All right, let's get going here now. Lord kind of gave me a few other things, and it's really more in the form of an attitude that we should have toward God. He used all kinds of illustrations. He taught in parables, and he said, well, if you understand this, it's as this, or it's like that. And so some of these things that I try to get across, it's things that I respond to, and I hope that you might respond the same way. Why are we studying the ear? What's this thing really all about? Is this just about being fascinated by it? Well, you can see how far off the beaten path this stuff is as far as a Sunday school lesson. Whoever studies anything like this except maybe in some kind of evolution studies or something, you might get into that kind of stuff. But this is not stuff that's ever taught in church. It's really way off the beaten path. Most of the stuff is Bible stories and verses of scripture, topic, or something like that, textual. There's a reason behind it. It was not my idea to come up with this stuff. It was really the Lord's idea. And it started the minute I got curious in the middle of the night about fearfully made, and that didn't make any sense. And then he explained that in the form of the definition that he gave to Noah Webster in a manner to impress admiration and astonishment. That was purpose. We're supposed to react and respond to some of these things. It's like, call upon me in a day of trouble, and I'll deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. We're supposed to respond back, and that's what God desires. You know, when the boat's filling up with water, and they're saying, Master, carest thou not that we perish? Do you think God got what he was interested in from those people? Every single one of them missed it completely. And those were the disciples, the ones closest to him. And God didn't bother to stop and say, you guys missed the whole lesson. You missed the whole point. He just said, why are you fearful and without faith? They didn't even respond to that. They didn't even say, well, that's a good question. Why was I afraid? And if he can control the seas and the winds, wonder why I was afraid. Lord, how come I was afraid? Don't you think he'd have answered that if one of them had had the sense of curiosity to ask? Sure. Trouble is, we're just not curious about those things. And what if we were to study somebody like Solomon? What do you think we'd be looking at? It would all depend upon who you ask. You say, what do you mean? Well, like the two women that claimed that the baby was theirs. They'd have a perspective on Solomon, wouldn't they? And I guarantee you that the focus would be on what happened the day they both showed up. That's the way it'd be. What about building the temple? Talking to a construction worker, you'd say, man, he ought to see the size of the temple that guy built. What if you were talking to an accountant? Do you have any idea how much wealth Solomon had? What if you're talking to somebody that did a lot of Bible study? He'd say, that guy wrote a lot of the Bible. Whether you realize it or not, it was about him up there in First Kings and stuff. But he wrote Proverbs and he wrote Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. Some of the most unusual books in the whole Word of God are those things. It all depends upon who you're gonna talk to. If you talk to a politician, he'd say, man, that guy was one talented guy. All the rest of the kings and people in politics would say, this guy had an ability to get everybody's vote. He got 100%. They all voted for him. You can't do that today. That's impressive. It all depends on who you're talking to. Look at some of the things that God put in there about Solomon over there in 1 Kings. And we've read this, but I'll read it to you again. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East country and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men, than Ethan the Israelite, Heman, Chechol, and Dara, the sons of Mahal. And his fame was all nations round about. And he spake 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall. He spake also of beasts, and of fowls, and creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all the people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and all the kings of the earth which heard his wisdom. Now, that gets into a lot more than just about the temple that he built or how much money he had or just his wisdom. That goes out there and it starts to expand your scope of who Solomon really was. What if we were to talk about somebody we know, for example? What about Jim Butler? Well, he's a guy that operates the sound equipment here at the church. But isn't he about a lot more than that? A whole lot more. What about Bob Stratton? He said, well, oh, he's retired Navy. Well, some of you wouldn't even think of that first. Some of you think, well, he repaired my lawnmower. It all depends upon who you talk to. It depends upon where the person's interests lie. If we were over there at Beard Equipment and somebody said, well, who's that? As Joan walked in the door, oh, that's Chris's mom. Isn't that weird? Some places, Chris is our son. Other