Discover the wonder of your own body! Explore the intricate design within each cell and DNA as clear evidence of a masterful Creator.

We look around us and we see the awesome handiwork of our Creator. From the birds to each little and big creature to the smallest plant and the biggest tree, we see the workings of our Creator God. We also see Him through every intricate detail of our human body. He created us in His image, and He created us so detailed that even the most “intelligent” of evolutionist can’t figure it out. God created us for a purpose, not by accident.

Summary

This sermon delves into the complexities of the human body at the cellular level, highlighting the astonishing design and information-rich DNA. Key concepts explored include:

• Divine Blueprint: The intricate structure and functionality of cells and their DNA point to a purposeful Creator, not random evolution.
• Unparalleled Complexity: The sheer volume of information contained within a single cell, comparable to thousands of books, far exceeds anything that could evolve by chance.
• God's Workmanship: The Bible describes humans as God's "workmanship" or "poems" – unique creations intricately designed with intention.
• Uniqueness and Value: Just as a car's inventor understands its workings best, our Creator understands us and the purpose for which we were created.

The message challenges the evolutionary narrative, emphasizing the inadequacy of random chance to explain the human body's marvels. Instead, it encourages a sense of wonder and appreciation for our Creator God, reminding believers of their intrinsic worth and the privilege of reflecting His image.

Transcript

Thus far in our study, we’ve taken our binoculars and added them to our Bibles in order to make observations revealed in creation – some of the wonders of the natural world – and we’ve easily concluded that all of it has been created and designed by the creative genius of our Creator God.

And the more we learn about creation, the greater and lovelier and more gracious our Creator God becomes to us. This was the conclusion of David the Psalmist who wrote,

On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on Your wondrous works, I will meditate . . . I will tell of Your greatness.

Psalm 145:5-6

In other words, meditating – studying – observing – watching – examining – learning about creation, leads the believer to say – I can’t help but praise the Lord for His greatness!

In other words, spending a little time observing just one aspect of God’s creation and you end up as a believer saying, “Is God great or what?!” We will tell of the Lord’s greatness.

If created things are seen as gifts from God and as mirrors of His glory . . . to delight in them is to delight in their Maker.

John Piper

So far, we’ve taken a closer look at some of God’s handiwork which have included honey bees, birds, metamorphic rock and gemstones, dinosaurs, hurricanes and, in our last study, a closer look at the marvel of those average, ordinary, oxygen producing marvels called trees.

And we’ve really only scratched the surface . . . to notice some of the creative marvels in the world around us.

What I want to do today is follow the advice of Augustine, the brilliant theologian from the 4th century, who wrote this interesting statement – and I quote –

Mankind goes abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the long course of rivers, the vast compass of the ocean and the circular motion (orbits) of the stars, but they pass by themselves and do not notice.

Augustine––354-430 AD

And that’s true. In all our observations, it would be easy to miss the marvel of our own creation by the design and plan of God.

I struggled with what exactly to focus on. In fact, I spent a lot of time reading on the human eye – it is an amazingly complex creation – a moving self-cleaning; self-adjusting fiber optic marvel.

Darwin even wrote to a friend that his theory had at one of its weakest points the concept of the human eye evolving. i

He wrote to his friend late in life – and I quote – “The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder . . . but my reason tells me I ought to conquer this cold shudder.”ii

There’s an interesting expression in the Hebrew Bible where the believer is told that we are the apple of God’s eye. To the Hebrew poet and author, the pupil of your eye – that black hole – was considered the apple of the eye, perhaps because of the round shape.

We now know that the strongest protective reflex you have in your body is the reflex to blink in order to protect your eye. Nothing moves faster than that reflexive protection. If someone or something gets too close to your eye, you blink faster than you consciously think.

It became a metaphor in the Hebrew Bible for the swift protection of God over His children. This is what David was praying about in Psalm 17:8 when he asked the Lord,

Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.

Psalm 17:8

Those are two poetic expressions asking for the Lord the fastest and strongest protection possible.

The prophet Zechariah, speaking for God, promised Israel; For he who touches you, touches the apple of His eye.

Zechariah 2:8

In other words, metaphorically speaking, to touch the person who belongs to God is like touching the most sensitive part of God’s body, and He’s going to reflexively move to protect the apple – the pupil – of His eye.

