Life

I want to give you a heads up. Those of you, you keep writing in saying, "I requested a song. And when are you gonna sing it for me?" And we keep saying, "we will sing it." Well, what I do is I pick a song in chronological order, and then a song by popular demand. So if all your friends request the same song, it will get sung quicker. But we're trying to get all The Songs.

So it's taking us a while, but we are slowly but surely singing your favorite request. And this morning is a favorite from m. Jean in Alabama, kyle, cameron, cec and pamela in australia. Okay in California, donna in Montana, rob in North Carolina, susan in Texas, mary in Virginia, adrienne in Vermont and jean richard in Wisconsin. Their favorite request is 575, "let your heart be broken.

" This is a beautiful song. I want you to play close attention to the words, 575, verse 1, 3, and 5... I love that song. Every time I go somewhere on a mission trip I think about the words of this song. And it is a privilege that we are given to help other people.

Sometimes we think, "oh, I don't have very much. But you know what? Compared to most of the people around the world, we actually have a lot. And anything that we can do to help others is a blessing to them, and even more importantly, is a blessing to us. When we--let's see, our opening song is 251, "he lives." You have a risen Savior who's in the world today. And you know he's living.

, Verses 1, 2, and 3... If you have a favorite song request that you would like to send in, go to our website at saccentral.org. Click on the "contact us" link, and send in your song requests. And we will sing that for you. At this time, let's bow our-- oh sorry! Thank you, jennifer.

I wanted to let you know, those who requested that song-- 'cause it's important. This is your favorite request-- was debbie in Alabama, barbara in California, maria in england, yaw in ghana, yanique, David and ellisa in jamaica, dustin in Kansas, ernestine in Maryland, Ruth in Mississippi, roiji in miramar, darlinda in the netherlands, lyndon, fran in New Jersey, marianne in norway, stewart and joanne in panama, ken in saudi arabia, margaret in spain and brian in Texas. So thank you so much for that request. Let's bow our heads for prayer. Father in Heaven, you do live this morning.

And that is why we are here to worship you, because you are a living and risen Savior. We thank you so much for bringing us here this morning to worship you. And I pray that you'll be with us as we study together. Be with those who are joining us from across the country and around the world. Be with each one.

And I pray that we will all receive the blessing that you have for us this morning, that we will be blessings to everyone we come in contact with. In Jesus' Name, amen. At this time our lesson study is--whoops, where did he go? There he is--gonna be brought to us by pastor mike thompson, our health and outreach pastor who is at central. And it's his 37th wedding anniversary today. Well, debbie, thank you very much.

You gonna say, "congratulations." Thank you very much, yeah. Yeah, congratulate my wife on being such a courageous lady, years, that's quite a feat, isn't it? Yeah. Thank you, kelly. She'd appreciate that. Well, Happy Sabbath to you all.

I hope you're all doing very well today. And we're on lesson four of this new theme, "the Christian life." ExcEllent, all kinds of goodies in this quarter. And the one today is entitled simply, "life," "life." Simple term it seems, rolls off the tongue, but there's so much involved in life, the miracle of life. So there is a memory verse in John 10:10. The words of Jesus, "I have come that they might have life," may have life, "and have it more abundantly," or to the full.

That's not the full verse, by the way. I'm going to read the full verse, John 10:10 toward the close of the lesson today. But let me begin by saying this. February 12, this year, 2009, was the 200th anniversary, or should I say the birthday of a fellow countryman--who I take no pride in identifying with, charles darwin. And charles darwin was a man without any degrees in engineering or physics or biology or geology or anything like that.

But when he was on a trip to the galapagos islands on h.m.s. Beagle and he put in to certain places, and he looked around, he was kind of struck with this notion that all life forms existing in the present evolved or developed from life forms from the past over a long period of time. Now darwin wasn't the only one, the first one who entertained such imaginative thinking as this. In fact, the ancient Greeks, long before his time, also conjured up the idea of what we call evolution. And I've said this before.

