Podcast appearances and mentions of alexander flemming

Utan svampar hade vi inte överlevt på jorden. Men är det svampar som kommer rädda oss från jordens undergång, eller kommer de att förinta oss? Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. I början av mänsklighetens historia ställer svampen ofta till med mer skada än nytta. Men under 1900-talet händer något. Läkaren Alexander Flemming glömmer kvar lite gammal disk i sitt laboratorium och det kommer att förändra hela mänsklighetens förutsättningar för överlevnad.

Hoy me llena de orgullo y satisfacción decir que el próximo día 13 de febrero celebra su día nacional Escocia, los únicos del Reino Unido que merecen vivir. Aunque tiene estatus de país, está dentro del Reino Unido, y junto con Gales e Inglaterra forman la Gran Bretaña. El animal que es símbolo nacional es uno que no existe…el unicornio!!! De hecho está en el escudo de armas de Escocia desde el siglo XV. Es como si un país dijera que su animal nacional es un gamusino. La flor nacional sí existe, pero así entre nosotros, glamurosa glamurosa no es, porque su flor nacional es el Cardo. La explicación está en la leyenda de que los escoceses se escondían de los vikingos de mierda en un bosque lleno de cardos. Los vikingos para hacerles una emboscada, se descalzaron para no hacer ruido…total, que al final los que salieron trasquilados fueron los vikingos. Una de las cosas más conocidas de Escocia es Nessie, el famoso monstruo de Leganés, pero lo que mucha gente no sabe es que hay otro lago, el Morar que tiene otro monstruo, llamado Morag. Son autores de muchos inventos: Alexander Flemming inventó la penicilina. La primera foto en color aunque la hizo un inglés (Sutton) fue siguiendo las instrucciones de Clerk, un físico escoces. La foto se llama Tartan Ribbon. La anestesia quirúrgica tiene su origen en Escocia, y el primer parto con anestesia se hizo en 1847 allí. El primer mamífero clonado del mundo, la Oveja Dolly, era escocesa. Graham Bell, escocés, es el padre del teléfono, aunque parece que fue un poco mierda y le copió la idea al italiano Meucci, pero con ese nombre mejor…imaginad el teléfono de meucci… También es escocés Angus Barbieri, un escocés que en 1966 estuvo 382 dias sin comer, porque estaba entrado en carnes…y perdió 126 kilos…y lo curioso es que no perdió la vida. SOlo tomaba, agua, café, té y complementos vitamínicos. Es la cuna del golf, y su invención data de la Edad Media. En tierras escocesas está la montaña más alta del Reino Unido, llamada Ben Nevis (porque allí le ponen nombre y apellidos a las montañas), aunque se le conoce como The Ben (Er Ben). Tiene la friolera 1345 metros. La bebida nacional es el whisky, y para ser considerado un whisky 100% escoces, el llamado Scotch Whisky, debe ser un destilado de agua y cebada malteada, y debe de madurarse en EScocia en un barril de roble durante al menos tres años. Como curiosidad, muchos de estos barriles son de Jerez. Su capital es Edimburgo (Edimburg) para los anglófonos, aunque la ciudad más poblada es Glasgow. En el mundo se calcula que hay un 2% de pelirrojos malasuerte, pero solo en Escocia son el 13%. Parte de su historia la conocemos por la película Braveheart, aunque Mel Gibson se tomó algunas licencias. La prenda más característica es el kilt, la famosa falda escocesa de tartán. Parece que su origen está en las Highlands donde se tiene constancia de su uso desde el siglo XVI, y acabó siendo usada en todo el país. Todo hace indicar que es de origen Vikingo, ya que en las Highlands fue donde más influencia vikinga hubo. Su plato más característico es el Haggis. El haggis es un plato escocés muy condimentado y de sabor intenso. Normalmente se elabora a base de asaduras de cordero u oveja (pulmón, estómago, hígado y corazón) mezcladas con cebollas picadas, harina de avena, hierbas y especias, todo ello embutido en una bolsa hecha con el estómago del animal y cocido durante varias horas. Yo he probado el Haggis, y eso está taco de bueno, pero claro yo es que es verdadera devoción lo que yo tengo por la casquería. Y para su himno, que es un himno oficioso, porque se rigen por el himno del Reino Unido, me he permitido la licencia de poner una versión cantada en un estadio, en MurrayField, y en un partido de rugby. A mi se me ponen los pelos como alcayatas cuando escucho esto. Como curiosidad, es un himno compuesto en 1967 cuando estaban hasta la polla del God Save de Queen, y desde entonces es el himno oficioso de Escocia.

A resistência aos antibióticos leva à morte de mais de um milhão de pessoas por ano no mundo, segundo um estudo publicado em 2022 na revista científica The Lancet. Em entrevista à RFI, o infectologista francês Jean-Paul Stahl, do Hospital Universitário de Grenoble, explicou por que alguns desses medicamentos deixaram ao longo do tempo de agir contra as infecções. Taíssa Stivanin, da RFIO surgimento dos antibióticos, que combate as infecções bacterianas, é considerado como um dos maiores progressos da Medicina. A penicilina, descoberta pelo médico inglês Alexander Flemming em 1928 e usada pela primeira vez nos anos 1940, revolucionou a prática na área. Mas, o advento dessas moléculas também revelou o mecanismo de resistência de alguns micróbios que sempre existiu.“Esse mecanismo existe há muito mais tempo do que os antibióticos. Para prová-lo, os cientistas encontraram bactérias fossilizadas e conseguiram cultivá-las em laboratório. Os antibióticos apenas revelaram esse mecanismo, mas não provocaram seu aparecimento”, explica o infectologista francês.Divididos em dois grupos, os antibióticos podem ser bactericidas, ou seja, matam o micróbio, ou bacteriostático, evitando sua reprodução. Ambos têm ações e mecanismos diferentes e também não resistem da mesma maneira às moléculas.Os antibióticos podem ser semissintéticos ou naturais e classificados em β-lactâmicos, tetraciclinas, peptídicos cíclicos, aminoglicosídeos, estreptograminas e macrolídeos. Os de origem sintética são divididos em sulfonamidas, fluoroquinolonas e oxazolidinonas.De acordo com o infectologista francês, quanto mais usamos antibióticos, “mais o mecanismo de resistência é revelado”. Esse, diz, é o “efeito colateral” do progresso gerado pelo aparecimento das moléculas.“Para explicar de maneira bem geral e simplificada, o antibiótico é destruído por uma secreção da bactéria", diz o infectologista francês. "Esta é a primeira possibilidade. A segunda é que as membranas de algumas bactéria impedem a penetração de certos antibióticos", explica."A terceira possibilidade é a seguinte: para agir, o antibiótico precisa de um ‘alvo' na célula, que algumas bactérias são capazes de modificar, impedindo a ação da molécula. Ou seja, quanto mais você usa, menor o efeito e o remédio acaba não servindo para nada”, conclui.Algumas bactérias sobrevivem ou continuam se reproduzindo após o uso de um antibiótico porque sofreram mutações ou adquiriram um gene específico que neutraliza a molécula. Esse gene pode ser transmitido para outros micro-organismos similares, mas também para outras espécies. Dose baixa demaisUm dos erros mais comuns é o uso de uma dose menor do que a necessária para combater uma infecção, exemplifica Jean-Paul Stahl. “Quando receitamos um antibiótico, contrariamente ao que pensamos, é preciso receitar a maior dose possível. Só assim podemos ter certeza de que vamos matar o maior número possível de bactérias e não gerar resistência”, alerta.Receitar antibióticos para tratar infecções virais é outro erro frequente cometido pelos médicos. Esse tipo de molécula, diz, age sobre todas as bactérias que temos dentro do corpo e acaba perturba o equilíbrio do organismo e do meio ambiente.“Temos bilhões e bilhões de bactérias dentro do nosso corpo. Aliás, temos mais bactérias do que células. Quando utilizamos antibióticos por uma razão qualquer, eles terão um impacto na flora do indivíduo", explica o infectologista francês."Isso não provocará uma infecção, mas o antibiótico vai se disseminar no organismo e aumentará a população de bactérias resistentes no meio-ambiente, fazendo com que outras pessoas possam se infectar com essas mesmas bactérias resistentes”, diz.Campanha publicitáriaA França tem lutado contra o uso indiscriminado de antibióticos e a resistência vem diminuindo nos últimos vinte anos. Isso ocorreu em parte graças ao sucesso da campanha publicitária da Seguridade Social, lançada em 2002, “Les antibiotiques, ce pas automatique” (o uso de antibióticos não é automático).O slogan, que visava justamente alertar a população sobre o risco de utilizar esse tipo de medicamento sem necessidade surtiu efeito e acabou se popularizando.A epidemia de Covid-19, em 2020, também contribuiu para a queda do consumo de antibióticos, já que os lockdowns limitaram a transmissão de doenças infecciosas. Mas, desde 2022, o governo constata um novo aumento do consumo.Na França, centros de prevenção de infecção e de resistência aos antibióticos monitoram a situação. Nos consultórios ou hospitais, os médicos coletam amostras que são enviadas em seguida para os laboratórios, onde as bactérias são isoladas. Se o teste à sensibilidade a certas moléculas for anormal, a bactéria será enviada aos centros de referência.Receitas inúteisEstudos também mostram que metade das receitas médicas de antibióticos são inúteis ou simplesmente inadequadas. Para evitar essa situação, Jean-Paul Stahl lembra que é fundamental o médico realizar um exame clínico preciso. Em 80% dos casos, diz, é possível saber se o paciente tem uma infecção viral ou bacteriana. Também existem, atualmente, testes rápidos que ajudam no diagnóstico.O infectologista também afirma que a suprainfecção é uma “lenda”, ocorre raramente e não justifica o uso profilático de um antibiótico, ou seja, por precaução. Ele ainda lembra que há uma diminuição da resistência de algumas bactérias, como os pneumococos, graças à vacinação, que ajuda no controle do fenômeno de resistência.De acordo com o infectologista francês, os países e regiões onde são registrados os maiores índices de resistência são a Itália, a Grécia, o norte da África, a índia e toda a Ásia.

