April 3-4: Easter is a Celebration of Miracles

1. We should celebrate miracles

1. Some people called the 1980 Olympic Hockey victory over Russia a "miracle"

2. Was it a miracle? The world typically defines a miracle differently

3. What a miracle really is: the impossible happens and is seen

2. Today we celebrate a miracle:

1. The miracle in Jesus: God raised the man from the dead

2. The miracle in us: Our sins are forgiven, they are no longer a part of us
3. Example: Sand of more than one color, mixed – is it impossible to separate?

3. A miracle from Numbers 21:4-9

1. The people of Israel are wandering through the desert. Many are forgetting or disbelieving the promises of God

2. God sent snakes among the people - not to punish them, but to remind them they were reliant on him

3. The people call out, desperate to be saved

4. Moses lifts up the snake in the desert, they look to it, and they are saved

5. God did this miracle to prove that he could do things they couldn't do for themselves.

4. We are also sick & in need of God

1. Our sin makes us imperfect - we are stained, broken, scratched up, and it cannot be undone on our own.

2. Yet, the Bible says only perfect people can stand before God

3. What God wants is the same as he wanted Moses' people to do - to turn to him for help

5. The parallel reference is in John 3

1. v. 13 - 16 - when Jesus was "lifted up" it was on the cross

2. When we believe in him we're like a man bitten by a snake…we tell God that we are sick and need his help

March 27-28: Answering the Question - Where did God come from?

What do I do if someone asks me, "How do you know God created the world?" or "How do you even know there is a God?"

Universe in a Box
Sometimes we are asked, "When did God begin? How can God not have a beginning?"
The answer is that God is outside of time. Think of the universe as a box. Contained inside are height, depth, and width (what we call the three dimensions) - but God stays outside the box. God can't be measured - he does not have a height, or depth, or width. The 4th dimension inside the universe is time - but God is outside of time. He does not age, and he does not have a starting point - all of time is contained in the universe, and God is not contained by the universe.

Rolling Ball
If I see a ball rolling, what do I know had to have happened to it? That someone or something acted on the ball to start it rolling. In the same way, I can look at the universe, which exists, and know that something had to be the "first cause", coming before it.

The Watchmaker
If I see a watch on the ground and pick it up and examine it, does it cause me to think, "These parts must have come together by accident"? No - I automatically assume someone was behind the design of it. It is simply too complex to be an accident. We can look at the universe and all things that live in the same way. It is too complex to have come together by accident.

Who Wrote the Rules?
There are always "rules behind rules" ... and it usually comes down to: it's wrong to hurt other people, wrong to hurt yourself, wrong to take what doesn't belong to you, wrong to be selfish, etc. Who wrote those rules? Are those human-invented rules? Could the rule-maker - the parent, the teacher, the principal - re-write the rule and suddenly it would become ok to hurt others? Or to take their things? No...and that's an argument that moral truths came from something other than humans, making them up.

1 Peter 3:15 - In your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.

Why should we answer questions with gentleness and respect?
1. People belong to God - to speak harshly to them is to disrespect them
2. If you are rude, they will stop listening to what you say
3. You want people to continue asking questions - a conversation is better than an argument

March 20-21: Created or Evolved?

Does nature and the complexity of organisms point us toward a creator? Or did everything we see in the world come from Evolution?
"Evolution" can have two meanings:
"micro"evolution refers to changes or variations within species. Example: parents with blond hair can have a child with dark hair; certain tendencies for diseases can be "carried" in certain people; short parents can have kids who grow up to be tall...BUT two parents with arms will not have a child who has wings.

"macro"evolution refers to the change of one species into another. This is what is often meant by "evolution" as a way of explaining where all life came from...that it started simple and then became more and more complex.

From last week: if a certain species evolved into (branched off into) different, other species, we would expect to find lots of "in-between" fossils in the ground - we don't.

Let's say all of the complex life we see today came from one, simple, single-celled creature...which evolved into higher and higher forms of life: the question still has to be asked - Where did that first living thing come from?

Two scientists - Miller and Urey - set out to answer that question by combining a mixture of gases in test tubes and sending an electric charge through them. By doing this, they produced amino acids, which strung together make proteins. They said this simulated what happened at the beginning of the universe. But - did they use the right chemicals? Were the gases they used really the ones present at the beginning of the universe? And in what amounts? If you use different starting products, you get different results. (For instance, many models of the early earth contain cardon dioxide and nitrogen which would form nitrates, and nitrates destroy amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins.)

But suppose the amino acids did form that way...couldn't they have come together to start life? NASA has found that the simplest protein that could be considered "life" is a string of 400 amino acids in a specific sequence. So, to come together by accident would be like blindly drawing the numbers 1-400 out of a bag, one by one, and getting them in perfect order.

Moreover, there are structures in complex living things that couldn't have evolved. (This is called the problem of "irreducible complexity".) One example is your eye. Every part is necessary - missing one structure, the whole eye fails. Think of your eye as being like a mousetrap: without any one of the parts, the mousetrap is of no use. For eyes to have evolved piece by piece would have meant some creatures had useless eye-parts-that-would-become-eyes...so these parts would have evolved (because they were necessary) - even though they were worthless.

Where did cells get the information to "know" what to become? Cells have "information" in them that tell them how to function and what to be...where did this "intelligence" come from if the first single-celled organism came together by accident?

Does all of this point to a Creator?
We can't "prove" that God was the originator of life. But neither can a person who believes evolution is the answer "prove" that life came from non-living things, or that one species turned into another, or that amino acids arranged themselves into proteins, which led to cells, which led to organisms...anytime someone concludes that something "probably" happened, it's a statement of faith.