Forgive me saying again, but I'm from england; we say "evilution" because I believe it's evil. It's robbing God of the glory that is his. So if I slip and say, either evolution or evilution, you know which one I'm talking about. But the point is this. Neither the Greeks nor charles darwin, those who champion his cause have been able to prove that evolution was the way that life came into existence, just can't prove that.

Now on the other side of the coin, we have the creation account in Genesis of where life came from, how it began, where men and women came from, where everything began. And in Genesis 1:1, first verse in the Bible, it says, "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." In how many days? Six literal days. And by the way, I want to say this as kindly as I can, 'cause I believe there's a lot of well-intentioned people, even people who are not Christians, and even people who are Christians. There are even some Christians who believe that--they believe in evilution, but they still believe in the idea that God took long periods of time. And I believe a lot of these folks are sincere in that.

But I still have to disagree with them, because the Bible speaks. And it speaks of seven. I mean, we go to the account of creation including the Sabbath, seven 24-hour periods, evening and the morning. I think that's very clear. And I believe that God purposefully put that in there so we would know it was 24-hour periods.

But here's the point I want to make. Whether we stand on the line of the evolutionist or cross the other side of the line with the creationist, none of us were there when life came into being. Is that right? So whether an evolutionist or a creationist, both parties have to accept their belief based upon faith. Now a lot of people think that faith is only in the arena of religion. Well, I agree with that, but you know, I think evolution very much is a religion.

It's dealing with origins. And one of the main tenants of religion is "where did we come from?" Evolution dabbles in the area of religion. So the evolutionist is just as religious as the devout creationist. But none of us were there when it happened. So what we have to do--well, actually let me say something else first.

Of course I believe in the biblical account of creation for two reasons. One is I believe it's true. And the second thing is, you know, I can tend to be a little lazy when it comes to exercising faith. When it comes to going into the gymnasium of faith and having to push up those weights, you know, give me the two pound weights. Let me exercise faith that way other than trying to bench press 300 pounds, using metaphors here of course.

Give me the path of least resistance. To me, it's so much easier in the gymnasium of faith to believe that somebody that is God, made everything out of nothing, rather than to believe that nobody made everything out of nothing. That calls for an awful lot of faith on the side of the evolutionist. But if you're devoted to your religion, zealously so, then hey, I kind of take my hat off to that. But what we have to do is this.

We have one set of evidence. We've got one, wherever we go here, Colorado, wherever you go, into china, himalayas. We find one geological column. One set of evidence, but two interpretations, not just in the area of geology, but biology and other things. One evidence, two interpretations.

So what we have to do is see which interpretation, which side is interpreting the evidence based upon laws that we observe in nature. You know, this world gets governed by laws, the physical, just your body, the way you breathe has laws of circulation, laws of electricity, all kinds of laws. They're all over the place. God wrote those laws into our beings. He wrote them in the way this world functions.

So we have to look and see which set of faith, which belief is in harmony with the laws that we observe in nature, whether they're laws that govern physics or biology or geology and so on. And in spite of the claims that the evolutionist makes--i want to stop again here. Just let me pause. I don't want to just come and stomp on people who believe in evolution. Because I believe there's a lot of people out there, that's what they've been taught.

They accept it, and they don't know any different. I used to believe in evolution, but now I'm a Seventh-day Adventist. Why? Because I was given the opportunity of hearing the other side of the story. So is anybody here today sitting in the congregation, or anybody watching on television--by the way, I didn't welcome you. Welcome to "central study hour" today.

People sometimes don't understand. So you get the point. Anyway, let me get back to what I'm saying here. Getting back to the geological column for example, which the evolutionists tell us if we look there, speaking simply here, you see all the various life forms. But the only thing is, if there's been an evolving of primitive life forms to more complex, then in the geological column or wherever we look, we should see what's known as transitional forms.

We used to use the term "missing links." You familiar with that term? Well, where are the transitional forms that take us from a blob or a tadpole to a frog, to a snake, to something else that grew legs and then finally evolved into an ape and finally evolved into a human being? You know, friends, it's just not there. It's just not there. And if I was an evolutionist, I'd feel a little embarrassed, feel a little embarrassed about that. Not only that, not only that, getting back to the issue of laws that operate in the natural world. The evolution--I'm gonna mention one in a second.

