Overlaid With Gold

This often happens, and often occurs when you're working on preparing a message. There are a number of factors that all seem to kind of come together in and around the time that you plan to give it that push your message in one direction or another. It's often fascinating to see what comes out of the process, given where you had planned in your own head to take it. And quite frequently, the message that you end up giving is nothing like the message that you planned to give in the first place. Case in point, the message that I'm going to give you today was the one that I planned to give the last time I was here. And during the preparation of that particular message, I kept coming at it in one direction and just trying to make it work, trying to make it work, and it was not coming together. It was like trying to take a square peg and jam it into a round hole. It just was not happening. So I kind of backed up and looked at it and thought, well, I'll come at it from this direction, and I'll try to come at it from over here. And I tried to kind of push my way through to get to where I thought maybe I could hit the point I wanted by the end. And what came out of it instead was the message that I gave last time I was here on Living Your Dash. Now, there are aspects of that concept in this message today, but we're not going to use this as a part two. That message was a lot more spent on the idea of the amount of time we have on this planet and spending the time that we have in pursuit of spiritual things.

This one is going to be more poised on giving us more time on the planet to develop that necessary relationship. So rather than it being kind of an official part two, we'll just consider it as being along the same vein of inspiration and go from there. Both these topics have been topics that have been on my mind for the past several months to a year. So it's just been a matter, really, of trying to cover the topic in a way that was going to do it justice as well as provide enough of a spiritual takeaway. It was really only recently that I came across an angle that would allow me to address it the way that I was hoping to.

I came across a movie trailer not too long back on YouTube for a movie called Fed Up. Have any of you heard of Fed Up? Okay, a couple of you have. Have any of you seen it yet? It's out on DVD, by the way. We had a chance to see it, Shannon and I. It was out in theaters, but it didn't come anywhere near Salem. Ben had it, but we couldn't get it worked out to where we could actually be over there at the time that we thought we could see it. Anyway, long story short, we have had a chance to see it now, but it's a documentary film that is produced by Katie Couric and Laurie David, who is the producer of the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

Katie Couric narrates the film, and in it she serves the role of the investigative journalist who is interviewing the different individuals that they have in the film. From what I could gather from the trailer at the time, and now what we've seen from the movie itself, the film takes a very hard look at the sugar and the processed food industries in America, and the role that they play in the obesity and diabetes epidemics that America faces in the United States at this time.

So through a series of interviews with many 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 primary diet of many Americans today. And they actually make the claim, it's an interesting claim, they make the claim that the epidemics of diabetes and obesity is less an issue of self-control and willpower, and more an issue of addiction.

In some additional research on the topic, I found some interesting stuff out, and I'd like to share that with you today. One study actually made the claim and did the study and figured out that sugar is actually eight times more addictive than cocaine or heroin. And so they found, they've previously known, researchers have known in the past, that when they give rats cocaine and heroin, and they get them addicted to it, and they give rat sugar, and they do MRIs on those rats, the same neural centers light up when they've been given cocaine or heroin versus been given sugar.

The same areas of the brain light up. And so they were curious as to whether one was more addictive or kind of how that works. So here's how one of the studies did this, and this was done with cheesecake. And I like cheesecake, so I can understand how this could be done. But they were curious about the two to see how addictive one was over the other.

And so what they did was, they managed to get one group of rats completely hooked on cocaine and heroin. I mean, completely addicted to cocaine and heroin, one group of rats. Then what they did was, they gave another group of rats the cheesecake and whatever else, and they started going through and giving them unpleasant shocks when they offered the thing that they offered. So they'd give them the cocaine, they'd consume it, shock them.

Cocaine, consume it, shock them. To the point where they tried to associate this and this, this negative aspect of things with what they'd been given. Well, what they ultimately found on this was, those that had the cocaine, when shocked, when the shock got unpleasant enough, they would stop. They would completely just avoid it entirely.

There was no interest whatsoever once the unpleasantness of the shock got to be high enough. With sugar, on the other hand, they found that the rats would continue to eat the sugar as the shock button was held down. They would continuously apply a shock and they would shrug it off and continue to consume the sugar. So they ended up quantifying it.

They came up with eight times more addictive. And there's been other studies that have done similar things as well. But with us as humans, it's not much different. You know, 80% of the items that we find in our grocery stores contain added sugar, and that sugar above and beyond the natural sugar that's already in products. And some of that added sugar is in places that you would never expect. For example, there's twice the amount of sugar in a bottle of ragu spaghetti sauce than there is in a bag of M&Ms. There's twice the sugar in ragu spaghetti sauce than there is in a bag of M&Ms. And one researcher has actually gone as far as claiming that if something doesn't change, if something doesn't change, that by 2050, one-third of the U.S.

population will be diabetic. 33% of the U.S. population will be diabetic. Now, if you couple that with current data on obesity, that's one-quarter, 25% of youth, from age 2 to 5. 25% of our children aged 2 to 5 are obese, 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 have a serious problem on our hands.

In fact, this problem in the U.S. has culminated in some experts estimating that this generation of young people, the generation that my own children are part of, that this generation of young people, maybe the first generation of young people that will not outlive their parents, that it's gotten to that point.

