Overlaid with Gold

We appreciate the opportunity to come over and visit everyone. The weather today was something special, that's for sure. We started out in Salem and it was absolutely dumping buckets of rain. It was really coming down on Highway 22 as we came across. All of that changed once we got over the top of the mountains, as things seemed to do, which was really, really nice to be honest, to get out of that little bit of rain and nastiness that was definitely going to be there. It is definitely nice to be here. We do appreciate the opportunity. And, brethren, you know, it often occurs when you're working on preparing a message. There are a number of factors that all kind of seem to come together in and around the time that you plan to give that message and kind of push it in one direction or another. There's all these different factors that are just out there and they all seem to come together near the end and take you sometimes in a completely different direction than what you had originally anticipated going. And sometimes the message that you end up giving is significantly different than the message that you planned on giving, which is always kind of interesting. Case in point, the message that I'm going to give you guys today was the one that I had planned to give the last time that I was here in Bend. And I started down that road and I thought, all right, here we go. This is the point I want to make. This is what we're going to do. We're going to come out of this direction. And, you know, I kept coming at it from that one direction and it was like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. It just would not happen. And so I came at it from a slightly different direction, thinking I'd ultimately get to my point at the end and, you know, we'd be good and it went a completely different way. And so the message that we had last time on Living Your Dash was the end result of that. Well, there are going to be aspects of that message in this message today, but we're not going to call this a part two. This is not a part two. We're going to consider it coming out of essentially the same vein of inspiration as that message did, but I don't want to call it a part two. So we're going to try to stay out of part two territory. But both of these topics that this message and the other message dealt with, they've been on my mind for the past several months. And for me, it's just been... I'm having some issues here. Hang on one sec. I apologize. Get this thing set up to where I can see. But it's one of those situations where, you know, I was trying to find a way that I could really do the topic justice and to where it would be something that I could ultimately get the point across and have it be a solid spiritual takeaway as well. Additionally, I had to find a way to give the topic to where, you know, there wouldn't be torches and pitchforks. And so I'll get to that in just a second. And I only recently came across an angle that I could come out with this to get where I needed to go. I recently came across a movie trailer on YouTube for a movie called Fed Up. How many of you have ever heard of the movie Fed Up?

Okay, a couple of you maybe have. Okay, so I came across this movie, or at least the movie trailer for this, fairly recently. And the interesting thing with this particular movie is it's a documentary. It's a documentary film. And it is set up, in fact, it's in select theaters now. None of them are in the Salem area, mind you, apparently. I appreciate it. Apparently, we don't rate. Salem doesn't rate. You, however, in Bend, do. In fact, the Tin Pan Theater, apparently. It's some independent theater here in town. They have this movie. It is currently showing. I haven't seen it. I can't fully recommend it. I've just seen the trailer, but it looks interesting. It's a documentary film. It was produced by Katie Couric and Laurie David, who did the movie Inconvenient Truth. Katie Couric narrates it and is kind of the investigative journalist that goes and does all the interviews and everything else. But from what I could gather in the trailer, the film takes a very hard look at the sugar and processed food industries in the United States.

And really looking at the role that they play in the obesity epidemic here in the U.S.

And through a series of interviews with a lot of the top individuals in the country in nutrition and food policy, they make a very strong case for the dangers of added sugar in the processed foods that make up the majority of the American diet today. And they make the claim that it's less an issue of self-control and willpower and really more of an issue of addiction. Really more of an issue of addiction. Now, one study actually showed, and this was really fascinating. I did some reading into it once I saw the trailer. One of the studies that they cite in here showed that refined sugar is up to eight times more addictive than cocaine.

Now, the way that they did this, just in case you're curious because I was, as a scientist I had to figure out how in the world do you prove that. So what they did was they used rats and they took a look at the brain centers of rats. They would give them sugar, they would give them cocaine, and sure enough the parts of the brain that respond to cocaine respond when they give them sugar. And they light up like you wouldn't believe. Sometimes they light up even more with sugar. So then they went onto the line and said, well, then it's clear that they can make, that they can, you know, somehow become addicted to this.

So they kept feeding it to them and feeding it to them until they wanted it more and more. Then, and this is kind of the science part of it that's interesting, they set up an experiment where when the rat partook of that particular thing they received an electroshock. And it was an unpleasant electroshock. It wasn't a nice mildly tingling electroshock. It was painful. And so the idea being that trying to get them to give up whatever it was they were going after.

Well, with the cocaine that they'd given them, they stopped very quickly. The study went on to say that with the sugar, they were eating it as they were providing continuous shock. And they would shock them and hold the button down and they would ignore the shock and continue eating the sugar. So they somehow quantified it, they somehow figured it out, ended up coming away with it being eight times more addictive than cocaine. Now, with us as humans, it's not much different. 80% of the items that we find in our grocery stores contain added sugar. Some of the places that you least expect it.