Antimicrobials are a broad range of medicines used to prevent and treat infections in humans, animals, and plants, including antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals and antiparasitics. The discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Alexander Flemming has been widely recognized as one of the greatest scientific advancements of the 20th century, but what happens when there are no new antimicrobials being discovered and the ones we have available no longer work? In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, Mr. Oliver Schact, CEO of OpGen, joins to talk about:The drivers of antimicrobial resistance (AMR); The impact of COVID-19 and lessons learned; and How precision medicine can help to combat infectious diseases and the emergence of AMR. Podcast GuestsOliver SchachtPodcast HostsWilliam Wang, BA, MPHGordon Thane, BMSc, MPH, PMP®References for Our Discussion World Economic Forum: The looming health catastrophe that could be more deadly than COVID-19World Health Organization: Antimicrobial resistanceSubscribe to the NewsletterWhat if there was an easy way to receive timely information about public health and global health right to your inbox? Subscribe to the newsletter to stay in the loop about the latest news, live events, jobs, and professional development opportunities. Subscribe to ensure you don't miss out: https://thepublichealthinsight.com/subscribe/. Tell A FriendIf you enjoy our podcasts, it would mean the world if you shared it on social media and tagged us. If you are not the social media type, we would appreciate it if you shared it with a friend or colleague who you think might enjoy the podcast. It helps us to get discovered by other people.

Aujourd'hui c'est la Saint Alexandre ! L'occasion pour Salomé de revenir sur 4 porteurs du prénom, influents à leurs manières et pour leurs époques ! Elle reviendra sur Alexandre le Grand, Alexandre Astier, Alexander Flemming et Alexandre Dumas !Bonne fête à vous !

It is a period of bacterial war. A curious scientist, returning from a summer trip, has won his first victory against S. aureus. His blue green mold, secreting an unknown substance with the ability kill bacterial microbes, has forced the bacteria to retreat. Pursued into the 21st century, the bacteria have developed the power to resist Flemming's green blue mold and potentially bring a period of uncertainty to humanity. Sources: Bellis, M. 2019. The history of penicillin and antibiotics. ThoughtCo. Available from: https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-penicillin-1992304 Biography.com. Alexander Flemming. 2019. Available from: https://www.biography.com/scientist/alexander-fleming The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2019. Biggest Threats: 2019 AR Threats Report. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/biggest-threats.html Flemming, A. 1945. Penicillin Nobel Lecture. Goff, D. 2016. Antibiotics “just-in-case”.TEDx Talks; Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALryAB_AYiA Harkins, C. 2017. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus emerged long before the introduction of methicillin into clinical practice. Genome Biol; 18(130)Available from:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5517843/ Lax, E. 2004.The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat. New York (NY): Holt Paperbacks. Lima, R. Sá Del Fiol, F., Balcão, V.M. 2019. Prospects for the Use of New Technologies to Combat Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria. Front Pharmacol; 10(692) Available from:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6598392/ Pietzsch, J. Enhancing X-ray vision. The Nobel Prize; Available from: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1964/perspectives/ Solensky, R. 2019. Patient education: Allergy to penicillin and related antibiotics (beyond the basics). UpToDate. Available from: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/allergy-to-penicillin-and-related-antibiotics-beyond-the-basics Sprenger, M. 2015. How to stop antibiotic resistance? Here's a WHO prescription. The World Health Organization. Available from: https://www.who.int/mediacentre/commentaries/stop-antibiotic-resistance/en/ The World Health Organization. 2020. Lack of new antibiotics threatens global efforts to contain drug-resistant infections. Available from: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/17-01-2020-lack-of-new-antibiotics-threatens-global-efforts-to-contain-drug-resistant-infections Wu, K. What causes antibiotic resistance? TED ED; Available from: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-antibiotics-become-resistant-over-time-kevin-wu Yocun, R.R., Rasmussen, J.R., Strominger, J.L. 1980. The mechanism of action of penicillin. Penicillin acylates the active site of Bacillus stearothermophilus D-alanine carboxypeptidase. J Biol Chem; 255(9): 3977-86. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7372662

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This week we carry on from part one, by discussing the educational and technological advancements in surgery that prompted the improvement of surgical operations as a whole. From the first discovery of ether as a form of anaesthetic and sedation, to the discovery of antibiotics by Alexander Flemming, we look at how these progressions started to widen the scope of stoma formation by developing new types of stoma's, including the ileostomy and the urostomy. Finally, we look at the very first possible colostomy ever created on Australian soil, right here in Victoria.

Phillup suffering from a sinus infection goes back in time to see how Alexander Flemming discovers penicillin.

It's almost like this superpower... design is such an invisible force in our lives. We don't realize how it's affecting our behavior, affecting how we do things, how we live, how we die.  - Pagan Kennedy "Pagan Kennedy tells stories about iconoclasts, humanitarian inventors, and scientific visionaries. Kennedy's journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times Magazine, where she wrote the "Who Made That?" column. She is now a contributing writer for the New York Times Opinion section; she is also co-producing a serial podcast for the Radiotopia network.  As a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2010-11, Kennedy studied microbiology and neuroengineering.  She has won numerous other awards including an NEA fellowship, a Smithsonian fellowship, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships.  She is the creator of Inventology — How We Dream Up Things That Change The World. "    Website: https://www.pagankennedy.space/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Inventology-Pagan-Kennedy/dp/0544811925/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1545190907&sr=8-1&keywords=inventology Podcast: https://radiopublic.com/ShowcaseFromRadiotopia/ep/s1!dfcfb   Fun And Interesting Points Discussed 1. Most cited patent holders were in their 40s and 50s.  2. John Goodenough invented the lithium Ion battery at the age 57. He was still creating inventions at the age of 94. 3. Alexander Flemming's beginnings to creating Penicillin 4. Serendipity - observational creativity and "anti-serendipity" 5. Invention is multi-step. Eureka makes for a good story, but there needs to be testing, understanding... Eureka makes it sound a lot easier than it is.  6. The one who sees a problem on a daily basis has the strongest ability to create a solution (end-user mentality).     

