Okay, so now we're back. We've had a week away from this, but we're going to step back in and start looking at the study where we're looking at counterfeits, false things that we need to be careful of. We'll just do a little bit of a review. We talked about that we live in a world that's full of counterfeits and people that claim to be something they're not, and that's discouraging sometimes. It's irritating sometimes when you run across people that claim to be something they're not, or they claim they can do things for you that they can't. They're just counterfeit. They're false. And we talk about how there's religions that are false. They're counterfeits. And they offer to people that will listen to them, they say there's lots of ways to get to God. There's multiple ways. You can do this, or this, or this. And people will tell you that all religions are really the same. And we know that's not true, that Christianity is very different from everyone else. And we know that that there is only one way to God. There's not multiple ways to get to Him. We get to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. We talked about how there's preachers that allege to have Some people, nowadays, they'll stand in a pulpit and maybe tell you they had a vision of something that's different from what's taught in Scripture. And we know that's not true. The Bible doesn't give us any reference that says that God is still speaking to people in these visions. We hear people that talk about they've got the gift of tongues and yet scripture would teach us that that gift ended a long time ago. It ended with the apostolic age. It was a gift that was given to lend credence to the authority of the apostles because they were able to speak in languages that they were never learned. They were never taught or they never learned. That was an example of how God was working in their lives. And so they needed that in the early days of the church because there could be well people that could ask the question, well, how do we know God speaks through you? And so there were ways, there were things that God gave them that allowed them to demonstrate that they were. his apostles. We talked about how their products that are counterfeit products, they advertise that they can do things for us that they can't do for us. They can make us young, they can make our hair a different color, or they can I don't know how they do it, but there's people you can see before and after pictures of people who look like they're 30 pounds younger just because they put on a particular piece of clothing or something. It makes them look so much different. But it's counterfeit because you didn't really change the person, did you? We talk about drugs too that are counterfeit. Someone can be under the conviction of sin and go to a doctor who will give them a drug that makes them forget that or makes them get past that conviction and they feel good about themselves suddenly when the Holy Spirit doesn't want them feeling good about themselves and we don't either. They need to be convicted of sin. And so there's these things that are counterfeits that are all around us, and if we're not careful, even as Christians, people in churches, we can get taken in by some of these things if we're not careful. And so we talk about the long held view is the best way to recognize a counterfeit is to know what the real looks like, to know it inside and out. And so God's word teaches us what's real, and the Holy Spirit helps us, as we know what's real, helps us to understand what is counterfeit. So then we talked about different things that as church members, as churches, as Christians, we ought to be aware of. One of the first ones, or the first one we talked about was false Christs. Jesus said, there shall arise false Christs and false prophets. They'll show great signs and wonders. It's much that if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. And then he said these words, behold, I've told you before, I warned you about this. Those are almost, Words like that coming from the Lord, it's almost eerie, isn't it? Look, I've told you this is going to happen. It's going to happen. There's going to be false Christs who come along, and they're going to teach you things that are different from what the Scriptures teach you. They're going to teach you different standards, different expectations, and different teachings from what you see in Scriptures. We looked at the remedy for that. The remedy is know what the Scriptures teach us about the Lord Jesus Christ, and then we know if someone comes along and tries to teach something different, we'll know that they're wrong, they're false. We talked about there being false ministers. It could be pastors, it could be deacons, it could be elders in a church, people with authority that come along, and according to what Paul told the Corinthians, such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And so they come along and they teach us things and they try to make you think that they're teaching you what the Word of God would have you know. That they're coming on the authority of Scripture and we need to be careful of that. Paul warned that they were false apostles, they were deceitful workers, they would transform themselves. In other words, they're making themselves to be something. They're not letting God make them something as leaders in a church. And we talked about the most effective way, again, to recognize a false religious leader is to know what the scripture teaches about a real one. And we took the time, we won't do it this