Is the Bible Anti-Science?

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- Well, hey, welcome to Crossroads.

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My name is Andy and this is Crossroads right here.

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And this is Crossroads.

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Whether you're at one of our physical locations

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or watching online, we're so glad that you're here.

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Now we're continuing a series called Deeper Questions,

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but I actually have a question for you

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before we head into Easter and the holidays.

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I've got young kids, so I'm sort of collecting

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and curating family traditions.

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So what are some of the traditions your family has had?

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- Oh, man, all holidays or..? - All holidays for now, yeah.

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- Okay, well, my family goes all out for Christmas.

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We get really competitive. We love to have fun.

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So we have a Christmas themed decathlon with teams.

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Points, bragging rights, the whole thing.

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For Easter, it is a race to see

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who can find their basket first.

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My sister's one year was sunk to the bottom of a pool,

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so needless to say she did lose that year.

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- Sunk to the bottom of a pool. Okay.

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So your family is pretty intense. Got it, got it.

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Now, her traditions aside,

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I think there's something special.

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Traditions help us recognize that a holiday

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is worthy of special attention and focus,

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and they help prepare us for what's coming.

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And that is what Holy Week is all about.

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It's to help us prepare for Easter,

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prepare for what is the most important thing

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to celebrate in our faith.

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And so we have amazing, amazing events

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happening all week long.

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We've got great stuff happening

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in the Crossroads Anywhere app

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with daily scripture readings and guides,

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as well as daily worship and moments

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reflected by the Crossroads music team

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as well as our big four core events.

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So we've got Palm Sunday, we've got Good Friday,

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we've got Last Supper, and we've got Easter.

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And just a little pro tip on Easter.

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You might know Crossroads or be like,

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"Hey, I know it'll be great.

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I know what to expect from Easter."

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I promise you, you don't.

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It's going to be really, really special.

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We've got some new things that we're launching

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and releasing and I think it will blow your mind.

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So make sure you are there for Holy Week,

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and especially Easter.

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- Yeah. And like Andy said, we want you

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to experience all of these amazing things for yourself.

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But at Crossroads, we love and advocate

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for doing things in community,

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so this is a perfect time to invite someone to come with you.

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If you're near a physical building,

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you can bring someone with you physically.

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If you're part of our Anywhere community,

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invite someone into your home to watch it with you.

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Or if you're watching on the app,

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you can just click the share button

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and it'll send via text.

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Just take the risk

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and I think you'll be blown away by how God moves.

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- Yes! Love it.

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So Holy Week is right around the corner,

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but right now we're jumping in

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with the final week of our series called Deeper Questions.

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And so today, what you can expect is

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we're going to spend some time in worship with our band.

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Then you're going to hear from our lead pastor,

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Kyle Ranson, about the mystery of God.

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And then we're actually going to be taking communion later

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so you can grab bread or wine or juice

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or crackers, whatever you have on hand for that later.

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- Yeah. So right now we're going to hear

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some songs that are going to be sung

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that are for God to God and about God.

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So let's worship and tune in to hear what God has for you.

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- Well, hey, everybody, welcome in to Crossroads.

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Hey, my name is Justin, and I'm so excited you're here.

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Glad you're here with us.

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Hey, if you're brand new, fantastic, fantastic.

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You came on a great week.

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And here's the deal, one of the things

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we believe around here as a church is

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we believe that God's the source of all good things,

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like, good things like love and courage

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and peace and even joy, even joy.

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So in a world of chaos, we need to sing

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about those things to draw us back to that.

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And so that's what we're going to do right now.

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We're going to sing about those things about God.

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So if you're brand new, why don't you stand up?

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Everybody stand up together.

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If you're brand new, join with us. Here we go.

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You can clap your hands a little bit and sing this.

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- Come on sing this part.

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- And I believe that with my whole heart.

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Can I share a scripture with you?

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So the book of Revelation says,

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worthy are You, our Lord and God,

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to receive glory and honor and power,

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for You created all things,

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and by Your will they existed and were created.

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That is a massive truth, because I believe

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all things includes you and includes me,

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and includes all the beauty of this picture.

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There are a few things in life I love

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as much as looking up at a clear night sky.

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It's the only redeemable thing

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about taking the trash out every week. You know?

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I took this picture last week with my phone.

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I'm just kidding. Yeah, that's not true.

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Let me show you another picture.

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Let me show you the second one.

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This one's called the Pillars of Creation.

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Some call it the Hand of God.

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It spans 4 to 5 light years,

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which means 30 trillion miles, approximately.

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The Earth around the equator is 25,000 miles.

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This image 30 trillion miles.

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That's what we're looking at.

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It's beautiful. Why did I show you that?

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Why do I tell you that?

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Because I used to believe that the journey

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of Christianity was the journey of certainty,

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of having all the answers, figuring it all out.

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Like, I thought I had to choose either science or faith,

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put God in a box and understand Him perfectly.

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And more and more, I'm learning the journey to God,

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the journey of Christianity is a journey of wonder.

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It's a journey of awe, of amazement,

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of things beyond my comprehension.

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I can't even put into a framework 30 trillion miles,

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but that's His creation, that's His beauty.

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I started to make faith a noun and not a verb,

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God a set of beliefs to believe in

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rather than a god to stand in awe of.

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That's the God I found life in.

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That's the God who's awakened my heart and my mind

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and stirs me each and every day.

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You know, about six months ago,

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we spent some time as a church

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looking a lot at stars in NASA.

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We wrote a song about this very thing.

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My friend Marissa, is going to lead us in it.

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- Father God, the silence, the stillness is for You.

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You're a God of mystery, and yet You make Yourself known to us.

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The One who created us and loves us.

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So once again, right here in this moment,

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I give my heart to You, my life to You.

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And I pray all this because of You, Jesus. Amen.

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- Amen. Amen.

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- Thanks for leading us, Marissa. Yeah.

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I want you to turn to somebody next to you

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and say, "Hey, glad to be here with you,"

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then you can have a seat.

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Hey, if you're joining online, so glad you're with us.

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So glad you're with us.

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I got a little sweat on that one.

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I don't know about you back at home

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or wherever you're joining, but glad you're with us.

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Hey, in a minute, we're going to hear from our pastor,

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Kyle, and he's going to lead us

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through communion here in a minute.

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And so whatever you have around bread, cracker

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juice, wine, whatever you got, go get that

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and we'll see you back here in just a minute.

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- Ah, doesn't a beach sound nice right about now?

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But if you stay on the beach, you're actually missing out.

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What if I told you the most exciting part

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was under the water?

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When we go deeper in our relationship with God,

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He takes us on an adventure

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and we see things we never thought were possible.