Now, these same young people are bombarded by advertising, bombarded by marketing. You turn on the television for any length of time, and you're absolutely visually assaulted by advertisements for McDonald's and for this and for that. You watch a sporting event, and everything that is advertised to you are processed foods and other things. In fact, at our house, I don't know about you guys, I don't know how it works down here in Medford, Tuesday is junk food ad day at our house.

What we get is a giant packet of junk food ads from them. They bought out the mailer or whatever, it goes out to every household. You go through and look at that, and it's just like one ad after the other. Then, of course, they give you coupons at the bottom to go and buy these things that you see at a much cheaper cost. But what they're starting to find, you've got kids' meals with toys, you've got mascots, you've got all sorts of things. It's sort of paralleling, I don't know how many of you remember the trials of big tobacco in the late 80s and early 90s, where they were concluding that it turns out that they were advertising cigarettes to children with Joe Camel and some of these other things.

So you look at restaurants, you look at all these candy, sugary food school lunches, they're designed to catch the eye of both kids and adults. The processed foods that these advertisements illustrate are inexpensive, they're 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 Americans today, particularly those on fixed and low incomes, utilize these.

Now interestingly enough, the restaurants and companies that produce them are multi-billion dollar companies. In fact, the top ten restaurant and fast food franchises in the U.S. This is according to Forbes magazine. It was an article on, if you want to make lots of money, buy these franchises, is what the article was about. But here's the totals of the top ten. McDonald's, number one. Subway, number two. Starbucks, number three. We love our coffee. Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Hut, Chick-fil-A, and KFC. Those are the top ten biggest earning fast food franchises in the U.S. Collectively, they bring in just shy of $100 billion in profits a year.

That's just the top ten. There's hundreds of others. Now of that top ten, McDonald's brings in over a third of that, $35.6 billion in profit a year in that particular franchise. So if you want to get rich, turns out McDonald's is the franchise to buy from the sounds of it.

So it's very clear as you start going down this rabbit hole that processed foods, fast foods, junk food, it is the way of the world today. And I think we can all kind of agree on that. You look at how the food is marketed to people. It is the way of the world today. And it's not just here in the United States. This is increasingly becoming a worldwide issue as it becomes more and more ubiquitous and harder to resist. Now there's nothing wrong with food. And give my disclaimer here. Nothing wrong with food. Please don't get me wrong. Food is a good thing.

God made us to need food, to desire food, and to enjoy food. God designed the eating experience to be a fantastic social and taste palette experience. And there's nothing better than getting a chance to enjoy a meal with someone, to sit down, have good conversation and good food, and really enjoy that meal. But with all things that God has created for good, Satan has gotten a hold of and found a way to pervert it. And so much of what we consume today isn't really food. It's in the words of what author Michael Pollan would say, they are food-like products.

They look like food, they sort of taste like food, but they're food-like products. It's been engineered, it's been made to be more tasty, more attractive, and in many cases highly addictive. High calories, high sugar, high fat, high sodium, and they're convenient. I mean, we look at...we don't sit down often and enjoy these meals with others. We slam them down in our car on the way to our next meeting, wash it down with a 72-ounce Coca-Cola, and then eat not just one apple pie, but two, because they're 50 cents a piece, two for a dollar, whatever.

I know how it is. But as a teacher, I see a lot of these things. I see this a lot with my students that come in in the morning, and what they consume for breakfast is sometimes just...

And you wonder why they're bouncing off the walls. One kid comes in one morning with this giant sugary pastry thing. I'm not even sure what it was called. It was just huge, like this big and gooey. And then he's washing it down with a 32-ounce Rockstar. It's 7 o'clock in the morning. 7 o'clock in the morning, and you wonder why that kid can't sit still all day.

He's sitting there at his desk, just twitching, you know, from the sugar and the caffeine and everything else. But today's generation of young people are becoming statistics. And this is a concept that's really hit home in my life over the last year, as I've tried to make efforts to be more healthy and to eat better and exercise more, to get out of that statistic column. Both, you know, for my own health as well as being an example to my children, so that they're not ultimately a statistic as well.

Now, there's a certain amount of difficulty in preparing and delivering a message such as this, and I recognize that as a guy can go from moving from preaching to meddling real quick. And particularly, as we often have snacks after services, I want to assure you, if you did bring something to munch on after services myself and no one else will be evaluating what you've brought.

There will be no judgments pronounced upon your offering. There's no nutrition police at the next potluck writing down names and shaking their heads disapprovingly. But this message is simply designed to share some things I've come across as I've studied this out personally, and hopefully encourage you to look into the topic further on your own if it's something you're interested in exploring. We're going to begin today in perhaps a somewhat unlikely place.

Let's go over to 1 Chronicles 28. 1 Chronicles 28, and that's where we're going to begin today. We're going to actually kick into the words of King David here as he kind of nears the end of his life and as he begins to pass on a whole laundry list of things that were kind of unfinished in his own life passed on to his son. Some of those things are okay things.

Some of those things are not okay things. There's a couple of messages in there like, Hey, you know this guy? You're going to have to have him killed because he's going to be a problem. Those kind of things. That's not what we're going to focus on today, though. We're going to focus on some of the other things that King David was passing on to Solomon from an unfinished business standpoint. We'll be in 1 Chronicles 28, and we'll go ahead and we're going to pick it up in verse 10.