I spent time researching the subject of the brain, and was amazed at what looks like a 3 and ½ pound cauliflower.

But inside that command center are 100 billion neurons, with each neuron communicating through tens of thousands of connections every second.

In fact, one recent research project revealed that it would take the world’s fastest computer 100 years to process what the eye sends to the brain and the images that are processed in 1 second. One hundred years to process the data you take in and comprehend in 1 second.iii

So you can imagine how easy it would be to focus on the eye and/or the brain. But as I studied further, I was drawn deeper still into the molecular, cellular aspect of our bodies creation.

Your body happens to be an amazing cell-producing factory. In the time it takes me to finish this sentence, millions of cells will have been produced in your body.

In fact, your body is producing 2 million cells every single second . . . which is a good thing because around 2 million cells are dying every second.

And as we age, the replacement rate slows down and doesn’t keep up – so our skin gets dry and our memories slow down and our eyes fail and our joints don’t work and on and on.

But just imagine, inside you today – just today – 60 billion cells will be produced in your body.

Throughout the course of your average day, there’s so much going on inside you . . . 60 billion cells are being manufactured . . . no wonder you’re tired.

If you’ve ever wondered if you accomplished anything in one day, you can now tell yourself, “Self – today I produced 60 billion cells. Now I’m going to sit down and prop up my feet up and watch the Red Sox win the World Series.”

It’s going to be a great night.

Now evolution says that life supposedly developed over a few million years in a warm little pond of goop.

You have to say goop and not water, because molecules that construct amino acids can’t form in water – so this goop – which no one knows where it came from – can’t be water – but we don’t know what it was . . . but of course the evolutionist knows with absolute certainty that you came from it.

If you start with the big bang which produced this planet and on the planet, after a few million years inside this puddle of goop, molecules were formed . . . and over a few more million years amino acids formed and during the next few million more years, some of those amino acids just happened to make the right connections and eventually, after a few more million more years, the first single cell sprang to life. We owe it all to that amazing little puddle of goop.

Now based on the light microscope, which Darwin would have used to amplify the cell several hundred times, the living cell would have looked to him like an apparently disordered blob of particles which seemed to be tossing around haphazardly in all directions.

But now – thanks to the electron microscope, and amazing progress in molecular biology along with mitochondrial DNA research, which Darwin could never have imagined, we can now study one cell magnified essentially a billion times.

Now science was not my favorite class – in fact, this study of cells wasn’t my first pursuit in the study of the human body . . . but I found these discoveries and observations not only fascinating but conclusively and convincingly point to the hand of a creative, imaginative, brilliant, purposeful God.

And it really matters to the human being, right? But why? The evolutionist Bertrand Russell said that man is “a curious accident in a backwater” . . . I mean we’re an accident that happened in this backwater puddle of goop. It was nothing more than random purposeless accidents!

Oxford Professor, Peter Atkins, said with even more biting pessimism that mankind is nothing more than “a bit of slime on the planet”.

That’s about it. We’re accidents . . . we’re slimy coagulations of amino acids and proteins that accidentally sprang to life for no apparent reason. Which means you have no meaning . . . no hope . . . no security . . . and by the way, no help in life – I mean, you’re on your own.

Beloved, your Creator God says something vastly different. Isaiah the prophet writes,

This is what the Lord, the one who made you, says— the one who formed you in the womb (and that’s not all – notice, He not only formed you, He) and helps you . . . (and what does He say to you?) “Don’t be afraid.”

Isaiah 44:2

You are not an accident; you were deliberately and specifically and knowingly crafted and created and embroidered by the Master Designer.

And here’s one point of application among many – which Isaiah points out – did you notice – Don’t be afraid. Everything about your life has a sovereignly designed purpose, even though we might not have all the explanations this side of Heaven.

Don’t be afraid. If God is your Creator – wise enough and powerful enough to create you – He is wise enough and powerful enough to watch over you.

Now, let’s go back to that amazing microscope that would reveal what Darwin would never have imagined. You happen to be an amazing factory of working cells.

Now here’s where it gets crazy. You don’t just have one cell in your body, you have 37 trillion cells.

