Thomas E Kresal – (20+) Facebook

‘Science VS MILLIONS OF YEARS OF EVOLUTION � OBSERVABLE TESTABLE M REPEATABLE FALSIFIABLE OBSERVABLE ODeENMADLE TESTABLE TEOTARL REPEATABLE AIAULL FALSIFIABLE RELIGION: AN INTEREST, BELIEF, OR AN ACTIVITY THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO A PERSON OR GROUP. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary’

Bill Taylor God has arranged that many scientific discoveries support the divine origin of the Bible, particularly the first 5 books. The section “The first three words” in https://successful-marriage.blogspot.com/…/what-drove…shows how discoveries in astronomy going back to Sir Isaac Newton confirm the Bible. What do you think?

THE FIRST THREE WORDS – GOD IS GREAT – CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE >>>> Marriage Under Threat: What Drove Jesus’ 11 Nobodies to Turn the World Upside-Down? (successful-marriage.blogspot.com)

The first three words – “God is great” are obvious.  Atheists who say the world came about by random chance from nothing speak of the marvels of creation.  If God existed, He would obviously be great.  The Bible begins, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth.”  We see God in His works:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.  Psalm 19:1

God knew that unbelief would come and that people of “science falsely so called (1 Tim. 6:20)” would tell Christians that the Bible is full of unscientific fairy tales.

But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.  2 Timothy 3:13

God arranged many scientific discoveries to prove what He wrote in the Bible.  You needn’t understand quantum math or physics in detail, but you can tell others that the Biblical account of creation and Moses’ laws contain information nobody knew until recently.  That shows that the Bible came from God.

Sir Isaac Newton, who wrote down laws of motion and invented calculus, said, “When I see a watch, I think of a watchmaker.”  If you found a wristwatch, you wouldn’t think the watch had formed by little bits of metal, gears, springs, and whatnot coming randomly together to form the watch.  You’d think a watchmaker made it and someone lost it.  Sir Isaac knew that random creation of our complicated, precise, and orderly solar system was silly, but he thought his “watchmaker God” wound up the universe and left it alone.

Sailors could predict high and low tides; astronomers could predict eclipses and keep the calendar lined up with the seasons by following the lights God gave “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years (Gen. 1:14).”  Sir Isaac believed that the motion of every planet was completely predictable with his laws – once you knew how God started the solar system, you could always predict where planets would go.

Sir Isaac was wrong.  Physicists learned that if there were only three planets in the entire universe, just three, you cannot predict where they will go.  We can’t solve what’s called the “three body problem.”  Sir Isaac didn’t know that the universe is not predictable from his understanding of God’s laws of gravity.

“And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. (Col. 1:17)”  “Consist” was completed in the past but the word emphasizes the ongoing results in the present.  Jesus’ word created the universe.  His action continues into the present, He keeps it going “by the word of his power (He. 1:3).”  God is great indeed.

It seems that the universe operates automatically.  Rivers run down to the sea, water evaporates and comes back as rain (Ecc. 1:7).  Stars and planets stay in their orbits.  Sir Isaac’s idea of a watchmaker God who wound it up and let it go seems reasonable, but the Bible teaches that God keeps the universe going; He didn’t set it up and let it go, He stayed involved.  That helps us understand prayer.  If God wound the universe and stepped back, there would be no reason to pray, but that’s not what He did, He stayed involved.

I don’t understand the mathematical proof that nobody can solve the three-body problem, but physicists who do understand are convinced that we can’t use God’s laws of gravity to predict the motions of just three planets.  Our solar system operates smoothly because God keeps it in order, not just gravity.

We don’t understand gravity.  On November 9, 2016, Science Alert wrote[29]:

“Our current ideas about space, time, and gravity urgently need to be re-thought. We have long known that Einstein’s theory of gravity can not work with quantum mechanics”, the author the new paper, Erik Verlinde from the University of Amsterdam, told Dutch news site NOS.

We study gravity and quantum mechanics but can’t fit them together.  Don’t worry about “quantum mechanics,” few understand it, but we see what it does as we see what gravity does without understanding it.

We can’t predict planetary motion and we can’t predict hydrogen atoms.  Hydrogen is the simplest atom of all.  One hydrogen atom has one proton with a positive charge and one electron with a negative charge.