So in this particular section, he's letting the people know that he had purposed in his own life that he was going to build a house for the Lord. That's what he had said. His whole idea was to do this. But that when it came down to it, God wouldn't let him do it because he was a man of war, because he had shed blood.

He was not the right person for the job. However, we see that the Lord did give him the plans. God did provide him with the plans, and that he was then going to pass those plans on to his son Solomon. Let's go ahead and pick it up in 1 Chronicles 28. 1 Chronicles 28 and verse 10 begins with, Consider now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a house, for the sanctuary be strong and do it. Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the porch, its houses, its treasuries, its upper chambers, its inner chambers, and the place of the mercy seat.

And the plans for all that he had by the Spirit. We see that God inspired David in these plans. Of the courts of the house of the Lord, of all the chambers all around, of the treasuries of the house of God, and of the treasuries for the dedicated things.

Also, for the divisions of the priests and the Levites. So it wasn't just construction information that he provided him. He told him how the Levitical priesthood should be divided up, how those divisions should work for the temple and for the work that was going to be done in it. So for all the work of the service of Ott. For all the articles of service in the house of the Lord. 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 in every kind of service.

The weight for the lampstands of gold. Their lamps of gold by weight. For each lampstand And its lamps for the lampstands of silver by weight. For the lampstands of the lamps according to the use of the biblical lampstands. We see here, not only was it construction plans, not only was it the divisions of the priesthood, David had spent part of his life accumulating materials, and accumulating these materials, making alliances that were going to be necessary to be able to make this happen.

Also pure gold for the forks, the basins, the pitchers of pure gold, the golden bowls, he gave gold by weight for every bowl, for the silver bowls, silver by weight for every bowl. Refined gold by weight for the altar, for the construction of the chariot, the gold carobim that spread their wings and overshadowed the ark of the covenant of the Lord. Verse 19, All this, said David, the Lord made me understand in writing by his hand upon me all the works of these plans. And David said to his son Solomon, Be strong and of good courage, and do it. We see that message echoed throughout the Old Testament. The book of Joshua was full of it, full of the whole concept of being strong and of good courage.

But 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 for the service of the house to the Lord.

Verse 21, Here are 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.

We see this was going to be quite an undertaking. The building of the temple was going to be quite an undertaking. This was not a project that was sketched out on the back of a cocktail napkin. These plans were in place. God had inspired David to record very specific plans.

And then in the next chapter we see that he had accumulated all of the materials, he'd made all the relationships that were necessary to make building this temple a reality.

But the ultimate job fell to Solomon to complete.

Let's turn over to 1 Kings 6. In 1 Kings 6 we see that Solomon did, in fact, complete it.

And we're going to kind of paraphrase our way through 1 Kings 6. I don't want to read the whole entire thing. It's quite the passage and it's a lot of detail. But I do want to bring out some points as we go through this. 1 Kings 6, we do see that Solomon does indeed complete it.

And as we read through this and as we paraphrase through this, focus on the level of detail and specificity that goes on in the building of this temple. Focus on the respect for God that is recorded as this temple is built. Again, this was not something haphazardly slapped together. It was planned, the costs were counted, and it was built painstakingly to the plans that God had provided.

So 1 Kings 6 and verse 1, 1 Kings 6, pardon me, a little bit under the weather today, I caught a little cold, head cold from the Petri dish of my classroom. All the kids show up and they're hacking and coughing and whatever else. We give it, we hand it off to everybody. It's like we all share. It's like kindergarten, really. We all make sure that everybody gets it. So Solomon 6, or Solomon 6, 1 Kings 6, verse 1, 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. It's really nice that that was recorded because that allows us to take a look at this is when it started and then look ultimately at when it finished. We can figure out how long it took for the entirety of it to be done. Now the house which King Solomon built for the Lord, its length was 60 cubits, its width 20, its height 30 cubits.

The porch in front of the sanctuary of the house was 20 cubits long, crossed the width of the house. The width of the porch extended 10 cubits from the front of the house. 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 and the inner sanctuary.

Thus he made side chambers all around it. The lowest chamber was five cubits wide, the middle was six cubits wide, the third was seven. He's going through here very specifically. These were the dimensions of what existed. These are the dimensions that were there. For he made narrow ledges around the outside of the temple so the support beams would not be fastened into the walls of the temple. Verse 7, 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.

Verse 7 is a perfect illustration of the respect that they had for God as they built this temple. The workers did all of the stonework off-site. All the stonework was done off-site. They had the stones that they hewed out off-site, moved in, and then placed. If you've ever seen pictures of the Temple Mount and some of those big stones that were used as the foundation stones of that, these are not small stones.

We're talking absolutely enormous stones, thousands of pounds, and they're dry stacked. It's a situation where these things would have to have been hewn perfectly off-site to be able to be brought in and then placed in place. But the worksmanship would have had to have been nearly perfect. Imagine the amount of manpower it would have taken to hew it out in one spot, move it however many miles away to the location, only to find out that it didn't fit. And that it was the wrong cut, or that it was hewn incorrectly. The amount of manpower to then turn around and reject that stone.