morning, to look at it again, but we looked at 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1, the requirements, the basic scriptural requirements for what someone in a ministry position should be. And if someone comes along and they don't meet those requirements, well, that's like the cost of playing the game. If you don't meet those requirements, you don't get to be a leader. And so, we may have other things that we like. Think about... I've been in churches before that didn't have a pastor, they were looking for a pastor, or known people who were, and you hear things like, well, we need someone who's young, or we need someone who's old, or we need someone who's married, or we need somebody who's single, or we need somebody, and those are personal preferences, and everyone can have personal preferences. Some people might say, well, I want somebody that's tall and dark, dark hair, he's handsome, And other people might say, I want somebody who's so ugly that the young women in our church won't even be tempted to go after this guy. Those are all personal preferences. But the scriptures tell us what the scriptural requirements are, and that's what we need to be looking for. caught up or taken away with counterfeits. Another thing we looked at was false Christians. Paul spoke of to the Galatians false brethren unawares brought in and we talked about how Satan will bring people into a church sometimes and they say the right words, they dress the right way, they act the right way, they act like they're Christians but they're really not and we have to be careful of that too because sometimes the devil will bring people in and try to change a church drastically. through someone who's not even a Christian. And we have to watch out for that. I think that's what's happened in a lot of churches, maybe, that have gone more of the contemporary path. There's people who have come in and they brought a different kind of music, maybe, or a different kind of behavior, or different things that don't quite align up, oftentimes, with Scripture. So we have to be careful with those as well. And how do we do that? We talked about how the devil comes and he sows tares among the wheat. And we don't always know who the tares are and who the wheat is. And the Lord didn't tell us to start weeding things out. What he tells us is to beware and don't be taken in by someone who's not really a Christian. that might be trying to change things. So the remedy is we trust the Lord to identify and to sort out what shouldn't be there. And there's nothing at all wrong with praying. Lord, don't let tares come among us. Keep them out. And don't let them change the things. And I'm not talking about just this church. I'm talking about Christianity in general. We need to be careful as Christians. We talk about there were false teachers. First, second, Peter, we looked at some verses there or some words there. Peter said there were false prophets. He talked about how in the days of old, the Lord God had inspired men to write the word of God. But he said there were false prophets also among the people. even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privately shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And then he said, many shall follow their pernicious ways. There can be false teachers, and there will be false teachers among Christians. And Peter said, you've got to watch out for them. They will come, just like they've always been there. And that scary, scary word, many will follow their pernicious ways. And I think we see that if we look at Christianity as a whole in the United States. I'm sure it's the same way in other parts of the world as well. There are people who will follow false religious teachers and we've heard about that. We hear about it, it hits the news every now and then. The remedy that I believe, To avoid that is to follow the example of the Bereans, where we read in Acts that they received the Word with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so. If we daily spend time, weekly, regularly spend time in the Scriptures, the Lord will teach us what's right. And He'll teach us the right things. And if someone comes in with a false teaching, you might not know exactly what's wrong about it, but it'll set off an alarm. and the Holy Spirit will point out to you that something's wrong with that and will follow that false teaching. And so we can be careful in that way. We talked about there were false prophets that would come as well. That's a little different than false teachers. 1 John 4-1 says, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try, that is, test or prove or examine closely the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are going out into the world. And the question is, well, how do you recognize a false prophet when one comes along? Well, John, in verses two and three of that same chapter, says, Hereby I know you, the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is coming to flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is coming to flesh is not of God. And that's that spirit of Antichrist. So if someone comes to us, a false prophet, so to speak, And they don't have a right view of who Jesus Christ is. We know they're not from God. They're a false prophet. Anyone who can come to you and say, well, you know, Jesus, he was a good man. And he was a teacher that God sent, but he's not God's son. And he didn't really come, he didn't come into flesh the way the Bible says. He didn't lead a sinless life and then die on the cross and then rise from the dead. That's