When you plug a cord into the wall, electrons flow out socket into your appliance.  The power company works hard to keep electrons flowing so they can bill you for electricity.  The electron part of hydrogen atoms powers your appliances; the proton part of hydrogen atoms powers the sun.

On Sept. 15, 2017, Forbes Magazine published “Proof of ‘God Playing Dice With The Universe’ Found In The Sun’s Interior.”[30]  Under high pressure at the center of the sun, electrons are stripped off hydrogen atoms.  There’s a soup of protons and electrons in the center of the sun.  Our sun’s energy comes from billions and billions of protons smashing together so that they fuse into helium and release energy.

A hydrogen atom has 1 proton and 1 electron, a helium atom is 2 protons stuck together and 2 electrons.  When two hydrogen atoms fuse into 1 helium atom, a tiny bit of energy is released.  That powers the sun.

Yet despite these incredible energies, [Forbes says] the protons in the Sun’s core would never be able to begin this chain reaction if the Universe were completely deterministic. It requires the wave nature of quantum mechanics to make it possible, proving that Einstein’s famous statement, that “God does not play dice with the Universe,” was false.

Einstein, like Newton, believed the universe could be predicted from Newton’s laws.  He knew that the sun is powered by the energy released when two hydrogen atoms stick together, make a helium atom, and release energy, but he didn’t believe that God put chance into the way the universe works.

Protons repel each other; they don’t want to fuse together.  You’ve played with magnets.  Magnets have a north pole and a south pole.  If you try to push two north poles together, the magnets repel each other and push back; if you put a north pole and a south pole together, the magnets attract each other and stick.

Protons have positive charge.  They do not want to come together.  Pushing them together hard enough to make them stick takes huge pressures and temperatures.  Fusion power research has failed despite billions of dollars– we can’t get temperature or pressure high enough to generate energy as the sun does.  Forbes wrote:

So we do our calculations, we calculate how the protons in the Sun’s core have their energy distributed, and we come up with a number for these proton-proton collisions with sufficient energy to undergo nuclear fusion.

That number is exactly zero. The electric repulsion between the two positively charged particles is too great for even a single pair of protons to overcome it and fuse together with the energies in the Sun’s core.

Our sun isn’t big enough for the pressure at the center to overcome protons pushing each other apart.  How, then, can the sun give light?  Forbes explains:

Each proton is a quantum particle, containing a probability function that describes its location, enabling the two wave functions of interacting particles to overlap ever so slightly, even when the repulsive electric force would otherwise keep them entirely apart.

You and I have locations and our smart phones tell us where we are.  A proton doesn’t have an exact location.  Its location is a fuzzy ball of probability and the proton could be anywhere in the ball.  It’s most likely in the center, but could be anywhere.  Einstein didn’t want to understand that part of quantum mechanics.

If protons were small particles as Einstein believed, they’d repel each other too strongly to fuse because our sun isn’t big enough to have enough pressure or a high enough temperature.  Protons aren’t particles, they’re fuzzy probability balls which can overlap enough that sometimes, protons in our sun fuse into helium atoms.  “Probability fuzzball” isn’t scientific, so physicists say that protons are wave functions, not particles.

It’s the power of quantum mechanics that allows the Sun to shine. [Forbes says] In a fundamental way, if God didn’t play dice with the Universe, the nuclear flame that powers the stars would never light, and the life-giving fusion that occurs in our Sun’s core would never come to be.

If hydrogen atoms in our sun were particles, our predictions show that they couldn’t come close enough together to fuse into helium and our solar system would be a cold, dark place where we couldn’t live.  Instead of particles, however, God made protons and electrons as wave functions whose future we can’t predict.

When two wave functions overlap, the protons can fuse and create energy even if the particles repel each other.  The sun is a probability system; we can’t predict it.  Probability systems aren’t stable because they don’t operate predictably.  They may not be likely to explode or shut down, but over time, that’s what a probability system will do.  God has to stay involved to keep the sun’s output in a range to keep us alive.