Then you start looking at the whole concept of Christ as the cornerstone and the builder. There's a lot in there, and that's a whole other sermon for a different day. Let's go to 1 Kings 6, verse 8. So we start getting into a little bit more detail here as we go through this and what's kind of going on with the building. 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.

He built the temple and finished it, paneled the temple with beams and boards of cedar. He built side chambers against the entire temple, each five cubits high, and on and on and on it goes. On it goes. Okay, we get into verse 11, I'm sorry, of 1 Kings 6. Then the word of the Lord came to Solomon, saying, If you walk in my statutes, 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. Verse 13 is important.

God tells Solomon here concerning this house, if you can do these things, if you can walk in my statutes, if you can do what I've asked you to do, I'll establish my word with you, and I will dwell with you in this house.

I will dwell with you here. I won't forsake you. You see that in verse 14. So we see in verse 14 that he goes on. He says, He built the temple and he finished it. Built the inside walls of the temple with cedar boards, which were difficult material to get your hands on at that time. Lebanon was the location of those. Had to have an alliance there. See from the floor of the temple to the ceiling, it was paneled with wood. And then as we scroll down just a little bit more, or as we move down just a little bit more, down into verse 20. We see that the inner sanctuary was 20 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, 20 cubits high. And he overlaid it with pure gold and overlaid the altar of cedar. Solomon overlaid the house within with pure gold, verse 21. He drew chains of gold before the oracle and overlaid it with gold. The whole house he overlaid with gold until the house was finished. Also the whole altar that belonged to the oracle, the overlaid with gold. Note here, nothing but the absolute most precious of metals and materials. We're not talking about materials from the bargain bin here at Lowe's. These are the finest materials that the world knew, assembled and built by the most skilled craftsmen in the world at this time. Verse 23, we see the interior here a little bit, and we again quickly go through these. Verse 23, the inner sanctuary made two cherubim of olive wood each 10 cubits high. It ends up overlaying those with gold. All of the walls of the house in verse 29 are carved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers within and without. These intricate carvings all over the interior and then over the floor of the house. Even the floor was overlaid with gold inside and out. There was gold everywhere on the inside of this particular temple floor to seal. Can you imagine what it must have looked like with all the lampstands lit and the light flickering and reflecting off of the walls? It must have been quite the sight, really quite the sight. Verse 31, we see it gets into more and more detail talking about the different carvings that are going on in different places and the different things that are made. We see in verse 38 of 1 Kings 6, And on the eleventh year in the month of bull, which is the eighth month, the house was finished in all its details and according to its plans. So he was seven years in building it. It took seven years to get the temple to the degree of detail and the degree of specificity that God required in the plans that he'd given David. Why was it so important to have the level of detail and have those finest materials? Because when it came down to it, this was a physical house for the Lord himself. His glory would reside there. Anything less than the best simply wasn't good enough. Whether it was the temple or whether it was the tabernacle in Moses' day, you look back through some of those sections of the Torah, God is so specific about the places that he's going to dwell. Down to the loops on how many loops it takes to hang the curtain. It is very specific. It's passage after passage on the requirements, different materials and the measurements and the utensils and the embroidery and the workmen to do it. The level of specificity that God provides and the quality of the materials he requires cannot be overstated. He wouldn't accept anything less than the best. And why? Because God is holy.

God is holy. He is set apart. He is not common. And he won't be common. He won't accept anything less than the best because he's the Lord, the creator of the universe. And he is holy. Now, we're all aware of the food laws that God put into place in Israel. We've all kept them for years. Have you ever looked at why he put those into place specifically? Have you ever considered why? I mean, we know that it was obviously a good idea. They didn't get things like trichinosis and all these other diseases that come from messing around with dead, unclean animals. But why specifically did God put them into place? Let's go to Leviticus 11. Leviticus 11, rather, records the food laws in their entirety. And we're not going to take time to go through them letter by letter today because we know what we can and can't eat. We've got that down. We've done that long enough. But I do want to focus on one aspect of these passages. Go over to Leviticus 11, Leviticus 11, and we'll pick it up in verse 44.

And prior to verse 44, prior to verse 44, we see a laundry list of things that is allowable and not allowable, what will defile someone and what will not defile someone. And when we get to verse 44, we get the reason why. Leviticus 11, verse 44. Leviticus 11, verse 44 says, This is the law of the animals and the birds and of every living creature that moves in the waters and of every creature that creeps on the earth to distinguish between the unclean and the clean and between the animal that may be eaten and the animal that may not be eaten. Because I am holy, therefore you are holy. You're not to eat the same foods that the nations around you eat. You're holy. You're set apart. I've chosen you as my people. You will not be like other nations. We see similar instructions in Leviticus 19, and we're not going to turn there for sake of time, but if you want to jot it down in your notes. We see in Leviticus 19 a series of instructions given to ancient Israel for the express purpose of setting them apart from the nations around them.

These were given so that Israel would be holy as the Lord was holy. They weren't to conform. They weren't to conform. God desired his people to be different. Now within Leviticus 19 and within much of the Old Testament, we see a number of items that are commanded to the Israelites to separate and to distance them from the nations around them.

We see circumcision. We see grooming laws, beard trimming laws, and other things. We see food laws. We see health laws. We see moral laws. The list goes on. And we see that this expectation wasn't necessarily just an Old Testament expectation. Let's go to Romans 12.

