitters, and it destroys, and it tears things and people apart, and it eventually steals and murders. Of course, money is a necessity. In order to survive, we couldn't live without it. But it's also true. that many have been consumed by what the Bible describes as the love of money. It doesn't say money is the root of all evil as many people misquote the Bible as saying. It doesn't say that it appreciates the fact we need money to survive. It says the love of money. That is where the root of all evil comes in. And so many people have been taken by this root and consumed by it to the point where words written by Gary Hess are true of them. He wrote, money is the thing that drives us. The more we have, the greedier we are. The less we have, the more we want. Money is power. If we have it, we can get what we want. If we have it, we only want more. Money is nothing but hate, he said. It makes us steal, it makes us kill. Money is nothing but hell. I'm not so convinced about that last line, although there can be no debate upon the point that this love of money, this lust after excess, has driven many a man, many a woman, at a breathtaking pace, right down into an eternal hell. We do well to call a halt, ask ourselves a few questions every now and then, and So quick is the pace of life that often times we don't take time to ask some vital questions like, what am I living for? Am I a fully signed up member of this rat race that is in progress all around me, craving and lusting for more and more and more material goods? In chasing after earthly riches, have I paid any attention to the Lord's instruction in Matthew 6 verse 19 and 20? Lay not up for yourselves. treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. And another question, does Matthew 6 verse 25 through 33, Hebrews 13 verses 5 and 6, Do they characterize my life? In other words, have I sought Christ in the time available to me for salvation? Do I esteem him to be the greatest treasure there is? And when my earthly destiny has been settled by trusting in him, am I content to testify? You know something? I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold. I'd rather be his than of riches untold. I'd rather be Jesus than houses or lands. I'd rather be led by his kneel-pierced hand than to be the king of a vast domain or to be held in love's sins dreadsway. I'd rather be Jesus than anything this world affords today. What about these vital questions? The depth to which these miners had traveled into the earth intrigues me. In the Bible, I always discover that those who walk away from God and on and on in sin, little thought of salvation, little thought of appeal to the mercy of God, little thought for his grace, little use for his word or his day, they are described as going down, going down. Jonah is one example. He went down. Down and further down. In his initial departure from God, charted for us in Jonah chapter 1, he went down to Joppa, where he found a ship going down to Tarshish. And he went down, we're told, into that boat. Everything he did took him further from God. Maybe this is your position today. Going down. Going down further into sin. Going down, never to return. Going down without a savior. Down into the depths of the earth. Down further into the grievous place. Hell all the time. Your eyes, mind, heart are closed to the God of heaven. You have no appreciation for His word, you have no sense of obligation to His commands, you have no fear about any of His warnings, no response to any of His gracious entreaties. I caught sight of a poem from an anonymous author yesterday, and it poses the vital question that all of us should ask right along the journey of life, what then? When we have pushed on with our goals, what then? When we have moved on in years, When we come to die, what then? When we face God, what then? When he asks us what we have done through our living with his son, what then? But the poem was this, when the great factory plants of our cities have turned out their last finished works, when our merchants have sold their last products and sent home the last of the clerks, When our banks have transacted their business and paid out the last dividend, when the judge of the earth calls a reckoning and asks for a balance, what then when the actors have played their last drama when the mimic has made his last fun, when the film has flashed its last picture on the billboard, displayed its last run, when the crowds seeking pleasure have vanished and gone out in the darkness again, when the trumpet of Aegis is sounded and we all stand before him. What then? When the church choir has sung its last anthem, the preacher is near his last prayer, When the people have heard their last sermon and the sound has died out on the air, when the Bible lies close on the pulpit and the pews are all empty of men, when each one stands facing his record and the great book is opened, what then? When the bugle call. sinks into silence. The long marching columns stand still when the captain repeats his last orders and they've captured the last fort until when the flag has been hauled from the masthead and peace seems to reign among men when those who rejected the saviour are asked for a reason. What then? The position in the depths. But then there's the perception about the depths that we note here in Psalm 71 verse 20. Thy, the psalmist said, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles shall quicken me again and shall bring me up again from the depths of the earth. He speaks of his experience of these great and sore troubles more than any answer the fact God had shown him great and sore troubles. Not merely brought him into them or brought him through them, but helped him to calculate how great and how sore they were and activated his sensitivity so that he understood how far down he really was. God had awakened his senses. God had opened his eyes to the danger that he was in. The rock fall in the San Jose mine caused a thick dust cloud that blinded the miners for up to six hours and caused lingering eye irritation and burning. They're down there, 2,300 feet into the