God lets the sun’s output change.  Sometimes He has our sun put out more heat, this makes our climate get warmer, sometimes He has the sun put out less heat and our climate gets colder, but God keeps it in a range so that we can live on the earth He made for us, just as God limits the sea:

Fear ye not me? saith the LORD: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it

: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?  Jeremiah 5:22

The more scientists study the heavens, the more they learn about the glory of God even if they won’t admit it.  Our theories about gravity don’t work with quantum mechanics, but the sun couldn’t light without quantum mechanics.  Scientists want to explain gravity, but so far, they can’t.

My point is, the universe could not work as it does if it were predictable.  It’s not a deterministic system that God could wind up and ignore.  Probabilistic systems aren’t stable, so God has to keep the universe running smoothly and keep the planets in their orbits.  Colossians 1:17 says, “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”  Science proves that even if the scientists won’t admit it.

We can also be confident in six-day creation as taught in the Book of Genesis.  On July 8, 2014, Carnegie Science reported[31] that there is a lot more light in the universe than the light generated by the stars.

“Either our accounting of the light from galaxies and quasars is very far off, or there’s some other major source of ionizing photons that we’ve never recognized,” Kollmeier said. “We are calling this missing light the photon underproduction crisis. But it’s the astronomers who are in crisis—somehow or other, the universe is getting along just fine.”

A “photon” is one little piece of light, by “underproduction,” he means that stars don’t make enough light to match all the light we can see.  He has one thing right – “the universe is getting along just fine,” it’s the scientists who’re messed up.  Rejoice!  We know there has to be more light than the stars make because God made light before He made stars.  On June 30, 2017, Forbes Magazine wrote “Science Uncovers The Origin Of The First Light In The Universe[32].”

After centuries of investigating the origins of the Universe, science has finally uncovered what physically happened to “let there be light” in space. …

So where did this light — the first light in the Universe — first come from? It didn’t come from stars, because it predates the stars.  [emphasis added]

Forbes tells us light came before the stars!  They explain that light “quanta,” one little piece of light just as a proton is one little piece of matter, interacted with each other and produced bits of matter.  This is like particles colliding in an atom smasher – collisions can create any particle at all if they have enough energy.

This isn’t a new idea.  In 1934, John Wheeler and George Breit proposed the Breit-Wheeler process which describes how light can turn into matter, or in short: how matter is created from light.  Recent experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory provided suggestive evidence that the Breit-Wheeler process can be duplicated experimentally.[33]  Scientists are accumulating more and more evidence that when little bits of light bump into each other, little bits of matter are produced.

“Let there be light” came on day 1; the stars weren’t created until day 4 (Genesis 1:1-15).  Who told Moses to write that light came days before the stars?  What human mind could imagine that?  Not our scientists…

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.  Psalm 19:1

The more scientists study the universe, the less they understand how it works.  Sir Isaac Newton thought God’s laws of gravity showed how planets move.  As instruments got better, we saw that the planet Mercury moved in ways gravity can’t predict.  Einstein’s theory of relativity explained those differences, but Einstein’s theories of gravity won’t work with the quantum probabilities which let the stars shine.

I was told years ago that religious people believe in the “God of the gaps;” we said God caused whatever science couldn’t explain.  They said that as we understood how things worked, the “God of the gaps” would get smaller and smaller until He disappeared.  Remember the “God is dead” movement in the 1970s?

Gaps are getting bigger.  Details aren’t important, what’s important is that discoveries about light and gravity confirm the account in the Book of Genesis, light first, then stars, just as God told Moses.  They know gravity doesn’t predict planetary motion.  God keeps the stars and planets in place; they haven’t a clue.

MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Besides telling a bit about creation, God’s rules for public health confirm the divine nature of the Bible.

And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases

 upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee

.  Exodus 15:26

For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft

, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.  Mark 7:3

Is washing hands before eating mere religious ritual?  My mother thought there was a practical purpose.  The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  I wash my hands before eating because my mother trained me up to do it.  It wasn’t just a command to her; she knew the germ theory of disease.  God expected obedience even if His people didn’t know why they should wash.

This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days

.  Numbers 19:14

And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water

, and shall be clean at even.  Numbers 19:19

Being unclean as Numbers 19 describes meant you couldn’t touch other people and you couldn’t cook food for others.  After a week, you purified yourself, washed your clothes, and took a bath to be clean.  We now understand the health benefits to following these laws, but Jews obeyed by faith; nobody knew why for thousands of years until we discovered germs.