place, we're his parents. It all depends upon where the focus is, where the attention is. And so this is really critical. This is not just some little flippant thing that's passive because God wants our attention on him. And if our attention is on him, our responses to him are different. If our attention is on ourself, our responses will be different than if our attention's on him. That's what happens. Now, if you were to talk to Jim Butler, for example. Wow, Jim Butler, it's nice to meet you. I understand you run the sound equipment. Yeah, but I do a lot more than that. Don't you think that some of the things that he's involved in, he'd like to kind of get that across to you and find out where your interests lie? So I understand you have a motorcycle too. Oh yeah, he started telling you about motorcycles. I understand you operate that recycle yard. Yeah. And I'm also involved in this and this and this and this and this. So what am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that it's more about what you're thinking about. It depends upon where your attention is. And what if you ask about God? So what do you think of God, modern day Christian? Oh, he's the one on our money and God we trust. They're trying to get that off. They kicked him out of the school. You know, they won't even let us pray in school anymore. Oh, he's a big guy up in the sky. You know, he's one taking care of me. What about him? Oh, I believe in him. That's about all you get out of a lot of modern day Christians. You're not going to get them to discuss God. They immediately get uncomfortable talking about him. Why? Their attention is somewhere else. And so they approach that thing with a guilty conscience. It's like asking a kid how he's doing in school when he's got all Fs. Hey, how you doing in school, Billy? He don't want to talk about it. You want to hide all the bad stuff. I get an A in history, F in everything else, but A in history. Man, let me tell you about this history. Wow, sounds like you're doing really good. We want to be bragged upon for the good things. We want people to know about it. You know, we desire to get people's respect. We desire to get people's admiration. We like to be thought well of. Where do we get it? We get it from our creator. That's where we get it. You like the good things emphasized and you want the bad things suppressed, right? Well, guess what? There aren't any bad things about God. What's that mean? That means everything about God is good. Every single part of it. And you get a little bit more religious people, quote unquote, and you say, well, God's really good. Boy, he sure takes care of me. Well, I don't know what I'd do without him. Oh, he did this or that or answered this prayer or that prayer for me. But you see, that focus is still right about where your attention is. It's not actually about God. It's about how God deals with you. Like I said before, unfortunately, our responses to God are in direct proportion to how he treats us. That's a sad state of affairs. It's not supposed to be that way. I mean, David's response wasn't like that. What if you did ask King David? Well, we've read this stuff before, but this is David's responses. I will extol thee, my God, O King. I will bless thy name forever and ever. Does that mean on the bad days too? Every day will I bless thee, and I will praise thy name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable. Don't you notice how that's as good as He treats me? That's how good I'm going to treat Him. Well, this is what God did for me, and so I'm just telling you about how good He's been to me. It's not like that. This stuff has to do with God individually, independent from how He treats you and everybody else. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise thy works to another and shall declare thy mighty acts. I will speak of the glorious honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works. Not the answers to prayer of God's abilities. He's going to talk about God's genius. Now God wants us to be impressed by his genius and his abilities. But you're going to be just like those guys in that boat. God will not show you a thing unless you're curious. When he said, he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and he's a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, he was not kidding. And the reason that none of this stuff is being taught on anymore, and the reason our focus is so narrow in the church that it's only about salvation and the cross and the blood, And basically, if it has to do with the functions of a normal Laodicean church, then it's interesting, and anything outside of that doesn't belong here. It's because that's where the Laodiceans' focus and their attention is. And that's all it is. But it's a lot bigger than that. So when God began to show us these verses up here on the wall behind me, he was trying to show us something about himself and get our mind off of just this little focus and realize, Man, God, you really did everything, haven't you? And everything you've ever done is good, and you want to be noticed for that, don't you? Exactly. That's the point I was trying to get