not, someone who can tell us that, that Jesus didn't do all those things. Then he's not from God, is he? He's a false prophet and the word says we need to avoid him. So these are the counterfeits we've looked at thus far. So this morning, we'll take a look at some others as we continue in the study. One is there's something, we'll just refer to it as a false gospel or a false doctrine, teachings. If you've got your Bibles, turn to Galatians chapter one and we'll read some verses here. I'm gonna touch on this. particular topic. By the way, I hope these are helpful studies to look at. I find them helpful because when Scripture tells me to beware of something, then I want to beware of it. And when the Lord goes to the trouble to tell his disciples, this is going to happen. And when Peter says, We need to be aware that it's going to happen because it's in the scripture. So we need to know that it's coming. Galatians chapter 1, I'm going to start reading in verse 6. This is Paul talking to the church in Galatia. It says, I marvel that you so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel. Which is not another, but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. For though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Strong words, isn't it? If someone comes to you and they preach a different gospel from what you've heard, let it be accursed. And we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you, then that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I not persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul says, I didn't make this up and no other man told it to me. I didn't meet some guy on the street corner that was selling pamphlets that had this message in it. That's not where I got it. Jesus Christ gave me this message. It came from the Lord. And we know that Paul, after he was saved, he went into a desert place and he spent some time there alone with God. And when I say alone, I mean there may have been other people around. I'm sure he had contact with some other people perhaps. He had to find food and drink and that sort of thing. But he spent time just fellowshipping with God. And God gave him the message. And he emerged from that time as who we know as the Apostle Paul, no longer Saul of Tarsus, who was a Pharisee. persecuted Christians. Now he was the Apostle Paul, one that had met Jesus on the road to Damascus and who had had that salvation experience and now he's been given the gospel message to carry. And while some of the other apostles were focusing their ministry on Jewish people, Paul had been prepared to, yes, start sharing the gospel with the Jews in the synagogues, but he also knew that the gospel message was meant for Gentiles as well, people who weren't Jews. And I'm so thankful for that, aren't you? Because I know I have a lot of Irish in my ancestry, but I don't know of any Jewish blood in my ancestry. So I'm thankful that the gospel came to people that aren't Jews. In Romans 1-16, Paul called the gospel the power of God unto salvation. That's a good term, isn't it? The power of God. We speak the gospel. We can share it with people. We can give them a tract or we can show them a Bible verse. We can quote a Bible verse to them. We can share a faith with them. Those are just words, except it is the power of God behind those words. And that's what saves people. I'm not that good at convincing people of things. I'm not that good a talker. I'm not a salesman. Never been a salesman. Never wanted to be. And yet, isn't that to a certain extent what God calls us to be as Christians? We are to share our faith. Maybe that's an inaccurate way of looking at it. We're not supposed to be salesmen. We're just supposed to be witnesses. We're supposed to tell people what God did for us, what we have experienced that makes us witnesses. And it's his power that uses those words for salvation. So that's what Paul had to say in Romans 1. Here in Galatians 1, he addresses people who have left that gospel. And he says, I'm surprised, I marvel, in verse 6, that you're so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ to another Gospel. You believe in something else. Why? The Gospel message, when we really think about it, it is so simple, isn't it? Jesus Christ came to seek and save that which was lost. It's not difficult. And yet someone had come along with some other Gospel message to the Galatians, and you can almost imagine it being something like what we hear nowadays Well, yeah, it's good to believe in Christ, but you need to do this, too. You need to be a good person. You need to not tell lies. You need to do this. And nowadays, you might hear preachers saying, and you need to subscribe to my newsletter, and I take Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. and you can go to my website, and for this many dollars a month, I'll send it right to you. That's the sort of thing that we hear nowadays, isn't it? Well, it may have been that way then, but they had brought something that was different from the gospel, and Paul says, I marvel that you fell for that. Why? Why would you leave something as simple as that gospel message that if you give your life to Christ, he will save you, you'll be born again into God's family, and you'll never be out of God's family after that? But that's what had happened. He described some people, Paul did, as some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. These people are coming along, they're stirring up trouble. You knew what you believed. Paul had ministered to the Galatians before. He had contact with them