An expository sermon on Isaiah 28:23-29 explores how God taught science to mankind as a means to worship and how they suppressed the truth and turned against their Creator. - SERMON TRANSCRIPT - Right out in front of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in England, there is a statue of Sir Isaac Newton seated, chin in hand, pondering an apple at his feet. And it's obviously a statue of a famous moment in history of modern science, in which Isaac Newton saw an apple fall, some say it hit him in the head. I don't know, I wasn't there. But in 1666, he considered the journey of this apple, then he began to ask a question, the question was this: "If the force of gravity reaches to the top of the highest tree, why couldn't it reach the moon?"| And so, it was a flash of insight as you watched this apple fall. Throughout the history of science, there have been flashes of insight that have come to scientists that have guided science along throughout human history. Thomas Edison, the famous inventor, said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. I'm here to say today to God be the glory for both. God gives the inspiration and he gives the perspiration that his guided genius has guided science throughout history, and I wanna take back and give to God the glory for these things that modern atheistic scientists seek to take away and give to man alone. In Isaiah 28, it teaches that God instructs and teaches man the right way concerning science. Flashes of insight and long careful development, both come from God. So, a summary of my message today is that scripture reveals God as the teacher of humanity. He is the teacher of the lessons of his glorious creation, whether they recognize him or not. That God has guided the development of human science in all areas and to God be the glory for that development. For every truth that science has ever taught comes from God. "God has guided the development of human science in all areas and to God be the glory for that development. For every truth that science has ever taught comes from God." However, in the 21st century, especially in the western world, science is seen to be a rival to faith. It's grown to be a rival to God. Even a system by which some people think they can prove that God doesn't exist at all. How ironic. God gives us the wisdom, the weapons of wisdom and technology, and we then turn them on him as if we can destroy him with them. Puritan pastor Cotton Mather, speaking of material prosperity, not of science, but a material prosperity, looking at the Puritan movement, especially the New England Puritans, he said this: "Piety, godliness, gave birth to prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother." So, in other words, as the New England Puritans got wealthy through their godliness, they lost their godliness through their wealth. Well, the same thing has happened, it seems with science. The godliness gave birth to science and science now sees to devour what gave it birth. The 1978 astrophysicist and hobby historian Michael H. Hart, wrote a provocative book called, ‘The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History’. Very provocative, very controversial. His number one most influential person of history was Muhammad. His number two was Isaac Newton, number three was Jesus Christ. Now, I don't know if Isaac Newton had genuine faith in the Triune God and the deity of Christ. Now, there's questions about that. But let's hope for his sake, that he did. Imagine him up in heaven realizing he is in second place and Jesus in third, and how amazing and ironic that would be. It shows how we in the west value science above even Christian faith. But God gives the flashes of insight, and he does it all to bless humanity, and he does it through people, and often, often cases through people who don't even acknowledge him as he's doing it. Science is a good gift from God. Should never be feared. It is a platform for a deeper worship of God. Think of Psalm 8, what David wrote in verse 3 and 4: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have made. What is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man, that you care for him?" Careful cosmological observation by David, that science led him to worship, and to be humble. And so it should be. Science is a good gift from God by studying the physical universe, we can use many useful things, helpful for life, things that can enrich our lives: electronics, medicine, aviation. Good science can also point, if you know what to look for, to the existence of God. But science also has its limitations, science can make us proud, science can make us independent of God. God has willed that is impossible for any of us to find him through science directly. Through man's wisdom alone, no one will be saved. God has willed this. We'll talk about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And it is not by science that our souls will be saved. Faith operates in a higher realm than science. Not contradicting it, not opposing it, just above it. Science cannot falsify faith claims, therefore, it cannot make any statements about the truth of those claims. You can't devise an experiment by which we can prove that God doesn't exist, or that he does. "Science cannot falsify faith claims, therefore, it cannot make any statements about the truth of those claims." God creates the laws of science for his own glory, and he is not subject to them, but rules over them for his own glory. That is my purpose today to give God glory for this, for science. So this is a bit different sermon than I usually preach. My purposes today are not apologetic, I'm not here to defend the faith to skeptics and unbelievers. So if this thing gets out on the internet and Richard Dawkins listens to it, he's not going to be persuaded by what I'm saying. I'm not talking to him, I'm talking in-house to believers. I'm talking to brothers and sisters in Christ, and saying that from this text and expanding out from the Scripture to God be the glory for everything that science has ever devised. It's a time of worship for us. So, let's try to be somewhat expositional this morning, amen? Just for a while, anyway, 15 minutes of exposition and then the rest will be topical. Okay, is that alright? Understanding the Passage in Context So this morning, we're going to start with just the passage in context and try to understand it, and then I'm gonna go off and discuss science based on it. So let's look at the context of Isaiah 28, I already preached through three-quarters of this chapter in the last sermon I was preaching a few weeks ago. We see in Isaiah 28, a judgment of God on the northern kingdom of Ephraim of Israel for their wickedness and for their sins. Sins of drunkenness and idolatry, of irreligion. And we saw in verses 9 and 10 of this chapter, that Israel's leaders were mocking Isaiah's prophecies in reference to Judah, the southern kingdom, and they were saying, "Do and do, do and do, rule and rule," etcetera. Which in the Hebrew is, “Sav lasav sav lasav, kav lakav, kav lakav”. Just yada, yada, yada, that kind of thing. And they were mocking God's word, and so God said, very ominously, "Very well then, since you won't listen to the clear prophetic word, I'll speak to you through a foreign language, I'll speak to you through men of another tongue, and they'll come to your hometown and they'll speak that language, right in your streets. And you'll understand what I'm saying to you then, the judgment of God has come at last because of your sins." Ultimately though in this chapter, they reject the rock, the foundation rock, the cornerstone, who is Jesus Christ. In verse 16, it says, this is what the Sovereign Lord says, "Behold, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious corner stone for a sure foundation, and the one who trusts in him will never be dismayed." That stone is Jesus Christ. The New Testament makes it plain, Jesus is the foundation stone for the temple, the spiritual building of God. Jesus is the cornerstone and we can trust in him, the son of God who came, who came to Earth, who was incarnate by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, who lived a sinless life, who did miracles, who taught mighty words, and who proclaimed the gospel of the coming kingdom of God. And who especially shed his blood on the cross, who died in our place, and who was raised from the dead on the third day. This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and if you believe in the Gospel, you will be saved. And friend, you may be on the outside looking in, on the outside of Christian faith looking in. You may be interested, your interest may be piqued about the whole science thing. That's not gonna save your soul. This message will. So if you hear nothing else I say, hear this, the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone saves sinners and all you need to do is trust in Jesus. Don't trust in your own works, don't trust in your own righteousness, but trust in Christ and he will give you the gift of righteousness and the gift of eternal life. The gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the gift of adoption as sons and daughters of the living God, he will give you heaven as a gift. All of these things freely as a gift. And then he'll give you a new life. When by the power of the Holy Spirit, you can work out your salvation with fear and trembling, you can put sin to death. You can do good works, as we're talking about, as Adam said that we are prepared to do good works, by involvement in a good church. We can do those good works but none of them make us any more righteous, none of them make us any more acceptable to God, none of them make us any more adopted or any more indwelt by the Holy Spirit or any more certain of going to heaven. Those things are just gifts of God. So believe the Gospel, it's a center piece of every text and of every sermon. Now, these Jewish people in those days thought, people in the southern kingdom of Judah, that they could make a covenant with death, they could make an arrangement, and that death would circumvent them, and I think they were reaching out to Egypt for military allies and all of this, they make a covenant with death, and they thought they could avoid the coming judgment, but that covenant with death would fail. Verse 18: "Your covenant with death will be annulled, your agreement with the grave will not stand. When the overwhelming scourge sweeps by, you will be beaten down by it." And the end of the section I preached there in verse 22, he says, "The Lord Almighty has told me of the destruction decreed against this whole land." So this is really, those 22 verses are dreadful and terrifying, a word of woe right at the very beginning, verse 1: "And destruction decreed against the whole land." Verse 22 it's a word of terrible warning. God Teaches Agriculture to Farmers And at the end of this chapter comes this little parable, this agricultural parable about a farmer in his land and techniques of agriculture, which you heard Tim read. Listen again to these words: "Listen and hear my voice, pay attention and hear what I say. When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil? When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cumin, does he not plant wheat in its place, barley in its plot and spelt in its field? His God instructs him and teaches him the right way. Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over cumin. Caraway is beaten out with a rod and cumin with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread, so one does not go on threshing it forever. Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it, his horses do not grind it." Verse 29: "All of this also comes from the Lord Almighty, wonderful in counsel, magnificent in wisdom." Straightforward lesson, in context. If the farmer knows when to stop plowing, how much more does God know when to stop judging his people? If the farmer knows when to stop threshing and to start making the bread, how much more does God know when enough is enough? And so it's really a word of comfort and consolation to a people about to be judged by God. God will not destroy them, he will not wipe them off the face of the earth, that's the lesson. God knows when to stop crushing his people and to start rebuilding them. So that's the point of the parable, in context. Look at the details, he begins by calling for attention, he asks for them to listen to him, in verse 23, "Listen and hear my voice, pay attention, and hear what I say." This is characteristic of wisdom literature. Where in Proverbs 1, “Wisdom”, personified wisdom, “cries aloud in the streets.” “How long will you simple ones love your foolishness. Come and listen to me and eat what is good and be wise.” It's a calling out to people to listen to wisdom. “Whoever listens to me”, Proverbs 133, "Will live in safety and be at ease without fear of harm." So it's a cry of God really to listen to his words. The lesson of the farmer's knowledge in verse 24, "When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually? Does he keep on plowing? Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil." Obviously, a question, the implied answer is, “No”, he doesn't keep on plowing forever. He knows when the plowing's done. And when all of this plowing is done, it would be a metal pointed stick maybe tipped with bronze. Eventually, they found that bronze was too soft, so then they used iron, a little bit harder, could break up the soil. That's what was happening. And then after that came the harrowing of the soil, which would be heavy logs with spikes coming out of it, chained together, and they would drag it across the plowed earth, leveling it and flattening it and smoothing it out and making it ready for the seeds. And after all of this work was done, then it was time to plant the seed, verse 25, "When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cumin? Does he not plant wheat in its place? Barley in its plot, spelt in its field?" The idea is that each seed is dealt with a different way. The very fine black cumin seeds are scattered indiscriminately over the surface, you don't have to be careful about them, they'll do just fine. So you just scatter those fine little seeds over there and they'll be fine, but larger seeds like the wheat and the barley have to be pushed down into the surface, into the prepared soil, and that's how they're going to thrive. Each seed dealt with a little bit differently. Spelt is planted at the edges of the field, because it grows up really tall and provides a natural boundary for the field, preventing animals from coming in, and other farmers knowing that that's the edge of the field. So, all of this was worked out and God knew all of this before the farmer did. He knew it all, he knew exactly what to do with agriculture. And here's the key statement in verse 26: "His God instructs him and teaches him the right way." So again, in context, the logic of the passage that the farmer knows when to stop plowing and harrowing the soil. How much more does God know when his people have had enough? He doesn't go on plowing endlessly, he knows how to leave a remnant of the Jews who aren't destroyed and from them to build his future people. He continues in the second half: "Caraway is not threshed with a sledge nor is a cartwheel rolled over cumin. Caraway is beaten out with a rod and cumin with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread, so one doesn't go on threshing it forever. Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it, his horses do not grind it." So, we move from plowing and planting then to the threshing that happens after the harvest. The same techniques are not gonna be used on small grains that you use on larger grains. With wheat and barley, you have an animal tethered to a central post, and he's dragging a heavy threshing sled with stones or bits of metal that just break it apart and separate the kernel from the husk. But you can't do that with the smaller harvest, the smaller seeds that are harvested. There you're gonna use a flail, which would be two sticks connected with a leather strap, and they beat it out. I actually, got to do this a year ago in Nepal. I wasn't very good at it. It provided a good chance for them to laugh at me and it was an opening for the Gospel. I didn't know the technique, but watching them, they were just very good at it, and they knew how to use the flail to do the threshing. Separating out the kernel from the husk. And Isaiah's point in the second half is the same as the first, the farmer knows what to do the thresh and he knows when to stop threshing and start to make the bread. He knows when enough is enough. And he ends with the same kind of statement in verse 29: "All of this also comes from the Lord Almighty, wonderful in counsel, magnificent in wisdom." God knew the science of agriculture before the farmer did and he's the one that taught it to the farmer. So how much more does he know how to deal with his people? When his people have had enough, God will stop. And so later in Isaiah in chapter 40:1-2, he'll say, very beautifully, he'll tell his prophet to tell the people: "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. And proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins”. The time has come. It's done now, there's no more judgment now, it's over. The time has come to rebuild now. So I'm gonna stop right here and just give an application of this to us. Do you realize that tenderness and the gentleness and the wisdom of God in dealing with you? That God does not burden you with more trials than you can handle, he knows when enough is enough, he knows when you can't handle anymore, he knows when to stop the trials. And say that those trials have done their work on your heart, your heart has been plowed enough, the harvest has been trashed enough, he knows when to stop. God is faithful, he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear. He knows when to stop. Twice, in Peter's Epistle, 1 Peter, he teaches this same thing, he talks about the joy that believers have in coming to faith in Christ and knowing our inheritance. This great joy that we have, this joy unspeakable and full of glory. He says, "In this salvation, you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trials." Did you hear that? Now, for a little while, you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold which perishes, even though refined by fire may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. God brings the trials into your life to purify your faith so that Jesus gets glory when he returns, but notice, he does it for a little while. The trials are necessary, but not too much of them. He knows when to stop, and he teaches the same thing at the end of the book. In 1 Peter 5:8-10, he says, "Be self-controlled and alert your enemy, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of sufferings." And God, after you have suffered for a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. Isn't that marvelous? God measures out how much Satan, the roaring lion can get at you and then he moves them aside and says, "That's enough." God is so wise in dealing with us. What are you going through right now? What is bringing pain in your life? What is causing you suffering? What are you struggling with? Understand those days, indeed those hours, minutes and seconds have been measured out by God. He is wise. He doesn't go on plowing you forever, he doesn't go on thrashing you forever. And there's gonna come a day when there's no more of any of it, no more death, mourning, crying, pain and he is preparing you for that day. So give him the glory and trust him as you're going through trials. Though you are burdened, though you may be crying, though you may be weak and weary, you should cry out to God but know this, he has measured out the days of your trials and they will not be too many. He knows when to stop. III. God Teaches All Science to Humanity Thus ends the exposition. Now we go topical. I think this passage teaches a secondary lesson, now, the thing with expositional preaching, the definition of it is that the point of the text is the point of the sermon. Well, the point of the text has been the point of the sermon up until now. But I want to take a moment and just talk about science. Just because I think it's important in 21st century America, I think it's something we Christians deal with every day. And if you're in certain settings on a college campus or in a laboratory working as a scientist or whatever, you may deal with this topic every day of your life. Science has come to dominate our culture in ways scarcely imaginable 200 years ago. Science changed everything, the way people lived, all of the externals and the patterns of our lives were changed by scientific insights, people lived about the same way for millennia, you think about the agriculture, the agrarian nature of life, the way that people would be transported from one place to another. I'm not saying there weren't some technological advances along the way but progress was very slow. Look at the Native Americans who lived in North America for centuries, basically, inheriting a way of life from their forefathers and living that out and passing it on to their children, and very little changed. And the same was true for the most part of many places around the world. But science flourished where Biblical faith grew and developed, especially New Testament faith. It flourished because we saw in the regularity of the creation, a God who created all things to be regular like that. We saw in the words of scripture, for example, right after the flood, God spoke concerning the regularity of nature, said, "As long as earth endures seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." So that regularity has come from the mind of God, from the character of God. Those things will not stop until the Earth ends. C.S. Lewis said this, "Men became scientific because they expected law in nature." And they expected law in nature because they believed in a law giver. Regions of the world dominated by animism or polytheism, or even some of the major world religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, and even Islam, did not develop in the same way that places where Christianity had taken root developed. But the west through the industrial revolution as science continued to learn and make valid insights and develop valid products and valid medicines and all that, grew to fall in love with science and forget the one who gave it. Now, what do we mean by science? Well, the scientific method is well known. You probably studied it when you were in high school, what the scientific method is: you make an observation of the surrounding world, for example, this corn is better than that corn, taller, richer, greener, just better. Then you ask a question, "Gee, I wonder why. Why is that corn better than this corn?" And you notice that some cow manure got dumped at the bottom of that corn and not at the other corn. So then you formulate a hypothesis, "Gee, I wonder if cow manure are might help the corn to grow better?" So then you craft an experiment to find out if this hypothesis could be true or not, "Tell you what I'll plant... Next year, I'll plant one tenth, 'cause I'm not sure about this idea but anyway, one tenth of my corn with cow manure in it and the rest in the regular way." And then you watch and see what happens. You analyze the data. Sure enough, the corn did grow taller and richer and better. So the next year you maybe do half of your field with cow manure and the other half not. Over a period of time, you eventually draw a tested conclusion from these experiments. You settle that conclusion, namely, cow manure helps corn grow well into a larger system of truth about agriculture, things you've already learned. And then you publish your findings to other farmers so that they can grow from it and you can grow from their observations. There my friends is science, that's what it is. That's what it does, it's been doing it for centuries now, that pattern of eight steps. But now the scientific method is coming back to devour the God who gave it to begin with, especially since Darwin published ‘The Origin of the Species’ in 1859. Scientists have become bolder in saying everything in the universe can be answered by science. Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford said this, "Science emerged from religion, as science discarded the cocoon, its cocoon to become its present butterfly, it took over the whole garden. There is no reason to suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence." Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg said this, "The world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion, anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done. And may in fact be our greatest contribution to humankind." So in other words, we are at war, science and religion are at war, and good scientists will do everything they can to win that battle. Richard Dawkins wrote a book called ‘The God Delusion’. Any of you folks deluded today? [chuckle] Deluded that there is a God. He says there's bunch of chemical reactions in the brain, he just believes in natural selection, evolution, that whole thing, he says, "Religion itself can be explained by physics." He says, "Everything in the universe can be accounted for by the blind laws of physics, and that religion is not merely a delusion but a dangerous delusion." Dawkins says this, "I'm utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into giving to religion." So, if you didn't think we're at war, we're at war, at least in the minds of some, many and this is part of the culture we live in, part of the air that we breathe. Christians can feel backed into a corner when dealing with intelligent scientists, atheistic scientists, back on our heels. Atheistic scientists claim that people resort to gods or a God when they don't understand something. It's called the ‘God of the gaps theory’. So where there's a gap in human knowledge, we stick a god or gods in there, superstitions and myths. Basically, modern atheistic scientists are saying, "We see where science is going and things we used to say the gods did, we now know why they happen. And so we see where all is is going, there's still many unanswered questions, but some day there won't be any. Some day we'll know everything, and then there'll be no God or gods at all. So why don't we just go there now? Why don't we just say, there is no God now. We see where it's going. So enough of the God of the gaps.” Well, this is sheer arrogance. Do you not see it? This is how it works, if I study some laws of cause and effect, I can say there's no God who made either cause or effect? If some superstitious people have ascribed to thunder and lightning, the activity of Zeus, and then we learn that it's very much like static discharge done by Ben Franklin and other things, we say, "Okay, I guess the clouds are rubbing into each other and creating static electricity, and that's where the thunder and lightning comes from, therefore there's no God?" How do we figure that out? How do we go from one to the next? But that's what scientists are saying. Now, Isaiah 28, the text we're looking at this morning, suggests that all of the scientific insights have been taught directly by God. That God's the one that instructs the farmer on the science of agriculture, and I'm going beyond that to say, God has taught us everything we've ever learned, everything we know, God has taught it to us. To God be the glory for the physical universe he made and the science that has studied it, and the whispering he's done in the ears of scientists along the way, in which he has instructed and taught them the right way, and that's what the text says. Look at verse 26 again, “His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.” The Hebrew words are very potent actually. The science of agriculture is the subject, God is the teacher, the farmer is the pupil. It literally says, "for" It's omitted in the NIV, but it's, "For his God instructs him and teaches him the right way." The reason he plows this way, the reason he acts way, is that God has taught in what to do. And it says very strongly, God instructs him rightly, literally, justly. So there's a justice to the agricultural science, similar to the moral law of the universe, this is the right way to handle these things. It's a very strong statement his God teaches them the just way or the right way. And then at the end, look at verse 29, "All this also comes from the Lord Almighty, wonderful in council, magnificent in wisdom.” God teaches everything. Look what it says, "Lets start with magnificent wisdom." God just knows the right way to do things, everything, and then he's wonderful in counsel. He gives advice, "Hey, why don't you try this?" So God's magnificent in these things, he knows what to do, and he tells us what would work best. Now, when did all this start? I tell you, it started back in the garden of Eden. Started right back at the beginning when God made Adam out of the dust of the earth. And it says in Genesis chapter 2, if you look, you don't have to turn there, but in verses 4 and 5, it says, "When the Lord God made the heavens and the earth, and no shrub of the field had yet sprung up. And no plant or herb of the field had yet sprung up, had not appeared on the Earth for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth. [Listen] And there was no man to work the ground." That's fascinating. Back in Genesis chapter 1 in the third day of creation, God made seed-bearing plants. The genetic code in the seed and they were gonna reproduce according to their kind, according to their seed. So he created these types of plants that could not grow, they could not develop without human cultivation. They're needed human beings, farmers to raise those particular types of plants up. And so agricultural science tells us what they are, for example, you never find corn growing in the wild ever. If you ever walk through the woods and come to a stand of corn, you know there are people nearby, and there are many other such crops. God linked those crops to human involvement. Well, then you think, "Okay, Adam gets born, made, crafted out of the dust of the earth, what does he know?" Friends, nothing. He doesn't know anything. "Well, how is he gonna know what to do with those herbs and plants of the field?" Well, his God will instruct him and teach them the right way. He'll teach him what to do. Just like Jesus said about his relationship with his father, he said, "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing on his own. He can only do what his father tells him to do. Because his father shows him everything he's doing." That intimate father-son relationship. And in Jesus's genealogy in Luke 3, it said that Adam was the son of God. And so the Father would teach the son, Adam, what to do with the garden. He would teach him how to make those crops flourish. And He put him in the garden to serve it and protect it, it literally says in Genesis 2:15, that was his job to make those crops come to their full fruition. But I'm gonna go beyond just agriculture, I think that's where it started. But remember in Genesis 2, there was a river that went through the garden and broke into headwaters, and then it goes out into different lands, and there's onyx out there, and there's aromatic resin, and there's gold, it's like, "What am I gonna do with onyx and aromatic resin and gold?" Well, God will instruct him and teach him the right way. He'll teach him what to do with all those things, what they're good for, what they're not good for. The science of the earth, dear friends, God was gonna teach it to them. And God's was gonna teach science to all humanity because it was gonna be part of our relationship, our love relationship with God, we were going to love the Lord, our God with all our heart, our soul and our mind. The first and greatest commandment. "The science of the earth, dear friends, God was gonna teach it to them. And God's was gonna teach science to all humanity because it was gonna be part of our relationship, our love relationship with God." Science is a Basis for Eternal Worship And God had filled the world with his glory. Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." And it says in Isaiah 6, the seraphim crying out, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory." And it was our job as human beings to learn that glory, to study that glory. Habakkuk 2:14 on this map out here, "The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." We were the scientists, we were the ones who were gonna study and the topic would be God. The topic would be God and his glory woven into every atom, every fiber of the universe. But then sin entered the world. Genesis chapter 3, tragically, they were drawn away, enticed by a different kind of knowledge an arrogant ambition to be like God. To know good and evil to become like God, and they ate from that tree. And God had woven and clear evidence of himself and creation, Romans 1:20, "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities –his eternal power and his divine nature – are clearly understood from what has been made." But men, now in sin, worshipping themselves really suppress or hold down that truth in unrighteousness, that there is a God, that he made all these things that creation testifies to the greatness and the existence of God. So they suppress it in unrighteousness. I find that interesting, holding It down. Came across a quote by Francis Crick, Watson and Crick were the ones that came up with the DNA double helix thing, they won the Nobel Prize for it. Guys, an arch-atheist biologist, and he said this, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." What a fascinating quote. You have to work hard when you're in the lab or just constantly keep in mind, it was not designed, but it was evolved. It was not designed, but it was evolved, you have to constantly... You have to work hard at it. Actually Richard Dawkins said this, "Living objects look designed, they look overwhelmingly as though they were designed, but they weren't.” Does that not sound like suppressing the truth and unrighteousness to you? A design means what? A designer, dear friends. And so it got worse. Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images. They exchange the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator. You wanna know the number one created thing they worship and serve? Their own brains, themselves. That's what they're worshipping, that's what they're serving. And yet for all of that, God still will to teach the human race science, he still will to do it. And so people discovered scientific truths, but now corrupt, they start to use them for evil purposes. Prime example is the Tower of Babel. Remember how they said in Genesis 11, “‘Come let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ And they covered them with tar for mortar and they said, ‘Come, let's build us a city with a tower that reaches up to the heavens so that we can make a name for ourselves.’” Oh, they're no longer living for the glory of God's name, they're living for their own name. Interestingly, God said some amazing things at that point. He said, if as one people speaking one language that they began to do this, then nothing they proposed to do will be withheld from them. God knew what he put into the mind of man and the greatness of being in the image of God and the danger at that point, so he retarded it all, slowed it down by confusing the languages. It was God that taught them the ceramics. It was God that taught them advanced building techniques. It was God that taught them these things, but they used them for wicked purposes. Now, some godly people in the Bible are scientists. A good example of this is Solomon. Solomon begged God for wisdom and God gave it to him, and it branched out into science, it branched out into a study of different types of plants and animals. In 1 Kings 4, it says that Solomon describe plant life from the Cedar of Lebanon to the hyacinth that grows out of the walls. He was a botanist, I guess. He was a biologist, he also taught about animals and birds, and reptiles and fish, a zoologist. Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon's wisdom sent by all the kings of the world who had heard of his wisdom. Even the Queen of Sheba came to test him with difficult questions, and he passed all the tests. Oral exam, PhD, oral exam, and he passed. Amazing! A scientist. And he talks about that in Ecclesiastes, he said, "So, I turned my mind," is Ecclesiastes 7:25, "I turned my mind to understand, to investigate, to search out wisdom, the scheme of things, to understand." And then 7:27, listen to this, "Look, said the teacher, this is what I have discovered. Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things." Friends, that's science is what that is, was given as a gift of God to Solomon the king. Jesus did the same thing and his teachings. Remember in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6, he talks to anxious people who are worried about food and clothing and all that sort of stuff. He said, "Why do you worry about food? Study the birds of the air, will you? Study them, watch their habits, watch their techniques. They neither sow, or reap, or store in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? And why do you worry about clothes? Study the lilies of the field. Look at them carefully. Pick one, go ahead, pick it and look at it. I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. Now, if that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith." So he's using science and goes from it to spiritual principles of God's care for us to destroy it in a very counseling kind of practical sense your anxiety about food and clothing. He does the same thing concerning his own advent, his coming to earth. He says, "You look at the weather, right? You say, look at the sky, it's red in the morning and today it'd be stormy, and then the night. It'd be fair weather for the sky is red. Now, you know how to interpret the appearance of the sky but you cannot interpret the signs of the times." So he's going to meteorology there. Oh, you guys are studying the weather patterns, why don't you study what's happening with me now? And he does that concerning his second coming, "As lightning that flashes in the east is visible in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man." So bottom line, God is the teacher of science, always has been, always will be, and science can be used to the glory of God. "God is the teacher of science, always has been, always will be, and science can be used to the glory of God." He also teaches science to atheists who give him no credit at all. Look in your Bible a few pages up to Isaiah 45:3-7…Wow, I have two spiders on my microphone here, that is freaky. So, I study of them? What do you think? I don't know. Look into them, into the science. I think there's only... No, there's two of them. Where did it go? That's creepy. Pray for me. Anyway, he says to Cyrus the Great, an empire builder from Persia. This is Isaiah 45:3-7, he says this to him, "I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel who summons you by name. I summon you by name and I bestow on you a title of honor though you do not acknowledge me. [Do you see that?] I am the Lord and there is no other apart from me, there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me so that from the rising of the sun to the place of it setting, men may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness; I bring prosperity and create disaster. I the Lord, do all these things." So, God will open the treasures of scientific darkness and give those riches to people who do not acknowledge him. And he does it, I think, in a common grace blessing, like causing the sun to rise on the righteous and the unrighteous, and sending rain on those who acknowledge him and those who don't. And he does this for his own purpose, even to people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now, later in Isaiah 45, you still there. Look at it in verse 15, it says, "Truly, you are a God who hides himself, oh, God and Savior of Israel." God teaches science to atheists and hides himself so that they do not actually know him. Deeper, God uses science to control human history. He gives scientific insights to some peoples and not to others, and in this way causes some nations to rise up higher than others, for his own sovereign purposes. No one from the East to the West can exalt a man, only God can do that, that's Psalm 75. And the Apostle Paul in Athens on Mars Hill, said to those philosophers, those scientists of Athens, said this, "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth. And he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live." How does God control these things? Well, without them knowing it, God directs the minds of the rulers or of the scientists, whatever way he chooses, he has that power to do it. So he'll give an insight on steel, or gunpowder, or free market economies, or other things, and causes some nations to rise up higher than others, for his own purposes, for his own glory. And as science advances, it advances by what they call eureka moments, moments flashes of insight, like Isaac Newton's apple. I don't know if it hit him on the head, but it made him think. The word ‘eureka’ is Greek for "I've found it." It comes from Archimedes who figured out how to discover if the king's crown was made of pure gold or not. When he lowered himself into a tub and the water spilled out, and he thought a specific gravity could sink the crown in there and figured out its density that way. Amazing, eureka, I've found it! Well, what he should have said, Isaiah 28, is, “He taught it to me. Thank you, God.” God showed me what to do with specific gravity, and has happened again and again, 1% inspiration, moments of inspiration, God says, "Try this, try this, try this." Whispering in the ears of the scientist, whether they acknowledge him or not. So, there was a scientist working for 3M and they had developed an adhesive that was very weak, didn't hold very well, they didn't know what to do with it. So he's in church and he's singing, and his bookmark keeps sliding out of hymnal, it just keeps sliding down the page. Eureka! Post-it note. Any of you ever used a post-it note? It was in church while the guy was singing. Or another guy goes walking with his dog through the woods and after the walk, he sees a bunch of birds hitchhikers on his sock, his woolen sock. He looks at it for a while, plucks it off, looks at it under a microscope and discovers velcro. These are true stories. Science Magazine Top 10 Eureka moments, Aha moments. Of course, number one was Alexander Flemming discovering antibiotics when a bread mold killed a bunch of bacteria. Albert Einstein himself, who went beyond Newtonian physics in about the same way that Newton discovered the first level of physics. He's in a Swiss Patent Office in 1907, and he starts thinking about people falling. And he thought, "If a man falls freely, he would not feel his own weight." And he began thinking about that and started to develop the general theory of relativity. Now took him eight years of mathematics, but God worked it through him and he gave it to him. And to God be the glory for all of us. Now, someday, friends, our minds are gonna be fixed, our hearts are gonna be fixed, we're gonna live in heaven and the world is gonna be filled with the glory of God, and Jesus will be the lamp of the glory of God, and everything we see will radiate with the glory of God, and our minds will see it, and we will study it, and we will give directly God the glory for all of it, for eternity, and the earth will be filled at last with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the earth. The Limitations of Science But there are limitations to science. Science cannot produce faith, it cannot save your soul. Luke 17:20, Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation." So you're careful observation will not bring the kingdom of God. And even better, 1 Corinthians 1:21, "For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God. God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." Alright, just to unravel that, 1 Corinthians 1:21, it was wise for God to set up a world where science couldn't find him. It was wise for God to set up a system where you could only be saved by believing Christ and him crucified. It was wise for God to do that. So no scientists can inch their way toward God by the scientific process, but faith comes by hearing the gospel in that way alone. Conversely, however, science cannot disprove our faith. It's amazing the arrogant statements made by that. There's no experiment that they can put together to disprove the existence of God. Science is not God's master, God is science's master. God makes laws, but he can break them any time he wants. Amen, Hallelujah. And Jesus broke them a lot: they're called miracles. Alright, he walks on water. What happened to specific gravity there? What happened to gravity itself? Jesus could do anything. Then interestingly, after he walked on water, what did he do? Got in the boat. So both of them are gods, that ordinary technology of flotation and boat development and all that, God's in favor of it. That's our usual way. But he is not behold into it, he can use the boat or not as he chooses. And after his resurrection he flouted the laws of nature again and again, goes right through the walls of the tomb, didn't need the angel to come and move the stone, he was gone already by then. He goes, though the doors are locked for fear of the Jews right through the walls as he chooses. He's eating with the two disciples on the road to a Emmaus, and he break bread and their eyes are opening he disappears. Where did he go? Don't know, next place. And after 40 days of instruction, he's there on the Mount of Olives and he just floats up to heaven until a cloud hides him from their site. Applications So, he made the laws but he didn't have to follow them. And science can be a basis of worship, it cannot lead us to faith and it can make us arrogant and independent and unthankful. We know 1 Corinthians 8:1, that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something, doesn't yet know as he ought to know. Jeremiah 9, this is what the Lord says, "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, or the strong man boast of his strength, or the rich man boast of his wealth. But let him who boast, boast about this, that he understands and knows me." Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to study. I pray that these words, some sense they've been long and some sense too short, but that they would be used by you to give us a sense of the glory of God in creation and in science. And I pray that you'd help us to be courageous when we preach the Gospel to our generation and to give you the glory for everything that you've done, in Jesus name. Amen.