It's called the second law of thermodynamics-- the evolutionist would have us believe that everything evolved from simple forms. And it developed, become more complex, more sophisticated and so on. But as we observe things in the natural world, it doesn't go in that direction. Instead of things developing, getting warmer and evolving upwards, everything is going in the other direction. It's based on what we call the second law of thermodynamics.

In other words, everything is actually winding down, cooling down, and decaying. And it's something which we term as entropy. In other words, you build a brand-new house, okay? And beautiful house, fill it with furnishings. It's just gorgeous. But then you lock the front door.

And you walk away for 40 or 50 years. You come back after 40 or 50 years, you open that door and you come inside, what do you find? Everything is kind of moldy and broken. Plaster's falling off the wall. The shades are all tattered, and it just smells musty. And that house certainly wasn't proving and going, developing upwards.

Everything, you see, was winding down. That's entropy. And that is what we observe in the natural world. So the second law of thermodynamics flies right in the teeth of one of the foundational, foundation stones of the concept of evolution. It's a major contradiction.

It's a huge stumbling block that the evolutionist really cannot find their way around. They simply have to kind of ignore it and move on. Now but that's not the only thing. And I'm not here yet--we're talking about life today. So obviously I feel I should mention this, 'cause the origin of life is extremely important.

And we don't have time today just to be dwelling in the area of evilution and creation. But there are some momentous stumbling blocks that get in the way of accepting, if you're gonna be honest and truly scientific, except in the concept of evolution. I want to introduce you to this magazine. It's called "acts and facts." It's not from Amazing Facts, believe it or not. It's from a website that you can find if you go to www.

icr.org, www.icr.org, stands for institute of creation research. Tremendous website. Good for kids who are doing projects on evolution and creationism. Go yourself. It's just tremendous.

And they will send you free this magazine, full color, glossy called "acts and facts." And by the way, there's an envelope, so you can send them a donation. You should. But I want to tell you, this is a tremendous magazine. It's written--the people who write this, they're credentialed with doctorates just as well as any doctor in a university teaching evolution. Here's the thing, you see.

The reason why evolution gets all the publicity is it has hollywood on its side. So there's the big bucks. You got the media on its side. You got the popular media. Why? Because nobody likes to retain God in their thinking.

Nobody likes to think there's a God that made us, 'cause that makes us accountable to him morally. So let's get rid of him. So evolution is very, very opportune thing to accept. Then you get God out of your life. Does hollywood want God? No.

So they put the big bucks in. Hollywood will produce movies, which when you look at it, it's based on the evolutionary concept that life is cheap. Morality, forget it. And so where am i? I'm rambling on here. But this magazine.

You should get it. I want to, for example, just take you briefly to one article here. It's called, "chemistry by chance: a formula for non-life," by charles mccombs, ph.d. And dr. Mccombs says this.

He said, "evolutionists tell the tale that life was formed from chemicals in some primordial soup from which life arose by accident. Can random chemical accidents produce the building blocks of life? The following eight obstacles in chemistry insure that life by chance is untenable." And he goes through eight points here: mass action, unreactivity, reactivity, ionization, selectivity, sugars and so on. Very scientifically sound. Oh, I know what I was gonna tell ya. So you don't hear about men like this.

Hollywood has the big bucks to print out the other people out there. You don't hear people about this. And what kids are not told in high school is that there are men out there, men and women who are just as intelligent as anybody else. They've got degrees in science and technology. And they're simple enough and intelligent enough to believe that there is a God who made everything in six days.

But we don't hear about these people, but they exist; trust me. Anyway, he goes through these eight points here. And he concludes with this. "Any of these eight problems could prevent the evolutionary process from forming the chemicals vital for life. This is why evolutionary scientists hope you don't know chemistry.

Darwin asserted that random, accidental, natural processes formed life. But the principles of chemistry," the natural laws that we observe in our natural world that govern physics and chemistry and so on, this is what he's talking about. "Darwin asserted that random--" where is it now? "The principles of chemistry contradict this idea. The building blocks of life cannot be manufactured by accident." Go to their website. It is absolutely tremendous.