I don't know if you would expect this. I didn't. There's twice the sugar in a bottle of ragu spaghetti sauce, then there isn't a bag of M&Ms, by grams. Ragu spaghetti sauce. Twice. And I'm not begging on ragu. It's probably that way across the board here. But companies are adding additional refined sugar above and beyond the natural sugars in these products. And one researcher has actually gone as far as claiming that if something doesn't change, that by 2050, one-third of the U.S. population will be diabetic. One-third of the U.S. population. Now, we coupled that with current data on obesity rates in America. Currently one-quarter of two to five-year-olds, one-third of school-aged children, and more than two-thirds of adults in this country.

We can see we have a serious problem on our hands. We can see that we have a serious problem. In fact, this problem in the U.S. has culminated in some experts estimating that this generation of young people may be the first generation of young people that will not outlive their parents. Now, these same young people are bombarded by advertising and marketing.

There are kids' meals with toys. There are mascots like Ronald McDonald. There are who, it's ironically McDonald's says, oh, he doesn't sell meals to children. He informs and inspires. No, he sells meals to children. Just like Joe Campbell sold cigarettes to kids, too, back in the 80s. They made that determination. But these restaurants, these candies, these sugary foods, school lunches, they're all designed to catch the eye of both adults and kids.

And I know, because I'm one of those people who succumbs to marketing. I'm one of those people who, when I am in the line at the supermarket and I see, oh, look at all these brightly colored candy wrappers, my little ADD goes, oh, what is this? What have we done here? So I'm fully aware of kind of how this marketing process operates. Here's an example of what came through my mailbox just this past Tuesday. This wasn't all of it. We, Tuesday's our junk mail day. I don't know about you. Is that your junk mail day, too?

Is it a Tuesday thing across the country? Fantastic. We need to just, like, refuse mail service on Tuesdays. But I don't know how that works. But anyway, this wasn't even all of it. I mean, this is KFC ADD. You know, we've got, not trying to make anybody hungry here, but we got Jack in the Box. We've got Arby's. People still eat at Arby's. Maybe they do, I don't know. There's Arby's. There's, I mean, the list goes on. You know, the list goes on. Okay. Nope, this guy, oh, that's, holy shit, isn't it? Yep, sure is.

Pizza companies, all that stuff. That was Tuesday! That was Tuesday. Okay. Now, there was more than that, but it wasn't near as flashy and bright and all that stuff that we were going. But processed foods in our country are so inexpensive. They're so easy to obtain. They don't need to be prepared. They don't need to be cooked. So it's no wonder that a large number of America today, particularly according to the data, the South, make this a staple. Now, interestingly enough, the restaurants and companies that produce it are multi-billion dollar companies. In fact, the top 10 restaurants, top 10 fast food chains, franchises in the US, McDonald's, Subway, Starbucks, Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Hut, Chick-fil-A, and KFC collectively brought in just shy of $100 billion in profits fiscal year 2013 alone. Of that, over one-third was McDonald's at $35.6 billion.

Just 2013. So it's very clear as you begin to go down this rabbit hole, okay, as you begin to look into this research, that the processed foods, the fast foods, the junk foods, the things, kind of, really, let's be honest, the way of the world today, the way of the world today, not just here in America. This is becoming a worldwide issue as it becomes more ubiquitous. But this is a concept that hit home in my life over the last year or so. I've been making, as you as some of you may know, that some efforts to become a bit more healthy, to eat a little better, and to exercise a little bit more, and really to kind of work my way out of being a statistic, both for my own health as well as being an example to my kids, so that they're not a statistic either. But there is a certain, and the reason that it didn't come together last time, this is one of those topics that is so delicate, because you can very quickly move from preaching into meddling, and it can be one of those things where, you know, you can, you gotta be careful with this. And so I'm gonna try it. We also have snacks of Sabbath, so I just want to assure you and all of you, no one is going to be evaluating what you brought to snacks today and pronouncing any kind of judgments upon what you brought. But this message was designed to share some things that I've been coming across lately as I've studied this topic out, and hopefully, my hope is to encourage you to explore this further on your own if it's something that you're interested in exploring. We're going to start in a somewhat unlikely place, and at first you may look at it and go, what exactly does this, how does this connect? I promise you it will connect. Let's go to 1 Chronicles 28. We're going to actually start in 1 Chronicles 28 today, and I'm going to use this Pietro's Pizza coupon as a bookmark. It's about what it's worth, right? Pirate golf. All right, which, by the way, we went and did what the kids want. It's absolutely frightening. So we won't be going back anytime soon.