This Day in Skepticism: Murray Gell-Mann and Alexander Flemming; News Items: Sun Myung Moon Dies, Company Apologies for Thalidomide, Super WiFi, Calorie Restriction and Longevity; Special Report: A Skeptical 12 Step Program; Science or Fiction; Skeptical Quote of the Week

This Day in Skepticism: Murray Gell-Mann and Alexander Flemming; News Items: Sun Myung Moon Dies, Company Apologies for Thalidomide, Super WiFi, Calorie Restriction and Longevity; Special Report: A Skeptical 12 Step Program; Science or Fiction; Skeptical Quote of the Week

The Pressure of a Guilty Conscience All week long I've been looking forward to this moment, looking forward to the joy of preaching the power of the blood of Christ to cleanse a guilty conscience. What an incredible gift we have in the Gospel. And I think if we really have the ability spiritually to perceive the burdens, the pressures of the people around us, we would realize that the issue of a guilty conscience is one of the biggest issues of human life and experience. We have a sense inwardly that we are guilty and it presses on us; it's an affliction. And it comes up throughout culture and music and literature. Some of you perhaps can remember in high school when you were reading Shakespeare's plays and Macbeth, one of the darker plays, but Lady Macbeth urges her vacillating husband to kill Duncan, so that he can seize the throne for himself. And she assures her husband, just a little water will clear us of the deed. But it's not so easy after the man's murder. Lady Macbeth herself afflicted with a guilty conscience, sleep walking at night, having nightmares, rubbing her hands, rubbing them, rubbing them, as if to clean them of some substance and says very famously, "Out, out damn spot, out I say." And she can't get rid of it. Who knew that the man had so much blood in him. She's actually thinking about the actual shedding of the blood, and the murder, and she just can't get it out of her mind. She is absolutely afflicted by a guilty conscience and in the end, she commits suicide. Or again, Edgar Allen Poe's story, the dark tale, The Tell-Tale Heart, a man murders another man and the neighbors hear some noises, and a policeman comes and he had hid the body under the floorboards of the very room that the policeman and he are talking. And as they're having this discussion, this murderer hears louder and louder and louder the beating of this dead man's heart until, finally, he can't stand it anymore and just rips up the floor boards and shows the policeman where the body is hidden. Well, those are literature tales. I think that I'm preaching today to people who know very well, intimately well, the power of a guilty conscience. And it's my joy and privilege as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to proclaim liberty or freedom for the captives today, in the name of Jesus Christ. And so, what better work could there be of any preacher of the Gospel as we come to Hebrews Chapters nine and 10, I think we really come to the glowing center of this magnificent epistle. This is the theological, the weighty center of the Book of Hebrews. Context: The Supremacy of Christ in All Things Now we've already seen the supremacy of Christ. Christ is superior to all of the Old Testament prophets. He's superior to the angels, who were the mediators of the Old Covenant. He's superior to Moses, who was the human mediator, who was just a servant in all God's house, but Christ the Son over God's house. He's superior to Joshua who brought the people into a physical promised land but could not ensure that they stay there. He's superior to Aaron and to Levi and that Levitical priestly system that was set up under the law of Moses, which had no actual power for the cleansing and the forgiveness of sins. He's even superior to Abraham who in some mysterious way, paid a tithe, or Levi paid a tithe through Abraham. And so, therefore, Abraham is seen to be in some way inferior to Melchizedek who represents Christ. So we see the supremacy, the superiority of Christ. But what is the point of all that? It's that this superior Christ brings us a superior covenant by which we are saved. And the nature of that priestly work of Christ is the focus in Hebrews 9 and 10. And so in this text today, we're going to see the superiority of Christ and His priestly work, superior in it's location as He offers His sacrifice in heaven, not on earth. That the blood itself that He offers is superior. It's the precious blood of Christ, superior to the blood of bulls and goats, and calves. We're going to see the achievement and the effectiveness of Christ's priestly ministry and how it results ultimately in us serving the living God with clear consciences. And so that is the delight that's in front of us today. I. The Perfect Place: Heavenly, Not Earthly (vs. 11) Look at Verse 11, as the author gives us this. He says, "When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, He went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say not a part of this creation." So the author is dealing here with the perfect place of Christ's mediating work as our high priest. It is heavenly and not earthly. The author gives us this title "Christ." The word Christ is the Greek word for Anointed One or Messiah. And Christ was anointed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, the eternal Spirit is going to come up later in this morning's message, but in every case, the Old Testament offices, prophet, priest, and king were anointed offices. King Saul, King David, King Solomon, were anointed with oil for their office. Elijah anointed Elisha with the oil as prophet in his place, and so the prophet was an anointed office. Aaron was anointed with a special anointing oil as priest. These were anointed offices and the anointing, I think, in every case refers to the ministry of the Holy Spirit through these offices. And so Christ now, specifically His office as priest, is in focus here and it is an anointed office. When Christ came, it says, as high priest, our anointed high priest. And the word came here, implies in the Greek a certain appearance, when He appeared when He showed up or presented Himself as high priest. A sense almost of a majestic fanfare like trumpets, "Here at last is the high priest, and He is appearing for us." Now, it could refer to His incarnation, when He was born, of the Virgin Mary, but I don't think so. It could refer to the day in which He presented Himself to Israel or John the Baptist spoke and said "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But I don't think so. I think here is Christ presenting Himself to our Holy Father. Our Heavenly Father, on our behalf, is our high priest in heaven when Christ appeared in the heavenly realms, and it speaks here of the good things that are already here. Christ the mediator of a new covenant, who has come to bring us as it says in Ephesians, "Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms." Oh, those are good things. Are they not? And they are already here, now that Christ has come. Jesus is the mediator of this New Covenant, which brings us rich blessings. A treasure trove of spiritual things, these good things that are already here. And they've been here now for 2000 years, we are in the new covenant era and Christ came as the mediator of this new covenant. It says He went through a greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made man made. Now, we've already looked at the beginning of this chapter, at the physical tabernacle. The Old Covenant tabernacle. It was a tent made of linen and animal skins and acacia wood poles, and precious metals and different things, but it was earthly it was man made; it was a shadow and a type of the perfect tabernacle that is in heaven. And so I think it represents the heavenly throne room of God. The true Holy of Holies, the true Holy Place or most Holy Place, where Jesus has now appeared for us on our behalf, this greater and more perfect tabernacle. And it says, He went through this. There's a sense of the movement of Jesus. And so I picture here in some amazing and powerful spiritual way Jesus moving through the heavenly realms. He has passed through the heavens, it says in Hebrews 4:12, He is exalted above the heavens, it says in Hebrews 7:26, Jesus went through this greater and more perfect tabernacle, the heavenly one that which is not part of this creation. So we see the superiority of the work of Christ in the location. He is ministering for us in the heavenly realms before the very presence of God. II. The Perfect Sacrifice: Christ’s Own Blood (vs. 12) Secondly, we see the perfect sacrifice of Jesus in verse 12, it says there that "He did not enter by means of the blood of bulls and goats or goats and calves, but He entered the most holy place, once for all, by His own blood." So the question here is this issue of entrance, the entrance of the high priest into the most holy place, definitely picking up on the echoes of that day of atonement, that one day a year in which the high priest was enabled, empowered, permitted to go into the most holy place where the presence of God was. The Ark of the Covenant, the cherubim of glory, sends the picture of the presence of God amongst his people. That one day a year, he was able to enter to go in into the presence of God. By what right did he enter? Well, he brought in the blood of animals under the Mosaic Law, but this high priest, our perfect high priest, did not so enter. He entered by means of His own blood. What right did he have? By what means did he enter? That's the question in front of us. And so the issue there is the perfect holiness of God and the wickedness and sinfulness of man. What right did we have to stand in the presence of God? And this mediator, what right does he have to bring us sinful as we are into the very presence of Almighty God? Our God is holy. As we saw last week, He is a consuming fire, he sits on a throne, that's all ablaze, it's wheels are all ablaze, Daniel Chapter seven, a river of fire flowing from that throne representing the judgement and the righteousness the holiness of God and what right did this high priest have to enter into His presence? And so there's a sense of the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man and the requirement of blood sacrifice. Blood sacrifice is essential for this high priest to enter, as it was essential for the Levitical priest to enter. And so we must have the blood. And so, the contrast here is the blood of animals versus the blood of Jesus Christ. "He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves. But He entered the most holy place, once for all, by His own blood." And so we come at last to this issue, the necessity, the absolute necessity of blood sacrifice. Now, historically in science, it was Anton van Leeuwenhoek in the 17th century who first started studying blood itself, biologically. Blood cells, the movement of blood and capillaries. And up to that point, the microscope had been somewhat of a toy, but he used it for scientific advancement. He was studying blood and trying to understand the connection between blood and life. But it's not the biology of blood that's of interest to us here; it's the theology of blood. Blood Necessary for Atonement And it's very, very plain here in the Book of Hebrews that "without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness" of sins. And it goes all the way back to Leviticus 17:11, and there in the Law of Moses, says very plainly, "The life of the creature is in the blood. And I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar. It is the blood that makes atonement for one's life." And so God set up this principle of the connection between the shedding of blood and atonement or forgiveness. There's an absolute connection between the two. And so it is by the means of Christ's own blood that He enters. And what is this connection? Well, it's the death penalty for sin from the very beginning, God commanded forbad Adam from eating of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and He put the death penalty in connection with that, with that prohibition. Said, "You shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die." And so it says in Ezekiel 18, "The soul who sins will die." "The wages of sin is death." And so, it