Pastor Jonathan Burgess
May 29, 2016 - W1622

Pastor Wayne is always saying that the church is historically always answering the questions that no one is asking. So in this series, Hot Topics, we are actually answering some questions everyone is asking. One of the longest running hot topics has been how do science and faith work together? Do they compete with each other or is there a way the two can work hand in hand? This message will be addressing this issue and will clear up some of those “Grey Matters”. God doesn’t want us to leave our brains at the door, no, He invites us to be able to investigate. In fact as it says in Romans 1:20 there really isn’t a reason why the people should NOT know God because God has placed all kinds of signs and markers that lead us directly to Him: 

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Romans 1:20 (NIV)

In other words, God is inviting us to further explore who He is by exploring scientific realities around us. Science actually doesn’t push us away from faith. It calls us to see God’s handiwork. This is how Nobel Prize winner physicist Dr. William D. Phillips puts it, “I believe in God more because of science than in spite of it.” Dr. Phillips works with cold atoms and he is saying he believes in God more because of science.

A professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge University, Russell Cowburn says, “Understanding more of science doesn’t make God smaller. It allows us to see his creative activity in more detail.”

It’s like when we go to a museum and we look at a Da Vinci painting, the closer we look at it, the more we see the mastery of each brushstroke and the handiwork of the artist. We become more aware of the master that has made this creation.

Science invites us to take a closer look to see who God really is. We see His mastery, His detail and His divine design behind everything. Science and faith actually complement each other rather than push us away. Science actually becomes proof of God’s presence rather than the absence of His involvement. His divine design allows us to see Him at work all around us and this brings us to point number one:

1. Moving from an either/or to a both/and reality.

It’s not either science and faith it is both science and faith. You can actually see this at work in the story about Daniel in Daniel 1:4. The context is when God’s people were brought into Babylon captivity and we have Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego brought into this pagan culture. They are youth with great faith in God and God begins to give them a place there:

“...youths in whom was no blemish, but well-favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and endued with knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability to stand in the king's palace; and that he should teach them the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans.” Dan. 1:4 (NASV)

God gave them a high place because of their faith and their understanding of science. Like Daniel and his friends, our youth need to know that they can ask questions and that we won’t get offended by those questions. The reason Jesus says seek and you will receive is because He wants us to ask questions because in asking we will understand.

You see:

2. Discipleship includes both what to think and how to think.

We don’t want to just say, this is what you’re supposed to think, we also want to invite the next generation to say, “Here’s how we can think.” We think by observing, by investigating, and by asking questions. In that process we are going to find God. To better illustrate this I have invited an actual scientist and teacher to teach us how science and faith actually can work together. His name is Ray Cruz.

Pastor Jon asks Mr. Cruz how he dealt with the fact that science and faith actually complement each other when other people of his profession say the two actually contradict each other. Here is his answer:

Ray Cruz: “I don’t think you can have science without the existence of God or the spiritual realm. They got to come together. The science of energy and the science of gravity cannot exist without this power that made the universe. Following Christ made sense to me. One thing, for sure, that no one can argue with is our miracles. Take for example the birth of a baby. That is a miracle. But science likes to argue probabilities. Okay, so, the probability of a cell combining with another cell to make a two-celled organism would be 1x10 to the 20^th power, that’s 20 zeroes after, so it is almost an impossibility that cells could happen to create a child on their own. You have to bring in faith at this point.

“Kids are always asking why. Yes, sometimes to delay things getting done or sometimes to mess with you, but we have to take the time to answer that question.”

Pastor Jon replies, “Colossians says that God keeps everything together by the power of His word.”

Ray Cruz: “Yes, And sometimes teachers and professors give the response, ‘it just is’ which just brings us to faith in it happening. Like that birth of the child improbability, sometimes you just got to believe these miracles happen and just accept it. And that is faith. Okay, I’m going to demonstrate something. Here is a balloon. Let’s pretend this balloon is us. Now here is a lighter, and the fire it produces represent the troubles in our lives. What will happen when I put the fire next to the balloon? It pops. Okay now I put some water into the balloon. The water is Jesus and the balloon is us, when I put the fire against the balloon this time, it does not pop because the water which represents Jesus is in there protecting us. If you were to feel the water in that balloon you will find it is heated. And that is like God, He can take a lot of heat or burdens which we cannot do by ourselves. Without the water, the balloon pops, but with the water the balloon is okay. It is like our dependence on God.”