1 Chronicles 28, to begin with. 1 Chronicles 28. We're going to pick it up in verse 1. We're going to be in 1 Chronicles 28 for just a little bit, but we're going to get some information here regarding the words of King David. This is really where David is nearing the end of his life here. He's passing on some of his unfinished business to his son, going through and looking at some of the different things that he didn't get to necessarily do because of the type of life that he led. So we'll be in 1 Chronicles 28, and we'll pick it up in verse 10. As he's talking here, he's letting people know that really he purposed to build this house for God. He purposed to build the temple. He collected the materials. He went through the hard work to get all this stuff gathered together to an extent to make the alliances and the connections that were going to be necessary. And then God said, no, not you. Not you. You lived a life of bloodshed. You're a man of war. You're not building my house. And so here in verse 10 here, he's kind of the last few words of David in 28 and 29 here. He's passing this on to Solomon. Let's go to 28 verse 10. 28 10 says, Consider now, for the Lord has chosen you, speaking to Solomon, to build a house for the sanctuary.

Be strong and do it. And then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the vegetable.

Not the vegetable, sorry, the vegetable. It only sounds like vegetable when I try to say it. Its houses, its treasuries, its upper chambers, its inner chambers, and the place of the mercy So he gives him these plans. And I would imagine detailed plans. You can see as we go on here that these plans were inspired by the Spirit. It says, the plans for all that he had given by the Spirit of the courts, of the house of the Lord, of the chambers all around, of the treasuries, of the treasuries for the dedicated things. Also for the division of the priests and the Levites, for all the work of the service of the house of the Lord, and for all the articles of service in the house of the Lord. Verse 14, he gave gold by weight for things of gold, for all articles used in every kind of service. Also silver for all articles of silver by weight, for all articles used by every kind of service. The weight of the lampstands, the lamps of gold, the weight for each lampstand and its lamps. I mean, these are detailed plans. Here are the items that I've procured, here are all of the things. Here's the blueprints. Solomon, go and do it. Is really the message that David is giving to him here. Okay, we go down to verse 20. Go down to verse 20. And it said, or 19, I'm sorry. All this, said David, the Lord had made me understand in writing by his hand upon me all the works of these plans. Can you imagine the kind of blueprints that God might give someone?

I mean, given what you remember from the tabernacle and some of the different, you know, absolute specificity that was given when it came time to put the tabernacle, I mean, down to the number of rings per section that held the curtains up. Those kind of attention to detail. I can imagine these plans were pretty well set up. Verse 20. Just lost it. Let me go back, find it. There it is, top of the page. And David said to his son, Solomon, be strong and of good courage and do it. Do not fear nor be dismayed for the Lord God. My God will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you until you have finished all the work of the service of the house of the Lord. 21, here the divisions of the priests and the Levites for all the service of the house of God and every willing craftsman will be with you for all manner of worksmanship, for every kind of service, also the leaders and all the people will be completely at your command. You know, we see here this was quite an undertaking that Solomon was about to begin. These are not projects that were sketched out on the back of a cocktail napkin. I mean, this is not something where he sat down with. It'd be cool if we put this right here and then we'll kind of we'll put this thing here because then that'll face... No, God said, this is what I want. This is my temple. These are the blueprints. These are the plans. Build it. God inspired David to record very specific plans. And in the next chapter, 29, we're not going to go through and read it all, but we see he's got all of the materials and the relationships that make this temple a reality. But the ultimate job fell to Solomon to complete. Let's go to 1st Kings 6. We'll go to 1st Kings 6. We'll actually see that Solomon does indeed complete it. 1st Kings 6. We see that Solomon does indeed complete the temple. 1st Kings 6. And as we read through this, I want you to consider and think about, as we look at this, the level of detail and real specificity that's here, as well as the respect that they have for God in this process and how respectful they are to God in the process of building this particular building. So this, again, wasn't something that was haphazardly slapped together. This was planned. The costs were counted. It was built painstakingly to the plans that God had given them. So let's start in 1st Kings 6, verse 1. 1st Kings 6 and verse 1.

1st Kings 6 and verse 1. And now it came to pass in the 480th year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel in the month of Ziv, which is the second month that he began to build the house of the Lord. Now the house which King Solomon built for the Lord its length was 60 cubits, its width 20, and its height 30 cubits. The vestibule in front of the sanctuary of the house was 20 cubits long across the width of the house, and the width of that same thing extended 10 cubits from the front of the house.

And he made for the house windows with beveled frames. Against the wall of the temple he built chambers all around. Against the walls of the temple all around the sanctuary, the inner sanctuary, there were side chambers all around it. The lowest chamber was five cubits wide. Listen to all of the specificity, the numbers, all of the things that were recorded here.

Okay, number seven, or verse seven, and the temple when it was being built was built with stone finished at the quarry so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built. This is a perfect illustration of the respect that they had for God as they built this temple. The workers did all of the stone work off-site and then they had stones move from the quarry to the site to be assembled. There wouldn't be the noise of chisels and hammers as they were hewing this stone out.