across. Well, let's get back into this thing on the ear. We've been studying this thing for a little while, and we're going to get on into the really fascinating stuff. Up till now, it's been just kind of bland, believe it or not. The last thing we got into was how those three bones in that ear, the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup, grow supported out in the middle of this little cavity inside of some of the hardest bone in the body, the petrobone, which is hard as rock to protect all that stuff. And it's grown out in there on these little teeter-totter mechanisms with connections from one bone to the next, and it's got muscles in there that dampen the movement to protect your ear. But it's got more than that. We talked about that stirrup and how that thing's got an oval hole in it versus a round hole. And there's reasons for that. And I haven't read any of this stuff. I understand other mechanical things. I understand some of the laws of physics that God's made. And I said, why would you make that stirrup an oval hole instead of just a round one? And I believe that that, under extreme circumstances, deflects the mechanical operation of those three bones to the point where instead of that stirrup pushing straight in, it twists sideways. So instead of getting this massive pressure buildup and shoving in on that thing that would damage your ear, by twisting sideways, you get almost no response. So you got this mechanical protection. Now the muscles work a little bit like a shock absorber do on a car. You hit a bump and it just dampens the motion. But you know, if you hit a bump hard enough that it goes beyond the capability of the shock absorber to stop that, and it goes clear up and hits a spot on the frame that's got a rubber bumper on it. And that's kind of what happens. So God's built all of this protection into it, and those bones move through this pattern. Why not just have something directly connected to the eardrum that goes straight into this hole, pushing in and out? You lose all the protection. So God designed it. It's a sensitive meter that monitors pressure changes. And so I tried to find something that would give you an understanding of how this thing is designed. Now this is about the biggest gauge I could find. That's an old R12 gauge. Refrigeration gauges, they got two dials on them. One's pressure and one's temperature. You take a temperature reading on a bottle of R12 and it's 120 degrees. and it's about 165 pounds of pressure in there. All you need to know is the temperature. You automatically know the pressure. If you know the pressure, you know the temperature. You say, man, that's weird. No, it's just some of God's laws of physics. Pressure and temperature are relative, and as long as everything's stable, you can tell temperature, you can tell pressure, and all you need to know is one or the other. Anyway, so how does a pressure gauge work? What's going on inside of that thing? You see that big arch? That is a piece of thin brass tubing that's been flattened out. And as the pressure builds up inside of that tubing, it has a tendency to want to make it go back into a little more of a round shape because it's so flat. And as that happens, it tries to straighten out slightly. And as that thing starts to straighten out, you get movement on the gauge. And that thing goes through a process of converting this movement from this, into this, into this, run through some gears, and turns the dial. It's got a spring return on it, which kind of dampens some of the movement. And it's got a little dial up in here that's a calibration thing. And that calibration has to do with putting it back on zero. That's just a simple pressure gauge. But you know, when you've got every single part of this thing operating inside of your ear, It goes beyond it because this only goes to a visual reference where that dial is pointing, but yours sends electronic information to a computer to analyze it. Do you know what's going on inside of your head? God designed your brain so that you are constantly recalibrating. So what do you mean? Well, do you think both of your ears are exactly the same sensitivity? Oh, you get hearing tests and you realize I've lost some hearing in one ear or the other. Well, if your brain didn't recalibrate, you know what it'd be like? Somebody'd say, hello, and you'd look over there thinking they're over there because that ear was more sensitive and you thought they were over there when actually they're over here. Your brain has to analyze it and you don't even have to think about it. because you'll be talking to somebody and your brain goes, I know where that person's at, and this volume's just slightly off from this, and this volume's a little bit off from this, and so all of a sudden, now, I'll just recalibrate everything. So if you start getting a cold, one ear starts getting plugged up or something, you're not constantly looking behind you thinking somebody's over there, because your brain constantly is recalibrating itself. Now that's some amazing technology. What really blows me away is it's all alive. He grows it. Nobody grew a gauge like that. You had to go through a lot of