1. God is Known (verses 19-20).
2. God is Rejected (verses 21-23).

Today we will continue in the book of Romans. Last week we surveyed Paul's argument from Romans, chapter 1 and verse 18 all the way until Romans 3 and verse 20. And we saw the bad news that we are all under sin. And apart from the mighty grace of God, we stand condemned.

But praise be to God that he sent Jesus, while we were yet sinners, so that we might be "justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24). In other words, when we believe in Jesus, regardless of how dark is our sin, we are made right in his sight. And that's good news.

Well, this morning, we are going to dig in. We are going to dig in and see what Paul has to tell us this morning in chapter 1. Let's begin reading in verse 18, ...

Romans 1:18-23
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

These verses tell us that God is angry. He is angry with the wickedness of men. It's only natural for a holy God to be angry with us in our sin. But, his anger isn't simply because people stumble into their sin unawares. No. What Paul argues is that people walk into their sin in full knowledge of what they are doing.

God is angry at the wickedness of men, because he has clearly revealed himself to men, and they have rejected him nonetheless. They have said to God, "No thanks" (verse 21), and walked in their own ways, following after their own hearts' desire. They refuse to acknowledge the Lord.

See, it's one thing to do what is wrong, but it is another thing altogether to know what is right and still do the wrong anyway. For instance, picture yourself going out on an errand, and coming home to dirty dishes still in the kitchen. Your heart sinks that your capable children at home didn't have the presence of mind and willingness of heart to lend a hand in the housework.

But it's another thing when you tell your teenage children before you leave home, "Could you please do the dishes while I'm out?" And they say, "Yes." And then, when you come home and the dishes haven't been washed, your heart sinks even more. It sinks because it's not just that they had a heart to serve, but didn't notice the dishes in the sink No, it's because they refused to listen to you with a servant's heart. Instead, they did their own thing, and demonstrated their selfishness as you are out serving them with the errands that you were running.

That's what Paul is getting at in these verses. The wrath of God is upon sinners--not those who don't know that they are sinning, but those who know full-well that they are sinning. They are sinning in full knowledge of the truth. Listen again to verse 18, ...

Romans 1:18
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

God's wrath is upon those who know the truth, but "suppress the truth" to walk in their sin. And, truth be told, it is all of us. We all know the character of God. We all know right and wrong. And in our sin, we are "without excuse." My message this morning is entitled, "Without Excuse." It comes from the phrase in verse 20, "So they are without excuse." Let's look at my first point this morning, ...

1. God is Known (verses 19-20).

Verse 19, ...

Romans 1:19
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

Let's do a little show and tell. Let me show you what I have in this box. I have a cup. I have some ice. I have a can of Fanta. I think that all of you know what I'm supposed to do with these three items. I'm supposed to take the ice and put it into the cup; open the can of Fanta; pour it into the cup, and enjoy!

It's obvious to anyone who would open such a box what you are supposed to do with the contents. This is what God has done with us, only he has not put secrets about himself inside of a box just waiting to be opened. He has placed it out in the open for all to see. Look at verse 20, ...

Romans 1:20
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Here it is: God has made himself known through creation. From the very first day that he said, "Let there be light!" until today, the creation has been telling all of mankind about God. Psalm 19 says that, ...

Psalm 19:1-2
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.

In other words, if you go outside in the day and see the sun, you will see the glory of God. And if you go outside in the night and see the moon or the stars, you will see the glory of God. David continues, ...

Psalm 19:3-4
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

The creation isn't a novel that must be read in language that can be understood by the reader. It is more like a painting; something that people of every tribe and tongue and people and nation can see and can understand. It is more like a symphony that is played without words, and yet communicates a range of emotions that can touch the heart.

That's what creation is like. Even if you are blind, you can know of creation. David continues on, ...

Psalm 19:4-6
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them,
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

If you go outside and feel the heat of the sun on your skin, you are receiving knowledge about God. In fact, even if you could neither see nor hear, you could still know God.

