Title: A DAY IN THE SUN

Text:  Selected

Introduction:

            We’re going to be spending a day in the hot California sun.  By mid afternoon we may be resenting it, but I want to share with you some awesome statistics that will help you appreciate this creation of our wonderful God.

            How do you suppose we get so much heat and light from the sun?                     The heat comes from burning about 4.2 million tons of gasses per second; that’s 8.4 billion pounds per second!  Suppose we decided to buy the energy that the sun gives off in just a 24-hour period.  Suppose we are going to pay one penny per kilowatt of energy, and we are going to pay it in silver dollars.  The amount of silver dollars to buy that much energy would cover the United States 16 miles deep!

            And guess what?  There’s still enough energy left in the sun to burn for 30 billion years!

            The sun is located more than half way from the center to the outer edge of our solar system.  Our solar system is disc shaped.  When we look up into the stars tonight and see the Milky Way, we are looking into the disc, like from the edge – looking into the densest part of the stars in the galaxy.

Our sun revolves around the center of our galaxy at 134 miles per second.  So it’s spinning very fast.

The sun is such a huge star that it has a tremendous gravitational pull upon the planets spinning around it; including our planet earth.  Gravitational pull is pull it takes to keep a ball in the same orbit when it’s spun around your head with a rope – like the “hammer” in track in field contests.  If you were to replace the gravitational pull of the sun on the earth by a cable, you would need a cable 8,000 miles in diameter, and that would just barely pass the snapping point.

Deut. 4:19

Can you stop the sun?  Do you know there is someone in the Bible that prayed to God and God stopped the sun for him?  Josh. 10:12-14 

Listen to this blessing Deborah prayed over Israel when she was Judge over Israel:  Judg. 5:31 

The Psalmist used the life span of the sun (30 billion years) to describe how long the throne of the Lord is to endure.  Psa. 89:36 

And how long His name is to be praised:  Ps. 113:3 

            When you feel the scorch of the heat of the sun today, I want you to remember this blessing from the very words of God:  Isa. 49:10

            Rev. 1:12-16               Rev. 21:22-23             John 8:12; 12:36