In 1847, doctors’ wards at Vienna General Hospital had three times the death rate from childbed fever than midwives’ wards.  Dr. Semmelweis suspected it was because doctors cut open dead bodies for autopsies and midwives didn’t.  He proved that washing hands between patients reduced fever to less than 1%.

Semmelweis couldn’t explain.  Doctors were angry at the idea that they carried death on their hands and didn’t want to wash.  His results weren’t understood until Louis Pasteur proved the germ theory of disease years after Semmelweis died but God’s laws of washing worked.  To this day, most hospital infections are caused when doctors and nurses don’t wash between patients!  They see it as just a rule, not as a command of God!  It’s in their heads, not in their hearts!

God knows the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge.  A mother must be very careful to pay close attention to her newborn to keep it alive.  The hormones of pregnancy work on a mother’s brain to make her ears more attentive to a baby’s cry and on her emotions to get her really involved in the child[34].  God puts newborn care into mothers’ hearts through hormones.  Hormones affect her thinking, page 124.

God also commands that new mothers be given physical rest.

Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days

; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean. And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days

; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary

, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled. But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks

, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days

.  Leviticus 12:2-5 *

Why should giving birth, a natural and honorable process, make a woman unclean?  Why?  An unclean woman couldn’t wash dishes – they’d be unclean and nobody could eat off them.  She couldn’t do laundry – nobody could wear unclean clothes.  She couldn’t do housework; she got time to rest and to get to know her baby.  She stayed home from church.  Staying home protects new babies and mothers from infections.

Without infant formula, nursing was the only way to keep a baby alive.  I’ve been told that girl babies often have a harder time nursing than boy babies and that girls are a bit smaller at birth than boys.  It’s a big deal for a mother when her baby gets big enough to hold enough milk to sleep through the night.  If girls have a harder time nursing and they’re smaller, it would take longer for a baby girl to sleep through the night.

If this is true, God knows all about it.  What did He do?  A mother got 70 days off when she gave birth to a girl and 40 days when she gave birth to a boy.  That extra month made it more likely that a newborn girl would sleep through the night before the mother got back to her household routine.

Most American babies are born in expensive hospitals!  Mothers are sent home after a day or two and get back to work.  My mother got a week of help from her mother and a week from my father’s mother when I was born.  That was 14 days of help, not 40 days of no housework at all.  Does God know something we don’t?

The Pharisee described in Luke 18:11-14 bragged that he fasted “twice in the week.”  Christians have believed that fasting gives benefits and some studies are beginning to confirm medical benefits of fasting.

What about the feast of leaven?  God said that yeast represented sin, so:

Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born in the land

.  Exodus 12:19

To get rid of all the yeast in your house, you have to clean to white-glove inspection levels as the army does.  This means you pass a white glove over everything.  You fail if there’s any dirt or dust on the glove.

What happens when an entire village gets rid of all the yeast in every house for a week?  That cleans out all other food – seeds, crumbs – and critters starve.  Cleaning came at the time of Passover, the time of year when rats and mice breed.  Villages have fewer insects, rats, or mice if there’s nothing for them to eat.

Christians had the Old Testament during the Middle Ages; Jews could have talked about the “none of these diseases (Ex. 15:26)” benefits of obeying God’s laws.  The Jews didn’t give God the glory for better health; they didn’t declare “in the sight of the nations (De. 4:6)” that God’s statutes meant “none of these diseases.”

In the 1340s, the Black Death spread by fleas carried by rats.  Jewish customs of washing and cleaning leaven out of their houses meant that the plague affected them less in the sight of the nations, just as God had promised.  Gentiles thought Jews must have caused the plague because they were immune!  There was persecution because Jews didn’t give God the glory!

What about circumcision on the 8^th day?  A newborn’s blood gets some clotting factor from the mother.  It takes about six days for the baby’s bone marrow to build clotting factor.  The cut heals best after the baby’s clotting factor comes.  The 8^th day gives time for boys who’re a bit slow to get ready to clot and heal after the cut.  We now know that circumcision reduces infection which is why it’s so common in America.