It's also an incredible example of the attention to detail that they had in this process. Because if you think about it, you know, it's a lot of manpower to hew out these huge stones at the quarry, move them all the way down there, go to set them in place, and realize that the guy doing the carving messed it up and it won't fit.

That's an awful lot of work for a reject, which there's a whole other sermon in that, but we'll keep going for today. Verse 8, the doorway for the middle story was on the right side of the temple. They went up by stairs to the middle story and from the middle to the third. So he built the temple and finished it. He paneled the temple with beams and boards of cedar.

Built the side chambers against the entire temple. Each five cubits high, they were attached to the temple with cedar beams. Then what we end up seeing is we end up seeing God coming to Solomon. God coming to Solomon here. Concerning the temple which you're building, if you walk in my statutes, if you execute my judgments, keep all my commandments and walk in them, then I will perform my word with you, which I spoke to your father David.

And I will dwell among the children of Israel and I will not forsake my people Israel. God comes to him and says, look, concerning this house, if you can walk in my statutes and if you can do what I've asked you to do, I'll establish my word with you. I'll dwell with you in this house. I won't forsake you. See in verse 14, so Solomon built the temple and he finished it. He built the walls of the house within the boards of cedar.

From the floor to the ceiling, or floor of the temple to the ceiling, he paneled the inside with wood. He covered the floor with the temple with planks of cypress. Then he built the 20-cubit room at the rear of the temple from floor to ceiling with cedar boards. So he continues to go through this process. He continues to build. He builds the innermost parts. He builds the side chambers, the courtyards. And note, as this process goes, you can read through this, as the process goes, he uses nothing but, nothing but, the most precious of metals and materials.

I mean, these were the finest of the fine materials. These weren't materials from the bargain bin down at Lowe's. I mean, he's not building like I build, you know, going out and trying to find the cheapest materials I can find to get the job done.

Okay? This is the finest materials the world knows at this point, assembled and built by the most skilled craftsmen in the world at this time. Verse 23. Verse 23, we see that in the inner sanctuary, he made two cherubim of olive wood, each 10 cubits high. So he's got, you know, sculpting that's going on in this case. One wing was five cubits, the other wing was five cubits. Ten cubits, there were two of these things. The height of the carob was 10 cubits and so was the other. And then notice what he overlays them with. He overlaid the carobim, verse 28, with gold.

And really then went through and took out, covered the entirety of the walls with gold, intricately carved the gold. There was gold everywhere inside of this temple.

Florida ceiling. Can you imagine what it must have looked like? With all the candelabras and all the lampstands lit, with the flickering light off of the inside of the gold reflecting off of each and every wall. It must have been absolutely beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. It must have been quite the sight. I mean, there's all these carvings and everything else that go along as well. Verse 31.

Verse 31, for this entrance of the inner sanctuary, he made doors of olive wood. One lintel and door posts were one-fifth of the walls. We've got pretty good-sized ceilings here. The two doors were of olive wood, carved on them figures of carobim, palm trees, and open flowers, overlaid them with gold, spread gold on the carobim and the palm trees. So for the door of the sanctuary, he also made door posts of olive wood one-fourth of the wall. The two doors were of cypress wood, two panels comprised, one folding door. I mean, the list of details in this process goes on.

It says, in the fourth year, the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid in the month of Ziv. Verse 37, and in the eleventh year, in the month of Bull, which is the eighth month, the house was finished in its details. So he was seven years in building it. Why was it important to have the level of detail and the finest materials when it came to building this particular temple? Why was it so important that it was done exactly as planned, exactly correct with the finest materials?

Because this was a physical house for the Lord Himself. His glory would be residing here. Anything less than the best simply was not good enough. Whether it was the temple or whether it was the tabernacle in Moses' day, as we mentioned earlier, God was very specific about the places that He was to dwell. Very specific. In fact, when you look at the instructions of the tabernacle, I remember reading through this in our chronological thing, it is chapter after chapter after chapter on how to build the curtains, how to build the rings on the curtains, the wood of the poles, this and that, the different instruments, all the little utensils. And it's like one chapter after another, and it seems like it goes on forever. And then it repeats it, which is funny. It goes through the same thing again, but made sure that the Israelites got it. They were hard-headed, kind of like us. So, God was very specific about these things.