And that’s not all. Inside each cell in your body, there are 100 trillion atoms, busily at work.

How long did that take to put together randomly . . . in just the right order and according to just the right functionality.

Let me try to illustrate it with a tennis ball.

If you could magnify one cell in your body so that each atom was the size of a tennis ball – that’s the workable scale we’re trying to get to – that one cell would end up taking up the space of New York City.

If you decided to make a model out of that cell like you put together that model airplane; if you decided to make a model out of that one cell – so that each atom was the size of a tennis ball – and if you were able then to connect all the tennis balls with little sticks – like tinker toys – remember those?

Well, if you could connect each tennis ball to another tennis ball – at the rate of one tennis ball every minute – so that all the tennis balls were connected – that model would take you 56 million years to put together – and that’s a model of just one cell inside your body.

How long would it take for a human body to evolve – if it took 56 million years to construct one cell – but don’t forget, you don’t just have one cell in your body, you have 37 trillion cells in your body.

Now back to these tennis balls. If you could make that model, the size of New York City actually come alive so that all these tennis balls are working like they do inside a living cell – tennis balls are flying and spinning and moving all over the place.

And if you could get in your car and drive around that New York City sized cell and look at all the activity, it would be anything but a blob of haphazard activity that Charles Darwin observed.

With the help of electron magnification, inside just one cell inside your body – here’s a little bit of what’s going on.

Let me read a quote – and I’m going to put it up on the screen so you can follow along – this is from a book I read by Stephen Bartholomew, which I read over the summer in preparation for this series, 300 pages of fascinating material . . . let me pull out one quote . . . here it is;

If the cell could be magnified to allow you to travel within it, at the outer edges – the surface – of the cell you would see millions of openings, like the portholes of a huge spaceship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we drove through one of these openings, we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.

We would see endless corridors and conduits branching off in every direction, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others leading to assembly plants and processing units.

We would see proof-reading devices and quality control machines checking to make sure everything is in proper order; we would watch a variety of assembly processes, decoding systems and memory banks where information was being stored and then retrieved at just the right time and for the right purpose.

Eventually we would arrive at the nucleus of the cell, a vast spherical chamber, resembling a large dome; and inside the dome we would see, neatly stacked together in ordered array, miles upon miles of coiled chains of DNA molecules – the genetic code – all the information drawn, from which determines all the processes inside that cell – information which is uniquely designed to make you – you.iv

And let me stop here to marvel for just a moment at the complexity and beauty of these coils of DNA.

Again, with the help of amazing microscopes, looking down through the top of just one little piece of DNA – just 13 base pairs – this is from the top view – there is incredible symmetry and design.

Beautiful, aren’t they? These are photographs of A and B DNA. These pictures are a snapshot of 13 base pairs – viewed from the top down.

This is a snapshot of only 13 base pairs – but your entire DNA inside that one cell is actually made up of 3 billion base pairs. 3 billion base pairs that form the double helix design. This is only 13 base pairs – you have 3 billion more.

In fact, if all of your DNA inside all of your cells were to be uncoiled and lined up end to end – your DNA would wrap around the Solar System.v

All that complexity and beauty and design is what makes the marvel of you.

The evolutionist has argued that much of your DNA is malleable, changeable, and adaptive to becoming something else. And you share common traits with mice and monkeys and even, they’ve proven, a banana tree.

But one study of DNA, just published a few months ago is shattering that view, proving that as much as 95% or your DNA – and the number keeps getting higher and higher and higher through research – but 95% of your DNA is fixed.vi

It is fixed. In other words, you were going to become you when you were conceived. You were never going to be a mouse or a monkey or a banana.

One theoretical evolutionist admitted recently that if this research can be validated, evolution is – and I quote – evolution is finished.

Let me show you another picture: here’s a picture of Z DNA (on the left); again, just 13 base pairs shown from a top view.

Again, you have such beauty and balance and design. The Z DNA is shown next to a piece of stained glass there on the right. I found that online at Houzz.com when I went looking for stained glass designs. I found several pieces on sale at Houzz.com – I’m not getting paid by Houzz to show you this, but I wanted footnote the picture and also who you the obvious.

