God of Creation: Honeybees (Part 1)

A honey bee is not just a bug with wings, it’s a flying bundle of precision tools. When you look closely at its antennae built for smell, its built-in “cleaning gate,” its pollen basket and packing spur, and the chemistry that turns watery nectar into honey, you’re forced into a question many people try to avoid: does this kind of interlocking function come from chance, or from a mind that designed it? We take the “bee’s knees” seriously and use real details from nature to argue for a Creator who plans, builds, and sustains life with purpose. 

Then we widen the lens from creation to Scripture. We talk about the Holy Bible as a different kind of marvel: written across centuries by many authors in many settings, yet carrying one unified theme that points to redemption through Jesus Christ. We reflect on why the Bible has endured, shaped moral life, and spoken to every generation, and we read 1 Thessalonians 2:13 as a direct claim that the Word is received “not as the word of men” but as the Word of God. 

Finally, the message turns personal. With John 3:16 and a story of an Indigenous chief who recognized God in the storm and in provision, we ask what it means to move from knowing there is a God to actually knowing Him. If you’ve been weighing intelligent design, Christian apologetics, creation and faith, or you’re simply restless with empty religion, this broadcast aims straight at the heart. Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who loves science and big questions, and leave a review with your answer: what part of creation most clearly points you to God?

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Transcript

The Bee’s Smell And Identity

Bee Tools For Cleaning And Pollen

Design Argument Against Chance

The Bible As A Miracle Book

Back To Bees And Honey Making

Wings, Flight, And Engineering

Scripture On God’s Word

John 3:16 And The Indian Chief

Personal Appeal To Trust Christ

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Thank you so much for that kind word of introduction. Greetings once again to one and all of you. I'm Brother James, and this is the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. We thank you so much for tuning in today to a Bible-based and Bible-believing radio program. We try each and every time that we get together for thirty minutes to give you some truth, some substantial and life-changing and soul-stirring truth from the Word of God. We are thankful for Christian radio. We are thankful for uh radio stations where you can tune in and hear great hymns of the Christian faith, where you can hear uh songs and hymns and spiritual songs. We're thankful for the opportunity to tune in a radio uh station where we can hear testimonies of the working of God in people's lives and how God is blessed and moved. Uh and we are glad for that. We appreciate that. On this program, what we try to do is take the uh full thirty minutes that is available to us and teach you about God from God's Word. We are going to begin on this radio broadcast, a very uh unique, we believe be a very unique and a very blessed uh series of studies, uh, entitled The God of Creation and the Creation of God. And what we are going to do for the next uh several broadcasts, be very many in this series, we're not sure yet just exactly how many, but we are going to discuss the creation of God. For example, uh we'll have uh a few lessons on honey bees, we will uh talk about uh uh gardening, we will talk about different kinds of plants, we will talk about uh whales and lions, we'll talk about uh kangaroos and uh bats and things of this nature. And what we are going to do is show you from science that there must be a creator, and then show you from the Word of God who this creator is, and we think this will be a very uh interesting as well as a very instructive and very informative uh series of radio broadcasts, and we trust above all else that it will prove to be a faith-building series of broadcasts. We're gonna discuss, first of all, the honey bee, and include in this discussion the wonder of the bee's knees. Now you've probably heard that expression uh if you were uh on in years. Uh that used to be a very common, very familiar expression, uh she's the bee's knees or he's the bee's knees. But honey bees have been on earth for thousands of years and as far as we know, are today exactly what they were from the beginning. They continue now, as always, to excite the greatest degree of admiration and interest. They intrigue the human mind with the marvels of their structure and even more with the intricacy of their mysterious operations. We want to examine some of these wonderful workings of the honeybee as we discuss uh them on the program today. But let's glance first of all at the mechanical equipment on the knees of the three pairs of legs possessed by this astonishing insect. You have no doubt noticed the two rod like projections that extend out in front of the bee, and they're constantly on the move. It used to be thought that these were feelers, but scientists now know that they are smellers. In fact, they are the nose of the bee. Now aren't you glad you don't have two things uh uh long projectiles