He wouldn't accept anything less than the best. And why? Because God is holy. God is set apart. He's not common. He won't be common. He won't accept less than the best, because He is the Lord, the Creator of the universe, and He is holy. Now, we're all well aware of the food laws that God put into place in Israel. But if we were focused on why He put those into place, we ever looked at what the specific purpose was as to why those food laws... I mean, obviously they gave Israel incredible physical health, because they weren't getting all these illnesses and sicknesses that all the other groups were getting, all the other nations were getting. And we won't go through... this is in Leviticus 11. We won't go through them all piece by piece, but let's go to Leviticus 11 real quick. There's one passage I want to look at in this section, thinking about why God gave the ancient Israelites these particular food laws. And again, we know what we can and can't eat. I mean, we know this from when we are kids growing up in the church. You know that this is not okay. Those little round red discs on the pizza? No deal. That is no deal. Can't have the pepperoni, right? So, I mean, we intuitively kind of know this. Where it gets difficult is when we go to other countries, and things don't look like what we're used to seeing. I remember when I went to Belize, I actually had to get a hold of the church, the home office, and get a hold of a list of clean fish. Because not only do they not use the same names that we use for fish here in the U.S., I had to go through in specific... I mean, I have like five different names for different fish, so I had to find out what each one was. But we know these things by letter pretty well. But I want to focus on why. Let's go over to Leviticus 11 and pick it up in verse 44. Just prior to this, we get a laundry list of what's allowable and not allowable, what will defile someone, and what will not defile somebody or someone. But in verse 44, we get the reason why these are in place. Leviticus 11 in verse 44. Leviticus 11 verse 44 says, Really, Israel was not to conform to the nations around them. They were to be set apart. They were to be distinct, and they were to be different. So God desired His people to be different. Throughout the Old Testament, we see this. There's a number of items that we command that Israel is to separate and to distance themselves from the nations around them.

Law of circumcision, grooming, food laws, health laws, moral laws. The list of what God gave His people to not be like the other nations around them is staggering when you start digging through those passages in the Old Testament. But we see that was not necessarily just an Old Testament expectation. Let's go to Romans 12. Romans 12. Romans 12 records the words of the Apostle Paul in this very subject as he's speaking to the Romans. Romans 12. And we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 1. Pretty common passage. Dugtales in nicely with what we're looking at today.

Romans 12 verse 1. And we'll go ahead and read through verse 2. Romans 12 verse 1.

So Romans 12 verse 1 says, I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed. There's that word again. Conformed. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Now there's a lot in these two very short passages. First, we present our bodies a living sacrifice, a sacrifice that's worthy to God, that's set apart, and that that is our spiritual service. That our whole being is to be dedicated to a life of service to God, and our physical bodies and all that that encompasses are to be an offering given to God willingly. Secondly, we see the same message given to the New Testament church, or same message given to the New Testament church that was given to ancient Israel. That we're not to be conformed to the world around us. We're not to be like the other nations around us. Instead, we're to be transformed. Thirdly, and this is kind of an implied thing, you have to kind of read a little bit between the lines here, we're not to be conformed to the world, which implies that there is something that we're to be conformed to. In this case, Jesus Christ. You know, we're to be fashioned after that pattern. Now the word for conformed here is the Greek word, and I butcher these every time I'm going to do the best I can. It's sus-gametizo. And what it means, just like vegetable, what it means is that we're to be fashioned after a pattern. And if you think about it, in manufacturing, when somebody builds a prototype, and somebody says, this is the object that we want to make, and then they tool the factory up to produce, you know, multiple thousands of these widgets, whatever they happen to be. That's an example of this. It's an item that is fashioned after a pattern. Here's the prototype. Here's the exact replicas of that pattern. We're being said, we're being told here by Paul not to be replicas of the people around us, not to be replica of the people of the nations around us, not to be fashioned after the same prototype, not to be conformed, but rather to be transformed. In this case, it's the Greek word metamorphu.

Metamorphu. Which, same Latin word, what's the word for metamorphosis? Exactly. We use that in science all the time. And it's a transforming change. It's not being conformed to the world that we see around us, instead being transformed, changed from that into something else, from caterpillar to butterfly, so to speak. Something that is remarkably different at the end from where it started. Now, we typically look at this from a purely spiritual standpoint. We look at it and we say, you know, we talk about sin and we say, look, we're not to be conformed to the world around us, not to live as the world lives. Rather, we need to be spiritually transformed to become more like Christ. I believe there's a very important physical principle in this as well. It's not just spiritual. And here's, we'll try to explain this. When you look at the world around us today, when you take a look at kind of societal trends, and I feel like I'm very plugged into societal trends teaching in a middle school. I mean, I see societal trends every day because those kids are trying to conform to whatever society is telling them to conform to. You know, Nike is everywhere. I mean, that's period. In fact, we just bought my son a soccer ball the other day. I don't know where he gets it. He goes, I want the one with the Nike on it. Where does he get that?

Where does he get that? I honestly don't understand, but he wanted the one with the Nike symbol on it. And so, you know, they conform to whatever it is that they kind of see.

