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Three Pounds in the Balance
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone SDA Church, CA, USA
Delivery: 2008-03-30 00:00Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2008-03-30 00:00Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kir-upgrade3.php
Designed to Think
The Scripture reading today is not new to any of us. “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). We may be formed by the world or by having our minds renewed. Since “the fashion of this world passeth away” (1 Corinthians 7:31), we understand that we need transformed minds.
Different cultures have understood the seat of the person’s distinctive self to reside in various parts of the body. In some it was understood as being the heart, in others, the intestines. It now seems clear that the brain is actually that place.
Likewise, we use intellectually and spiritually only a small percentage of our brain. Our behavior confirms it. We live far beneath our potential. The nervous system is centered in the brain. While the brain represents only about 2%, or three pounds of your body weight, it receives 15% of your heart’s energy. It uses 20% of the total oxygen consumption. It spends 25% of your glucose, or sugar. It requires a minimum of .1 calories a minute just to keep the brain running, and it can spend up to 1.5 calories in the same time when solving a crossword puzzle. Through the night your body burns calories. The heart beats; the lungs respirate; blood and oxygen moves through your veins. All this, not to grace the world with mindless big toes that wiggle, no, no. When God designed humanity, He made the brain a most prominent part of the anatomy. All of this machinery was designed and exists to support the seat of being. The capacity is there; the wherewithal to take advantage of it is underdeveloped.
But we are not here today for A and P (Anatomy and Physiology); we are gathered to worship the infinite God.
The Christian Worldview
Christianity proposes a radical worldview. A personal, good God created intelligent beings. Designed with enormous potential for good, some, led by one of their number, Halal, “Praise,” in Hebrew (Lucifer), rebelled. God was capable of intervening but permitted events to take their course. Halal was imprisoned on earth where God was creating humankind, a new order of being. Humans, as angels, were granted free will.
And yet, in its infancy our race rebelled. In the free decision to serve self, we were damaged. Acne, dementia, cancer and contact lenses entered the universe. These are just the surface. Lurking radioactive, unseen, destructive, sin began its loose-cannon reign. Its effects immediately metastasized. Earth was saturated, defiled. Neither roses nor butterflies were spared.
And when all looked ruined, hopeless, a Savior was promised. God would enter this deranged flesh. For his rebellion man could not atone. Hence One above and beyond would journey from there to here. He too would rebel, but His would be a resistance to the fallen humanity that contained Him. All its disordered, self-indulgent clammers He would resist. Christ took our nature, fallen but not corrupted, and would not be corrupted unless He received the words of Satan in place of the words of God. He would come, triumph, and save us all.
And yet, He would not be exempted from the situation of man in any respect. As a man He would be fallible; He could choose His Father’s will above and beyond, or His own. He could be deceived. He was God in human flesh but Deity was clothed in dust and sweat. He could feel pain and hunger. He could have His flesh flayed open to the bones and drain out His veins in red. Inducements could and would be offered Him. What would He do?
What would He do when Halal came to Him and offered an apparent way around the cross? “All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). And at the end, when He hung at last on the cross, wet with blood and the spit of the self-righteous and well-dressed; at the end when He had tasted the base betrayal and all the cheapness of fallen men when His twelve chosen betrayed Him; what would He do? When to breath only a word of request to His Father would return to Him powers and prerogatives He had laid aside for His human robe, when He could descend from the cross in flaming power and at a word turn all Palestine into a glowing crater, what would He do?
Christianity says that He hung on the cross and gave Himself. No fire, no flames, no vaporized pharisees; His brain, just three pounds in the balance. He chose to sacrifice His life for ours. And the Father? “For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Yes, on the cross Jesus prevailed. The decisive blow was struck in the battle.
In Bereshit (Genesis) a Savior had been promised. To Halal, now Satan the serpent, God said, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). Satan would have his head bruised (crushed), but Jesus, God in human flesh, would live and die as a man and in His death be victorious. He would live as a man and in all His choices be “without sin” (John 8:46; Hebrews 4:15; 7:26). He died a complete and perfect sacrifice in our place. Nevertheless, the battle between God and Halal was not yet ended. The eloquent Paul shines the light. Speaking to Christians in Rome years after Jesus’ death on the cross, he alludes to Genesis 3:15:
And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly (Romans 16:20).
Jesus came into the rebellion and rebelled against it. He refused the clammers of the humanity He bore. He made peace possible. Yes, the God of peace would bring peace again. Eden will be graced by men and women again. Satan was bruised under Jesus’ feet at the cross. Jesus rose triumphant. But the New Testament says that Satan—Halal—is bruised under your feet—the feet of believers. This occurs after the cross.
And so the story turns to us. Jesus’ sacrifice for us was decisive; without it there would be no one to take our place, to be our substitute. Could one sin have been found in Christ, had He in even one particular yielded to Satan to escape the terrible torture, the enemy of God and man would have triumphed. But He did not.
The law requires righteousness—a righteous life, a perfect character. We do not have this to give. Not one of us can meet the claims of God’s holy law. But Christ, coming to the earth as man, lived a holy life, and developed a perfect character. These He offers in free gift to all who will receive. His life stands for the life of men. In this way they have forgiveness of sins that are past. But to crush Halal fatally means more than this. Christ He builds up the human character in the likeness of the divine. The very righteousness of the law is fulfilled in the believer in Christ.