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When we look at the Bible,

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Jesus challenges us to go deeper.

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People would come to Jesus asking Him

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to meet their immediate needs,

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but He would regularly respond with deeper questions

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because He knew wrestling with those questions

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is where life change really happens.

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To go deeper with God, we have to ask deeper questions.

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And the deeper we go, the more He has for us.

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Will you go deeper?

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- Well, hey, welcome, everybody. Welcome.

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I'm Kyle, I'm our Lead Pastor if we've never met before.

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We are going to get into some Deeper Questions today.

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But first we got to talk about Crossroads Dayton,

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because this weekend

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is a special one for Crossroads Dayton.

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For eight years they've been setting up

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and tearing down faithfully week in, week out,

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in a cafetorium in a middle school.

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And this weekend they move into their building.

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Amazing, amazing, amazing.

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By the way, if you're one of the 5000 plus families

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who's committed the 10X Push,

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your dollars are helping make this happen.

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Way to go!

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Now, the grand opening for Crossroads Dayton

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is actually on Easter.

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And so if you have a friend in the Dayton area

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who might be open to come into Crossroads,

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they will not regret being there.

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It's going to be an amazing experience.

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Text them, invite them, get them there.

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Grand opening on Easter.

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This weekend is actually called a soft launch,

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which is what happens to me after I eat Taco Bell.

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Usually not something we celebrate,

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but we're very excited about this weekend.

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Let's pray for Dayton and everything going on up there

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and our message today.

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God, thank You so much for the work You're doing.

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Thank You for inviting us to be part of it.

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I'm asking that You bless everybody up in Dayton,

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especially this weekend, You give them the ability

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to work hard and be ready for the crowds

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we know You're going to bring

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to come hear Your gospel on Easter.

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Help us all today take a step closer to You. Amen. Amen.

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Well, if you're new, you are, you're joining us

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for the last week of a series called Deeper Questions.

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The the purpose of asking deeper questions

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is you get deeper answers, and those deeper answers

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lead you to a deeper life.

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Not just more, you know,

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theoretical stuff to think about,

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but a deeper sense of purpose,

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a deeper sense of joy,

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and a deeper connection to power.

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Jesus actually said that you either are going to

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dig down deep and anchor yourself to Him, the rock,

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or you're going to end up on the beach washed away.

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He likened it to building a house on sand

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and said this in Matthew 7:

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See, the problem is, despite the warning of Jesus,

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many people, many Christians included,

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decide to live their life spiritually

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and intellectually on the beach, on the surface.

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It's an elementary approach to life,

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which no offense to elementary school kids.

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Love you so much. You're so great.

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You're just not what we think of

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when we think of the depths of wisdom. You're just not.

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I have an elementary schooler in my house,

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my daughter Gracie, and a couple nights ago

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we went to our pond.

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And we walked to the edge and she noticed

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there was a lot of frogs in the pond this time of year.

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And the frogs appeared to be wrestling.

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And she asked me, she said, "Daddy,

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they're on each other's backs.

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Why are so many frogs giving each other piggyback rides?"

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And I said, "Oh, my dear, sweet elementary school daughter.

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Oh, they're not giving piggyback rides. They're mating.

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And if you have any questions about that,

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I would be happy for you to go inside

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and ask your mom for more information."

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Now, today's elementary surface level questions

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hit on a topic that's been very central to me

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in my own personal journey of faith.

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That's a question you can actually ask in two ways.

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One is: why is the Bible anti-science?

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And the other would be the opposite:

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why is science anti the Bible?

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It's asked two ways because

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there's two camps who are at odds with each other.

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Camp one is the people of faith.

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You see headlines about scientific discoveries

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on the news or on YouTube or wherever.

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And oftentimes, the information that's presented at you

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seems to contradict what's in the Bible.

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And so you either dismiss it or you live with

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this constant state of dissonance

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and even fear in the back of your mind

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that maybe the foundation of your faith is flimsy.

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On the other side is the camp of the science minded people,

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people who aren't yet followers of Jesus,

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which I know we have many with in this room right now,

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in all of our rooms and watching with us online.

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So glad that you're here.

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We actually made Crossroads for you.

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By the way, part of our vision at Crossroads

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is don't check your brain at the door.

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You don't have to walk in here and pretend like

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logic and reason don't exist. No, please come in.

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Bring your questions. Absolutely.

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Don't check your brain at the door.

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Glad that you're with us.

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But I also know that you too can live with a level of dissonance.

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Because for all of its insight

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and all of its amazing discoveries,

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science can shed zero light on some of

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the most important questions you have about your life.

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What am I here for? What's my meaning?

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What's my purpose? What's my value?

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It offers nothing, and so you live with this dissonance.

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But you also carry around a fear.

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Because if you were to even entertain the notion

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that there could be a God, someone might label you

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as naive or an idiot.

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So for both sides, they do the same thing.

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Both sides out of fear choose to stay naive.

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Both sides choose to stay on the surface.

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And so today, no matter which of those camps

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you might find yourself in at this exact moment,

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I'm going to push on you by digging deep

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into both the Bible and into science.

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I hope the Bible part is not surprising to you.

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You're in a church.

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I know some of you are in the Dayton Mall

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and you thought you're in Hollister.

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Nope. It's a church. Stay here.

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It's going to be better than Hollister.

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I promise. Stay here.

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The science side might be more surprising to you.

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It might be, but if you --

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If you know me at all, you know that

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me digging in to what science says about God

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has had a massive impact on my faith.

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In fact, few things have strengthened my faith more

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than learning about God and discovering

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not just the works that He's done,

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but who He is through modern science.

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See, as I found truth there, my sense of wonder

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and awe at God has grown.

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And my sense, therefore, my confidence that I have in Him,

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that there's no one better to give my life to

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has grown exponentially.

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Which warning, sometime in this message later,

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we're actually going to do some exponent work.

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I know. You thought you left it behind in middle school.

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No, we're going to do it.

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I'm going to go full science nerd on you later on,

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actually, and you'll know. Don't worry.

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It's not gonna be the whole time.

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You'll know because I'm going to put on

00:32:25

my science teacher tie. Okay.

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I don't care what decade you went to school,

00:32:30

your science teacher had this exact tie.

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And that is because when you graduate

00:32:35

with a science degree, you don't get a cap and gown.

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You get a short sleeve button down. And this tie exactly.

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So we're going to science nerd on you a little bit.

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Now, I believe if you were to walk up to Jesus

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and ask Him either one of these surface level questions:

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why is the Bible anti-science?

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Why is science anti the Bible?

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I believe the question that Jesus would respond with is:

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why are you putting Me in a box?