testing to get one to function like that. Well, like I said, up till now, we've been dealing with stuff that's really pretty simple. that outer ear, and even the middle ear, those things are pretty much mechanical. Now you're getting into something that really gets interesting. God has designed some really incredible things. And we know how a piano works. The shorter the strings, the finer the wire, the tighter they are, the higher frequency they vibrate at. The longer the strings, the heavier they are, the looser they are, the slower vibrations. Well, somehow your brain has to read all of those independently from each other. God takes these minor vibrations in air pressure that affect your eardrum, and he converts those things into individual responses, and those things are fed individually back into your head. He breaks that sound wave down, so you're hearing each one of these little things totally independent from each other. He breaks them all out and separates them all. So that's what we're gonna be looking at here. We'll start moving into this thing. This part here is the inner ear, and it's pretty hard to see, but basically it's comprised of bone and fluid, and then some really interesting electronic valves, little switches that turn off and on inside of there. And it has a bony outside to the thing. It's really hard. And moving on to the inside, This is called a labyrinth. You say, why is it a labyrinth? Because it's so complicated. I don't know how you do this. I mean, I understand seeing a shell, it's grown in like a snail shell or something like that, but this isn't just like a snail shell. This thing here is way, way, way beyond that. On the outside of this thing, you've got a bone like a shell. On the inside of it, you've got a membrane and it's like a football. You got a football, you got an outside skin. You know what's inside of that? Like an inner tube. And that holds the air pressure, three parts. Once again, you got three parts. You got the bone, you got the membrane, and then you got the fluid. And the fluid is really special. Now this part you're looking at right here, it's designed with different loops and stuff, and it actually resembles a manifold in a car. This thing looks for all the world just like a snail shell. This whole thing is about the size of a pea inside of your head. God doesn't have any problem with making things small. I've heard before when they study outer space and then they study inner space and they say, if you think outer space is big, the distance from the earth to the furthest star, you think that's a big gap? The study of inner space is even higher contrasts. Getting smaller, there's more of a difference between our size and starting to look down in size until you're looking into the smallest, tiniest things. They said, there's more distance looking from one-on-one down than there is looking from us out to the furthest star. You say, well, the distance can't be the same. It's got to be more to it than that, because that's billions and trillions of light years. What they're saying is, when you start looking smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, it's more infinite. This thing here, you get down to where it disappears, and then it starts being built on theory. Because you can't even see a lot of these things. I mean, you think anybody's ever seen an electron? They just know they're there. How do they know? Well, the proof is there. But it just keeps on getting smaller and smaller. God doesn't have any problem with that. Why? You get right down to the bottom line. What he speaks into existence, he speaks into existence by converting energy into matter. How much energy? Much as he wants. A little bit of energy, a little bit of matter. A lot of energy, a lot of matter. He's not limited by anything. I mean, when we get into this stuff where His greatness is unsearchable, His abilities, you know, are past finding out. That's exactly how it is. Now, there's two types of fluid inside of there. One of them's like a spinal fluid. God makes everything specific to the purpose that it's designed. That gauge I just showed you, that little old brass tubing, It can't be soft. It's got to be very hard. It's got to act like a spring, so it's got to be a hard brass. It can't be a soft brass. And it has to be made that way because the first time somebody hit the thing with high pressure, it would bend it and the whole gauge would be just junk from then on. So when God designs these ears, He designed all the fluid that goes into it. He designed them to be different for a specific purpose. What would happen if you swapped grease for oil in your engine? Or put oil in a place where you're supposed to have grease? Simple fact is it quit working real soon. So God says, I know exactly what I need. How long did it take him? Didn't take him long. It's not a matter of research for God. Well, I think I'll try that. It's not like that. God never had to say, oop, I didn't mean to say that. Oh, well, that didn't work too good. I'll try this instead. It's already there. When we really meet him face to face, we're gonna be impressed. Unfortunately, so many Christians, they're