Do you know who Helen Keller is? She could neither see nor hear. She learned to communicate as a child, when a faithful teacher, named Anne Sullivan came and spelled words for her in her hand. Amazingly, she learned how to speak for herself. Learning even to "listen" to others by reading their lips with her hands as they spoke. She has been an inspiration to many.

At one point when she was learning about the world, her thoughts turned to God. She had the opportunity to speak and correspond with Phillips Brooks, a famous preacher and writer in Boston. She told him that ...

She had always known about God, even before she had any words. Even before she could call God anything, she knew God was there. She didn't know what it was. God had no name for her -- nothing had a name for her. She had no concept of a name. But in her darkness and isolation, she knew she was not alone. Someone was with her. She felt God's love. And when she received the gift of language and heard about God, she said she already knew. ^[1]

This is because God makes himself known to all of creation. Paul is specific about what God has made known.

Romans 1:20
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

God has made known His eternal power and His divine nature. We speak of it in our hymns. "I sing the mighty power of God that made the mountains rise." We see His glory in the mountains, in Grand Canyon sunsets. When one sees the devastation that a hurricane (or earthquake or tornado) can bring, they experience the power of God. When one looks into the vastness of the heavens, they see the power of God. And from what we understand, the power of God is incomprehensible.

The Hubble Space Telescope was placed into orbit in 1990. Without the light pollution of the earth, it has enabled the eyes of mankind to reach deeper and deeper into the universe than ever before. In 1995, scientists dreamed up the idea of pointing the telescope at an empty patch in the sky close to the Big Dipper, in hopes that they might see something.

It was thought to be a bit risky as the demands for using the telescope was so high. What if they didn't see anything? What if it returned blank pictures? So, on December 18th 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope pointed at a tiny dark spot in the night sky. Over the course of 10 consecutive days, the telescope gathered light from a region so small that it is comparable to the amount of the sky seen through the eye of a needle held at arms length. Do you know what they saw? They didn't see dark space. They saw thousands and thousands of galaxies of all shapes and sizes. That's the power of God!

And just this week, articles have come out across the internet explaining how the universe is much bigger than we ever thought. I read from an article on Popular Mechanics, ...

A new study from a team of international astronomers, led by astrophysicists from the University of Nottingham with support from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), has produced some astounding results: The universe contains at least two trillion galaxies, 10 times more than the highest previous estimates. What's more, the new study suggests that 90 percent of all galaxies are hidden from us, and only the remaining 10 percent can be seen at all, even with our most powerful telescopes. The paper detailing the study was published today in the Astrophysical Journal.

"We are missing the vast majority of galaxies because they are very faint and far away," said Nottingham Astrophysics Professor Christopher Conselice in an RAS press release. "The number of galaxies in the universe is a fundamental question in astronomy, and it boggles the mind that over 90 percent of the galaxies in the cosmos have yet to be studied. Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we study these galaxies with the next generation of telescopes?"

For two decades, astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Deep Field images to try to estimate the number of galaxies in the observable universe. The previous estimate was 100 to 200 billion, and now we believe that huge number was too small by a factor of 10 or 20, depending on where your original estimate falls. ^[2]

That's the power of God. And if (according to schedule) the James Webb Space Telescope launches in 2018, I believe that we will see more and more and more of the power of God. It boggles the mind! No, it brings out the fact that God is and that he is powerful!

But Paul says that the creation tells us more than the "eternal power" of God. It also tells us of his divine nature. Look again at verse 20.

Romans 1:20
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

I think that here Paul is getting at the intricacies of creation. The order of this universe screams of the existence of a creator! Scientists today are debating the merits of our universe being a "fine-tuned universe." In other words, the relationships of the physical constants in our universe are such that our universe can even exist. We are talking about things like the speed of light, or the gravitational constant, or the proton-to-electron mass ratio, or many others. Scientists think about what would take place if some of these were different. Could the universe even exist? Or, would all crumble into chaos?