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Now, if you're in the science side of things,

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you put God in this box.

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It's called "things that don't exist."

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And because God doesn't exist and can't exist,

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no matter what the evidence of my work says

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or the work of my peers say, God is impossible,

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therefore I don't have to investigate God.

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I don't have to think about Him.

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Nothing of what He says applies to my life.

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Now, the faith camp also has a box.

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If you're in the faith camp, the temptation is

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to put God into a box called "things I understand."

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And because I already understand God enough,

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I've been in Sunday school

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since elementary school, for instance.

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I don't have to investigate or learn about God through science.

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I can just ignore all of it.

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And I'll just say, for most of my teens and early 20s,

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I thought the goal of faith was

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to get God to fit inside the box.

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And I tried very hard, very, very hard.

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I read book after book, and I dug deep

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and I looked up the words and the original language,

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and I tried really hard.

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If I can get God into this box.

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And I'll just tell you from my experience,

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you can fit a god into that box

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and you'll have some truth,

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but you'll have no wonder,

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you'll have no awe,

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and therefore you'll have a God

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who's not super exciting or remotely helpful to your life.

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Why?

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Because to fit God in the box called "things I understand"

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you have to reduce Him down to being understandable.

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That means you have a God of understandable power,

00:34:35

a God of understandable grace,

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a God of understandable forgiveness,

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a God of understandable love.

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In other words, a very, very small god.

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It's not the God of the Bible.

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Not interesting, not helpful.

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But for me, in my life, a strange thing happened.

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I ended up at one of the best colleges in the country,

00:34:58

even in the world, for engineering and science.

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A whole bunch of smart people

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and then somehow also me.

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And so, at the same time in my life as I'm realizing

00:35:07

this is really hard to fit God into

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and He's not very satisfying, I discover modern science.

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And in the mixture of the depth of Scripture,

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when you push past the elementary understanding

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of God's Word and you push past

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the elementary understanding of science,

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I discovered a God who could not fit in the box.

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A God of wonder, and awe, of transcendence.

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And I'll tell you, that is the kind of God I want.

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And I think it's the kind of God that you want, too.

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It's, by the way, not just the kind of god

00:35:42

I think you and I want in our lives

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who transcends our problems,

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who's bigger than anything going on in our lives,

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a God who we can't possibly imagine

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how big and how awesome He is.

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That's the kind of God we want.

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Not only is it what we want, it's who He says He is.

00:35:57

He says I don't fit in the box, again and again.

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Here's one place, Job 11, God says:

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God says clearly, "I don't fit in the box."

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Well, you know what else doesn't fit in the box?

00:36:31

How God describes His work.

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He says that He has indescribable power

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in Ephesians 1.

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He says that He has unsearchable greatness in Psalm 145.

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He has unsearchable judgments, Romans 11:33.

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Marvelous things beyond wonder

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is a way to describe His works in job 9:10.

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And unsearchable answers is what He promises, Jeremiah 33:3.

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And then hidden treasures, Isaiah 45:3.

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And I could go on and on and on.

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If you go through the Bible,

00:37:04

if you do a depth of study about it,

00:37:05

you'll find these sorts of phrases all over the place.

00:37:09

God says you can't possibly imagine what I'm able to do.

00:37:14

And my number one question for all of us,

00:37:17

whether we walk into this room in the science camp

00:37:19

or the faith camp, is do you have a small box god?

00:37:25

If so, maybe that's why you're not experiencing

00:37:27

more breakthrough in your prayer life.

00:37:28

If so, maybe that's why when you look at the Bible,

00:37:30

it's just kind of boring and bland.

00:37:32

If so, maybe it's why you find it very easy to skip

00:37:35

and almost forget God in the big moments of life

00:37:37

and the painful moments of life,

00:37:39

because he's just kind of small.

00:37:42

See, the goal is not to cram God into a small box.

00:37:46

Do not put Him there.

00:37:48

But do you know that God actually has made a box

00:37:53

to help us understand Him?

00:37:54

It's not a box that He wants us to put Him inside.

00:37:58

It's actually a box that He made

00:38:01

and He put us inside to understand Him.

00:38:04

It's called the universe.

00:38:07

And He says the whole thing is actually shouting about Him.

00:38:12

Psalm 19 says:

00:38:26

There's another spot in the Bible, Romans 1,

00:38:27

where God says you can actually understand

00:38:29

His invisible attributes based on what He's made.

00:38:33

Again, not just abstract things,

00:38:35

but details about His personality and his character.

00:38:39

I don't know if you know this,

00:38:40

but there are a growing number of top level scientists

00:38:44

who are coming to faith following exactly

00:38:47

what Psalms and exactly what Romans says.

00:38:49

Scientists who conclude that God must be real

00:38:53

and it must be the God of the Bible

00:38:54

because the characteristics that we see

00:38:56

in whoever made this, they match perfectly.

00:39:00

One of them is a man named Douglas Ell.

00:39:03

He has degrees in physics and math from MIT,

00:39:06

an advanced degree in theoretical mathematics.

00:39:08

And then he's so smart he got a law degree,

00:39:10

just to top it all off.

00:39:11

I guess it's what you do when you're that brilliant.

00:39:13

And he wrote a book where he described his journey

00:39:16

of moving from atheism into believing

00:39:19

in the God of the Bible through the science.

00:39:21

Highly recommend it. It's called Counting to God.

00:39:24

In it he says this:

00:39:39

points directly at God.

00:39:41

And if you're in the science camp, you might dismiss that.

00:39:43

Like, "Ah, that's pseudoscience.

00:39:44

I've seen some videos on YouTube that are just,

00:39:46

I mean, they suggest some possibility.

00:39:48

They're just crazy. Pseudoscience."

00:39:50

Well, no it's not.

00:39:52

In fact, if you flip that book over,

00:39:54

the top endorsement is from Peter Fisher,

00:39:57

who was the head of the Department of Physics

00:39:59

for MIT from 2013 to 2022.

00:40:02

It's not old. It's not wacky scholarship.

00:40:05

It's not pseudoscience. It's there.

00:40:07

See, at its core, I think this makes sense

00:40:11

because Christianity is the only religion

00:40:15

that's compatible with the scientific method,

00:40:18

if you think about it.

00:40:19

It's the only religion that I've ever found

00:40:21

that invites you to question it.

00:40:23

Most religions, you're not allowed to question things.

00:40:26

You can get into big trouble if you question things.

00:40:28

The gods get mad at you if you question things.

00:40:29

The priest class will get mad at you if you question things.

00:40:32

Not the God of the Bible.