isn't just blood per se, but it's the pouring out of blood, it's the death of the substitute that's in view here. And only by the shedding of this blood can forgiveness be worked, but Christ blood, His own blood is what He had to offer not the blood of animals, the infinite superiority, I say the preciousness of the blood of Christ is what's in front of us in the text. The Apostle Peter puts it this way. "You know that it was not with perishable things such as silver gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but it was with the precious blood of Christ, the lamb without blemish or defect." What is it that makes something precious? I tell you that the blood of Jesus Christ is the most precious substance there has ever been. The most valuable substance. What makes something valuable? I think it's rarity combined with a certain usefulness to the human race or a certain beauty or attractiveness. Gold is precious because it's both rare and beautiful, attractive for jewelry and for other purposes, and so it's precious. So also diamonds are considered precious because they're rare and they're beautiful. And can be used for jewelry or for other scientific purposes. Oil is not beautiful, it doesn't smell good, but it is precious because it's somewhat rare and it's the most efficient energy supply that the human race has ever found. It's tremendously efficient fuel and so it's incredibly valuable. And so we see the preciousness. Sometimes medications can be incredibly precious if they're difficult to manufacture and they're in demand. I read some time ago about not just the discovery of penicillin, but how it was mass-produced and what a journey it was from when Alexander Flemming first discovered that penicillin could kill these bacteria in the dish. From that observation to when it was actually available as a medicine was a long journey, was very, very difficult; it was extremely expensive to make penicillin. As a matter of fact, the first patient that ever received penicillin was a British man, who cut himself shaving and then got infected and he was dying from the infection, and so they gave him what penicillin they had available, and it was remarkably effective for a while. But they ran out of the supply and in the end, the infection resumed even more powerfully and the man died. And so the big press at that point was to manufacture more and more penicillin. But I tell you in the final hours of that man's life, the most precious substance in the world for him would have been penicillin. Well, how much more than the blood of Jesus Christ. There not only our physical lives hang in the balance but our eternity as well. It is by the precious blood of Christ that we sinners can stand blameless and unafraid with clear consciences before Almighty God, how precious is that? It is the most precious substance there has ever been on Earth and so it is by faith in the blood of Jesus that we are cleansed of our sins. And Romans 3:25, says it quite directly, God presented Christ, "presented him as a propitiation through Faith in His blood." The word propitiation means, a sacrifice that removes the wrath of God, and it is by faith, by simple faith in the blood of Jesus, that all of your sins are forgiven, that you're not any longer under the wrath of God. And so there is this complete link between the blood and our forgiveness. Now, modern sensibilities recoil from that. The picture of a bloody Jesus on the cross is repulsive. And some churches have chosen to kind of hide that a bit. I was reading once of a church that was trying to do everything they could to make the gospel comfortable to the non-Christians that were invited and so they were trying to take away any offensive images any offensive language. Well, there was a new worship leader there, and he did a set of songs that all focused on the blood of Christ and this Pastor, this lead pastor actually got up and apologized for all the blood images has said it wouldn't happen again. Dear friends, I will never apologize for the blood of Jesus, it will always happen again in this pulpit because it is only by faith and the blood of Jesus, that we can be forgiven. The picture of Jesus bloody on the cross has never been appealing or attractive. It wasn't meant to be. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him. Nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. It says in Isaiah 52 that he was so disfigured and marred beyond human likeness. King shut their mouths and were appalled at His appearance, and "so will He sprinkle many nations." It has never been attractive, the bloody Jesus, but it is by faith in this blood that we are made whole. It is by faith His blood that we are forgiven of all of our sins. And by that perfect means, Jesus enters once for all that most holy place. He doesn't need to enter again and again, the work is done. He has entered and he stands there in our presence, pleading the merits of his blood. III. The Perfect Achievement: Our Eternal Redemption (vs. 12) And so we see the perfect achievement of this in Verse 12, and that is our eternal redemption. "He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but He entered the most holy place, once for all, by his own blood having obtained eternal redemption." That is the perfect achievement of the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. He has achieved or attained for us eternal redemption. Now, what does that mean, what is redemption? Well, the idea of redemption is a huge issue in the Bible in the old covenant. The idea is the rescue of a captive by the payment of a price. So in our understanding, you could think about someone that's been kidnapped and being held for ransom, and that person's in captivity, they're in danger, and the price has to be paid to deliver them. Or in the old testament world, there's the issue of slavery, bondage, and so the idea of redemption is of buying someone out of that bondage so that that individual can either be free or serve another master. And so that is the image of redemption. When the Jews were delivered from Egypt. When God, by His mighty hand and His outstretched arm delivered them, he did it by means of 10 supernatural plagues on the whole land of Egypt and the final plague was the most dreadful, the most terrifying one. God had said to Pharaoh, I told you to let Israel, as my first-born son, I told you let my first-born son go. But since you won't then I will kill your first born son. And so the plague on the first born, all the first born of Egypt, of man and of animals, were plagued. And the implication was clear that the first born among the Jews also deserved to die, but a plan was made whereby the first born could be redeemed, by the blood of the Passover lamb. And so the Passover lamb was sacrificed and they were redeemed from the judgment of God. So that's another issue of redemption, not just gotten out of being kidnapped, or being a slave, but under the judgment of God, to be redeemed from the judgment of God. And so God made it plain from that point on, effectively saying, "I want you to know all of the first born are mine, and they have to be redeemed." And so they would be redeemed either by animal sacrifice or by the payment of a price. So what is our redemption? It is the blood of Jesus Christ. The valuable blood of Jesus is the price that was paid to redeem us from slavery to sin and death, to free us from guilt, to free us from wrath and judgment. So it says in Ephesians 1:7, "In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins." And there in Ephesians 1:7, there's a direct connection between redemption and forgiveness and the cost is His blood. The perfect consistency of the Bible on this topic, we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and we are forgiven. And as a result of that, now having been delivered from bondage to sin and death, we are now free to serve another master. We are not our own master. No, it says in 1 Corinthians 6, "You are not your own, you were bought at a price, therefore honor God with your body." God is our master now. Sin used to be our master, death used to be our master. Now we've been delivered, redeemed from that so that we can serve the living God. He is our new master, and will be for all eternity. It says in Revelation that his servants will serve Him. And so we have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus. But there is one extra word that I don't want to skip. "Having obtained eternal redemption." Eternal redemption. We are eternally redeemed. If you were forgiven yesterday, you're forgiven today. If you're forgiven today, you will be forgiven tomorrow and for all eternity. God doesn't change his mind on this. You are completely free from all guilt if you are free indeed. And if you have come to Christ, if you have believed in Him, you were free 10 years ago, you're free five years ago, you're free today, and you'll be free for a millennia, yet to come. It is an eternal redemption that Christ has bought for us. IV. The Perfect Effectiveness: Our Cleansed Consciences! (vs. 13-14) How valuable is that and see, therefore, the perfect effectiveness of the work of Christ in verses 13 and 14, says there "The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean, sanctify them so they are outwardly clean. How much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death." So we have here the effectiveness of Christ's sacrifice before us and the author is using a "How much more" argument, he's comparing the effectiveness of Old Covenant sacrifices in their time to the effectiveness of the blood of Jesus Christ now, and he's using a how much more argument. So how effective were those old covenant sacrifices? Well, in order to understand this, you have to understand the issue of ceremonial unclean-ness. Back in the old covenant, there was such a thing as ceremonial unclean-ness. If something happened to you in everyday life, or something in some way had defiled you through sin, could be an accidental thing or it could be a volitional thing, you would be considered unclean and you had to become ceremonially clean in order to enter into the assembly of the people of God and continue to worship with them. You were excluded from the assembly of the worshippers while you were unclean, and so it could be you had an emission of blood or other bodily fluid that would make you unclean, you could have a sore that wasn't healing, and so lepers were continually unclean, they couldn't come into the presence of God. It could be that you touched a carcass that day, a dead body and you were ceremonially unclean. I think there are over 125 uses of the word unclean. In the Book of Leviticus, Book of Leviticus is about holiness and about unclean-ness. And so if you are priest, you might actually spend a lot of time dealing with the issue of unclean-ness looking at wounds and sores and bleeding things and all that to determine if the person was clean or not and could enter into the assembly of the righteous, and continue to worship. And so what the author says here is that the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer when sprinkled on those who, up to that point had been ceremonially unclean, when that happened, when that ritual happened they were now considered clean and they could actually, in real life, enter the assembly of the righteous, and continue to worship; it was effective. It actually cleans them and enable them to worship the living God. So the author then says, "Well if that's true, and you can see when you've got goats, bulls and ashes, something so low something so earthy compared to the blood of the eternal Son of God," and we can see the argument that he's making. "How much more then will the blood of Jesus cleanse our consciences?" Now, look at this phrase he gives right in the middle here. How much more will Jesus, the blood of Christ who, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself unblemished to God? What an incredible statement this is. First, just the idea of the Spirit's ministry through Jesus the spirit anointed Jesus he is the Christ anointed by the Spirit and covered him all the way through his ministry from beginning to end, and so it was by the power of the Spirit and He is called here the eternal Spirit. And so we have the doctrine I think