so limited. It'll be like meeting Jim Butler and say, boy, that's a great job you do in the sound booth. And that's all they know. We'll say, oh man, God, thanks for saving me. You sure are limited in your understanding, aren't you? Solomon's up there talking about everything in the world as king because God showed him all this stuff and the rest of us All we talk about is just the cross and the blood answering the prayers. That's about it Anyway, this is where the little stapes the stirrup is connected into this cochlea Here is this oval window And as that pushes in and out, you've got a sealed piston effect with actual seals around it to maintain all this fluid pressure inside. Because outside of that, you've got this bone moving in an air cavity, and he's got to build this little piston, you know, like a hydraulic piston, and it's got to operate totally sealed because there's not a whole lot of fluid in there. If you leaked out a little bit, it wouldn't take much for the thing to quit working. This thing's all maintained. How? God has a repair in itself. Automatic repair. But anyway, the mechanics behind this, fluid operates just about like a steel rod. You take a piece of tubing, put a steel rod in it, you push one end of it, that other end's gonna move exactly the same distance. Well, that's what happens in hydraulics. Except instead of being confined to a straight line, hydraulics can flow through any direction. And you put in one drop of fluid in one end of it, one drop's gotta come out the other end or go somewhere. Either the cylinder's gonna expand or something. because it will not compress. And so he builds this thing so it's designed to move fluid around the inside of this cochlea. This is an artist's concept of it. It's not an actual picture of it. Remember, you're talking about something that's really pretty small. We'll get into some actual photographs by electron microscope because the stuff is so tiny. It takes an electron microscope to even see it. You know, you're living in the last days, 6,000 years here, getting close to seventh, but you look at 6,000 years behind us, they didn't know any of this stuff. What are we talking about? We're talking about in the last days knowledge shall be increased. So as God begins to instruct us, we should respond to his instruction for his glory. I mean, there should be more curiosity than to satisfy our curiosity. We really ought to look at satisfying God's desires. David says, I will bless the Lord. Every day will I bless thee. What's that? I'm going to try to make you happy, God. How are you going to do that? Well, I'm going to keep coming to you and praying and asking for all the stuff I need. And God says, oh, wow, this is really fun. When are your thoughts ever going to be off of you and onto me? When are you going to ever start praying, Lord, how can I make you happy today? How can I bless you? Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. No, it's bless me, God. God says, what about me? What do you think I made you for? Well, you can do that yourself, God. That's kind of how we think. It's such a childish mentality, and it's because our attention's in the wrong place. Anyway, this thing here is a bony shell. Now, pressure equalizes in this whole area. On the inside of it, it starts with this oval window, and this cutaway view of this bony shell And those little loops off to the side, those have to do with motion and gravity and sensing your direction and your relationship to other things. So really, you have three different sensing devices in there. Once again, three more. It goes three, three, three, three, three, three. I mean, it just keeps on going. And if you think that's something we're gonna get on to the inside, you'll see that it doesn't stop with these three, it goes on to more threes and more threes. but it builds this pressure in there. And as it builds pressure, it flows through that little snail shell looking thing and it comes out this little round window at the bottom. Now the fluid doesn't leak out because there's a seal over that. And as the pressure fills up, it moves like if you had a balloon over the end of a piece of pipe and blew in it, the balloon would kind of swell out a little bit. And so it's moving in and out in this one area and going in and out the other end. What it actually does is it flows through this whole thing and makes a hairpin turn in the middle. Anyway, we're gonna have to get stopped here pretty quick, run out of time. But it's interesting how God's designed this. And so far, all we're really looking at is just the part where the air pressure goes into the gauge and it just kind of bends one little thing. You haven't seen any of the sensing stuff yet. It makes this hairpin turn, comes back and around, comes out the other side. Now keep in mind this whole time, we're not talking about a hydraulic piston where you push it in. We're talking about something that's moving back and forth between 20 times a second and 20,000 times a second, literally vibrating. That's exactly what's happening. And the viscosity and the fluid and all of that stuff is all critical as to how it works. Let's close in prayer.