00:40:34

Jesus says in Matthew 7:

00:40:42

God even invites his people to test Him.

00:40:44

Again and again you'll see this phrase come up.

00:40:46

In Psalm 34:8 He says taste and see that the Lord is good.

00:40:50

Like a taste test.

00:40:51

He goes, just put to work, see what happens.

00:40:55

Run it like it's science and see if you don't find

00:40:58

a God who transcends your understanding.

00:41:01

Now I know one of the objections can be,

00:41:03

well, if this is true,

00:41:04

how come more top level scientists aren't Christians?

00:41:07

And there again, I'd say,

00:41:08

"Well, that's kind of a surface level question.

00:41:11

Let's go underneath that and say, is that true?"

00:41:14

Is it true that most top level scientists aren't Christians?

00:41:17

Well, one measure would be the top level scientists,

00:41:19

they win an award called the Nobel Prize.

00:41:21

And if you go back through and look at

00:41:22

the last 100 years of Nobel Prize winners,

00:41:24

you'll see that the majority of them are Christians.

00:41:27

In fact, the small minority are atheists and agnostics.

00:41:31

Most have some faith in a higher power of some kind.

00:41:35

It's fascinating, and also shouldn't be surprising.

00:41:38

See people of faith, science is our turf

00:41:42

because it's the study of the unimaginable work

00:41:46

of our unimaginable God. It's ours.

00:41:49

And it's time to stop rejecting it

00:41:51

and leaving it on the side. It's ours.

00:41:55

I think the biggest reason why faith people

00:41:59

toss science into this box, "stuff that's not real,

00:42:03

stuff that doesn't exist."

00:42:05

And the biggest reason why science people

00:42:07

toss God into the same exact box, "things that don't exist,"

00:42:10

has to do with the very beginning of the story.

00:42:12

The beginnings of the universe

00:42:14

as described by modern science

00:42:15

and the beginnings as described by the Bible.

00:42:19

They say they're incompatible.

00:42:20

And so today, let's ask the deeper question:

00:42:23

Is that true? Are they really incompatible?

00:42:26

And to get an answer, we're going to look at

00:42:28

the beginning through the lens of Scripture

00:42:30

and through science.

00:42:31

First the Scripture part.

00:42:33

If you pick up a Bible and you read through

00:42:36

the modern English translation of Genesis 1 and 2,

00:42:39

that's the account of the beginning,

00:42:42

it seems pretty cut and dried that God made the earth

00:42:45

in six working days, rested on the seventh,

00:42:48

and that those days were literally 24 hours.

00:42:50

And that happened not very long ago, maybe 6000 years.

00:42:53

Which is very different than modern science

00:42:55

that says the universe is 13.8 billion years old.

00:42:59

Here's an example of that language

00:43:00

from the very end of the action.

00:43:02

This is the last verse of Genesis 1

00:43:04

and the first verse of Genesis 2. It says:

00:43:18

Again cut and dried.

00:43:19

Heaven and earth are completed in six days.

00:43:23

Case closed. Put it in the box "things I understand."

00:43:26

But a deeper look at the word translated to day

00:43:30

might make you hesitate.

00:43:33

See, day is actually the Hebrew word yom,

00:43:37

which many times does mean 24 literal hours.

00:43:40

Absolutely means that, but not always.

00:43:43

Sometimes in the Bible, that same word yom

00:43:45

is translated year.

00:43:47

Four times in the Bible that same word

00:43:49

is translated as always.

00:43:51

And so what you can know is that it means

00:43:52

somewhere between 24 hours and so much time

00:43:55

that we might as well just call it always.

00:43:58

That's what the word actually means.

00:44:01

Now, we don't know for sure, and so the best way

00:44:03

to figure out each individual case,

00:44:04

what it might be pointing to, are the context clues.

00:44:08

And the better context clue is the one that's as close

00:44:11

to where you're trying to figure it out as possible.

00:44:14

And so we just read Genesis 1:31 and 2:1.

00:44:17

Let's go three verses later into Genesis 2:4, very close context.

00:44:22

It says, these are the generations, plural,

00:44:26

of the heavens and the earth when they were created

00:44:28

in the day, singular, that the Lord God

00:44:32

made the heavens and the earth.

00:44:34

That's confusing, because what we just read,

00:44:36

God didn't say he made it in a day.

00:44:39

He said he made it in six.

00:44:40

And this is the generations, which means like

00:44:42

age after age after age after age, all in a day.

00:44:46

And so we can look at this one and we can say

00:44:48

day probably doesn't mean 24 hours here,

00:44:51

just three verses after the one that we just read.

00:44:54

In fact, you can go back as early as the fourth century.

00:44:56

This is not new thinking. This is old thinking.

00:44:59

As far back as the fourth century

00:45:01

the early church fathers like Augustine said,

00:45:03

"You know, this might mean something different."

00:45:07

Second point, if you look deeper at Scripture,

00:45:09

that's you got to weigh, you got to consider

00:45:11

is that God in time are very different

00:45:15

than you and me in time.

00:45:17

2 Peter 3:8 says:

00:45:27

Again, context is important.

00:45:29

So the context for this, 3:8,

00:45:32

rewind three verses earlier 3:5 in 2 Peter,

00:45:35

and he's talking about Genesis

00:45:37

and the beginning of creation.

00:45:39

And as he's talking about it, he goes,

00:45:41

"Hey, just don't forget, a day is like a thousand years,

00:45:43

a thousand years is like a day. It's just different."

00:45:46

See, what it means is it's kind of hard

00:45:48

to argue that Genesis is attempting

00:45:51

to be a thorough scientific textbook.

00:45:54

It's literally God explaining astrophysics

00:45:58

to a sixth century BC sheepherder

00:46:01

who couldn't conceive of a hundred miles,

00:46:03

much less a billion years.

00:46:05

That's what it is.

00:46:07

And I realize that can be unsatisfactory to you.

00:46:09

And so I'm going to give you a mental picture

00:46:12

that one of my professors at Georgia Tech gave me.

00:46:14

I took a class on Earth and atmospheric science.

00:46:17

And a lot of it used these ages for the earth

00:46:20

of millions of years and billions of years.

00:46:22

And at the very first class, he said,

00:46:24

"I know a lot of you grew up

00:46:25

in conservative Christian households,

00:46:26

and you believe the earth is 6000 years old.

00:46:28

And so this whole class could be very frustrating for you.

00:46:31

And so I'm going to give you a picture to help."

00:46:33

He said, "Close your eyes,"

00:46:34

which I want you all to do right now.

00:46:35

Everybody close your eyes and I want you to imagine

00:46:38

Adam 60 seconds after God made him.