When you look at a picture of a stained glass window like this you automatically say something like, “Look at the repeating patterns – the balance of color – that’s a beautiful design!”

No no . . . that’s the result of millions of years of random pieces of glass lying in a puddle of goop that decided to randomly attach themselves to each other and look at how they accidentally formed this amazingly complex and beautiful pattern.

No, you would insist – that is an amazing design. Somebody had to conceive of that pattern and then create the materials and then arrange them together.

Still, evolutionists maintain that if there were enough millions of years to work with, atoms could form together to create such design and beauty and functionality and complexity of information. Just give it enough time.

One author wrote, that would be like expecting that a monkey sitting at a keyboard randomly hitting letters and numbers could eventually, given enough millions of years – produce a telephone book – with each phone number in numerically correct order and each address spelled correctly. Just give him a billion years.

But here’s the added challenge we have discovered in our generation – this strand of DNA inside one cell inside your body contains more information than a telephone book.

In fact, if the information in this strand of DNA was transferred into print – it would require 2,000 books, 500 pages each.

Two thousand of books this size – I brought this 500 page book from my library – 2,000 of these would be needed to record the information in one cell inside your body.

This is the work of a master creator. This information was first composed and then condensed and then communicated in order to create every atom and every cell of your body.

You are not an afterthought, you are the result of eternal thought. From eternity past, God designed you and everything about you.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians and said, For we are His workmanship (poiema), created in Christ Jesus for good works . . .

Ephesians 2:10a

You are the workmanship of a Creator God.

This word for workmanship is poiema in the Greek language, which can be transliterated into our word for poem.

Paul is choosing a word under inspiration to emphasize God’s skillful and creative designing composition.vii You are a unique – one-of-a-kind creative poem written by God.

Paul pictures God as it were sitting down in eternity past and writing out an original poem – an original masterpiece – with original and unique lyrical phrases and nuances. And you’re it!

Then He planned as well when you would be born and what you would do for His glory. This is the created marvel of you.

Paul says, “God creatively composed you when He put you together.”

And since He put you together He knows how you work best and what He will want you to work at best and why.

I was reminded of an event that occurred in the early 1930’s. A man was on the side of a dirt road, standing next to his broken down car. He had exhausted himself under the hood of his Model A; nothing he tried would get it to crank back up again.

A beautiful, chauffer driven car pulled off the road near him and a small, well-dressed older gentleman got out and walked over and asked the man if he could take a look under the hood. After a few minutes, he popped his head back out from underneath the hood, slammed it shut and told the man that the car could now be started.

Sure enough, it cranked right up. The appreciative man couldn’t contain his curiosity and he blurted out, “You’re not dressed much like a mechanic . . . how’d you know how to fix my car?” The man quietly responded, “Well, my name is Henry Ford . . . and I invented your car . . . I know how it’s supposed to work.”

God designed you . . . He put you together . . . He wrote out the lyrics of your life and coded those lyrics into the DNA in the cells of your body according to His design so that you would be uniquely crafted and created. So don’t talk down about yourself . . . don’t run yourself down!

You happen to be one of God’s original masterpieces . . . one of God’s master-inventions . . . that’s the marvelous thing about you – He invented you . . . He invented you! He knows then how you’re supposed to work.

The more we discover about ourselves – even at the cellular level – the more it all points to an incredible Creator who had the genius to imagine us and design us and enliven us and genetically instruct us and manage us and lead us to bring us to surrender everything about us and . . . to say with the Psalmist David, I will meditate on your wondrous works [so that I might] tell of the greatness – the greatness – of the Lord.

i Tommy Mitchellon, “Didn’t Darwin Call the Evolution of the Eye Absurd?” Answers Magazine, September 14, 2010

ii Ibid

iii Answers in Genesis Essays, “Can Evolution Produce an Eye? David Menton” August 19, 2017

iv Adapted from Stephen Bartholomew, Jr. Scopes Retried (Bethany Press, 2012), p. 161-167

v https://www.sciencefocus.com

vi Institute for Creation Research Update (icr.org) “95% of Human Genome Can’t Evolve”, Jeffrey Tomkins, October 25, 2018

vii Clinton E. Arnold, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Ephesians (Zondervan, 2010), p. 141