You would enjoy that. Well, as much as I'd like to say more, I have to move on here. Oh, by the way, in the second magazine that they sent me, there was for anybody who maybe wants to believe in evolution but they believe--i mean wants to believe in creation, but they still believe it happened over a long period of time, there is a book out just to help folks like you. And I've forgotten the title. It's--oh, you know what? Maybe--I'll try and remember it before I'm done.

But if you go to this site, you'll see the book. It's on about long periods of creationism. I should have written the title down. I'm sorry. But ideal book though.

Anyway, we've got to move on this morning. So I want to emphatically state that I do not believe that human life happened by chance. And I hope you can say "amen" to that yourself. Genesis 2 tells us that--actually I'm doing all the talking. We got somebody wants to read Genesis 2:7? "the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

And the man became a living being." Thank you very much, birdie. King James says, "became a living soul." Actually, it's more correct to say that he became a living being. You don't have a soul, you are a soul. And the Hebrew word actually is the whole being. It means life, the whole living being.

Thank you for reading that. And so the Bible speaks of adam being created of the dust of the earth. God breathing into his nostrils the breath of life and boom! There he was. Just this miracle of God's creative power. Not just a marvel, not just this living organism, this biological phenomenon which could be seen, but just as miraculous about adam was the things that couldn't be seen, but it was just as powerful, just the life.

I mean what did life come from? Ya know? I know you're alive, Michael. I can see ya. You're breathing. He's nodding his head. He's smiling at me.

I felt your pulse, I'd feel your heartbeat. If I put electrodes on your head, I'd see electrical activity and so on. But where is the life essence that makes that happen? You look at somebody alive, you look at somebody dead; you tell they're different, but it's 'cause the life--what is it? You see? It's this mysterious, it's as invisible as the air that we breathe. Well, it's not mysterious to God, because he's the one that actually infuses us with that life, with that life principle. And so can evolution explain this? Not a bit.

Can a creationist explain it? Not a bit. But still, as a creationist it makes more sense thinking rationally that God made it rather than somehow it happened. Again, back in that-- in the gymnasium of faith, give me the easy way out. Believe that God made it. Let's have done with it.

Not only that as well, not just this essence of life that you can't see, but where do emotions come from? How are we able to feel these emotions of love? Now how can my wife after years, how can she feel she loves me? And she does; she told me this morning. She gave me a card, and I read it. And I'll tell you what, it touched me. It was very, very nice of her, years. I can't see that.

But it's there in her heart. How did it get there? Because God put it there. God allows us to have these feelings. As David said in the Psalms, psalm 139:14, "I will," what? "Praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." "Fearfully and wonderfully made." Not just his physical organism, but his ability to worship God, to feel, to have intelligence, to express himself. As you know I have a little -month-old grandson called jack.

And last night about 9 o'clock, helen and I got a call--we just live on the same street, four doors down. We got a call from debbie, "well, do you want to come?" Jack was gonna have his first spoonful of solid food last night. So we--[laughs] here I am with these baggy old pants--you don't know how I dress when I'm at home--these baggy old pants, this old shirt, down the road, go in the house, and there's little jack for this grand ceremony of jack's first mouthful of solid food. Well, it went in and so did his fingers, you know? It went in and it came out all at the same time. But that was quite a wonderful expression--and I looked at this little kid.

And I looked in his little face. And thank God for video cameras. We can go watch it again tonight. But it's just a miracle how these little creatures, these little creatures that they, that they come into being. And you see already this personality.

He's jack. He's jack okay. And there's only one like him. It's a miracle. Does it just happen by chance? No, friends.

It doesn't happen by chance. And when David was speaking about himself, when he was this little jack, even in the womb. It speaks about the fact in psalm 139 that God knew him. God knew him already. He says in psalm 139:15, it says, "my substance," in other words his little infant body, "my substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret.