sticking out from the front of your face that are constantly in motion that you use for smelling with, but uh that's what the bee has. Apparently every bee has its own distinctive odor, and this characteristic serves admirably as a means of identification among the hive members. Accordingly, it is necessary that the sense of smell be acute, and that the apparatus be kept in perfect functioning condition. On the tips of these two antennae are thousands of tiny sense plates. Depending upon the size of the bee, there uh are two thousand up to thirty thousand sense plates on each of these antenna. The queen has the least, and the drones have the most. The drones need to be able to follow the queen on their nuptial flight, and they do so not by sight so much as by odor. Now these scents plates are constantly rubbing against pollen dust as the bee inserts her head into the nectar holding flowers, and occasionally they become uh coated with uh propolis, or uh an easier term, a non-scientific term, would be bee glue. Okay, the bee is working down inside that flower where the pollen is, and these antennae that they use for their sense of smell, they tend to get clogged up and uh get coated with this um propolis or bee glue, and there must be some special appliance then for the cleaning of these antennae, and that is exactly what the bee has. The device resembles a self-threading needle. On the front pair of legs is a movable piece of horn like tissue which can be raised by the bee, making a small opening, on the outer side of which are stakes or teeth. These are really stiff hairs, not teeth at all, but stiff hairs which serve a very useful purpose. Now let's suppose that the bee desires to clean her right antennae. She bends it to the left, lifts the tiny horn like piece, the gate, we'll call it. She inserts her antenna, drops the gate, and then draws the smeller back and forth between the stiff hairs placed outside the gate until all dirt and dust be removed. When the same operation is performed on the other side, the tool is again functioning perfectly. Now on the middle pair of legs, the bee has six, three on each side, on the middle pair of legs at the knee joint is a short projecting spur, like a diminutive crowbar or maybe an elephant's tusk. It's a very useful tool and it's needed especially for packing pollen dust into the pollen basket, which is a curious hollow depression on the flat outer surface of the hind leg. On the inner part of this hind leg are a series of side combs. These combs are constantly being applied to the hairy body of the bee in order to gather the pollen dust, which is then dropped or scraped into the pollen basket and packed tight by the crowbar. The bee's life depends on the efficiency of these devices. There could not possibly have been a time when they did not possess them. If the bee did not have these devices, it could not have survived. And these appliances could not develop gradually through long periods of time from a small beginning because the bees would have gone into extinction. They could not have lived without them. They must have been created as we see them today. Chance could not produce these exact and efficiently functioning tools. This must be an evident manifestation of the divining and designing mind of a supreme being. You know, the Bible tells us to study these amazing insect creatures and to learn from them. And we're going to try and do this on a series of programs, but let's turn for a few moments to another wonderful product of divine wisdom, another tremendous display of God's magnificent knowledge. I'm talking about the Holy Bible. Now let's think just for a minute about this great, miraculous book, and I believe that you will see it to be as great a miracle as any of the miracles in the world of science. The Bible is a book which speaks of everything. It describes nature, proclaims its grandeur, and tells the story of creation. It informs us of the structure of the heavens, the creation of light, waters, atmosphere, mountains, animals, and plants. It speaks of things visible and at the same time speaks of things invisible and takes us into the realm of the celestial world. It is the product of many writers. These writers are from many degrees of educational and cultural background. They were separated by a total of over fifteen hundred years from one another. The Bible is written in the center of Asia, among the sands of Arabia, in the rustic schools of the prophets of Bethel and Jericho. Parts of it originate in the sumptuous palaces of Babylon, on the idolatrous banks of the river Chibar, and afterwards, at the center of civilization amid pantheism, polytheism, and infidel philosophy in the heart of Roman and Greek culture, in the heart of Corinthian apostasy. Yet in not a single sentence does the Bible oppose the latest discoveries of science in any field of scientific investigation. A man by the name of Henry Rogers, a scientist, once said The Bible is a book which man could not have written if he wanted to, and would not have written if he could have. It is not a book of speculations and guesses. It represents not the groping of the human mind after God, but the revelation of that God to the groping