00:46:42

Put some pants on him, because he's supposed to be naked.

00:46:45

So let's not get inappropriate. Put some pants on him.

00:46:47

Imagine Adam 60 seconds after God created him.

00:46:50

How old does he appear?

00:46:53

Somebody shouted out to me, how old does he look?

00:46:56

30, 37. I've heard as young as, like 18, maybe 20.

00:47:02

Somewhere in there. Okay.

00:47:04

Now how old is Adam actually 60 seconds after he's been created?

00:47:10

60 seconds. Okay?

00:47:13

And my professor said that could be the Earth.

00:47:15

It could be that God's made it to appear old,

00:47:18

but it's in fact very, very young.

00:47:20

If you believe in God, you have to admit

00:47:22

He could do whatever He wanted.

00:47:24

He could have created all of us one second ago

00:47:26

and all of our memories are fake, I don't know.

00:47:28

He can do whatever He wants to.

00:47:30

So a lot of times people will ask me, you know,

00:47:32

"Kyle, where do you land on this issue?

00:47:35

What do you think?"

00:47:36

And I'll happily tell you, I don't know.

00:47:40

That's what I think, because I wasn't there.

00:47:44

It's actually an opinion that the Bible

00:47:46

seems to say is a good one to take.

00:47:48

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says:

00:48:03

Literally goes you're not going to be able to understand it.

00:48:06

See, I think God is more interested in blowing your mind

00:48:10

than fitting into your tiny box.

00:48:12

I think He's more interested in you having

00:48:14

a sense of awe and wonder about who He is

00:48:17

and what's possible for Him than being understandable.

00:48:21

Now at Crossroads, by the way,

00:48:24

you're free to take any position you want to

00:48:26

and be an amazing part of our church on this issue.

00:48:28

We say that we major on the majors,

00:48:30

we minor on the majors.

00:48:31

The majors are things like in the beginning God created.

00:48:35

God made it. Absolutely. Jesus is God.

00:48:37

Jesus died for your sins on the Cross. He rose again.

00:48:40

The only way to heaven, the only way to the Father,

00:48:42

the only way to salvation is through Him.

00:48:44

Those are the majors.

00:48:45

The minors are things like exactly how old is the Earth?

00:48:50

I think there's a reasonable stance to take

00:48:52

to be true to Scripture, to say it's very young

00:48:55

or it could be very, very old.

00:48:58

We major on the majors, we minor on the minors.

00:49:01

What we do know is that it's not an accident.

00:49:03

God made it.

00:49:04

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

00:49:08

Now, what you might not realize is just how aligned

00:49:11

modern science is with that.

00:49:13

So it's time to go science nerd a little bit here on you.

00:49:16

I apologize for what's about to happen.

00:49:18

For some of you, it's going to be really --

00:49:20

You'll make it. You'll make it.

00:49:21

Just drink your coffee.

00:49:22

You're going to be just fine. You're fine.

00:49:24

So what does science say about the beginning?

00:49:27

Because many assume, mistakenly, that science

00:49:29

has drawn up a beginning that does not include God

00:49:32

and in fact has completely empirically ruled Him out.

00:49:37

I would say not so fast, and so would many others.

00:49:40

Here's one of them, Doctor Gerald Schroeder,

00:49:42

a leading physicist from MIT.

00:49:46

- And one of the questions that I'm asked as a scientist

00:49:49

is how can a scientist really believe that

00:49:52

there's something we refer to usually as God?

00:49:54

You know, is this metaphysical whatever

00:49:56

acting in the world or producing the world?

00:49:59

The irony is, the question is really a nonstarter.

00:50:02

Science has, in fact, discovered God.

00:50:04

And you can talk to the hard line atheists

00:50:06

and they will say, "It looks like

00:50:09

science has indeed discovered God."

00:50:11

And how would that be?

00:50:12

Well, if you take the trouble of going to the web

00:50:14

and there typing WMAP, the initials for a satellite,

00:50:18

it's a diagram that shows the development

00:50:22

of the universe from the creation over time.

00:50:25

It's a timeline.

00:50:26

Every word on that diagram comes from the NASA site.

00:50:29

It is the condensed knowledge of the scientific community

00:50:32

of how the universe created

00:50:34

and how it got to where we are today.

00:50:36

Each of the lines, the vertical lines

00:50:38

is another billion years. Okay?

00:50:41

You start from a burst of energy

00:50:42

at the extreme left side of the diagram,

00:50:44

and you end up at the far end with the oval.

00:50:46

The oval is to indicate expansion in all directions.

00:50:49

Of course, because it's a timeline,

00:50:51

we can't show that on a single piece of paper.

00:50:54

We see here, most amazingly, that on the extreme left edge,

00:50:59

it shows a beginning to the universe.

00:51:00

Now go back less than 50 years.

00:51:02

If I were teaching that at Tech, I might have --

00:51:04

A person could lose tenure saying that

00:51:06

there was a creation of the universe.

00:51:08

It sounds like it's Bible, because less than 50 years ago,

00:51:10

the overwhelming scientific opinion

00:51:12

was that the universe is eternal.

00:51:15

There was never a beginning.

00:51:17

The Bible is wrong from the very first sentence.

00:51:19

And then we discovered suddenly

00:51:22

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson,

00:51:23

the Bell Labs in New Jersey, the northeast of the US,

00:51:26

discovered the echo of the Big Bang,

00:51:28

the energy left over, which George Gamow

00:51:31

60 years ago predicted that if there had been

00:51:33

a universe created hot and small,

00:51:35

it would have exploded and the energy

00:51:37

would get more and more dilute.

00:51:38

And Penzias and Wilson, these are Arno Penzias

00:51:42

and Robert Wilson, discover this energy

00:51:45

that had been predicted.

00:51:46

Overnight, the Bible got it right,

00:51:48

there was a beginning to the universe.

00:51:51

How are we going to have this idea if there a God or not?

00:51:54

Notice that the creation force isn't a three letter word G-O-D.

00:51:59

If you look at the words carefully,

00:52:01

it's quantum fluctuations.

00:52:03

That understanding was first brought down by Ed Tryon,

00:52:06

a brilliant human being in The Journal of Nature

00:52:08

almost 40 or 50 years -- 40 years ago.

00:52:10

The universe allows creation of something from nothing,

00:52:16

provided you have the laws of nature,

00:52:17

the quantum fluctuations.

00:52:19

Tryon realized, and he published in The Journal of Nature,

00:52:21

one of the two leading peer reviewed journals in the world,

00:52:24

that you can create something from absolute nothing,

00:52:27

provided you've got the laws of nature:

00:52:29

quantum physics and the laws of relativity.