" While he was being formed in his mother's wombs, when those little fingers and toes were just little buds. They weren't properly formed. God had them all counted and all written down in his book. He says, "when I was still imperfect." While I was still imperfect, God saw David like he sees every little baby. And David said in verse 17 and , "how precious are thy thoughts to me, o God, how great is the sum of them?" If I should count them, they're more in number than the sand of the sea.

" Our God has the fondest regard and affection for each one of us, even when we're just these imperfect little babies forming in our mother's wombs. And with that in mind, I want to mention something this morning. My wife told me, she's a good wife, she says, "be sensitive." Well, I will be, but I still want to talk about it. I was reading recently some latest facts and figures about abortion. And I'm pretty sure I'm correct when I say this.

The estimate over the last years is that 60 million little children are being destroyed before they had a chance to be born, million little babies. You know, we have the term homicide is to take a human life. We have the term genocide. That's to take human life in mass like--or a race or a group of people that you want to wipe off the face of the earth. You've got homicide, genocide.

We also have infanticide. And that is the destruction of helpless, little babies who are still in the womb. Sixty million, that's about the population of where I come from, great britain, million people. Human life is not only sacred, friends. It's exceedingly sacred.

And society is so hypocritical and two-faced. We look back on the nazis with anger and disgust. They took 60 million jews and sent them to the death camps. And yet, society can look on with indifference as every year thousands of thousands of innocent little babies are exterminated, not in death camps with barbed wire around, but you know, professional-looking offices in every town, where it can be done legally, with all under the auspices of a medical license, all this kind of stuff. Six million jews on one hand, million babies on the other.

It's just awful. And it's almost incomprehensible that we allow such things to happen. But you know, we have such twisted thinking. And it all goes back to imbibing evolutionary principles on life. If you believe that people really evolve from tadpoles and monkeys, then how sacred is life? Not that much really.

We value those who we know, who are close to us, yes. But outside our sphere we can become terribly indifferent to human life. "Oh, it's a baby out there somewhere." And so because of this evolutionary thinking, we have this idea that, "well, I'm what you call pro-choice." You must respect my choice. Does the baby get a choice? Isn't the baby--doesn't the baby have some respect? Shouldn't the baby have a choice? "Well, no, no, it doesn't." Well, why? Well, you know, it's such hypocritical thinking. It's such selfish one-sided way of resolving an unplanned pregnancy.

And the root cause of this is to do with the evolutionary thought process, which causes people to think that a fetus is not--is not a human being; it's just a glob of cells for a while. And it's a non-specific form. And it looks a little bit like a little seahorse, you know, you've all seen the pictures. Then finally it takes on the resemblance of a human being. But you know, it takes on the resemblance of a human being pretty soon into that course of pregnancy.

I mean they're not very big. And there's the little arms and legs and eyes and everything. I mean, is that a little blob? And even if, even if there is absolutely no human form to it, it has nothing to do with appearances or form. It's the fact it's a life. It's a human life.

If I'm a woman, and life is conceived within me, even in the earlier stages, what is it? Is it the life of a dog? Is it the life of a cat? Is it the life of a pig? No, it's the life of a human being made in God's image. And it's because we've imbibed this strange and crazy way of looking at things that we have this carnage, infanticide. And it's all done supposedly legally on this earth, but not in God's eyes. And 2 Corinthians 5:10, just first part of the verse, it says, "for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." You know, the blood of abel cried out from the ground, the blood of millions of helpless little infants destroyed for the sake of convenience, whatever financial consideration, whatever it is, that cries out from the ground as well. And I'll tell you what, that cry doesn't go nowhere.

God keeps it all in a book. And God one day there's gonna be a settling of accounts. Now my wife told me to be sensitive. And I want to be, and I hope I am. But I still have to say what I have to say this morning.

There may be somebody watching or maybe somebody in this congregation that has been involved in infanticide, abortion. Let me tell you this, if you have, and you feel bad, God is merciful. It doesn't excuse what's been done, but if somebody, it doesn't matter who you are, if you are truly sorry, and you're determined that you will never do anything like that again, anything involved with the taking of an innocent little life, and you go to God and you ask him to forgive you, he will do that, 'cause God is merciful. Isaiah 55:6-7 says, "seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him," or her, "and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

" Isn't God wonderful? Isaiah 43:25, "i, even i, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake; and I will not remember thy sins." So is any lady struggling out there? It's alright. If you're sorry, God knows. And he forgives you. But let us determine never again to have anything to do with the taking of innocent little lives. Can you say amen? Praise the Lord, friends.