Romans 12, and we'll pick it up in verse 1.

Romans 12 and verse 1. Once again, seeing that God expects that his people are not going to conform. Romans 12, verse 1.

Romans 12, verse 1 says, Verse 2, There's a lot in these two short passages. First, we see that we're to present our bodies a living sacrifice. A sacrifice is worthy to God that's set apart this holy, and that this is our spiritual service.

That our whole being is to be dedicated to a life of service to God. Our physical bodies and all that they encompass are to be a living sacrifice offered willingly to God.

Secondly, we see the same message that the New Testament church was given to the ancient Israel. We aren't to be conformed to the world around us. We're not to do as the other nations of the world do. God expects us instead to be transformed.

Thirdly, we see that we're not to be conformed to the world, which implies there is something that we're to be conformed to, and that's Jesus Christ.

The word for conformed here is the Greek word, suskematidzo, and it means to be fashioned after a pattern.

And just like in manufacturing, if someone makes a prototype, you get your initial prototype built, and then you tool up the machinery, you just keep cranking out replicas of that original prototype.

That's along the lines of what suskematidzo would be. It's an item fashioned after a pattern.

So there's a pattern, and then there's a replica of that pattern, and it just keeps kind of kicking out replicas of that pattern.

You know, Paul's warning the church here not to be conformed, not to be replicas of the people around them, but to be fashioned... not to be fashioned after the same prototype, rather, but to be transformed, which is the Greek word metamorphu, same Latin root as metamorphosis, which is a transformative change, you know, to be different, to be transformed.

Kind of like Caterpillar to Butterfly. Something remarkably different at the end from where we began.

Now, we always have looked at this from a purely spiritual standpoint. We look at it from a standpoint of sin, and we say we aren't to be conformed to the world around us. We're not to do as the rest of the people in the world do.

We are to live a life that is spiritually transformed and to become more like Christ.

But I believe there's an important physical principle in this as well, and not just spiritual. I'd like to explore that a little bit today.

When you look at the world around us today, despite everyone's attempts at being unique, so much of the trends today are an attempt at being unique, to stand out and to be different from the world around them.

But it's interesting that when there is an attempt at being unique, there's an awful lot of conformity that comes with that. It's irony in today's societal trends.

At first, they're unique, but after a while, most everybody has them, and they're not that unique anymore.

For example, how many of you are familiar with the concept of gauges?

You're familiar with gauges? It's a type of piercing that you put in your ear. You may have seen them before, kids run around with them.

But you pierce the ear, and it looks like they've got nails jammed in their ears. It's kind of a longer piercing like this that tapers.

So what ends up happening in gauging is it's a piercing that's put in the ear, and then every little bit, you push the nail a little bit farther into the ear. It's not really a nail. I shouldn't use the word nail. It's a gauge.

As you push it in a little bit, it stretches the opening a little bit more, and then you leave it there for a little while.

As it starts to feel a little loose, again, your ear is adapted to it. You push it a little bit further, and it opens the opening up a little bit more.

The goal here is to get gauged out to the point where you can put a small cap in it that allows you to see through the earlobe. Sometimes they're like a solid opaque thing. Sometimes they're wide open. I always want to try to throw little things through them when I see them on my students.

I kind of want to see if I can land an eraser through it or something, but I've not yet. I've been good.

But I've had some students that have gauged. We're talking an inch on the gauging.

From the research that I did after I saw it, one kid was saying, oh yeah, I want to gauge this out to an inch and a half.

I'm looking at the information online and trying to figure this out. I told him one day, I'd go, I hate to be the guy who tells you this, but...

Anything over about three quarters of an inch isn't going to go back.

You don't have enough elasticity in your skin to be able to have that hole at an inch and a half close up.

We saw a guy in Bend, Shannon and I, at the feast a couple years ago. Not at charge services, but wandering around the Bend area.

They were gauged out. Unbelievable. You could have landed a baseball thrown.

The interesting thing about this is, it used to be very few people had them.

You really did stand out. People walked down the street, what has that guy done? What is going on?

It's almost normal to see now. What was once unique, what was once something that you stood out for, and it was a way of being non-conformist in that way.

Now, it seems like a lot of people have. It's very common.

When people see them, they go, I have to have that. That's really cool, I want to do that.

It becomes less unique as more and more people jump on the bandwagon.

Now it's not uncommon. I've been in business settings where I've talked to people who are in sales.

I've talked to people who have worked at the front desk of different companies and they've got gauges in.

It seems to be an acceptable societal thing now.

It's that way with societal trends like tattoos as well.

Piercings. Things that used to be very uncommon.

In fact, the tattoo thing typically were reserved only for military men or bikers in the old days.

Today you are hard-pressed to find anybody without a tattoo. At least one, somewhere.

I always have my students ask me every single year, they ask me, do you have any tattoos? No, I don't.

No tattoos, no piercings. Like, what? Everybody? No, no, no, no.

In case you didn't know, you're counterculture now.

You guys are the rebels now. Everybody's got the tattoos, so not having the tattoos is counterculture.

It's interesting you start looking into some of this stuff scripturally from a tattoo standpoint.

Are they specifically prohibited? Yes and no.