and he said, you were doing so well. Everything was going along fine. Why did you listen to these people to start with? Why do you let them trouble you? Why in the world would you let them pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ? He says these are counterfeits. These are false people who have come along and they've taught you something you shouldn't have ever listened to to start with. But now you've let them take you away from your faith. We have to be on guard, don't we, as Christians even now. We're not living in ancient Galatia. We're living in, well, we're in Alamance County right now. Robert and I live in Rockingham County. You guys live in Rockingham, Guilford County. Lawrence lives in Alamance County. We live in different places. But we have to be on guard because people can come and try and pervert the gospel today too. So we have to be on guard. We have to know what it is we believe. You're in Galatians. Turn back a few pages to 1 Corinthians 15. And let's just look at what I think is one of the clearest definitions of the gospel that you'll ever see. 1 Corinthians, you may know the verses, we'll look at verses 3 and 4. Paul says, writing to the Corinthians, I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, and we already know he received that from the Lord himself, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, and that he was buried. and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. And then he goes on to talk about people who had seen him alive after his resurrection. And at one point he says there were over 500 people that saw him at one time, all at the same time. I don't know what that event was. Must have been some event if you got over 500 people gathered together and they saw the risen Lord. But Christ died for our sins and he was buried and he rose again. That's the gospel, so we need to know as Christians, what it is that we believe. Because we'll be called on to hang our hats on that belief, but also to be able to share it. We also need to know why we believe it. We believe it because it's the word of God, don't we? And we've talked about that many weeks ago. We studied the inspiration of scripture. This is God's word. He chose men to share this with us, and then He gave us the faith to believe it. That's why we believe it. Not only is it the Word of God, but God gave us the faith. He calls us to be saved. And so He's done that in our lives. We need to know that. And then we need to know how to defend our faith. And I'm not talking about going and getting a master's degree in apologetics where you can argue every little facet of Scripture, but we do need to know how to defend ourselves. If someone asks you, well, what is this Gospel you talk about? We need to be able to take them into the Scriptures and show them, don't we? Well, just what we looked at in 1 Corinthians 15. Here's what the Bible says. And how else can we defend it? We'd be exactly what God called us to be. We're witnesses. We just say, well, this is what the Lord did for me. I can't say what He may have done for anyone else, but I know one thing. I was on this path, and I was living a life that was for me and no one else, and I was happy as could be, and the Lord stopped me in my tracks and showed me that was the wrong life for me. that I was living a sinful life and He turned me around. And after I trusted Him, this is what happened in my life. And I know that God's worked in my life. And I know that He's brought me through things I could have never gotten through myself. That's what we share. That's how we defend our faith with people, isn't it? We need to know where to draw a line against false doctrine. We need to know the Word of God well enough that when someone tries to teach us something that doesn't align with it, we say, well, stop right there. I can't be in agreement with you on that because that's totally against what Scripture teaches. And it helps if we know enough of Scripture to say, here's what the Bible says, here's what you're teaching me as a false teacher. And here's what the Bible says, and that's why I can't believe it. So we need to know where to draw the line, don't we? And we need to know, and this is a little more difficult maybe, we need to know when to break away from the people that Paul said would pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ. There may come a time as Christians when we have to break fellowship with someone because they're teaching a false doctrine. and they're trying to lead people away from the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they're trying to lure people away. There may be a time when we have to say, no can do, I can't go there with you. As Christians, we ought to be people who are willing to, we need to look for ways to get along with people, don't we? And we need to look for ways to try and witness to people. But if there's someone who is truly teaching a false doctrine, And we have tried to show them, this is why I think you're wrong. And they hold to that false doctrine and say, no, no, no, this is the truth. And we know it isn't. We may have to break fellowship with people from time to time. And there could come a time when you, if you're a part of a church and that church goes the wrong direction, you might have to say, I can't do this anymore. And it's kind of an old joke. Some people would attend a church that had left the faith long before, and they still go there because Paul and Ma are buried out back in the cemetery. But you know what? Paul and Ma would say, if I could get up and leave, I