How did Bible writers know this?  Did they do a double-blind study of circumcising thousands of boys on different days, measure outcomes, and use statistics to find the best day?  Or did they do as God told them?  God is not only great; He wrote some of His greatness in the Bible for our learning and for our benefit.

THE “THEORY” OF EVOLUTION DENIES THE BIBLE

The more scientists study genetics, the less they know about how different species “evolved.”  Non-Christians have written books showing huge problems with evolutionary theory.  Evolutionists stopped debating creationists years ago because the creationists had better arguments.  Everything they learn about how critters are born, live, reproduce, and die shrieks of intelligent design, which is another way of saying “God.”

The works of God confirm the Word of God.  God is great, and we need not yield one jot or one tittle of His Word in the face of science falsely so called!  God is great, we can proclaim it!  We’d better proclaim it:

Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.  Mark 8:38 see also Luke 9:26

I don’t want Jesus ashamed of me when He comes back.  I try to spread His Word, and I stand behind it all.

Jesus’ empty tomb shows the greatness of God and highlights the uniqueness of Christianity.  Jesus’ resurrection was unique.  All other religious founders, Buddha, Mohammad, Laozi, the founder of Taoism, Confucius, died and stayed dead.  Jesus died on the cross, but He conquered death by coming back to life.  That’s unique, but there’s more:

The Jews didn’t want to talk to God; the temple veil kept people out of the Holy Place where God was.

And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.  Exodus 20:19

Do Christians want to talk to God?  How often have we heard, “Pastor, will you pray for me?”  Jesus criticized Scribes and Pharisees for exploiting the people while “sit[ting] in Moses’ seat (Mt. 23:2-3[35]).”

And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.  Mark 15:3

The temple veil was rent when Christ died; now you may approach God directly, you need no priest, no pastor, no husband, God receives you whenever you wish. This was revolutionary, nobody imagined ordinary people approaching God without permission from someone.

Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: ³⁵But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.  Acts 10:34-35

The Bible is banned in places all over the world because it teaches that kings and other rulers must fear and obey God like everyone else.  That’s why the founders of America wrote that “all men are created equal.”

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female

: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.  Galatians 3:28

Which was more upsetting to the ruling powers – saying that God values peasants as much as He values rulers, or saying that He valued women as much as he valued men?

The idea of God loving people was revolutionary – pagan gods take without giving and don’t love anyone.

Having discussed the first three words of our 10-word theology, we’ll cover the last seven words next.

Chapter 5 – Saturday Morning 10-11 – Theology in 10 Words – The Last Seven Words

In discussing “God is great,” we explored scientific principles which are touched on in the Word of God.  God knew that Satan’s forces of “science, falsely so-called (1 Tim. 6:20[36])” would try to throw doubt on the Bible, so He arranged for astronomers to find more light than the stars can generate.  That surprised atheists but not Christians because we know that God created light days before He created the stars.

They’ve also found that if protons were little particles, the sun isn’t big enough to cause protons to come together to generate light.  Protons are “wave functions” and we can never know precisely where they are.  That lets protons come together and fuse into helium so our sun can generate light and keep us alive.

That means that the sun’s output can’t be determined mathematically, it’s a probabilistic system.  Systems that run on what we see as chance can explode or go out.  God sometimes lets our sun put out more heat which makes the climate warmer and He lets it put out less heat which makes the climate colder but He’s careful to keep it in a range so we can live.  God drives climate change; it’s not what people do.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat

, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. ¹¹Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, ¹²Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved

, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?  II Peter 3:10-12

Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus upholds “all things by the word of his power.”  That’s why the sun’s heat stays in a range that’s good for us.  When His time comes, the Bible tells us that He’ll tweak the knob, the sun will put out a lot more energy, and “the elements shall melt with fervent heat.”

We also talked about God’s rules for public health such as sweeping all the crumbs out of all the houses when rats breed so there are fewer critters spreading disease.  We talked about His commands for washing and giving new mothers time off from housework.  God gave us these medical laws for our benefit long before we figured them out.  There are places where the leading cause of babies dying is mothers not washing their hands before feeding their children.