human mind. The Bible is not a place where man discovers a hidden God, but it is the place where God presents Himself for man to discover him. You know, if you just look at it. The Bible is well, it's a book of sc scraps, a planless cluster of pamphlets and uh assorted essays and stories that represent the literature of the most unliterary of nations. It contains sixty six books, most diverse in character, scattered over sixteen centuries. They are made up of biographies, hymns, uh episodes of tribal history, laws of a social system which no longer exists, letters to churches dead for centuries, tales of old, far off and forgotten things, and ancient military battles which scientists are just now finding to be absolutely accurate as they uh unearth ancient cities and uh different areas of uh the Middle East and find that these things are just as God wrote them. But one book in the Bible is an Eastern love story, and another is an episode in the history of Persia which has not in it once the name of God. Yet another is a letter carried by an escaped slave who is being sent back to his master. This amazing book, you know it affronts all expectation. It seems in its literary form entirely unfitted for the great offices of a Bible, and yet this one book has influenced the history of the human race and the imagination of the world, not only more than any other book which can be named, but more than all other books combined. It has determined the morality of the race of mankind. Nations live by it or die by quarrelling with it. This tiny collection of Hebrew books not only lies on every pulpit lid in Christendom, but it is the shaping force in human affairs everywhere, even in the nations who do not believe it, and among the peoples who reject it as being the Word of God. Generation after generation rises up, each with its own separate ideals and deeds, each with its own language. The literature of yesterday is not the literature of today. Famous books who go out of fashion and are read only by scholars and antiquarians, but this immortal book is the contemporary of all the ages. It talks with the accents of each generation in turn. The silver cord of the Bible is not loosed, and its golden roll has not been broken as the centuries slip by. History is well it's literally strewn with a wreck of a hundred perished literatures. But time has not been able to destroy the biblical records. Some element not born of human genius lies in its pages and outshines all human genius. This book belongs to all the centuries and outlives them all. One supreme idea shines behind the many books of the Bible. The idea is the recovery of a fallen race, and the great instrument of this process is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible is a portrait, the face of Christ looks out tender, pure, and holy from every page. Is it really believable that sixty-six chance daubs and chance colors made without any agreement among themselves by a number of chance men could possibly produce the portrait of a face which not only arrests the attention but stirs the love or hatred of the entire world? No, it's not possible. There must be a single controlling mind behind the brush of the artist. No one can pretend that a handful of untaught Jews, herdsmen, fishermen, peasants could outscale the intellectual literary power of all the great minds, not only in the Greek and Latin literature, but of the literature of all races of all ages. To take the personal and intellectual element in the writers and try to explain the Bible by them is like taking a dead wire, the metal switch and the loop of fibers and offering them as an explanation for the electric light. These things are but the channel of that subtle invisible force running back into the mystery that we call electricity. When anyone can explain the electric light without an electric current, then we may explain the Bible without divine inspiration. Something is in the book which breaks out now in one place, now in another, with pulses of spiritual enemy or energy and gleams of unearthly light. It is flooded from cover to cover with divine inspiration. It is as though at first one cluster of words and then another became suddenly and strangely luminous. For the devout soul, the Bible is always a book of holy writ. But you know, back to our bee. For thousands of years man has gazed on the honey bee with awe and wonderment. This tiny bit of well of cells and molecules. It exhibits more than human skill in producing honey from the watery fluid that she finds in the heart of flowers. And then having effected this uh well, this sort of a magical change, she makes it a gift to mankind. Many centuries ago, honey was the main sugar supply of the world as early as thirty five hundred BC. Egyptian monuments portrayed the honey bee as an honored member of the community, supplying ample quantities of this delightful product which sold at about five cents a quart back in those days. Bees ask few favors of mankind except that of non interference. They are brave and self reliant, dying at the post of duty, literally of physical exhaustion, worn out by their strenuous labors. The active life of the worker bee is only about thirty five to forty