would, because this church has left what the scriptures teach. And so we have to make those hard choices sometimes, and we may have to separate. So we need to know that. What's the remedy, then, Avoiding a false gospel and false doctrines. We've heard it before now. You can probably guess from the other things we've looked at. God expects his matured children to take action when it's needed. He expects us to know what the real doctrine is. He expects us to know what the scriptures teach. And he expects us to give no place for refuge or no place of refuge for false teachings. I'm sorry, I can't do it. And to use the modern vernacular that school systems are so good at using, we should have zero tolerance for false doctrine. Just say, no, I'm not gonna, I won't listen to it. Because the devil would like nothing more than for us to say, to be, here's another something that you'll hear people talk about, especially in the South. They'll put up with a lot of things because they're just being Christian. I'm just going to listen to you because I'm a Christian and I just want to listen to your false doctrine. Charles Spurgeon would say that false doctrine is putrid. It's rotting mess. It's trash. It's garbage. Stay away from it. So we don't have to be Christian and listen to false doctrine. We can say no. I'm not going to listen to it. I can't have fellowship with you. I'm not going to give any place. I'm going to have zero tolerance for it. Some people might look at us and say, well, you're just being awfully bigoted. Well, OK, so be it. The Lord Jesus Christ said, this is black, this is white. And we can make those same kind of distinctions. We really can. And in the areas of false gospel or false doctrine, that's an area to draw the line. A next counterfeit that we need to be careful with, and this one's big in the United States. We've seen this a lot in our lifetimes. False science or counterfeit science. First Timothy even spoke about this in First Timothy 620. He said, Oh, Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so-called. I like that term. which some professing have erred concerning the faith. That term science that Paul uses there, it literally has the idea of knowing something or the idea of knowledge. And really that's what science is, isn't it? It's knowledge. And scientists look for things that we don't already know and they try to bring those things to bear on our lives. And I think no one would argue with the fact we hear this a lot. We live in what's called the information age. There are astounding amounts of information that are available to us, aren't there? You don't meet a lot of people nowadays that don't have a smartphone or at least a computer where they're connected to the internet. And there is so much information on the internet. And there is so much of it that's wrong. It's just blatantly wrong. And what has baffled me for a long time is that people will look at Wikipedia as being the source of the truth for whatever you want to know. Just look on Wikipedia. But I realized a long time ago that anyone can go in there and modify the information that's in Wikipedia. I tried that out one time. a variety store. And I looked it up to see if it was in Wikipedia. And sure enough, it was there. And it told all the cities that they used to have one. Well, Reidsville wasn't one of those. And I knew that Reidsville had one of those. So I thought, well, I'm just going to try this. I opened that file up, and I went in there and put Reidsville as having one of those stores. Hits in, and sure enough, there it was. I went out of it, I went back to Wikipedia, and there it was. Now, the last time I looked, someone else had gone in there and changed it and dropped Reasonable back out. But that's okay. But that's not the source of the truth, and any of us can go in there and modify it. I could just as well have said Osceola had one of these stores, or Saks Ball, or whatever. I suppose I could go in and change and say that Al Gore really did invent the internet. And they would take it. There's all this information out there, but it's not all true. And people come at us and they say, well, I'm a scientist and therefore you should believe me. We know many scientists deny creation. They say, well, it couldn't possibly have happened the way Genesis described it. It didn't happen because God one day said, let there be light and let there be darkness. And God just spoke in the creation of the earth and the planets and the stars and the asteroids. and then the animals and all that, it didn't happen that way. No, it didn't happen that way. And when you ask these scientists, well how did it happen? Well, there was, at one point there wasn't anything and then suddenly there was this big bang and then there was stuff. That baffles the mind, doesn't it? I remember the first time I heard those theories in school as a young child and I thought, wait, what? That doesn't make any sense. First there was nothing, and then there was this explosion of nothing, and then something, and it was all, it was just these little particles. And then the gravity took effect, and they started, some of them started gathering together because there was a gravitational pull that's, and some of them grouped together as planets or asteroids or whatever. Some of them grouped together as balls of gas, and they ignited, and we had stars. I'm going to tell you what. Their explanations require a whole lot more faith than believing the account of Genesis 1 that, in the beginning, God created. And as a matter of fact, I think all of their explanations