Anyway, I need to move on here. The lesson also spoke about physical education. Here I think was--yeah, Monday's part. Getting back to the lesson. And again, going back to what David says, "I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

" Indeed, a human being is a demonstration of the most amazing exhibition of God's creative ability. I mean it's just--try and look at the human brain and fathom it out. Even now, you know, we think we understand a lot, but as you reach--as you're climbing a mountain, you get to one little ridge and you think, "oh, I thought I was there, but I'm not." And so you keep seeing these other summits. It seems there's no end to God's ingenuity that he's built into the human body and into the brain and so on. But as marvelous as we are, it's a fact that human beings, we tend to take ourselves, our lives, this body God has given us for granted.

And so we don't always take care of it as we should. Is that right? Yeah, it's right. Now we could go in any number of direction this morning of discussing how we can best take care of this body that God has given to us. There's all kinds of formulas and prescriptions out there and things you can buy and pay through the nose for them, that you might have a healthier body. The thing we need to aim for, two things actually, quantity of life and quality of life.

In other words, I want to live as long as I can and be as healthy as I can while I'm living as long as I can. Okay? So quantity and quality of life. So what we need to do is incorporate into our lifestyle those things which are helpful and beneficial. And take out of our life those factors that do not lend themselves to good health, so that we can return to God, we can give to God a life that is long and well-lived. And we don't rob him of a life cut short by destructive habits.

I'm not my own to do with as I want. So again, you can go out there today. Well, go tomorrow. Go in any number of health stores. And look for the elixir of life, the elixir of youth.

If you find it, it'll cost you the earth, so don't even think about going there. God has given us some information that is very simple, cheap, but profound in its effects. And it's all around you just for the taking, most of it. There's a book called "ministry of healing." And on page 127, read these words--I'm gonna read this. Nothing startling.

You won't say, "I thought you had more to say than that." No. This is all you need. "Pure air. Sunlight--" well, California, I don't know, but you might have to go a little further up in the sierras, but anyway. Down in the valley, we still breathe and we still seem to live, so I guess there's some purity left, though sometimes not always that much.

"Pure air. Sunlight. Abstemiousness." What's that mean? That's an old english word. To abstain, to dispense with that which is harmful, okay. "Pure air.

Sunlight. Get rid of that which is bad, what you eat and drink, so on. Rest. Exercise. Proper diet.

The use of water. And trust in divine power." Right there. But it calls for a bit of self-discipline, you see? But if we will incorporate these things into our lifestyle, we will find that it will pay rich dividends. Now we live close to weimar institute, relatively speaking. It's just down the road about an hour from here.

And weimar institute, like some other health institutes across this nation and around the world, they have taken these nine modalities that I mentioned: fresh air, sunlight, and so on. And you're probably aware; they've turned it into an acronym. They've called it new start. And new start: nutrition, exercise, water, sunlight, temperance, air, rest, and trust. And I've worked in institutions like that.

And I tell ya, I've seen people come in--i used to work at a polite one down in Georgia called wildwood. We'd see people come in who had been smoking and drinking and stressed out eating too much fat, not enough exercise, just under stress, just not doing well at all. They'd be there for 3 weeks, we'd get them exercising, in the fresh air, drinking water, change their diet, cut out the cholesterol and the hard fats, get them--drink plenty of water, trusting in God. You know, I've seen them walk out, their cholesterol was way down. Their blood pressure was down.

They were invigorated, a whole new lease on life. It works. And you don't pay through the nose. Does that sound good? Does that sound like a good deal? It is a good deal, friends. Very good deal.

And this is why weimar institute, it's among the top few institutes, just a humble little place, but it's in the top five I think, definitely in the top 5 of type 2 diabetes reversal programs in the whole nation. And they base their program on those nine modalities there. So I'll leave you with that. You know, as Christians, above all people, we should be careful how we treat these bodies. We're just stewards.