00:52:31

In other words, the laws of nature.

00:52:33

So look what science has discovered.

00:52:35

We can create the universe from absolute nothing,

00:52:38

provided we have the forces of nature.

00:52:41

Now the laws of nature, the forces of nature

00:52:43

aren't physical, they act on the physical.

00:52:46

So if they create the universe,

00:52:47

that means they predate the universe.

00:52:50

So now we have a set of forces,

00:52:52

we call them the laws of nature, that are not physical,

00:52:56

that are able to act on the physical.

00:52:58

They create the physical from absolute nothing.

00:53:01

And they predate the universe, which means

00:53:03

they predate our understanding of time.

00:53:06

Put that together, it sounds very familiar.

00:53:09

If you haven't noticed it,

00:53:10

that's the biblical definition of God.

00:53:15

- I love that guy. I love him.

00:53:17

He forgot his tie, you know, for that video.

00:53:20

I have to forgive him for that.

00:53:22

That's a smart guy. Yeah, he's a MIT trained physicist.

00:53:25

He was a professor there for years and years.

00:53:28

It's not pseudoscience. It's not crazy.

00:53:30

What is crazy is that for 2000 years of history,

00:53:32

I don't know if you caught that,

00:53:34

from Aristotle all the way through Newton and Galileo,

00:53:37

even Einstein.

00:53:39

All of those guys believed that

00:53:41

the first three words in the Bible were incorrect.

00:53:44

They believed that the universe was infinite and eternal,

00:53:47

that there was no beginning.

00:53:48

And then these guys come along, who he mentioned,

00:53:50

Arno Penzias, Robert Wilson, and they discovered

00:53:52

in 1965 the universe has a beginning.

00:53:55

By the way, they won the Nobel Prize

00:53:56

for physics award in 1978 for that discovery.

00:54:01

Science proves the first three words of the Bible:

00:54:04

in the beginning.

00:54:07

And now I would argue that the latest science

00:54:10

is proving the next two words: God created.

00:54:14

Not an accident, not random chance,

00:54:17

but an intelligent, intentional force

00:54:20

beyond our understanding.

00:54:23

The Bible and science agree.

00:54:26

I got this watch just recently right here.

00:54:29

It's The Push.

00:54:30

My family's making a decent commitment

00:54:32

and so we have no, like, extra money to spend.

00:54:35

So to get this watch, I had to sell some tools that I had,

00:54:37

some extra woodworking tools.

00:54:39

But it was very important for me to get this watch.

00:54:42

You might notice it looks a lot like Brian's,

00:54:44

but I feel like you deserve to know

00:54:47

how it's different from Brian's in two very important ways.

00:54:50

Number one, it is bigger, and number two, it is better.

00:54:54

Okay? So you just got to understand that.

00:54:56

And I'd just like to point that out again,

00:54:58

just in case you missed it.

00:55:00

Now if you saw this watch laying on a trail in the woods,

00:55:04

you're walking along the trail, you're hiking,

00:55:06

having a great day, and you see this watch

00:55:08

laying in the middle of the trail.

00:55:10

Would you assume, probably by random chance,

00:55:14

all of the atoms and molecules and particles

00:55:16

had come together to create this watch?

00:55:19

By the way, when you lean down, you pick it up,

00:55:20

you find that it's fully charged and working.

00:55:23

Would you assume this is an accident,

00:55:25

or that it has been made and is being carefully maintained?

00:55:31

Well, every logical adult would assume

00:55:33

the second one, obviously, right?

00:55:34

It's made and maintained.

00:55:36

Now it's somewhat easy to imagine the logic there,

00:55:40

but what about at the scale of the universe?

00:55:43

How would you walk by the universe, so to speak,

00:55:47

and judge whether it's been made

00:55:49

or it could have been happened by random chance, or by God?

00:55:54

Is it possible to figure that out?

00:55:55

Well, the answer is yes. How?

00:55:58

By looking at the precision of

00:56:00

the construction of the universe

00:56:02

and determining if the odds of it happening by chance

00:56:05

are literally impossible.

00:56:08

Which is exactly what science is saying,

00:56:10

by the way, and some of the latest science.

00:56:12

Now, it's hard to imagine impossible because

00:56:15

seemingly impossible things do happen all the time.

00:56:18

Things have very small odds do happen.

00:56:20

Just the past couple of weeks my son Ben, he's 14.

00:56:22

He's filled out his March Madness bracket, which

00:56:24

all you need to know about Ben is

00:56:26

he knows nothing about basketball.

00:56:28

Not a basketball player.

00:56:29

Does not understand how you score points.

00:56:31

Doesn't get any of it at all. At all.

00:56:34

Yet, my son correctly predicted 16 out of 16 sweet 16 teams

00:56:39

and eight out of eight Elite Eights.

00:56:41

There was a moment where he was in the 99.6 percentile

00:56:44

of all brackets on ESPN. Crazy.

00:56:48

Those are small odds, but apparently not impossible.

00:56:52

And so what would be impossible?

00:56:54

How small do you have to go?

00:56:56

Well, there are 31 constants in physics

00:57:00

that have to be exactly, precisely the way they are

00:57:03

in order for our universe to exist and to support life.

00:57:07

Let's look at just one of them.

00:57:09

It's the incredibly high amount of order

00:57:12

that was present at the creation of the universe

00:57:14

at the moment where it all began.

00:57:17

Roger Penrose, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize

00:57:20

in Physics award for his work on this,

00:57:22

dug into it and he says the amount of order is crazy.

00:57:27

In fact, he estimated that the odds of our universe

00:57:29

which, you know, odds, right, like 100 to 1,

00:57:32

1000 to 1 would be a lot,

00:57:34

1 billion to 1 would be like a whole, whole lot.

00:57:36

Well, he estimated that the odds of our universe

00:57:39

having such a high degree of order, aka low entropy,

00:57:44

at the beginning is 10 to the 10 to the 123rd power to 1,

00:57:51

otherwise it would have failed.

00:57:53

Now that's a number so large that Penrose says

00:57:55

it's impossible to even write it down,

00:57:57

because the number of zeros exceeds

00:57:58

the number of particles in the visible universe.

00:58:00

You can't write it down. It's hard to grasp.

00:58:03

Still, let's try. How small are these odds?

00:58:06

Well, we need to start with the number

00:58:07

of subatomic particles in the visible universe.

00:58:10

That's all the protons, neutrons and electrons.

00:58:13

Imagine one of them is a golden ticket.

00:58:16

It's a lottery winner.

00:58:19

To approach these odds, you would have to

00:58:22

on your first try out of all of the subatomic particles

00:58:26

in the visible universe, pick the golden ticket

00:58:30

on your first try.