days. Man may kill the bee, but he cannot conquer it. The bee is almost the only domesticated insect among the six hundred thousand insect species. The honey produced annually is worth millions of dollars, and the value of bees to orchards and gardeners and farmers is well, you just couldn't tell it. In all its varied forms, the bee is guided by what man calls instinct. Its short life permits but scant time for learning. In a very few days after hatching from the larval stage we find bees gathering honey, taking part in all the active operations of the hive, doing work that would seem to require a knowledge of chemistry, architecture, and other arts, which man learns slowly and with much labor. The bee begins life fully provided with everything needed to carry out the diversified jobs allotted to it. There is only one explanation creation. The art of manufacturing honey is the sole prerogative of bees. They have a long hollow tongue which is a sucking tube able to reach the deepest part of the flower and extract the tiny drop of nectar. This is repeated from flower to flower until the honey bag or crop is full. Then the chemical factory within the body begins to function. From the salivary glands in the mouth, complex organic substances known as enzymes are poured out and mixed with the nectar. As the bee flies home, the sugar of the nectar is being changed into dextrose and levulose of honey. At the hive, the load of nectar is passed on to the crops of the younger workers who are acting as nurses for the one thousand to fifteen hundred bee babies that are born every day in the hive. These nurse bees force the fluid in and out through their bodies in a thorough mixing process until a thin honey is formed which contains considerable water. This thin honey is emptied into the cells which are not capped until sufficient water is evaporated, and it has the proper consistency. You know, we can appreciate the labor involved in honey making when we know that it takes about thirty seven thousand loads of nectar to make one pound of honey, and that the workers from one hive say thirty five to fifty thousand bees will visit more than a quarter of a million blossoms in a single day, gathering this amount. To collect a pound of honey, even where flowers are plentiful, requires a flight mileage of fifty thousand miles, equal to two circuits of the globe. The bee has two pairs of amazingly efficient, powerful wings, and they give evidence of a special designing. The larger front wing has on its rear edge a ridge. To this ridge, hooks on the flying front edge of the back winged are fastened when flying. This device converts the forewings into two large ones for flight. Otherwise they would be too big to fit the small six sided cells into which the bee must enter. So at rest the wings overlap beautifully and easily and thus reducing their size. There couldn't be any chance about this. This has to be the work of an awesomely intelligent designer. The wings beat one hundred and ninety times a second, eleven thousand four hundred times every minute, moving in a figure eight design which makes possible the flight in any direction, up, down, side to side, backward and forward. And as we have seen many times, I'm sure you have, the bee can poise motionless while hovering over a flower. The wings are very powerful so that the bee can lift loads much heavier than itself, and still fly at an estimated speed of about fifteen miles an hour. Yes, these are miracles of science. But you know, that word of God, I have to keep coming back to it because it's also a great miracle. The apostle Paul was a great scholar and one of the keenest intellectuals who ever walked the world's stage. He wrote long ago to some friends in Thessalonica. He said in second in First Thessalonians chapter two and verse thirteen, we also thank God without ceasing that when you uh heard of us the word of God that you received it uh, not as the word of man. In fact, let me just uh uh turn there, and if you have a Bible, uh you can turn there also, and let's read this wonderful verse of Scripture together. It's first Thessalonians chapter two and verse number thirteen. The Bible says, For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God. The conditions under which the book was written convinced the reader of its divine inspiration. It was produced by men from peasants to kings, yet one unified theme of worship is found throughout its pages. With hundreds of conflicting pagan cults and heathen practices surrounding the divine penmen as they wrote the sixty six books, during fifteen centuries covered by its writing, its divinity is undefiled. One voice speaks clearly from all the records of holy scripture. Now where did the writers of the Bible get such conceptions of the one God while the foremost nations were worshipping idols, while Egypt bowed to the crocodile, and Athens gave sixty thousand women to the terrible rites of Venus, while Rome was adoring the bloody god of war? While even the Parisi got no higher than to turn his face eastward and adore the sun, who guarded the scriptures from the pagan influences of that day? Few things are more arresting than the marvelous way in which certain brief statements