Jesus’ three pounds hung in the balance. So do ours. What will we do with the magnificent brain He has endowed us with?
Introspect
Opportunity knocks. And yet, somehow the idea exists that Christianity is a shortcut, a magic carpet-ride; that when you become a Christian, you are guaranteed Heaven apart from personal responsibility or change. Thus we clarify: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Christianity is about deep, even core changes in the believer. God’s power is available for change, but it must be applied in continuous choices. Many will be lost while hoping and desiring to be Christians. Why? Because they refuse to engage in the continuous cooperation between man and God that changes man.
What, then, is the pathway to change? We must be in connection with Christ or all our desire to change will come to naught. His is the power. We must unite our weakness to His strength. If we are in connection with Him, then we must learn His ways and introspect about them. That is, we must fill ourselves with a knowledge of His revealed will. We should closely study the Bible, invest ourselves in reading the inspired writings, pray and commune with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But what is this about a need to introspect?
Christian introspection is a looking into oneself while in communion with God. It is taking thought about who we are and what we have become so far. As believers, we discover where we are now and seek to progress in the direction God has marked out. We can know roughly where we are on the map and roughly where we are going on the map. Only then can we draw the line between those two locations.
Introspection is not a looking to self for power. We are not perfected by the flesh. Gaining a clearer intellectual understanding of who we are is not in itself the goal. Halal, Lucifer, Satan, we may be sure, has a strong intellectual understanding of who he is. Christian introspection is about changing us, returning us to God’s image. It means a willingness to recognize defects of character and to create an active plan for correction.
Perhaps this is why we read in our Bibles, “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). And “the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever” (Isaiah 32:17). And “He that believeth shall not make haste” (Isaiah 28:16). Zooming in our wildly spinning rodent-wheel, how rarely do we think on these texts. God invites us to slow down, come apart with Him, and rest. Not only to pray in urgency as we leap from one crisis to the next, but to trust in Him, talk with Him, to not make haste.
It has been said that “it is in our power to change the world.” If we are in Christ, it is in our power to change the world. Indeed, it is in our power to change more than that, for with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).
Christian Activity
By slowing down, we gain opportunity. By introspection we gain insight. By learning why we have made the decisions we have, we learn how to make them differently in future. God places people and opportunities into our pathway. His plan is for us to take advantage of them for His glory. Remember, we are not by these changes trying to add anything to God’s work for us and in us. We are only permitting Him the time He must have to change us without destroying the very free will that He has endowed us with.
So where are the opportunities for change? Some of them are right here—at your church. There is Sabbath school for yourself and for your children. Did you take advantage of that opportunity today? There is mid-week prayer meeting; have you been attending? Presently we are studying the Sanctuary, from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Wednesday nights. If you are not coming, you are missing an opportunity. There are other opportunities, seminars events held here at your church. This is not my church, it is yours. Are you taking advantage of the opportunities?
We have Amazing Facts Revivalist Dennis Priebe holding meetings on with us on May 3. I know many of you will be there for those meetings. But may I call to your attention another set of meetings even before then? Another opportunity here at your church for you to discover more about how you can grow heavenward in practical ways?
Next week Kelly Dulac will be with us Sabbath and Sunday. Sister Dulac has made a long-term study of the way the human mind works and spent years taking stock of the rich helps found in the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy. She and her husband run the Seventh-day Adventist lifestyle center in Vida Sana, located at Montemorelos, Mexico. She is a psychologist who believes in the Third Angel’s Message. If you do not come, you will miss an opportunity to learn how to cooperate with God in implementing those specific changes that give the Christian power to be like Jesus.
We must have Christ and His power. We must with the help of His Spirit learn something about God and ourselves and discover specific places where change is necessary. And then, we do not unfurl a magic carpet, but we roll up our sleeves and in God’s guiding, change what we are the old fashioned way; one step at a time. Christianity is not a shortcut, but it is the shortest distance between two points: where I am now and where God wants me to be. And so the meetings of the church are God’s appointed opportunities for giving the early and the latter rain.
Marc Scibilia asks, “Would you listen to a poet or a prophet journal all this world’s injustice, or try to stop it?” We are astute observers of what is wrong in the world and in the church. We are not behind in journalling all this world’s injustice. Jesus calls us to more than this. He is raising up disciples to try to stop it.
If evil is going to be stopped, if injustice is going to be arrested and ended, that has to begin somewhere. It must begin in us. The front line in the battle with evil is our own habits and defects, our own misrepresentations of Christ. The line must be drawn here. Here, and no farther, here Satan must be stopped, here, sin ended. The praise of Halal must end, as Jesus crushes Satan under your own feet. He is ready. Are we? We have not been ready because we have not invested our energies in being changed. We have not really cooperated with God. Do not miss even one more opportunity. Take the time to be holy. Your three pounds hang in the balance. And may God receive all the glory as we let Him finish the work He has begun in us (Philippians 1:6). GCO
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