00:58:31

Not just that, you'd have to do that

00:58:33

for 14 billion years in a row, every single second.

00:58:39

It's crazy.

00:58:40

Do you know what's crazier?

00:58:42

We haven't even approached

00:58:44

10 to the 10 to the 123rd power long odds.

00:58:46

That's actually very much more likely than that number.

00:58:50

To get to this, we have to take

00:58:51

a little bit of a mental sidestep. Okay?

00:58:54

So hold what we just talked about.

00:58:55

You picked the winner every second

00:58:57

for 14 billion years in a row.

00:59:00

Now imagine there's a rock. It's a big rock.

00:59:04

It's 300 million light years wide.

00:59:07

For perspective, the Milky Way galaxy

00:59:09

is 100,000 light years, so it's 3000 times bigger

00:59:13

than the Milky Way galaxy.

00:59:14

And once every 14 billion years,

00:59:18

a tiny bird flies to the rock.

00:59:21

And he pecks his beak on the rock

00:59:22

just to sharpen it or something. Just pecks it.

00:59:24

And when he packs it, one atom falls off the rock.

00:59:29

Now it would take him a trillion visits.

00:59:34

After a trillion visits which, remember,

00:59:37

he only comes once every 14 billion years.

00:59:39

After a trillion visits, he would have scratched the rock

00:59:42

so insignificantly that you'd have to squint to see it.

00:59:48

The odds of 10 to 10 to the 123rd power

00:59:52

are the odds of you picking the exact right particle

00:59:55

out of all the particles, every single second,

00:59:58

until the bird has worn away the entire rock.

01:00:02

In other words, it's impossible.

01:00:05

By the way, that's just one of the 31 constants

01:00:08

being the way that it is.

01:00:10

There's a scientist from Yale, Harold Morowitz.

01:00:13

He tried to put together all of these 31 variables

01:00:16

and calculate the odds.

01:00:17

And he said even the odds of

01:00:19

the simplest single cell organism happening by chance

01:00:24

are 10 to the 10 to the 100 billionth power to 1.

01:00:32

Those are the odds, which again, is literally impossible.

01:00:36

Now, you might have noticed science

01:00:37

is trying to get around this.

01:00:39

And the way they're doing that is what's called the multiverse.

01:00:41

The multiverse is not just something that

01:00:43

Marvel invented and then ruined their entire thing with.

01:00:47

So frustrating. So sick of the multiverse.

01:00:49

Not interesting.

01:00:51

Figure something else out, Marvel, please.

01:00:53

It's not just that.

01:00:55

It's the way that science has worked

01:00:56

to get around the problem of impossible.

01:00:58

Because see if there's a multiverse,

01:01:00

in other words, infinite universes,

01:01:02

then even impossible things theoretically could happen.

01:01:05

The problem with the multiverse, besides Marvel,

01:01:07

is the fact that it's a fantasy.

01:01:09

There's zero evidence.

01:01:11

And by nature of the multiverse,

01:01:12

there can never be any evidence.

01:01:16

See, the most rational and logical explanation

01:01:19

for the existence of life in the universe

01:01:21

is a superintelligence called God.

01:01:25

Einstein said it this way.

01:01:43

There's no other explanation that makes any sense.

01:01:45

There's not.

01:01:47

Still, many people try to find one.

01:01:50

In fact, in 2006, Harvard University started

01:01:52

what they call the Origins of Life Initiatives.

01:01:55

Let's discover how life happened, apart from God.

01:01:58

2006 they start this.

01:02:00

By 2012, they dissolved it.

01:02:01

They took down all of their research.

01:02:03

They had published nothing new in three years.

01:02:05

It was a complete and utter disaster.

01:02:08

One year before they shut it down, 2011,

01:02:10

Eugene Koonin, who was one of the advisors

01:02:11

on the project in a status report, said this.

01:02:15

"Despite many interesting results to its credit,

01:02:17

when judged by the straightforward criterion

01:02:19

of reaching or even approaching the ultimate goal,

01:02:22

the origin of life field is a failure --

01:02:25

We still do not have even a plausibly coherent model,

01:02:28

let alone a validated scenario

01:02:30

for the emergence of life on Earth.

01:02:32

A succession of exceedingly unlikely steps

01:02:34

is essential for the origin of life,

01:02:36

from the synthesis and accumulation of nucleotides

01:02:39

to the origin of translation;

01:02:40

through the multiplication of probabilities,

01:02:42

these make the final outcome seem almost like a miracle."

01:02:47

Okay, hold on,

01:02:48

let me just go back to pastor mode here real quick.

01:02:50

I'm just -- Okay.

01:02:51

Eugene, if it seems like a miracle,

01:02:53

it's because it's a miracle.

01:02:55

And miracles have a point of origin. It's called God.

01:03:00

It's called God.

01:03:01

See if you're willing to be an open minded person,

01:03:04

which, by the way, science demands that you do.

01:03:06

No answer can be impossible.

01:03:08

You have to be open to every possible answer.

01:03:10

If you're willing to be open minded

01:03:11

and not cram God into a box called "things that don't exist"

01:03:14

before you look at the evidence,

01:03:15

you'll see that it all points to Him always.

01:03:19

If we'll just crush past the elementary answers.

01:03:21

By the way, for faith people too,

01:03:22

if you stop putting God in this tiny box

01:03:25

called "things I understand," we'll all find

01:03:27

a God of such immense scale in awe and wonder

01:03:32

that He will blow our minds in the best way possible.

01:03:36

Do you have confidence in that God?

01:03:38

What can't He do? What can't He do in your life?

01:03:40

It's nothing. [applause]

01:03:43

Bible says this Romans 11:

01:03:45

Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

01:03:49

How unsearchable are His judgments

01:03:51

and His paths beyond tracing out.

01:03:53

Who has known the mind of the Lord?

01:03:55

Or who has been His counselor?

01:03:58

Isaiah puts it this way Isaiah 40.

01:04:11

In other words,

01:04:12

He's not going to get exhausted by your problems.

01:04:14

He's not going to run out of energy for you.

01:04:17

He's not going to not notice you.

01:04:18

He notices everything across the entire universe.

01:04:21

His scale is immense, and He's got you.

01:04:24

I hope that produces awe and wonder in you.

01:04:27

That's the God of the Bible.

01:04:30

Now, I would encourage you, don't stop here.

01:04:31

I hope this message was good. I hope it pushed you.

01:04:33

I hope you learned something.

01:04:35

If you want to dig in more to God and science,

01:04:37

I'd encourage you to do it.