For instance, what if the strong nuclear force constant was larger than it was? One person wrote this,

The sun 'burns' by fusing hydrogen. ... When two hydrogen atoms fuse, 0.7% of the mass of the hydrogen is converted into energy. If the amount of matter converted were slightly smaller--0.6% instead of 0.7%-- a proton could not bond to a neutron, and the universe would consist only of hydrogen. With no heavy elements, there would be no rocky planets and no life. If the amount of matter converted were slightly larger--0.8%, fusion would happen so readily and rapidly that ... there would be no solar systems and no live. The number must lie exactly between 0.6% and 0.8%. ^[3]

Now, it's not that you need to understand fully what that means. I don't understand. But what is important is this: the laws of nature are such that our universe is able to exist. Without gravity acting like it does; without light acting like it does; without protons and electrons acting like they do; without electro-magnetic forces acting like they do; without the strong and weak nuclear forces acting like they do, this universe simply wouldn't exist. It couldn't sustain itself.

And this is to say nothing of chemistry. How it is that you add one more proton to an atom, and everything changes about the atom? You add one proton to carbon, and you transform the atom from carbon to nitrogen--from a solid, dark material to a gas.

How it is that you add an atom to a molecule, and everything changes about the molecule? You add a couple of hydrogen atoms to oxygen, and you transform the molecule from a pure gas to a liquid (at room temperature). You take an oxygen atom away from carbon di-oxide, and you get poison! And this is to say nothing of biology, with plants and photosynthesis and respiration; with creatures who have muscular systems and nervous systems and cardiovascular systems and DNA.

Many have used the analogy of a watchmaker. A watch is incredibly complex, with all of its gears and springs and screws and hands. Nobody in their right mind comes across a watch and thinks that it just formed by itself. And so likewise, nobody in their right mind comes across a world such as ours and thinks that it just came to be on its own.

When you are taking a hike through the woods, and see a discarded pop can (Fanta), you don't think for a moment that it simply came up out of the earth this way. You know that someone has been there. Likewise, when you see the order of the world, you know that there must have been a designer. The complexities are simply too much to have happened "by chance."

There is a huge discussion in the scientific world today about something called, "Intelligent Design." That is, apart from a holy, personal God, doesn't the complexity of life itself argue for some intelligence behind it? Whoever (or whatever) it might be?

I believe that it is obvious that creation itself gives testimony of a creator. In fact, that's Paul's point in verse 20, ...

Romans 1:20
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

In other words, everyone who walks the planet clearly knows about God. They know that he created this world. But people don't like to deal with this. People don't want to live in a world that is governed by an omnipotent God. They want to live their own way. And so, they "suppress the truth" (Romans 1:18) so that they can live in unrighteousness.

But Paul says here at the end of verse 20 that they are "without excuse." That is, when they stand before God, they will face his wrath for turning against the creator. Look at verse 21, ...

Romans 1:21
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Look there at the first part, "Although they knew God." In the Greek language, there are two words often translated, "know." The first means a "factual knowledge." It's tied to the word for "seeing." It's the sort of knowledge that you gain by fact or information. The second means an "experiential knowledge." It's often related to people. It's the sort of knowledge that you gain by interaction with others.

If you know any Spanish, the first word is like the verb, "saber," to know by way of information. The second word is like the word, "conocer," to know by way of experience. Which word do you think is used here? The second.

In other words, God has so clearly made himself known to us that we all "know" him. We all "have experienced" him. Even unbelievers, who suppress the truth know and experience him. Now, these unbelievers may deny God. They may claim that he doesn't exist. They may call themselves "atheists." But, on the authority of God's word, you know that they have a personal knowledge of God. They have experienced him in one way or another.

And this should help in your eagerness to preach the gospel. Be confident that the one you are speaking with knows God! He (or she) has seen the creation! They know that there is a creator! But, they need to be told of the Savior.