“Have you heard about Bernoulli’s principle of air pressure and what happens when you have high air moving faster than the air around it? Here’s a demonstration, I have a blow dryer, let’s pretend that the stream of air coming out when the blow dryer is on is the flow of life, or is Jesus. Now if you are close to Jesus, you float, but the further away you are from Jesus then gravity kicks in and you fall.”

“So the idea is to get close, and when you get close to Jesus then you will receive the power and you’ll be encouraged to stay close to Him.”

As the Bible says, “Now as for these four youths, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.” Dan. 1:17 (NASV)

This verse is about both the natural and the supernatural. It’s about both the gifts of science and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that can’t be explained by science or when God shows us things that can’t be explained by the natural, it’s that grey matter that God gives us to cause us to use our brain. It’s a great example of when science and faith actually work hand in hand.

In fact, modern science was birthed out of the Christian faith. You can find God, by investigating the good things in the nature that He created. There is a divine design behind what we see and the closer we look, the more we see of God’s grand mastery.

In fact the Bible had it right from the start. Where science is today was already written about in the Bible. Isaiah 40:22 says that the earth is a sphere, but the world of science believed it to be flat until discovered otherwise. Job 38:19 says light moves and is not static, that was before science discovered the speed of light. Ecclesiastes 1:6 says wind blows in cyclones and the Bible says blood is the source of life according to Leviticus 17:11. All through scripture you will find reference after reference of what science has discovered before science even existed. It’s because God wrote the scriptures.

3. Releasing the leaders of tomorrow in areas of influence today.

King Nebuchadnezzar had the same foresight as many churches of today are finally realizing, and like Pastor Wayne and New Hope Churches have already been doing. He began to tap into what these young scholars had in them. As we see here in Daniel 1:19-20:

“And the king communed with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; therefore stood they before the king. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding, concerning which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his realm.” Dan. 1:19-20 (NASV)

Leaders of today are seeing and utilizing the skills of our leaders of tomorrow, now.

How great it is, knowing that before they go to college, they already have a bedrock of faith that is their own, because we allow them to go ahead and ask the questions now while they are learning as they serve in the church.

4. Revealing eternity in the midst of entropy.

Now what is entropy? It is a thermodynamic law in science that says everything is falling apart - that there is constant disorder in the state of the universe and things are collapsing. We can all see that, yes, it’s true, all we have to do is watch the nightly news. We can see that everything is falling apart, but as Children of God we are able to see that there are some things that will stay constant and that is our Faith, our God cannot be shaken. Let me try to explain, I was studying about a teacher named Louie Giglio. He mentions a protein molecule called Laminin. I researched it and found out something about this Laminin. There is about 10-16,000 protein molecules in the molecular structure and Laminin tells the cell what its job is in the body, it gives commands. This molecule is like what rebar is to concrete structures. Where rebar holds structures together, Laminin is structured in such a way that it holds all our membranes together. If we didn’t have Laminin we would probably be a big puddle where we sit. So we can thank God for Laminin. The most miraculous thing is the shape of Laminin under a molecular microscope. It is, believe it or not, in the shape of the cross and it is an adhesion molecule that’s holding everything together in us right now. Now here is what we see in scripture:

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross.” Col. 1:15-20 (NIV)

In these verses we can see, right here in front of us, science and faith working together. We can see now by studying this molecule how science works together with faith and here is the message to the generations from God, “I love you and I’m going to do something on the cross that will hold you together for eternity”. For apart from what Jesus did on the cross, you and I would fall apart in sin before He found us.

So I have to ask you, are things in your life falling apart? Can we learn from this Laminin molecule that it’s only through the cross that everything will be held together? We do have hope and our molecules confirm that God is holding everything together.

If you have some things that are falling apart tonight, you can go ahead and give it all to Him, let Him take them and you can begin, just like our molecules take commands for the Laminin, take the commands from God who knew you better than before you ever knew yourself and who is saying to you right now, “I love you and I’ve shouted this throughout the ages, I love you. You don’t have to hold it all together by yourself anymore. Let Me hold you.”

1) What are some examples, you know of, where science and faith work hand in hand together?

2) What is your belief on how Science and Faith relate to each other?

3) What is Science?

4) What is Faith?

5) Look up the Laminin Molecule, what can you express about knowing that molecule is cross shaped?