Where will you put your faith? In the idea that living things all came from chance, randomly as chemicals came together, and that all living things we see today, in all their variety, started out as the same single-celled creature? Or that living creatures came from the mind and will of God?

March 13-14: The Beginning - Investigating the Theory of Evolution

Where did the world and everything in it come from? It's natural for people to be curious about this and to try to form answers.

Charles Darwin was a zoologist who traveled the world and observed different species of animals. He observed that most animals had similar body types. He also believed that animals adapted to their different environments, in ways that helped them survive. Those that couldn't adapt didn't survive. He called this idea, "Survival of the fittest."

But, he also believed that all living things could be traced back to one common ancestor. When we talk of "evolution", this is what is usually meant - that one type of animal turned into another type of animal.

However, the Bible says that God created living things "according to their kinds". The variety of species that we see today is not the result of one species turning into another. Why?

For one thing, it would've taken a very long time for all species to have evolved from the first organism (or "common ancestor"). How long? No one knows, because evolution takes so long it cannot be observed. If it can't be observed, it can't be studied in a lab. But, it could well have taken longer than the earth has even existed.

For another, you would expect to find lots of fossils representing the "in-between" forms of animals - the "ancestor" of the two modern animals. But you don't see that. What you see instead is a number of new species showing up, fully formed, in the fossil record at one time. Remember that Genesis says God created living things "according to their kinds".

March 6-7, 2010: The Beginning - Theories

A theory is an educated guess about how something happened or happens.

A theory is a combination of two things:

• Things we know to be true
• Things we suppose to be true.

In this way, a theory is kind of like a brick wall: we "build" our conclusions on facts and educated guesses. If the "bricks" of our wall are weak (or the facts we're using are wrong), the wall won't hold.

The Theory of Evolution is a theory about how the world came to be and where nature - plants, but especially animals and humans - came from.

The Bible teaches that God made the world and everything in it. Before God moved, the earth was without form and empty. (Gen. 1:2)

January 2-3, 2010 - Paul goes on a missionary journey

History of Skateboarding - it started in California, when surfers put wheels on the bottom of planks of wood and rode down the street - "Street Surfing". But, it was a fad...it died out by about 1965.

Three big things happened to bring it back:
1. The invention of polyurethane wheels, which replaced unsafe clay wheels
2. A drought in California in 1976, which led people to drain their swimming pools. People discovered they could skate in them - the beginning of vert skating.
3. Invention of the "ollie" - a jump trick - in Florida. The ollie spread to California when its founder visited California and the trick took off.

Skateboarding went from a died-out fad to a revived sport that spread around the world; the spread of Christianity is similar.

By Acts chapter 12, Christians were being persecuted; James had been killed (the second Christian martyr, after Stephen). Some of the "big things" that happened in Christian history were:
1. The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
2. The miracles performed by the apostles
3. The conversion of Paul
4. Peter's vision showed that God intended to offer salvation to everyone
5. The sending of Paul on missionary journeys

Acts 13 - Paul and Barnabas are commanded by the Holy Spirit to take the message out.

At Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, they encounter a proconsul (government official) who wants to hear about the Lord, and a false prophet who opposes them. By the Holy Spirit's power, the false prophet is blinded. Paul had words & a message, but the Holy Spirit supplied the power to change and to convince the proconsul that what was preached about was real.

If God was going to send us out from NCCC, where would he send us?
He may send us to a far-off place; but he also needs us to take the message right here, to where we live: our schools, our neighborhoods, etc.

But - God's intention is not that we receive the message and keep it - it's that once we go out, we will return - with ourselves and others.

We have 5 Big Events this year that are great to bring friends to:
1. "Believe It With Your Own Eyes"
2. Kids Games
3. Summer Camp (July 5-9)
4. Christmas Party & Sleepover (December)
5. Next year's Winter Camp

November 21-22, 2009: Peter's Vision

"I saw something that looked like a large sheet. It was being let down from heaven by four corners. It came down to where I was. I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth. There were also wild animals, reptiles, and birds. Then I heard a voice speaking to me. 'Get up, Peter,' the voice said. 'Kill and eat.'"

Peter's vision happened in Joppa, a city on the coast of Israel.

In the Old Testament, people were either Jews (followers of God), or Gentiles. Among the Gentiles, some were believers in God ("god-fearers"), but they could not become Jewish.

Foods were also divided into "clean" and "unclean" - but the meaning of this was "acceptable, special" vs. "common".

In Acts 10, two men receive messages from God: Cornelius & Peter.

Cornelius - God told him to send some men to Joppa to get Peter and invite him to his house.

Peter's vision was of a sheet being lowered onto a roof, filled with clean and unclean animals. Peter protests: I will not eat what is unclean. The voice answers: do not call anything unclean that God has made clean.

Peter is brought to Cornelius' house. Normally a Jew would not enter the home of a Gentile, but based on Peter's vision, he knows that God does not show favoritism and that salvation is for the Gentiles as well as the Jews.

What does this story teach us about God? In God's eyes - everyone is equal. That is, no one has special status because of their skin color, past, family, money, religious background, or anything like that. What if we really believed that?

This does not mean we are all the same. Rather, that differences don't make people any less.

Think about the people you associate with. Then think about who you don't or wouldn't associate with. We often draw distinctions for pointless reasons.

When Peter takes the story back to Jerusalem, that he has shared the gospel and had fellowship with Gentiles, the disciples believe he's done a bad thing (violated the Law) until Peter explains his vision. How many of us would have that courage if we were confronted about hanging out with the wrong sort of people?

When you can look at all sorts of faces - colors, rich vs. poor, disabled vs. normally able - and see dignity and value in each one, you have the mind of God.