How many of you are familiar with gauges? How many of you are familiar with gauges? Okay, so a few of you guys have heard of gauges. Okay, you've all seen them. You may just not know what they're called. Gauges is when you see young people these days walking around with a hole in their ear about this big around, down at the bottom of the earlobe. And the interesting thing with gauges, and I'm not picking on people with gauges, I'm just saying it's an interesting kind of insight into our society. Everyone wants to be unique. Everyone wants to be unique. And the interesting irony of our society today is that as soon as someone attempts to become unique, everyone sees it and they all want to have the same thing, and then they cease to know, they cease to be unique anymore. You know, the gauges thing, you know, they start out with this little teeny tiny hole and it's got these spikes that they kind of gradually jam in there a little more, a little more, a little more, until it's finally big enough to put in a large opening. And then they put that one in and they leave it in for a little while and stretch the earlobe. Then they get even bigger ones and they jam those and just keep stretching the process to get those things to open up. And it was actually right here in Bend, Oregon a few years ago at the feast that my wife and I saw probably the largest gauges I've ever seen in my life. They had to be at least three inches around. You can't tell me those were coming back when that kid hits 80 years old. You know, grandpa, what's wrong with your ears? But anyway, I've seen them opened up just huge. And my students at school in particular, my students in school really think these are pretty neat and they all want them and they all have these little... and I keep trying to tell them, you know, I've done the research on it, looked them up a little bit and told them, look, you can gauge them out to about this much. Any further than that, they don't come back. So, you know, I mean, if you're going to do it, if you're going to do it, be smart. You know, don't go too far with it. But they often don't listen to me because I'm an old fuddy duddy. So... But it's the irony of the whole thing with society is what used to be unique, what used to be different than everyone else, as soon as someone finds that that's something that is kind of neat and they want it to, it ceases to be unique. It ceases to be different. It ceases to be counterculture. And so now it's not uncommon, I don't... some of you have probably come across this, it's not uncommon to deal with folks in business settings that have their gauges in. You know, that you walk up and you talk to somebody at the club and, you know, big old hole in the air, you could, you know, put your finger through it if you really wanted to.

I think they frown on that. But it's what was once unique and what was kind of socially somewhat counterculture now is fairly common. It's the same thing with other societal trends. Tattoos and piercings, same story. What used to be very uncommon, what used to be very uncommon, reserved kind of typically for military or for bikers and things like that, you know, today you're hard pressed to find someone without one or more of both. And it's just one of those things where, you know, societal trends kind of... that's the way they go. Now, are these things necessarily specifically prohibited? Well, no, not specifically. I mean, to be honest, if you look at some of this stuff scripturally, they're kind of in a gray area. They really kind of are in a gray area. You know, depending on people's individual interpretation of those passages, they can make arguments either way. In fact, from a tattoo standpoint, I've heard some within the church argue that as long as the mark is not for the dead, as long as the mark is not, you know, idolatrous in some way, or it's not part of some sort of pagan worship, then what's the prohibition? And it's not unlike smoking in that regard. Now, show me the scripture that specifically prohibits smoking. Show me the thou shalt not smoke. I mean, that one's not in there. However, many of you remember in the worldwide church of God, it was considered to be enough of a sin that a person couldn't attend services until they'd quit.

Now, just because there isn't a specific passage that spells it out doesn't mean it's okay.

Doesn't mean it's okay. Doesn't mean that God says, okay, yeah, you can smoke. It's not in there specifically. You can just go right on ahead. What it means is there weren't convenience stores, Hawken Marlborough's in Galilee. There was something that didn't come up when they were writing this stuff down. And so, I guess the point I'm trying to make, in the spiritual era, in the modern era today, we have to apply spiritual principles. We have to put precept on precept and then make a discernment given the entirety of Scripture. Okay, we have to kind of operate under some of that in some of these cases. Now, God tells us specifically here not to be conformed to the world, not to be another face in the crowd, and that instead we're to present our bodies a living sacrifice to God. Now, it's really kind of Paul's way of reiterating the concept that God laid forth for ancient Israel that they should be different, that they shouldn't be the same. Paul's really telling the New Testament church here they should be cut from a different cloth, that they should stick out like a sore thumb as we've sometimes said. They shouldn't blend in.

Now, let's go over to 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19. The Apostle Paul takes it just a step further, as he often does. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19.

1 Corinthians 6 and verse 19.

Now, just prior to this, we see that there's generally a kind of a laundry list of vices that he gets into, and then jumps into the next piece in 1 Corinthians 6, 19. I don't want to get into all the vices per se. We're just going to kind of operate from 19 down through 20. But 1 Corinthians 6, 19 says specifically, or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? That you are not your own. For you were bought at a price. You were bought at a price. That price was the blood of Jesus Christ. You were bought at that price. Therefore glorified God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. You know, our body is a temple to the Lord. God's given us a piece of him. He's given us a piece of his Holy Spirit, a small portion of his mind and his power.