NEXT THREE WORDS

The next three words are trickier – “God is great, God is good.”  Many Christians who have no trouble with the idea that God is great don’t seem to act as though they think that God is good even though we now know that many of His laws for public health benefitted us greatly for many generations.

And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases

 upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee

.  Exodus 15:26

For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft

, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.  Mark 7:3

Giving us those rules so that we would be blessed by our obedience shows the goodness of God.  People who believe God is good read the Bible carefully seeking keys to happiness.  The Bible contains many commands to do this or not to do that.  Why?  Did God write His laws to keep us from having fun?  Or are His laws for our benefit?  Does God love us?

Many writers have found God’s love for us hard to believe:

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?  Psalm 8:4

That question is repeated in Hebrews 2:6 – God’s love for vile sinners really is hard to believe.  God did four things to convince us that He cares for us.  First, He gave us laws telling us how societies should operate.  Except for the supremacy of God, the 10 commandments are found in all religions and in many bodies of law.  Don’t steal, don’t mess with someone else’s woman, don’t tell lies, don’t kill each other – these are the foundations of civilization.  We can’t run a business, family, tribe, or nation without these laws.

Mahatma Gandhi tried to unite Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians; the rich stew of India.  Many of his ideas came from the Bible.  He wrote, “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ” and “If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today.”  He died without Christ and went to Hell.  Gandhi knew Christ’s teachings, but could not accept the human frailty that is so evident among Christians.  He had the Bible which teaches, “they are without excuse.”  God drew Gandhi but he let Christians reject and repel him.  God’s teachings show that He loves us and wants our lives to go well.

Second, God made mothers. You’ve seen mothers care for their children even when children disobey or disappoint.  A mother’s love shows us the love of God if we look.  Third, God sent a Savior.  John 3:16 says that God so loved the world … God created salvation because He loves us.  Fourth, God created marriage.  Question:  God loved us enough to send His Son to die in our place.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Romans 5:8

Would our God who loved us enough to create salvation which required the death of His Son and turning His back on His Son (Mt. 27:46, Mk. 15:34) to bless us create marriage to curse us?  Or did God intend marriage for our good?  The Bible has a lot of rules about marriage.  Are those written to cause us frustration or to bless us?  God made marriage to bless us.  If a marriage is not good, who’s at fault?  God or the couple?

God listed a few of His laws in His Word, but He wrote most of His laws in His works.

Suppose I jump off a building.  I’ll fall.  Suppose I break my leg.  Can I complain, “How could a loving God let me get hurt?”  Would you sympathize, or would you call me a fool for trying to break God’s law of gravity?

The Bible says “by Him all things consist,” and “all things” includes gravity.  You wouldn’t sympathize if I got hurt trying to break God’s law of gravity, but lots of people break God’s laws of marriage which He wrote in the Bible and wonder why they get hurt.

Do we understand God’s law of gravity?  No, gravity baffles physicists.  They have no idea how it works, but we better follow the law of gravity.  Do we understand God’s laws of marriage?  No, but we can follow them through faith.  We don’t understand His laws of Salvation either, but we’d better follow the laws of marriage and of salvation if we want an abundant life.

God created salvation; we must be saved His way or we go to Hell when we die.  God created marriage. We have to do marriage His way or we can make life Hell on earth.  I know marriages which don’t show the torments of Hell, but they aren’t getting nearly as much blessing as God intended when He created marriage.

People must relate to God to get His full blessing.  After they left Egypt, the Israelites wouldn’t talk to God; they wanted Moses to talk to God and tell them what God said.  God was disappointed.  He told Moses:

O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them

, and with their children for ever!  Deuteronomy 5:29

God didn’t write commandments to keep us from happiness.  He wants us to obey because keeping His commands blesses us.  Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (John 10:10b).”

There’s a condition to receiving the abundant life Jesus offers – we have to follow His rules.  We know the story of the man who built his house upon the rock, there’s a song about his reward for obedience, but how many of us work to do what the Bible teaches?

The keys to abundant life in marriage and to abundant life in general are found in the Bible, but how do we read the Bible?  People tend to make understanding the Bible more complicated than it is.  Does the Bible lie?  Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (John 17:17).”  No, the Bible doesn’t lie.  God gave us the Bible “for our learning (Romans 15:4).”  If God lied to us in the Bible He wouldn’t be good and when we found out, we’d stop trying to learn from the Bible.