should begin with four words. Once upon a time, there was this, because they're fables. They're just made-up stories. They're myths. And yet they want to say that the biblical creation account is a myth. No, it isn't. It is what happened. into creation because of his power. And it wasn't because he needed anything. God never needed anything. He's self-sufficient. He is the great I am, the one who is what he is. But many scientists say, no, creation didn't happen that way. Other scientists come to us and they deny the great flood. And they say, well, that's not possible for there to have ever been a flood. There's no way there could have been enough rain to cover the whole earth. so that all the mountains were covered. Well, the Bible doesn't say there was a great rain that did that. It said that the scriptures tell us that the waters above the firmament were released. I had no idea how much water that was. And it says that the fountains of the great deep were broken up. That sounds pretty cataclysmic to me, doesn't it? It doesn't sound like something like a gentle rain that you see in the spring. something going on that was cataclysmic and it made drastic changes to the surface of the earth when this happened and it allowed there to be a great flood. And that's the only thing, by the way, that can explain the fossil record and some of the other things that we see archaeologically on the Earth. Because the scientists who tell us these things say that, well, when creation started, eventually there was nothing. There was the Big Bang and some things gathered together. And then there were these heavenly bodies that were formed. And then there was some water. Some of the molecules, they gathered together and they made liquid. And some of it was water. And then inside the water there were these other particles, and they joined together, and eventually there were single-celled organisms that lived in the water. And then eventually, over maybe millions, maybe billions of years, they evolved into multi-cell organisms. And then some of them said, hey, I want to get out of the water. So they came out of the water, and they became amphibious. Now they could survive in the water, but now they could survive on land for short periods of time. And then they developed, as the development continued, the organisms got more and more complex. They grew legs, they grew ears, eyes, all of this, internal organs, all of these things. And they got more and more complex. They got bigger and bigger. They came out, they grew lungs so they could live on the air. Some of them grew wings so they could fly. And that's what these scientists tell us that evolution has done for us. And so they say as these, over history as these things died, their bodies would lie on the earth, and then they would be covered up with silt and different sediments, and then more complex animals would arrive, and they would die on top of that, and then there would be sediment over them, and on and on and on. But when we look at the archaeological record, we don't see everywhere that the simple organisms are always on the bottom, followed by the complex. There are places where we see the very complex. We see dinosaur fossils at the very lowest layers of sediment, and the remains of other animals on top of them. To me that says, if there is a cataclysmic global flood, what's going to end up on the bottom first? It's going to be the heavy things, isn't it? They're going to sink right to the bottom. And so the flood can describe to us what we actually see. I mean, have you remembered science class? What is the definition of a scientific breakthrough? It's something that you can repeat in a lab, isn't it? If you can't repeat it, it's not a scientific discovery. And people can claim, I found, I discovered this new element. And now we have, I don't know how many elements are in the periodic table now. I lost count. There have been new ones since I was studying such things. I've got this new element. And all the peers, the scientific peers will say, okay, show us how you did that. And so you set up your lab experiment and, well, I did it the other day. They don't believe that. They're not going to take that until you can repeat it scientifically. We can't repeat the scientific theories of evolution. We don't see it happening now, do we? Things aren't evolving from little to big or simple to complex now. They never did. God created things the way he created them. Simple and complex. Just the way the scriptures say. So we've got false scientists that say, well, there was no great flood, there was no creation the way the Bible says. It's false science. In our country, and around the world I suppose too, we have a lot of scientists that deny that unborn children are humans. And that's a scourge in our country. It really is. They say, They come up with cold scientific terms to use for an unborn child. They say, well, yeah, that's human tissue, it's a fetus, it's this or that, but it's not a human being. The Bible is very clear. God's word makes it very clear that he knows children from the point of conception. If you want to turn back and look at Psalm 139 real quickly, just a couple of verses here. Psalm 139, this is a Psalm of David. It tells us about God's omniscience, about His omnipresence, about His omnipotence. And in verse 13, we read this. Psalm 139, for thou has possessed my reins. This is David speaking. Thou has covered me in my mother's womb. God knew him when he was in his mother's womb. He said, I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance wasn't hid from thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect. And in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. He said, God, you knew me when there was nothing And then you knew me when I was conceived in my mother's womb and you watched. And I like the way he said this. In my book, all my numbers were written. You see or you hear accounts of When a baby is born, a lot of times the mother will take that baby and they'll count their little fingers and their little toes to make sure there's 10 of them. You hear about that happening all the time. It's almost like God is recording. As David is growing in his mother's womb, yep, all the fingers are counted for, all the teeth that are going to be there, they're accounted for. Two ears, this, one nose, all of this kind of thing. God's recording it because he knew David. Jeremiah chapter one, if you want to turn there, a couple more verses. to speak to this same topic Jeremiah's talking about when God had called him to the ministry as a prophet. In verse four, we read, Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Before he was even born, David, and I called you. As we might say before, you were a twinkle in your daddy's eye. I knew who you were, and I called you to the ministry of being a prophet. So when we have scientists who come to us and say, well, unborn children, they're not human. Oh, yes, they are. And for a would-be mother to get together with a medical professional and plan an abortion in any other context, we would take two people getting together and conspiring to end another human life, we would call that first degree murder in any other context. And yet scientists want to call that, they want to give it a clinical term because it's not as personal. We'll just call it abortion. We'll call it a procedure to save a mother's life or whatever. It's premeditated murder. We may have false scientists that tell us they're not human, we know different. So we'll move on. Many scientists would deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They say he was a good teacher and he lived, and yeah, they crucified him, but he didn't rise from the dead. But I want us to consider the Roman military who put him to death. They couldn't produce his dead body, could they, a few days later? Even though they put it in a tomb, sealed the tomb and guarded it, or put Roman guards outside to guard it, men who were professionals, men who had been given orders, you don't let anybody into that tomb and you don't let anyone come out of it. And yet when they opened the tomb, when the angel rolled the stone away, there was no body in there. Jesus wasn't there. The Romans couldn't produce it. According to 1 Corinthians 15, we read it just a few minutes ago, there were a lot of people who saw Jesus alive after his death, over 500 at one time. And at the time Paul wrote those words to the Corinthians, if I'm not mistaken, it was some 30 years later, and he said, most of those people are still alive. You can go talk to them if you want to. They'll tell you what they saw that day. They'll show you. They'll tell you that Jesus was alive. He gave a whole list. He said after His resurrection, Peter saw Him, and then the Twelve, talking about the Apostles. He said over 500 brethren saw Him at one time. Then James, and then all the Apostles saw Him again. Then Paul said, and lastly it was me. I saw Him. He appeared to me on the road to Damascus. He's alive. Scientists may tell us that, no, resurrection isn't possible, and I'll tell you, with God, anything is possible, and He did rise from the dead according to the Scriptures, and He is alive now, and He will be alive forevermore, and He's coming back to earth. We know that. Scientists may turn a deaf ear to it, but they're counterfeits. The Word of God is not a counterfeit. It's the genuine thing, isn't it? Another thing we see that a lot of scientists do, they deny even the very existence of God Himself. They say, God's not real. Yeah, He is. All creation begs to differ on that topic. I'm going to read some verses. You don't have to turn to them. Psalm 19 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture, starting in verse 1. It says, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork day after day, utter of the speech. And night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice isn't heard. I can go to a foreign country. I know English. I know it. Some may argue, arguably, I know it fairly well. I can speak it. I've been speaking it all my life. I know a few words, a few phrases in German. I know a phrase or two in French. I know a few Russian words that I've seen here and there in books I've read. There may be a few other things, Japanese or something, maybe a term or two. I can go to different countries and I could share the gospel, I could share the word of God, and if there's not a translator, they would look at me and say, I have no idea what that guy's saying. He could be giving me the recipe for whatever, fried chicken, southern fried chicken, I don't know. But when creation speaks God's glory, The psalmist says there's no speech nor language where their voice isn't heard. I grew up, I've told you I grew up not far from here, just a few miles away on a farm and it was off a dirt road. When I was growing up there were no street lights, that no one had security lights on a pole. It was dark when it got dark, when the sun went down. I can remember walking along outside at night. city lights to lighten the skies to the point where I couldn't see what was out there. It's beautiful. Even