earth, they're in darkness, they're in danger, and unquestionably, they're facing death. The shift supervisor, Louie Uzuru recognized the gravity of the situation facing his men, the difficulties that would be involved in any rescue attempt to get them out, and he gathered the men into a secure room that he called Refuge, named it Refuge 33. And he organized the men and their meager resources for as long-term a survival as they could possibly hope for. Experienced miners among the group were sent out along little tunnels and shafts to assess the situation. Men with important skills were given key roles. Numerous other measures were taken down there to ensure as best they could the survival of all of those men. Now, they had in this refuge, 33, this room. about 50 square meters to work with. 550 square feet like a cozy studio apartment in size only. And all the time, above ground, the rescuers, they are buzzing about. They're trying to bypass the rock fall. At the main entryway, they're trying to use alternative passages. They find that there's a second collapse that occurred in the mine two days after the first one, the 7th of August, when they were using the heavy machinery up there to try and gain access through a ventilation shaft. They recognize, we're going to have to forget about these ventilation shafts. This is no way in. Anything we use is going to cause further collapse. And so they began with percussion drills. They made boreholes, eight in total. Exploratory boreholes down just about less than six inches wide to try and find the miners. But as they're trying to conduct a rescue operation upstairs, That operation is complicated by out-of-date maps that they had of the mine shafts, by the hardness of the rock that caused those boreholes to drift away off target. And on the 19th of August, day 14 of the rescue operation, one of the probes reached down to a space where the miners they believed were trapped, but they found no life there. On the 22nd of August, borehole number eight reached where the miners were. And they had been down there hearing those emergency drills for days. And the trap miners, they had written out notes to the rescuers. They made sure that they had insulation tape there to secure those notes onto the drill once its tip poked down into the space where they were. And those notes surprised the rescuers when they pulled the drill bit out, having gone through into borehole number nine, and they discovered the miners were still surviving down there 17 days, now much longer than anyone could ever have expected. The same afternoon, the president of Chile, Paineira, he showed the media a note written on a piece of paper with a red marker that confirmed the miners were alive. The note simply read, we're all right in the shelter, the 33 of us, and that really became their official cry for help. It became an emblem of the miners' survival and of the rescue effort. And it appeared, these words, we're all right in the shelter, the 33 of us. It appeared on websites, it appeared on banners, it appeared emblazoned on t-shirts as well. When we are going down in sin, away from God, walking in darkness and danger, headed for destruction, the sad reality is that we don't realize it. We don't realize it! feel secure. We live but others die around us and we stand at their gravesite. And if some evangelical minister comes along at that funeral ceremony and he preaches from the Word of God a faithful message, we turn away with hardly a thought that someday it will be our turn to die and hardly a question, have I made preparation to meet my God? Have I repented of my sin and turned to Christ for salvation? And you know something? We will never think like this. Never think like this. until God opens our eyes to see our need. We're like those miners, contentedly doing our shift, looking forward to the pay packet at the end of the week, not dwelling on the fact that escape ladders have not been installed, that safety is suspect down here, that we're in danger, and then the 700,000 tons of rock come tumbling in to seal off the exit. It takes the Holy Spirit to do His special work upon the human heart. John 3, verse 8, John 14, John 16. Otherwise, if He does not do it, we will never come to realize that spiritual darkness, that danger in which we are, and the destruction to which we are headed. We'll hear warnings about it, we'll shrug them off, but it doesn't apply to us. It doesn't have an impact upon us. The Bible teaches that all men are trapped under sin and darkness. All men are cut off and alienated from God. All men are in desperate need of salvation. But it also tells us that all men need this natural blindness removed before they can see and sense where they are. I read in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 18, we have the understanding darkened. Yeah, we can be intelligent in many ways, but we are alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in us because of the blindness of our heart. I read further in 2 Corinthians 4, in the verse 4, in whom the God of this world, the devil, hath blinded the minds of them which believe not. Why does he blind them? Lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine onto them. That's why men don't like to hear the gospel preached. Because the devil has blinded their eyes. 1 John 2.11 says, We walk in darkness and know not whither we go, because darkness has blinded our eyes. Sin has blinded men and women to their true condition before a holy God. Now we speak about people becoming alive to the danger that they're in. Their eyes are opened, suddenly. Their senses are alerted, suddenly. They get the danger that faces them into focus. And we need this conviction to overtake us, that we need ourselves to wake up to the spiritual, eternal emergency that faces us and get right with Almighty God. The psalmist in Psalm 13 and 3 appealed to heaven. He said, lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. And we need to borrow his language and press it up heavenward with the same heartfelt passion. Lord, open my eyes to see my darkness, to see my danger, to