This week I had a chance to speak with a few people about the Savior. One of them was an auto salesman. In our family, we have three cars. One of our cars has recently died. It needs a new alternator, but the cost of repairing it has exceeded our limit. We simply don't want to put more into our car.

And so, Yvonne and I were out looking at used cars this week. And we bought one on Monday. But while interacting with the salesman, he asked me what I did. I said that I was a pastor of a church. He asked what denomination I was. And so, I told him that we were a non-denominational church. I told him that we are focused on the Bible, and that I just teach through the Bible, verse by verse.

In fact, I said, "I'm preaching through the book of Romans. I came to Romans 1:18, which speaks of the wrath of God upon sinners." I said, "Not many churches speak about the wrath of God. But as I simply preach through the Bible, I came across this phrase. And it's an important phrase. Because you need to hear the bad news of our sin before you can embrace the good news of our salvation in Jesus. We have earned our death through our sin, but Jesus offers us eternal life, if we would simply believe in him." And that was about the end of our conversation of those things.

I knew this guy was in his sin, without excuse. I knew that he knows about God. But he needed to hear about the Savior.

Now, sadly, although God is Known (verses 19-20), ...

2. God is Rejected (verses 21-23).

Romans 1:21-23
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

This describes humanity! We all know about God. But, we refuse to honor him as God. We refuse to give thanks to him! In short, we reject him. And apart from the grace of God, our rejection leads to our futility. We no longer think as we ought to think. We no longer feel as we ought to feel. We no longer live as we ought to live.

Psalm 14:1 says, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" And isn't it interesting that in our society, the majority of fools are those who claim to be so wise. Verse 22 says, "Claiming to be wise, they became fools."

I read an interesting article this week that seeks to do away with the idea of "intelligent design" by believing in a theory of "panspermia." In other words, that life on earth was "seeded" by other planetary systems. I read, ...

THE PUBLIC perception of intelligent design is that it is a scientifically specious (i.e. false), religiously motivated idea that seeks to explain away the notion of Darwinian evolution through magical thinking. Some incarnations of intelligent design can fairly be described as such.

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., with displays showing animatronic dinosaurs roaming through Eden, employs a pseudoscientific presentation of faith — and biblical text — as a counterweight to the voluminous scientific information supporting evolution.

But there are other alternative ideas that can explain the origin of life on Earth. One needn't be actively religious, or even reject evolution, to consider the possibility of intelligent design. That intelligence could have originated not on some spiritual plane whose existence can never be proven but simply elsewhere in the cosmos.

Religiously motivated attempts at developing a full-fledged theory of intelligent design consistently fall short of the standards of academic peer review, which leaves the intelligent design movement with a collection of faith-based arguments that criticize mainstream science but offer no coherent alternative.

Design proponents often have in mind a creator God that made the universe itself and all of life, although they disagree on how this happened. Did the designer set everything into motion by causing the Big Bang? Was a designer required to get the process of evolution started on Earth? Or were the species all created in their approximate current form, and the conclusions of evolutionary theory are simply wrong? Or perhaps a designer simply meddled with our biochemistry or geology, and we can find signs of this tinkering if we look hard enough.

Modern science does offer a tenable theory of intelligent design, one that does not resort to religion or pseudoscience. When considering that humans were not far off from the technological ability to transport Earth-based life to other planets, astronomer Carl Sagan and his contemporaries hypothesized that extraterrestrial intelligent beings, if they exist, might try to do the same thing. From this speculation was born the concept that extraterrestrial intelligent designers are responsible for life on Earth.

Biologist Francis Crick is best remembered for his co-discovery of the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule, which subsequently unveiled the universal code of genetics that unifies all life on Earth. Crick expressed his puzzlement over why life used only one form of genetic code, based on only a subset of available amino acids. Crick, and biologists since, could imagine alternative genetic codes based on known amino acids that could have also arisen during the stages of life's development. For most scientists, this suggested that the genetic code shared by all of life provided survival benefits that outcompeted any other developing forms of life.