where we live now, we've been out at night when we would hear things that maybe there was going to be a meteor shower. You go outside and you look up and you realize, wow. I don't pay attention to this enough because I'm usually inside after dark. It's beautiful. The sky, the heavens declare the glory of God, don't they? And if we look closely, everything's not the same color when you look up into the sky. You can see actual colors. of different bodies of the planets will have a little different color sometimes. And we've actually seen from the field in front of our house, we've seen the space station go over sometimes. You can see kind of a twinkle. It's beautiful, isn't it? It's not part of God's creation per se, but when you look into that night sky, you see things that convince you there's a creator. When you go outside here and you look at all the trees and the flowers that are blooming, Things that we don't have to plant. And they come up and they are so incredibly beautiful. It amazes me that I can go to Lowe's and buy a tree and plant that thing and one can come up by itself because a squirrel planted an acorn in the edge of the woods. That tree will grow faster than the one that I planted from Lowe's and fertilized. God's creation is at work and it's better than anything we could do and it speaks throughout the world. Romans 1. Verses 18 to 21 say this, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. He says men know the truth, but they won't acknowledge it. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it to them. I think he's referring to what creation around us shows us. There's a God, but people don't want to acknowledge it. He says, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen. Being understood by the things that are made. What are the things that are made? It's us. It's people. God made us. And he said the things of God are all around, but they ignore them. They don't want to pay attention to them. He said, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power in Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." What we see in Scripture, we see a lot. There is enough in the world around us to tell us that there is a God, there is a Creator. And there was enough to make people seek to know who that God was. And instead of seeking to know who that God was, they decided and we're going to make him look like a frog. Or we're going to make him look like a cow. Or we're going to make him look like whatever there might be. We're going to worship that as God. Isn't that sad? And Paul's talking about that. People knew enough to look for a God and yet they settled for a frog or some other little creature to worship. It's sad, isn't it? And it still happens. And we've got scientists who come along and say, God doesn't really exist. Yes, He does. And God's creation shows us enough, but more than that, we've got God's Word that shows us the full truth. That we can know who He is and we can be saved. So what's a remedy for Christians to avoid falling for false science? We don't put our faith in that false science, do we? word because his word will refute science. I think I may have said this before, and you've probably heard many people say it before, the Bible is not per se a science book. But wherever the scriptures talk about scientific things, they're always right. There has never been science, any scientific fact that has refuted anything in the scripture. And it's almost, you almost get the feeling with with some people that They think God is in heaven wringing his hands. Well, those scientists are getting smarter and smarter. Sooner or later, they're going to find, they're going to come up with something that, that refutes something in scripture. God knows exactly what is in scripture. He inspired the man who wrote it. If there is any scientific fact or discovery in scripture, there's never going to be a discovery made on earth that contradicts that because God's word is true. of God that we can rely on. And I'm not in any way saying that we shouldn't believe science. If it's real science, if there is true data to back it up, that's one thing. I'm not going to be a person who stands here and says, well, you can't believe science. I'm an engineer by training. I've spent many years working in science. And I know that it's not all wrong. But if science ever refutes something that's in scripture, That's false science. That's a counterfeit and we need to avoid it. So that's just a few more areas of counterfeit that we need to beware of as Christians. Let's pray. Father, thank you for allowing us to be in your house this morning to study your word. Thank you for the accuracy of your word. Thank you for the the demonstration of your word in our lives. We have never found it to be false, and we never will, because it is inspired by the God that we serve. You, Lord, spoke through men to record what is in the scriptures, to teach us what we need to know. We thank you for that. We pray that as we go into the 11 o'clock service today, that you'd be with us, that you'd speak to us through your word, that you would teach us the things that we need to know. We pray, Lord, as Christians, you draw us closer to you. We pray for any who might be among us who have never trusted Christ that, Lord, you bring them to a saving knowledge of our Lord as a result of what is said and done here today. We pray for other churches meeting in the area that you do the same, that you just meet with us, Father, maybe a time of worship and adoration to the God we love. And we ask it in Jesus' name.