view destruction ahead. The position in the depths, the perception about the depths, and finally and quickly, the preservation from the depths. Back to Psalm 71, the verse 20. Thyme, which has showed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth. David is dying in great and sore troubles, but he understands here that he needs a power outside of himself. to lift him up out of these great and sore troubles, a power that will quicken him again, bring life into his heart and life, and bring him up out of the depths of the earth. After that collapse, sealed these men in. The miners used backhoes to dig for some underground water sources. They drained water as well out of the radiators of vehicles that they had. Food supplies were limited. On average, the men lost 18 pounds each in those earlier days. The emergency supplies that they had in terms of food were intended only for two or three days, but the miners rationed them and were able to make them last for two weeks, and they ran out just before they were discovered. You see, they were getting by by eating two little spoonfuls of tuna, a sip of milk, a biscuit every 48 hours, and a morsel of peach. Then after those 17 days had passed, that borehole that had located them, only the width of a grapefruit knew what was. It became that umbilical cord to them through which people on the surface were able to pass hydration gels, water, and food to keep those trap miners alive. Now they had shown themselves to be very resourceful down there, and that was all very good, but they had reached the end of their resources. They needed intervention from above in order to effect Their escape, and that intervention came in the form of a new wider shaft that was sunk into the ground, came in the form of specially constructed rescue capsules that were designed by the Chilean Navy, and they called the three of them that he made all the same name, the Phoenix, Phoenix 1, Phoenix 2, Phoenix 3, after the mythical bird that rose from the ashes and through these capsules, Lower down into the earth, each man, as we know now, was brought up one by one at maybe hourly intervals, until on Wednesday, the 13th of October, stretching on into the next day, all 33 miners were brought back safely to the surface. The harrowing ordeal that had stretched to over 69 days was finally over, safe. At last, I was encouraged by a headline I saw repeated over and over again after the mine rescue. The headline was, God saved us from mine, says evangelical preacher. There was an evangelical preacher among the 33 men that were down there. Who was he? Henriquez. And he has, since the rescue, talked in detail about the Bible studies that they conducted twice a day. He had requested that 33 Bibles should be put down through the 8th borehole, and that was duly delivered to them. And he talked about the singing as well that took place while they were buried deep underground. And in the interview that he gave, he was giving all the glory to God for their amazing rescue. He talked about the moment when the miners were discovered by this probe just in time. Enriquez said, only the Lord could guide that drill to us. Before those 33 Chilean miners were rescued, Jimmy Sanchez, one of their number, sent a message to the surface saying, there are actually 34 of us because God has never left us down here. And those words inspired articles, some with a little bit of depth, some with not much depth at all, in the world's media about the 34th minor. David says here, Psalm 71 20, thy which has showed me great and sore troubles shall quicken me again and shall bring me up again from the depths of the earth the Lord did this for those Chilean miners brought them up from the depths of the earth right into the company of the people who would gather to greet them and they were living in camp hope Esperanza the word that means hope in their language we need God's intervention to quicken and bring up our souls out of sin into his salvation. An operation from above that will reach down to us where we are and pull us up. Ephesians 2 verse 4 through 6 verses 8 and 9 addresses this very issue. Listen to the words, but God who is rich in mercy, Talking about mercy for those who were dead, Ephesians 2 earlier says, in trespasses and in sins deep down, for his great love were with us, he loved us even when we were dead in sins. Hath quickened us, that's the word the psalmist uses here in Psalm 71 20, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace ye are saved and hath raised us up together. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And just as this psalmist pleaded with God, was assured that he would quicken him again and bring him up again from the depths of the earth, just as those miners knew this as far as their body was concerned in their own experience, so we today need this experience. God to come. Lift us up, enliven us by his mighty power, save us by his grace, and bring us into his Christ. Some sobering thought should encourage us to cry to God for mercy and grace. One is this. In this incident with a happy ending, 33 trap miners were delivered from the depths. But only the next week, over in China, 37 miners lost their lives when they were trapped following a gas explosion down in the depths of the mine. Other consideration, on the day of final judgment, sinners will want to be in the holes of the earth. Remarkable thing, they will want to be in the holes of the earth as far down and further than the 2,300 feet reached by those Chilean miners. There is a warning in Isaiah 2.19, "...and they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty, when He arises, to shake terribly the earth." In Revelation 6.16, at the ending of time, people outside of Christ, not saved, we're told they will say to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us! Hide us! of the Lamb who sits on the throne. We need to call on to Christ for salvation today. Then we will join with this jubilant cry of the psalmist, thou which has showed me great and sore troubles shall quicken me again and shall bring me up again from the depths of the earth.