And that's residing with us. Here on earth, in this body, this mortal coil that we will someday shed, is a physical temple for that spirit. You know, when we put into that context, that should give us pause. It really should give us pause. We are not our own. You know, when we looked earlier at the requirements that God has for his different physical houses that he has dwelled in throughout history, from the tabernacle and all the numbers of, you know, curtain hanging, roughings on the rod, and the curtains, and the embroidery, and this and that, and everything else, to Solomon's Temple. When we look at all of the finest materials and the finest worksmanship and seven years of labor to build this thing, and it's overlaid with gold from the top to the bottom on the inside, and it's just beautiful. When we look at that, when we think about that, that should give us some insight as to how we should treat these physical bodies that we have. You know, it turns out when we look at we're talking about there not being convenience stores that were hawking marlboroals, there also weren't McDonald's and Starbucks and Burger Kings on every corner of Jerusalem and Galilee. There might have been in Jerusalem every other corner. Has to be every other corner. We actually, the irony of that, we in Salem, we actually have one Starbucks on one corner of Liberty in court, and there is another Starbucks one block away on the on Shemeccadah and Liberty. You can literally be from one to the other in less than a minute. So, you know, they joke about Starbucks being on every corner in Salem. It's the truth.

But, you know, it turns out Scripture, there's very little on this particular topic, too. They didn't have double bacon cheeseburgers back in, you know, in Christ's time. So, just like with the smoking thing, just like with some of these gray, we have to apply discernment. We see the book of Daniel discusses the king's delicacies. We're not going to turn to all of these for sake of time, but the book of Daniel talks about the king's delicacies, kind of rich food, and how Daniel and his friends refused those things and ate vegetables instead, and at the end of the time they were healthier than those who were partaking in the delicacies. We see Proverbs 23 1 through 3 talks of delicacies of the king as a deceptive food, as a deceptive food, and they actually make the suggestion that if you're going to eat at the king's table, and if you are prone to gluttony, you should hold a knife to your throat, because the king's delicacies are a delicate or a deceptive food. And then there are other other scriptural precepts that we can work with, but it ultimately comes down to discernment. It ultimately comes down to applying the principles.

Do we think that God wants us to ingest large quantities of things that are not healthy for us?

I think we can probably all agree the answer is no. We can probably all agree the answer is no. Now, a little bit here, a little bit there. You can make the argument for moderation, I would imagine, but let's go ahead and turn over to 2 Chronicles 29 here. The larger question is, the larger question here is, is the interior and the cellular makeup of our body, is it where that spirit resides? Is it made of fine cedar and overlaid with gold?

Is the exterior made of fine materials and a witness to God's glory, or have we cut some corners in the building process? You know, have we used some cheaper and expensive, but maybe weaker materials in the building process? I can tell you my answer. Let's go over to 2 Chronicles 29 here. 2 Chronicles 29. This past October, I turned 33 years of age.

And I know... I turned 33 in October. I weighed 330 pounds in October of this past year. I weighed 330 pounds. I struggled to tie my own shoes. I panted with breath trying to go up a flight of stairs without getting winded. I was having difficulties keeping up with my kids. I couldn't play with my kids. I couldn't keep up with them. And in reality, I was facing the very good possibility of not surviving to see my children graduate, or not having an opportunity to walk my daughter down the aisle. You know, the worst part of it was that as of that point prior to my 33rd birthday, I had honestly reached a point where I almost gave up and let it take me. I was almost there, where I almost just went, nah, I'm not getting out of this. There's no way. I can't do it. And I felt like I was so far gone at that point that there was no real way out from a physical standpoint. And I began to think about it, consider kind of where I was in my life, and I actually ended up finding my way to 1 Corinthians 6 that we just went over. I became convicted that the body that I was given was a temple to God, that he was residing. And he said, Holy Spirit was residing within me. And that, frankly, I had done a pretty terrible job of maintaining that temple that I had been given.

You know, when you see the instruction scripturally as to what all the Levites had to do to maintain the temple, and all the hard work that went into every single day getting up, starting with the morning sacrifice, taking care of this, doing the washings, doing all of this stuff. There was a lot of maintenance that went in there. I was doing very little maintenance. Very little maintenance. In fact, I'd really let my temple deteriorate pretty well. But as I found, what I found that was more interesting was, as my physical temple continued to deteriorate, my health got worse, so did my spiritual life. I found that I was more neglectful in my Bible study. I was more neglectful in my prayer. I was tired all the time. I was irritable. I was depressed. And it was during October, just prior to my 33rd birthday, that I found myself in the book of Chronicles, reading about the successions of the kings of Judah. And I was in 2 Chronicles 29, to be exact, where we are right now, looking at the story of the shift in kingship from Ahaz to Hezekiah, and looking at what Ahaz did to what Hezekiah had to try to repair. And a light bulb came on. I just finished reading about all the atrocities that Ahaz had done, all the horrible abominations that he had done within the country, and sacrificing his own kids to Molech, and just all these horrific things that he had done, and kind of culminating with the damage that he had done to Solomon's temple. Let's go ahead and pick it up in verse 3 of 2 Chronicles 29. Verse 3 of 2 Chronicles 29. In the first year of his reign, in the first month, this is Hezekiah, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord, and he repaired them. Then he brought in the priests and the Levites, and he gathered them in the east square, and he said to them, Hear me, Levites, now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and carry out the rubbish from the holy place.