I've heard arguments both ways. I'm going to throw the argument out. I personally don't believe people should have them, but I've heard the argument as it being a little bit of a gray area.

Depending on interpretation of passages, you could make an argument either way.

I've actually heard some within the church argue for tattoos on the grounds of, if the mark is not for the dead, if the mark is not idolatrous, or if it's not involved any way of worshipping as a pagan, then what's the prohibition?

I've heard that argument. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I've heard that argument.

It's not unlike smoking in that regard. You go back and you look at, show me the scripture that says, thou shalt not smoke.

It's not in there. It's not in there. But does that mean it's okay? No. No.

But many of you may remember back in the World Wide Church of God days, it was considered enough of a sin you couldn't attend services until you'd quit.

I mean, it was enough of a sin you couldn't attend services until you'd quit.

And just because there isn't a specific passage that says, thou shalt not x, y, z, doesn't mean it's okay.

It doesn't mean that God says, oh, okay, you can smoke. Oh, it's fine. You can have tattoos. Oh, it's fine. You can do this.

What it means is there weren't convenience stores hawking packs of Marlboros on the streets of Galilee or Hebron.

It just didn't come up in the scripture.

So what we have to do in the modern era is we have to apply spiritual principle.

We put precept on precept and we make a discernment given the entirety of scripture.

God specifically tells us in the passage we just read, not to be conformed to the world, not to be another face in the crowd.

Instead, we're to present our bodies a living sacrifice to God.

And that's Paul's way of reiterating the concept that God laid forth for ancient Israel, that they should be different.

You know, I often say we should stick out in a good way.

You know, the world should be able to look at us and realize there's something different about that person.

We shouldn't blend in.

Paul here is telling the New Testament church they should be cut from a different cloth, so to speak.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19.

We'll continue building this argument. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19.

Because in this particular passage, Paul takes it a step further.

1 Corinthians 6, verse 19. Paul takes it a step further.

1 Corinthians 6.

Verse 19. I'm in 2 Corinthians. Hang on one sec. That's not going to do me a good...

1 Corinthians 6, verse 19. There we go.

It says, We see here that Paul tells us our body is a temple to the Lord, that God has given us a piece of Him.

He's given us this Holy Spirit. He's given us a small down payment of the mind and the power of God.

It's residing within us here on earth, and our body is a physical temple for that Spirit.

When put into context, that should give us pause. It really should give us pause.

We are not our own.

And when we looked earlier at the requirements that God had for His physical house that His glory would reside in, that Solomon built, the laundry list of requirements, this cubit to that cubit to this cubit, the intricate carving here, the intricate carving there, the door needs to go here, this needs to go here, there needs to be this.

That kind of intricate laundry list of requirements, those exacting measurements, those finest of materials, finest worksmanship and building standards.

What should that tell us about how we treat our physical bodies?

Because, brethren, it turns out there weren't McDonald's and there weren't Starbucks, and there weren't Burger Kings on the corners of Jerusalem and Galilee either.

Scripturally, there's actually very little on this particular topic.

The book of Daniel talks about the king's delicacies. There's an example in the book of Daniel where he refuses to eat the king's food and says, No, me and my associates, we would like to eat vegetables instead, and just test us. Let's see who's healthier at the end of this week, basically.

There's another section, Proverbs 23, verse 1-3. Let's turn there.

This one's got some very evocative language in it.

Proverbs 23, verses 1-3.

Proverbs 23, 1-3 refers to the king's delicacies.

Proverbs 23, 1-3. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you and put a knife to your throat if you're a man given to appetite.

Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food.

There are some spiritual precepts to work with a little bit here. We see a little bit there that we can work with. But ultimately, what it comes down to is discernment and applying the principle, much like it does with the other things that are not specifically, Thou shalt not x, y, z. We have to be able to put the principles together.

The question we really need to ask ourselves is, Does God want us to ingest large quantities of things that are not healthy for us?

Based on a preponderance of Scripture from Leviticus to Romans and in between, I think we can all agree the answer is no. No, he does not.

Maybe the larger question is, is the interior of our body where that spirit resides, built with fine cedar and overlaid with gold?

Is the exterior made of fine materials? Is it a witness to God's glory and power? Or have we cut some corners in the building process? Maybe we've used some cheaper, inexpensive, but weaker materials in the building process. I can tell you my answer. Let's turn over to 2 Chronicles 29. Let's turn over to 2 Chronicles 29, and while you're turning there, I'll give you my answer.

2 Chronicles 29.

You know, it's past October. It turned 33 years old.

Third way to 100 years. 33 years old. I weighed 330 pounds this past October.

I struggled to tie my shoes. I struggled to walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. I was having difficulties keeping up with my children.

And in all reality, I was facing the very good possibility of not surviving to see my children graduate high school.

Or, worse, the opportunity to see my daughter married.

The worst part of it was that that year in October, I had reached a point where I almost gave up and let it take me.

I was that close to thinking I was so far gone from a physical standpoint that there was nothing I could do to fix it.

And I felt like, to a certain extent, there was no way out.

You know, I began to think about it, began to consider kind of where I was in my life at that time, and as I often do every year around my birthday, I get very introspective as one more year ticks off the clock.

But I found my way to 1 Corinthians 6, what we just read.