01:04:38

Here are four books I highly recommend

01:04:40

if you want to look at any one of these.

01:04:42

The first is the one I mentioned,

01:04:43

Douglas Ell, Counting to God.

01:04:44

Great, great book. Understandable.

01:04:46

The second, The Elegant Universe,

01:04:48

is written by Brian Greene.

01:04:49

He's a physicist from Columbia, not a believer,

01:04:52

but his description of an elegant universe

01:04:56

is exactly the one designed by God.

01:04:58

And he says things like we just heard:

01:05:00

it almost looks like it's a miracle.

01:05:01

It is Brian. It totally is.

01:05:03

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith by Stephen Barr.

01:05:05

He's out of Notre Dame.

01:05:06

And then the scientist you just saw in the video,

01:05:08

The Science of God, Gerald Schroeder.

01:05:10

Any of those books will help you

01:05:12

if you want to dig further into this for yourself.

01:05:15

Now, here's what I find to be the craziest thing,

01:05:18

the absolute, craziest thing is that

01:05:21

that God of immense size and scale and wonder and power,

01:05:28

who does not fit into a box,

01:05:31

that God came for you and for me.

01:05:35

And He didn't put himself in a box.

01:05:37

He put himself on a Cross to save us.

01:05:41

Right now we're towards the end of Lent.

01:05:43

We're heading towards Holy Week.

01:05:44

We're going to do a Last Supper Experience

01:05:46

that I hope you come to.

01:05:47

As a part of that, we're going to serve communion,

01:05:49

and it's actually what we're going to do right now.

01:05:51

There's no better way to end our time than reflecting

01:05:55

on what the God who transcends has done for us.

01:06:00

And so you can go ahead and get out

01:06:01

that little cup you got when you walked in.

01:06:03

I want you to just hold it in your hand,

01:06:05

just for a minute, just for a minute.

01:06:07

Justin's going to play a little bit of music.

01:06:08

And I just want you to have just a conversation

01:06:10

with God about who He is and how amazing He is.

01:06:16

Go ahead.

01:06:44

You know, the Bible says in John 1

01:06:45

that it was Jesus who created.

01:06:49

That same Jesus was in an upper room

01:06:52

the night that He would be arrested.

01:06:55

And He took a piece of bread that was on the table.

01:07:00

You can go ahead and open the very bottom of your cup there,

01:07:02

and you'll pull out a little tiny cracker.

01:07:04

Hold that in your hand.

01:07:07

And He took that piece of bread, and He broke it,

01:07:10

and he gave it to His disciples.

01:07:12

And He said, "This is My body broken for you."

01:07:17

Friends, this is the body of Christ, broken for you.

01:07:21

Let's eat it in remembrance of Him.

01:07:28

There was also a cup of wine on the table.

01:07:30

And He took the cup of wine and He held it up

01:07:33

and He said, "This is My blood shed for you."

01:07:39

Friends, you can open that top part of your kit,

01:07:42

open up the little juice part and you can drink that.

01:07:45

That's the blood of Christ shed for you.

01:07:48

Let's drink it in remembrance of Him.

01:07:54

Father, I bless You that You don't fit into the box.

01:07:59

I bless You that you're beyond everything I can think,

01:08:02

everything I can imagine.

01:08:03

I bless You for Your unsearchable grace,

01:08:05

Your unimaginable love, Your indescribable forgiveness.

01:08:08

God, thank You for being the God who transcends.

01:08:12

I'm asking for everybody here,

01:08:14

everybody watching online that

01:08:15

You would be that God for us this week.

01:08:17

We love You. Amen.

01:08:21

- Hey, thank you so much for watching today.

01:08:23

You know, I don't know what stood out to you, but I hope,

01:08:25

I hope that throughout everything Kyle shared

01:08:28

that you heard that

01:08:29

you don't have to check your brain at the door

01:08:31

when you're searching after God

01:08:33

and wanting to experience Him.

01:08:34

So I'm curious, Emily, what stood out to you?

01:08:36

- Yeah, I think I took away that

01:08:38

when you dig as deep as you can go into science,

01:08:40

you'll find God.

01:08:42

And when you dig as deep as you can go into God,

01:08:44

you'll find some science.

01:08:46

So both are welcome here at Crossroads

01:08:48

because both are relevant to your faith.

01:08:50

And that's why questions are so important,

01:08:52

because it helps us to understand more

01:08:54

of where we were created, why we were created,

01:08:56

and who was the One that created us.

01:08:59

So really good stuff today.

01:09:00

- That's great. Yeah.

01:09:02

Throughout this whole series,

01:09:03

we've been asking hard questions.

01:09:04

We've been asking the deeper questions about life.

01:09:08

And really, I think the deepest question is,

01:09:10

can we trust God?

01:09:12

Like, is God worthy of our trust?

01:09:15

And man, one of the the most difficult ways

01:09:18

that I have experienced that question

01:09:20

and wrestled with it and, honestly,

01:09:22

tested it almost in a scientific way,

01:09:24

is by trusting God with my finances.

01:09:26

So that's not for everybody, but if that is for you,

01:09:29

you're maybe like saying, "God, I want to learn

01:09:31

to trust You to a new degree and I want to test you in that,"

01:09:34

you can do that at crossroads.net/give.

01:09:37

There's lots of good reasons I could talk about

01:09:39

the why of that around where your money goes.

01:09:40

But this isn't that conversation.

01:09:42

This is about you and your experience of God

01:09:45

and Him moving in your life.

01:09:46

And so maybe you're ready for that,

01:09:48

or maybe you've got questions around

01:09:49

what Crossroads believes about money,

01:09:51

again, head to crossroads.net/give.

01:09:54

So as we mentioned, we are not

01:09:56

just only wrapping up a series on deeper questions

01:09:58

and preparing for Holy Week,

01:10:00

but through the whole series of Lent,

01:10:02

through the whole season of Lent, I should say,

01:10:04

we've actually been holding Monday Night Prayer Gatherings.

01:10:07

So we're not just removing digital distractions,

01:10:09

but we're also leaning in to say, "God,

01:10:12

we want You to move. We want You to move in our lives,

01:10:15

in our church, in our communities,

01:10:17

in our cities and across the globe."

01:10:18

And so every Monday night for the last five weeks,

01:10:21

we've been doing that, asking God to show up in those ways.

01:10:24

And the last one is this Monday at all of our sites

01:10:26

and online at 7 p.m. eastern.

01:10:29

You can just text "together" to 301301.

01:10:31

We'd love to send you the link

01:10:33

and have you join us for that.

01:10:34

- Yeah, and I can't wait to see you on Monday.

01:10:36

But thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time.

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