We know that God cares deeply about Children.  Does the Bible lie to children?

There are many things in the Bible children can’t understand, and many I can’t understand, but God is not the author of confusion (I Cor. 14:33).  God didn’t write passages with a simple, false meaning that must be explained through appeals to grammar, history, or “ancient authorities” that aren’t found in the Bible.  Anything in the Bible a child can understand is true in the way a child would read it.  If this were not so, children would be confused, which God doesn’t do.

Consider the story of the man who built his house on the sand.  We teach kids a song about it.  We tell them that obeying God’s Word is a wise thing to do and that someone who doesn’t obey is a fool.  Let’s look at passages which kids understand:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.  Ephesians 6:1

Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.  Colossians 3:20

Can children understand those verses?  Yes, but “obey” is often a bad word.  How old do children have to be to understand that it is as hard for their parents to obey God as it is for them to obey their parents?  God expects us to teach His Words to our children:

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.  Deuteronomy 6:7

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  Ephesians 6:4 *

Where does a father find the “nurture and admonition of the Lord?”  In the Bible.  Your most effective way of teaching the Bible is for you to obey it, even when it’s hard, and explain the Biblical basis for your actions and decisions.  What you do in following the Bible speaks so loudly that your children can’t hear what you say about the Bible.  Your words and your actions must say the same thing.  What has this to do with marriage?

Children can understand most marriage verses; your kids can see whether you’re obeying them or not.  There are also marriage-related verses which children know without having to read the Bible:

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing

, and obtaineth favour of the LORD

.  Proverbs 18:22

Where does a child go whenever anything goes wrong in the child’s universe?  Right to Mommy.  A child knows that his father’s wife is a good thing indeed.  Adults should learn from this.

I’ve met men who complain about their wives instead of appreciating them.  Philippians 2:14 says, “Do all things without murmurings and disputings.”  Murmuring about a wife makes her unhappy; Proverbs says five times that an unhappy wife makes her family unhappy.  God doesn’t like murmuring either (1 Cor. 10:10).

Parents who don’t follow these oh-so-obvious commands teach their children that the Bible is only a stick for parents to beat kids; it says nothing about adult behavior.  Is it any surprise that so many walk away from the Word of God when they grow up?  They’ve been taught that adults don’t follow the Bible, so why bother?

Believing that God is good has been the foundation of our marriage.  From her youth up, my wife wanted to be a wife and mother.  She knew she would have to find a husband who would pay her expenses.  As she read the Bible, she realized that God expected her to obey her husband and to follow him.

Instead of complaining about how irrelevant the Bible is to modern customs, she knew that obeying God would bless her somehow because God is good.  She realized that she would have to find a man whom she could obey.  While she was in college, she met a man she expected to marry.  When she asked God, He told her not to marry him.  She pulled away because she was convinced that God had her best interests at heart.

When I told her I was going to date her, she said okay, but she set out terms and conditions.  “God made me to be a treasure for my husband,” she said, and insisted that I agree that the purpose of dating was to decide whether she and I would marry.  From my point of view, this was good – she took God seriously!  I knew that if she was serious about following God, if she accepted everything the Bible tells wives to do, marrying her would be a good idea if I did my best to do what God tells husbands to do.

Indeed, it has been.  We had no idea where marriage would take us, but we knew that God would get us there if we followed His rules.  We trusted Him to order our lives together because we knew that God is good and had seen that He had ordered our lives while we were single.

Everyone has trouble following God’s rules.  Accepting Christ’s offer of forgiveness for your sins and asking Him into your heart helps overcome old habits.  Jesus Forgives More Than We Can Understand on page 6 shows how He forgave His disciples when they ignored His command to start His church and went fishing instead.  He will forgive you and help you straighten out your life if you choose to believe in Him and ask for His help.  Handling Conflict on page 41 shows how to handle disagreement without angry words.

The next three words are “God is good.”  Do you believe that obeying God’s commands in the Bible will be good for you?  How can you trust God with your salvation if you don’t trust Him to order your life?

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