I became convicted that the body I was given was a temple to God, that He's residing within me, that the Spirit's in me, and that, frankly, I'd done a pretty terrible job of maintaining what I'd been given. And when you see the instructions that the Levites were given as to how to maintain the temple on a daily basis, the things that they had to do, it was quite the task. I had done very little maintenance. I'd really let my temple deteriorate. And I noticed as my physical temple continued to deteriorate, as my health got worse, I noticed my spiritual life got worse, too.

I found I was more neglectful in my Bible study, my prayer life. I was tired all the time, irritable, depressed. And so it was during October, just prior to my 33rd birthday, that I found myself in the book of Chronicles reading about the succession of the kings of Judah. So we're going to pick up right where I was at, that 2 Chronicles 29, to be exact. And I picked up—I was reading about this shift in kingship from Ahaz to Hezekiah, and a light bulb came on.

I had just kind of finished reading about all of these horrible atrocities that Ahaz had done. I mean, the horrible things that he had done, not just around the temple, but in the temple. The pagan and all the idols that he set up, all over the country, and really the damage that he had done to the temple itself. And so we'll pick it up today in verse 3 of 2 Chronicles 29. 2 Chronicles 29 and verse 3, we see this Hezekiah picking up after, kind of starting to pick up the pieces.

It says, Let that sink in for a second. One time a year, a person entered that place. The Day of Atonement, once a year. That was the location where God's glory resided. And he has this time there was trash in it. Debris, garbage.

In the beginning of the day, King Ahaz, he looted the temple to pay tribute to the Assyrians. He closed the door, caused the dailies to cease, caused the people of Judah to stop making offerings at the temple, placed all manner of filthiness in and around in the holiest of holies. He had a pagan idol in there. In short, he caused the beautiful temple that we read about earlier in Solomon's time, built to those exacting standards to be completely dilapidated and destroyed. Ruined. I mean, it was bad enough that the people didn't even honor Ahaz with a burial fitting of a king. He was just kind of buried in the garden. He wasn't even put in with the rest of them. So Hezekiah comes along, he inherits the mess that his father had made, and decided it was time for a change. Now, he had a very strong high priest in Helechiah, which really helped. He determined the things that needed to be done and purpose to make a change beginning with the temple. Move down to verse 15. Second Chronicles 29, 15.

That's 28, 15, sorry.

And they gathered their brethren, sanctified themselves, and went according to the commandment of the king, at the words of the Lord, to cleanse the house of the Lord. Then the priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord, to cleanse it, and brought out all of 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. You know, they began the cleaning process. As they went into cleanse the house of God, the word cleanse here in verse 16 is the Hebrew word tahir. It's the Hebrew word tahir, and it means to cleanse thoroughly. It means to purge. It means to make uncontaminated. The inside of the temple was full of all manner of filth, and the Levites cleaned it all out. They repaired the temple. They began the daily worship again under Hezekiah's reign. Now, what I took from this, at that kind of low point in my life, was that it's never too late. The temple under Ahaz was completely ruined, looted. All those precious metals, all that stuff that was put in there, had been cleaned out to pay off the Assyrians. Under Hezekiah, it was repaired, and it was restored to its former glory. That process takes time. It is a process. It's not going to happen overnight. He got it up and going again. God had dealt with it. God blessed them exceedingly throughout Hezekiah's reign. But in my own life, I gave myself two years to make that happen. I said age 35 was the goal, to hit my goal weight, hit my overall health goals. The irony of it is, I'm one year out now. I'm almost 34 at the end of this next month. I'm one year out now. Honestly, I'm probably in the best shape of my life right now. I can go through, I can run 12 miles right now without stopping, I can lift, I can keep up with my kids. I don't have the aches and pains that I used to have. It really, truly saddens me to think of what I did with the days of my youth. What I did with the days of my youth. The lack of care and wisdom that I had in maintaining that physical temple. The years that I lost in that regard. When I think about it, did I live my dash during those years? Did I make the most of my days? No. No, I'd have to say that I didn't. Let's go over to Ecclesiastes 10 and we'll look at verse 18. This is a perfect example of what happened in those years in my life. Ecclesiastes 10 and verse 18. Ecclesiastes is one of those neat books of the Bible, because you get to see three different phases in Solomon's life.