But Crick took his speculations a step further and mused that the particular configuration of life's genetic code might indicate the work of extraterrestrial designers. His attraction to this brand of intelligent design is based on a more general idea in astrobiology known as panspermia, which investigates the possibility that microbial life could be inadvertently transferred among planets through collisions with asteroids and meteoroids. Rocks from the moon and Mars are routinely discovered in barren places like Antarctica, and the turbulent environment of the early solar system could have led to an even greater exchange of material among the terrestrial planets. Many microorganisms are capable of surviving for long periods of time in extreme environments. which suggests that at least in principle, they could withstand a journey through space.

Scientific study of panspermia since the discovery of DNA has generally confirmed that this process could work. The greatest threat to the survival of a microorganism on an interplanetary trip is reaching the surface of the destination planet without burning up in the atmosphere. Careful computational studies have shown that large, dense asteroids or meteors could conceivably keep microorganisms protected through an extended journey. Other factors, such as protection from dangerous radiation in space, seem to complicate the problem but do not necessarily rule out the possibility that microbial life may have been carried from Earth to Mars, or vice versa.

A team of researchers in 1996 announced that a meteorite found in Antarctica, purported to have originated on Mars, showed features with some structural similarities to microorganisms on Earth. Most of the scientific community has remained skeptical that the meteorite offers evidence of past life on Mars, in part because the structures, while visible only with an electron microscope, are much bigger than the terrestrial microorganisms to which they've been compared. Still, the idea that such evidence of interplanetary panspermia could exist, and may yet be discovered, remains possible.

Interplanetary panspermia is a viable hypothesis. If signs of life are someday discovered on Mars, one of the first scientific questions will be to determine whether it actually originated on Earth and migrated by panspermia. Interstellar panspermia — undirected transfer of life between planets orbiting different stars — is wildly improbable, though. The distance between stars is vast, and Crick was well aware that any object sent out in a random direction "would in almost all cases pass right through the galaxy and out the other side." Even objects like the Voyager spacecraft, which recently left the confines of the solar system, are destined to drift through the emptiness of space forever.

Crick imagined that humans may soon have the capability to intentionally send exploratory space probes to nearby planets, and he suggested that we could deliberately spread microbial life to other worlds. A carefully constructed craft could shield and preserve a selected population of microorganisms on the millennial (or longer) voyage between star systems, eventually coming to rest on a planet suitable for the colony to take hold. Such a bold and long-term experiment is still beyond our ability to achieve today, but we could conceivably do this in the near future.

Why would we want to seed the galaxy with microbial life? It would provide no direct benefit to humans, other than the knowledge that we have enabled Earth-based life to flourish elsewhere. We would want to be careful to avoid contaminating an already inhabited world. Crick suggests that we might someday consider this type of intentional panspermia if we have conclusive reason to believe Earth is the only inhabited planet in our galaxy. In such a scenario, spreading life to lifeless planets could represent a form of altruism.

The unified code of our genetics suggested to Crick that extraterrestrial designers seeded life on Earth when our planet was in the early stages of formation. The motives of extraterrestrial designers could be similar; perhaps they observed themselves to be the only forms of life in the galaxy, or even the universe. Possibly this motivated them to sprinkle the beginnings of a prebiotic soup or microbial mixture on a scattering of planets that looked suitable for life but remained lifeless. Maybe, Crick and others suggest, Earth was one of these planets.

Astronomer Fred Hoyle was another accomplished scientist who favored the idea of directed panspermia. Hoyle is best known for his pioneering work on the theory of nucleosynthesis, which describes how the elements of the periodic table were formed in the nuclear furnace of stars. He also coined the term "Big Bang" for the cosmic origins of the universe — though in jest, as he was a leading proponent of the countervailing steady-state theory of cosmology. Hoyle's talents extended to authorship of classic science fiction novels like "A for Andromeda" and "The Black Cloud."