of the Trinity here, God the Father is eternally Father God the son is eternally son, and here we have the eternal Spirit, the eternity of God, and so through this eternal spirit, Jesus offered Himself unblemished and so the Spirit is on Jesus from beginning to end, it was by the power of the Spirit that the Virgin Mary conceived, it was by the Spirit that Jesus was baptized when he was baptized by John the Baptist, the spirit was there, and descended as a dove. It was by the Spirit that Jesus was driven out into the desert to be tempted by the Devil for 40 days and the implication of this phrase, it is by the Spirit that Jesus continued unblemished through his life and so he returned in the power of the spirit after the 40 days, sinless and holy, and it's by the Spirit that He stood up in that synagogue in Nazareth and the scroll of Isaiah was unrolled and by the Spirit, He proclaimed the good news to the captives, so it was by the spirit that Jesus said all of his teaching, it was by the holy spirit that Jesus did all of his miracles, the miracles of Jesus, were by the Holy Spirit of God. But especially in view here, it is by the Spirit that Jesus died on the cross, and by the Spirit, he presents that blood un-blemished presents that blood to God on our behalf, this is a Spirit saturated ministry of Jesus, there is a perfect unity between the Father, the Son and the Spirit and the work of redemption isn't that beautiful, magnificent expression is by the Spirit that He offered Himself unblemished to God. And so how much more will the blood of Jesus cleanse our guilty consciences. Now, we come at last to this beautiful phrase. "How much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death." So what is the conscience? What are we talking about when we come to the issue of conscience? Well, I think the conscience is hardwired into us as part of our human nature. It's part of what it means to be a human being. And so every human being on the face of the earth has a conscience, and what the conscience does is it learns some system of morality, it takes that system of morality and applies it to your life and it urges you to do what's right and to avoid doing what's wrong. It's true all over the world. And then judges your behavior after the fact. And so after it's done, then the conscience testifies to you that you're either guilty or not guilty in what you did as far as you understand based on that system of morality you learned. Now, the conscience isn't a perfect guide because if the system of morality that feeds into it is faulty then the conscience will accuse people wrongly for something they shouldn't have been doing anyway. Like a Pagan who fails to offer a ritual sacrifice at a certain time may feel guilty but not before God; God didn't command that. But the issue of conscience is there all the time. Pressing on us, telling us to do what's right and to avoid doing what's wrong or saying you did right or you did wrong. It's right there. Now, of course, also if we continue to sin in a certain way, you can sear the conscience, so it doesn't really speak that much anymore. You don't listen to it. And that can happen, but it's still an issue. And all over the world, people are struggling with guilty consciences. And I tell you there is only one remedy. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. That's got to involve the guilty conscience. How can I be whole again and feel happy again and be healed, in reference to sin? Only the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fountain I know nothing but the blood of Jesus and so only by the blood of Jesus can our guilty consciences be cleansed. It's an issue throughout Scripture. It was a guilty conscience that made Adam and Eve run from the sound of God, remember, as they're hiding behind the trees. It was a guilty conscience that may Cain lie about what he'd done with Able; he knew what he did was wrong. It was a guilty conscience that made David to cover up the sin, by killing Uriah the Hittite, he laid with another man's wife, she conceived and became pregnant and then he tried to cover it up by killing Uriah and then, I believe for probably as much as a year, he hardened his heart and would not listen to God. And so in Psalm 32, it says. "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long, for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer." That's that the plague of a guilty conscience. It was a guilty conscience that made Martin Luther flee after a lightning storm in Germany and join a monastery and try to work off the guilt of his conscience by good works in the medieval Catholic style. But nothing worked, nothing worked. And so the guilty conscience... And I say that I'm not speaking just about biblical history or church history, I'm probably speaking about your history. It could be I'm talking to somebody right now who has come in here today with a guilty conscience and you're struggling, and you feel the pressure of it, and the weight of it. And this text says very, very plainly that the blood of Jesus is effective to clear, to clean your guilty conscience. It is a powerful force for the cleansing of a guilty conscience. V. The Result: Service to the Living God (vs. 14) So the result of this is service to the living God. Look at verse 14. It says, "The blood of Christ… cleanses our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God." The word serve here means worship I think, literally. It's an issue of worship. So it's literal. It means worship. So that we can basically... Now that we're cleansed, enter into the assembly of the righteous, and worship God. And so I don't think it's just the issue of corporate worship here, but it's your whole life given over to worshipping God, and serving Him, and how much more than when you die, to enter the assembly of the holy in heaven, the spirits of righteous men made perfect and join in the worship there. And so the blood of Jesus is powerful to cleanse our guilty consciences from acts that lead to death from those sinful, wicked things so that we may serve the living God. So let me ask you directly, how is it with your conscience today? Let me speak first to a non-Christian. It could be that God brought you here today, specifically, to hear this message and to hear the freedom that the blood of Jesus can give you. The text mentions acts that lead to death; those are sins where you violate the laws of God. And perhaps it's something in your past, something you know that is wicked and sinful. You haven't even told people about it, nobody knows, but it's submerged in your life and you feel guilty and you can't get rid of that guilt. You've come to the right place. Come to the cross, come to Jesus. The shedding of Christ's blood is sufficient to free a guilty person from sin. And so all you need to do is just trust in Jesus through faith in the blood of Christ your sins are forgiven. Well, what about for a Christian? Is it possible for a Christian to have a guilty conscience? And how does the conscience connect to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin? Well, as I said, the conscience is hardwired in. It's part of what it means to be a human being. You don't lose that when you become a Christian. What happens is the conscience begins a new education and a new moral system, a system of God's holy laws, and now it's pressing you to do what's right as it understands the laws of God, and it stands over you and judges you. But I think in this way, sometimes the conscience needs to be educated. Hey, conscience, I'm free. Hey, conscience, I'm sinless and holy now, you don't need to accuse me anymore, I've already come to the cross. Sometimes you just have to preach to yourself and tell your conscience that you're out from under the guilt and you've come at last you received eternal redemption, not just seven-week redemption or seven-year redemption, you're already redeemed you've been redeem and you're going to keep being redeemed. But does that mean the conscience doesn't have something still the say to us now it does, because Christian still do sin, and when you sin, your conscience will do its work. It'll speak up and say that was wrong and the Spirit will use that. The question is what to do. Do you wallow and guilt? Or do you come quickly to the cross and do you first John 1:9, Confess your sins to God If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so with this work of the conscience, we also resolve, as Paul says, "I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man." He's speaking as a redeemed Christian. He's not speaking as someone who needs to be educated on the atonement; he knows. And he says, because of what Christ has done for me, I strive every day to keep my conscience clear before God of man. In another place, he says, "My conscience is clear but that doesn't make me innocent," so he's not trusting the conscience, but he's striving every day to not do defiling acts, those acts that lead to death, but instead to lead a godly and an upright life. And so it could be you're sitting here today and you know exactly what's making you feel guilty. Maybe you had an argument with your spouse or a family member. Maybe this week, you've defiled yourself on the internet. Looked at internet pornography. Maybe you have been prideful or angry or selfish maybe you've been unforgiving. Maybe you've bickered. It could even be something that you really have never dealt with years ago and you starting get convicted by the spirit about it and you feel guilty about it; it doesn't mean you do nothing. We bring those things right to God, we bring them in confession to Christ and we say, "Lord, I've done this thing, I'm guilty, I've sinned against you, please forgive me." And you receive the ministry of the Holy Spirit and assuring you that you are a child of God, that all of your sins are forgiven, the blood of Jesus is sufficient for you. And then by the power of the Spirit you resolve to walk in holy obedience to His commands and the pattern of the New Testament teach you. You're not going to continue to do that same thing. You're going to actually bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance. You're going to fight the good fight of faith and not defile your conscience. Oh, the freedom that this text offers us, how sweet it is to stand today as children of the living God, the joy in our hearts, the accusations of a guilty conscience are addressed through the ministry of the blood of Jesus. Jesus is at the right hand of God and are seating for you, your faith is strengthened by the Word of God. And now we even get to partake in the Lord's Supper. And when you hold that little cup of grape juice, when you look into that purple fluid, it's supposed to remind you of the blood of Jesus. You're supposed to think about the blood that was shed for you. You're supposed to think, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness; it's just juice. It doesn't magically change into the blood of Christ. But by the Spirit's ministry, by the ministry of the word, as you're looking at that, you can think, powerfully, "Jesus shed His blood for me, the precious blood of Christ, and I am clean." And if you have some work to do with your conscience, do it before you partake. Please don't partake if you're not born again, if you've never come to faith in Christ and testified to it by water baptism, just refrain. But, instead believe the Gospel, trust in Jesus while you're while you're watching others partake and then next opportunity you'll have a chance to partake. But let's praise God now for the joy that we have in Christ of full redemption through the blood of Jesus. Please close this portion with me in prayer.

This Father's Day message centers around James 1:16-18. Love naturally flows down hill but it takes supernatural help to reciprocate back up hill!

This Father's Day message centers around James 1:16-18. Love naturally flows down hill but it takes supernatural help to reciprocate back up hill!

This Father's Day message centers around James 1:16-18. Love naturally flows down hill but it takes supernatural help to reciprocate back up hill!

This Father's Day message centers around James 1:16-18. Love naturally flows down hill but it takes supernatural help to reciprocate back up hill!