Ecclesiastes is wise old Solomon passing on the wisdom of his life as he contemplates the end of his own days. Ecclesiastes 10 and verse 18 says, Because of laziness the building decays, and through idleness of hands the house leaks. That is a perfect metaphor for what was going on in my life at that time. The roof of my temple was leaking, it was caving in. Through my own inactivity and my own unwise choices, I let it become dilapidated and broken. I looted it and I allowed it to fall into disrepair and disuse. When I look back on it, I squandered those years. As such, I'm determined not to squander the next thirty. God willing, I'm determined to live that dash physically and spiritually by properly maintaining the temple I've been given. What I found with this process has been amazing. Once I've bettered the physical side of my life, the spiritual side of my life has just taken off. Being able, going through and learning more and more and more as I dig in, I've got the energy to serve like I need to. I have the energy to keep up on the things that I need to do. I wouldn't have been able to do that this last year. In my own life, as I look back on it, I think it's true for all of us. It comes down to choices. Our life is all about choices. That's the hard part about God giving us free will. He allows us to make the choice. Of course, He desires that we make the wise choice. But He gives us the option. Realistically, our life, when we look at it every day, is confronted by thousands of possibilities of choices. You make one choice and it leads you to another decision point. You make that decision and it takes you to another decision point. There are thousands of these paths that fan out in front of us every day. Each decision point represents a fork in the road leading to another decision point. The first one, do I wake up with my alarm? Do I hit snooze? There's number one. And then your day could go any number of directions after that. Do I have oatmeal or eggs for breakfast? Do I drive my normal route to work or do I take an alternate path? Do I go hit up Mickey D's for lunch or do I pack a lunch from home? When I get home, do I sit in front of the computer or the TV for three or four hours? Do I do something active and productive? Do I go to bed at a reasonable hour or do I stay up until all hours in the night and then just start all over the next day? Each of these decisions might have resulted in a different set of circumstances or events for our day and ultimately our life if the other choice were made. In other words, the choices that we make have positive and negative consequences, both immediately and often in the future. We recognize this inherently in our spiritual lives.

I think we recognize this inherently in our spiritual lives. We know the consequences of sin are not good. We know that, and we recognize that. And as such, I think we're very, very careful spiritually to stay away from those things. But I think sometimes physically, we don't see the importance necessarily of making the smart physical choices as the two physical and spiritual go hand in hand. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 6. We didn't read this one. We read 19. We're going to read 12. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 12.

1 Corinthians 6, verse 12. We'll take a look at the words of Apostle Paul here. It's a broader context of kind of admonishing the Corinthian church for their vices. And this was like their response to him when he's... So he's kind of coming back at them for their response when he called him out on it before. But 1 Corinthians 6, verse 12, says, The New Living Translation puts it specifically. You say, quote, Part of the difficulty with freedom, as we mentioned before, is that the responsibility that goes along with it. And when we look at what's marketed and advertised to us as food, and from television to print, to all kinds of other things, we see that they're not just advertised. They assault us each and every day over the airwaves, over the radio, you know, in print, on the billboards on the side of the road, all over everything. We see it everywhere. Watch a football game. How many times do you get beer commercials and food commercials and buffalo wild wings and this and that, and come here and do this? It's everywhere. And we do have free will, we do have freedom, and sure, we can eat the things that are on those pages, but are they beneficial for us? We have to be able to see through the advertising and the marketing and judge them on their merit. If it has the potential to harm us in the long term, if we consume it regularly, to literally change our life by causing us to get diabetes or some other kind of hypertension or heart disease or other things, or if it alters our ability to make wiser choices due to the addictive properties of the food itself, is that what God intended for us? Or is it part of a more nefarious system? You know, we kind of have two ways in this world. We have God's way and we have, well, Satan's way. There's not really a lot of in-betweens. You know, a recent study indicates, at least in rats, that a diet with junk food included as an option makes it more difficult to make better choices in the long run. Here's a summary of the study. It says, Junk food does more than make you fat. We all know that junk food isn't good for you. There's a reason they call it junk, right? But a new study suggests that eating food full of chemicals, high in fat, sodium, and sugar, may also reduce your interest in eating healthier foods. The new study published in Frontiers in Psychology involved two groups of rats that were appropriately called chow and cafeteria. Scientists said both groups typical rat food, but the group called cafeteria also had additional access to highly processed human foods. So they both got the same diet primarily, but one control group had access to other things. And those other things were cookies, cakes, dim sum, and sweet pies. I've never had dim sum. I don't even know what it is. Apparently, rats love it. Um, yum! Or so the rats thought. So much so that after two weeks, that's all it took, two weeks, scientists noticed the rats that were eating the junk food lost their desire to eat anything else.

Essentially, they were junk food addicts. Their bodies stopped responding to the normal impulse to seek a more balanced diet. Now, this was a rat study, not a human one, but it did suggest to scientists that eating a diet rich in processed and fatty foods may do more harm than adding pounds. As the Apostle Paul said, all things are permissible, but not necessarily beneficial. And he was adamant to not be brought under the power of any. That addiction can be so hard to break.

We have to make wise choices.

Brethren, in conclusion, our physical bodies are the temple of the Lord on this earth. He's residing in us through the gift of His Holy Spirit, His mind, and His power. We're to present ourselves a living sacrifice to God, a sacrifice that's holy, set apart, and different from those around us. We're instructed to love the Lord with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. It discusses that in Luke 10. With our whole being, everything that we have, our physical bodies too.

We're not to be conformed to the world, but rather transformed.

And we're, most importantly, not to yield ourselves to anything that will control us. We are to yield ourselves to the Spirit of God that resides within us, to allow ourselves to be led, not controlled. And that's a big difference. God's Spirit leads. Satan controls. God's Spirit leads. The transformative process is not only spiritual, it has physical aspects as well. And it doesn't require that we make... the changes that we make, it doesn't have to be like an extreme temple makeover. It doesn't have to be a complete overhaul of everything. It could just be a minor remodel, it could be changing of a small subtle aspect of our lives. But as we go through this coming week, consider and meditate on these things. Ask yourself, are there any improvements that you would like to make? Because brethren, it's never too late.