That beautiful golden room that Solomon had built from ceiling to floor was filled with trash, with rubbish. For our fathers have trespassed, and they've done evil in the eyes of the Lord our God. They've forsaken Him. They've turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord, and they've turned their backs on Him. They've also shut up the doors of the vestigal, put out the lamps, and have not burned incense or burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel. They had completely neglected any and all temple maintenance whatsoever up to that point.

And you know, you look into 2 Chronicles 28, you go back just a passage, and you can see kind of the reign of King Ahaz. And what kind of happened with this? Ahaz looted the temple to pay tribute to these Syrians. The Syrians were coming through, they were conquered, and He brought them in to a certain extent to help fight with the northern tribes, and then they turned on Him too eventually.

And He was paying tribute like crazy. He closed the door, He caused the dailies to cease, started getting people to make offerings in other places, all manner of filthiness in the holiest of holies. In short, He took the beautiful temple that we read about earlier and completely dilapidated and destroyed it. He ruined it, just brought it to the ground. And it was honestly bad enough in here that 2 Chronicles 28 specifically says the people didn't even honor Ahaz with a burial that was fitting a king. I mean, he was not buried with his fathers. It was like, no, we're going to bury this guy over here. Like, we're not putting him in there. So Hezekiah comes along, he inherits the mess that his father had made, and he decides that it's time for a change. Now, he had a very strong high priest in Hezekiah, which was good, and he determined the things that were supposed to be getting done, and he purposed to make a change beginning with the temple. Pick it up in verse 15. 2 Chronicles 29 verse 15.

And they gathered their brethren, this is the Levite, sanctified themselves, and went according to the commandment of the king, at the words of the Lord, to cleanse the house of the Lord.

Verse 16. Then the priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord, to cleanse it. And they brought out all the debris that they found in the temple of the Lord, to the court of the house of the Lord. And the Levites took it out and carried it to the brook, Kidron. The Levites began the cleaning process. They went in to cleanse the house of God. And the word cleanse here in verse 16 is the Hebrew word tahir. And it means to cleanse thoroughly, to purge, or to make uncontaminated, to kind of decontaminate. You know, almost kind of in today's verbiage, these guys would be going in with hazmat suits. They'd be going in with the big yellow suits, and you know, full protections here, as bad as it was. But the inside of this particular temple was full of all manner of filth, thanks to Hezekiah and all of his idolatry. The Levites cleaned it out. They repaired the temple. They began the daily worship again under Hezekiah's reign. What I took from that passage, as I read that in the place where I was in my life at that time, I took from it that it's never too late. That the temple of under a house, yeah, it may have been ruined. It may have been looted. It may have been how all the precious metals that were taken and given to the Assyrians, but under Hezekiah it was repaired. It was restored to its former glory. And that restorative process, I can imagine, took time. This wasn't an overnight clean-out. I mean, this was a restorative process to clean that thing to God's standards so that He could go through and do this. You know, I gave myself two years to make it happen. So starting at 33 to 35 was my goal to kind of hit the goal rate and overall health stuff. The irony, the kind of sad irony of it is, at 33 still, yep, 33, I'm actually in the best shape of my life. Now, the interesting part of that is, when I think back on the topic we talked about last time, living your dash, living your life to its fullest in those moments, both spiritually and physically, the kind of sad irony is, I wasted a lot of years. I wasted a lot of years, you know, from a standpoint of not being in any kind of physical health to be able to do some of these things. Did I live my dash during those days? Did I make the most of it? I'd have to say, no, I didn't. I squandered many of those years when I went back on them. And as such, I'm determined not to squander the next 30, you know, determined not to squander the next 30, and determined to live that dash physically and spiritually by really maintaining the temple. Brethren, our physical bodies are the temple with the Lord here on this earth. I mean, we have Christ residing within us. We have that Holy Spirit. And we are to present ourselves a living sacrifice to God. We're to present ourselves a living sacrifice to love the Lord with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and in Luke 10 it says, our strength, our physical bodies also. With our whole being, we're not to be conformed to the world, instead we're to be transformed. And that transformative process is not only spiritual, it has physical aspects as well, and it doesn't necessarily have to be an extreme temple makeover. It doesn't have to be something huge. It could just be a minor remodel. It could just be a slight tweak. But, brethren, as we go through this following week, as we go through this week here, consider and meditate on these things, and ask yourself, are there any improvements that you might make?