Hoyle developed an even more elaborate hypothesis of directed panspermia in his 1981 book "Evolution from Space," coauthored with astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe. Expanding on the arguments outlined by Crick and others, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe concluded that life on Earth was seeded by intelligent silicon-based life forms, and that humans and the rest of life today progressed through an evolutionary history that was designed with extraterrestrial intentions.

They point to the development of robotics and artificial intelligence and speculate that computerized silicon-based intelligences may have desired such an outcome. Perhaps these intelligent beings invented our biological code in order to diversify the forms of life they knew. Perhaps they are waiting for us to develop our own computer-based intelligences that can someday communicate with them. Hoyle imagines that life on Earth is not a statistical fluke but instead part of a greater cycle of evolving intelligences in the universe.

Hoyle's speculations admittedly border on — if not cross directly into — science fiction, and the ability to make testable and concrete predictions remains a critical demarcation of an idea with scientific merit. Establishing the identity of the designer as a robotic silicon-based intelligence is a difficult, but not necessarily impossible, task. Yet a search for some general evidence of directed panspermia does suggest a few avenues of inquiry.

Crick and Hoyle held that the genetic code on Earth could provide clues to implicate extraterrestrial beings as the designers of life. A few scientists have argued that specific patterns in statistical analyses of genomic data might indicate that features of our genetic code were designed, which could add support to the directed panspermia hypothesis, although none of these arguments have been conclusive or convincing to the broader scientific community. Others have analyzed sequences in DNA for encoded messages, possibly inserted by intelligent designers as a calling card. No such patterns have yet been found.

The premise of directed panspermia of course requires the existence of intelligence life on other planets. If Crick and Hoyle are correct in their premise that Earth is a less-than-ideal world for the origin of life, then we should expect to discover planets around other stars that seem to be better suited. We've yet to identify such planets, but our observational data set grows as space telescopes continue to advance.

The search for radio and optical signals from extraterrestrial intelligent beings is another way to look. If life on Earth really did begin from the design of extraterrestrial beings, then perhaps we might someday establish remote communication with them. The recent $100 million Breakthrough Listen Initiative is one effort at addressing this question over the next decade.

Further research on the origin of life is even more promising. Understanding the role of Earth's environment in the formation of prebiotic compounds will better help humans determine whether Earth was suitable for the emergence of life. These topics and others all suggest a scientific direction of inquiry that could ultimately help to test the idea of directed panspermia.

Directed panspermia is not the best explanation of the data available today, but it remains a scientifically grounded idea that implicates an intelligent designer as responsible for life on Earth. It makes no claims that attach it to any particular religion or creed. There's no reason it couldn't be taught in schools.

We have nothing to fear from teaching a genuinely scientific theory of intelligent design in public schools. In fact, directed panspermia provides an excellent vehicle for students to understand the themes of astrobiology and the complexities of evolution. Let the students examine the evidence and decide for themselves which is more likely: origin of life on Earth, or origin from afar by extraterrestrial beings. Such an imaginative exercise will push students toward the frontiers of inquiry and inspire novel solutions toward a new, scientific theory of our origins.

Jacob Haqq-Misra is a research scientist with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. Follow him on Twitter @haqqmisra ^[4]

Romans 1:21-23
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Verse 22 speaks of our society. Verse 23 speaks of many godless societies. There are many unreached people groups all across the globe, all far from the gospel. But, please remember, that they are without excuse. But by the grace of God, we would go the same way.

This sermon was delivered to Rock Valley Bible Church on October 16, 2016 by Steve Brandon.
For more information see www.rvbc.cc.

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[1] http://www.city-data.com/forum/christianity/687203-helen-keller-blind-deaf-but-knew.html

[2] http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a23361/universe-20-times-more-galaxies/

[3] Martin Rees, Just Six Number on http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/designun.html

[4] https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/09/10/misra-intelligent/7F0TH4JUoCPDi97VzkSp0M/story.html