In the sermon last week, I was trying to illustrate the vast creative power of Jesus Christ, who spoke everything into being, so I asked Google to tell me the number of galaxies in the universe.

Two trillion.

I was surprised, because the previous time I checked, the number was in the hundreds of billions.

The previous estimate was off by more than a trillion.

This week I checked Google again, and now the number is 125 billion.

I’m not making this up.

For some time now, our leaders have been telling us to “follow the science” when it comes to a host of issues. But “following the science” as a matter of public policy, without a basis in values we all agree on, is fraught with problems.

John Lennox, an Oxford professor of math and science, gave the following illustration:

Imagine your Aunt Matilda made a beautiful cake, and you took it to be analyzed by a group of the world’s top scientists.

The nutritionists told you the number of calories and the nutritional effects. 

The biochemists described the structure of proteins, fats, and so on. 

The physicists analyzed the cake in terms of fundamental particles. 

The mathematicians provided a set of equations to describe the behavior of the particles.

But then you asked the scientists one final question: Why was the cake made?

Only Aunt Matilda knows. 

Lennox said, “All the scientists in the world are not going to be able to answer that question, and it’s no insult to their disciplines that they can’t. The only way we’ll ever get an answer is if Aunt Matilda reveals it to us.”

The Gospel of John says that God has revealed his purpose for your life: To be in a relationship with the God who created you, and to reflect back to God a bit of his glory that he put in you. 

The scientists can describe you the same way they describe Aunt Matilda’s cake.

Only God can tell you what you’re worth.