in this book have won the hearts of all kinds and conditions of men. You think of these world shaking words, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Peasants and kings, statesmen and beggars, the self righteous saint and the god defying sinner, the child at mother's knee, and the aged about to step into eternity, the ignorant and the untaught, the wise and the learned, the rich man, the poor man, they have all found rest of their souls in this wonderful world. Word that God so loved the world? Think of it, God so loved the rich, the poor, the black, the white, the male, the female, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Elberton Young was a great missionary to the Indians, and he tells how he once invaded the Nelson River district and opened a work among the people who had never before heard the gospel. As he tells the story of how he was surrounded by two hundred and fifty or three hundred Indians, wild and warlike savages, he says, I read aloud the sublime word, for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. They listened with rapt attention, as through four hours I talked to them of the truth of this glorious verse. When I had finished every eye turned toward the chief. He rose and coming near me he delivered one of the most thrilling addresses I have ever heard. Missionary, said the stately old chief, I have not for a long time believed in our religion. I hear God in the thunder, in the tempest, and in the storm. I see his power in the lightning that shivers the trees. I see his goodness in giving us the moose, the reindeer, the beaver and the bear. I see his loving kindness in sending when the south winds blow, the ducks and the geese, and when the ice and snow melt away and our lakes and rivers are open again, I see how he fills them with fish. I have watched all this for years, and I have felt that the great spirit so kind and watchful and loving, could not be pleased with the beating of the drum, or the shaking of the rattle by the medicine man. And I have had no religion because of this. But what you have just said fills my heart with joy and satisfies its longings. I am so glad you have come with this wonderful story. Henceforth this Jesus is my God, and this poor Indian is his. You know that was a great decision for an Indian chief and a wise one. But what about you? You know, we're just about twenty five minutes into a series of many, many messages where we show over and over again that nature and all its wonders, they're not coincidence, they're not chance, they're no accident. There is a creator, there is a master designer, and his works, his marvelous works which man cannot possibly duplicate with all his wisdom and all his intelligence. They display his glory and his majesty. And what about you? That mind that is reasoning right now over the words that you've been hearing, those ears with which you are listening, that heart which is being tugged upon by the Holy Spirit. All those you know are not the products of some chance, they're not the products of some unexplainable, unanswerable theory that someone is trying to teach your children in a classroom at school. You know that someone made you, and you know in the depths of your heart that you're accountable to that one. And you know it's sad that in a nation like ours with so many churches and so many preachers, so many Bibles, so many radio programs, that many are yet like that old Indian chief. They know there's a God and they see his great goodness, and they rejoice in his mercies and blessings. But how to know him? How to how to have a relationship with him? It seems a mystery and so many know that the vanities of religion and the vanities of deed doing and the vanities of striving after commandments and ordinances have never satisfied the heart, and uh many listening to my voice right now have probably reached the same conclusion this old Indian chief did. I'll just be without religion. I know there's a God, but I know that my religion can't get me to God. But you know, none of us could get to God. So God came to man. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, the Creator, the Almighty One, who marvelously made a way that the bees might live and produce sweet honey, has made a way that we might live and produce not only a sweet testimony and a sweet spirit in this life, but that we might live forever in heaven with Almighty God. Jesus Christ came into the world, given by God to lay down his life on the cross and bear the sins of the world, but able to save you today because he rose from the dead and is alive forevermore. All with trust and pray that you would humble yourself and receive the Lord Jesus Christ. Put your faith and trust in the Savior that God has provided for your soul. The God of creation desires to be your God and desires that you know him personally. All with trust and pray that you would come to Jesus and receive him into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Thanks for tuning in today. Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, JamesW. Our terminal audio page, Bible Baptistal Land, or our website, BibleBaptistaland.com. Until next time, and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.