They're loaned to us. When I was a philistine in my early days, I thought I could drink and do all kinds of stuff. And I wasn't breaking windows or hurting anybody else. And I thought, "that's okay, you know, I'm not hurting anybody." But when I started to read the Word of God, I realized I'm not at liberty--none of us are at liberty to do such things. We will be called to account before our creator, because he has paid a price, not just created us, but he's paid a price to redeem us.

And here's a couple of verses here, which I'd like somebody to read. Corinthians 6:19-20. "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the holy ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." Thank you very much, Pauline. So they're not ours to do with as we wish. We've been bought with a price, with the precious blood of Jesus.

He was nailed to a cross that we could be redeemed, not just look forward to eternal life, but in this life God has a claim upon our physical organisms that he has made. So bought with a price. But even more so, there was something in that passage I hope you noticed. And I'm gonna read some of it again. It says, "what? Know ye not that your body is," what? "The temple of the holy ghost which is in you, which you have of God.

" And it says, you know, "you were bought with a price." And it says, "therefore glorify God in your spirit, which are God's." God also describes us, these physical organisms are to be habitations of the Holy Spirit. We're living temples. And Peter speaks about us being living temples. Now just think back to the temple of Jerusalem. Going into that sanctuary, the holy place, to the most holy place where the actual presence, the shekinah glory of God actually dwelt, did that have to be a pure and a clean place for God to come down? Absolutely.

Before the priest went round that veil into the most holy place on the day of atonement, he had to be physically clean. He had to be clean from his sins. He had to have taken advantage of a sacrifice just for him that day before he officiated in the sacrifice of the two goats on the day of atonement. So that temple was a clean and a holy place because God was there. And God wants to dwell in us.

But if my living temple is defiled through personal habits, bad habits in the way I eat and I drink and things that I do, I defile this body, is he gonna come in? Absolutely not. So if it's harmful to eat something, then don't eat it. If it's harmful to drink something, then don't drink it. If something that you watch or you read or you listen to or you surf on the internet, whatever you look at, if it stirs up the wrong passions in you, then don't watch it. Separate from it, that you can be a clean vessel, fit for the Spirit of the living God to come and abide within you.

That's what God wants. And that, by the way, the theme is life and abundance of life, that is real living. When Jesus comes and lives in the heart, nothing like it. Nothing like it. So we cannot afford, friends, to be controlled by the physical appetites, physical passions, 'cause what kind of a life is it if you're a slave to such things? You don't have abundance of life.

You just--the devil has you on strings and he pulls them and the leg comes in--you know, like a puppet. The passions of the body, the passions of the flesh are not to control us. We are to control them. God has given us a brain, a mind. And the frontal lobe of the brain, the highest center's here.

Here is the reason, the willpower, the judgment. It's this part of the brain that is to function and govern the rest of everything that's below. But so often because of the way we live, it's the lower passions from below that rise up and they take this part. They just hold it captive. And we live enslaved to the animal passions.

But it's God's purpose that those shackles should be broken and the Spirit of God come in here and we can stand upright noble, pure, holy, undefiled creatures, living temples for the indwelling of God's Spirit. Is that what you want? Can you say amen? Praise the Lord. Corinthians 9:25 is another verse somebody could read, probably somebody on this side this time, 1 Corinthians 9:25. "And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.

" Thank you very much, Michael. He's using the analogy of the Greek athletes, the foot races. He says, "these people," he says, "you know they strive, strive to win the crown." Well Paul takes that analogy of the olympics, and he applies it in the arena of the Spiritual life. And as Michael said, he says, "every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things." What's temperance? Another word we don't tend to use so much. It's actually self-control.

It means I'm the boss. I'm in control. I'm running this show. When the cigarettes come I can say no. Why? 'Cause I'm the boss.

Somebody offers me crack or dope or alcohol, I can say no thank you. Thank you, but no thank you. 'Cause I'm in charge here. Jesus Christ dwells in me. the Spirit enlightens my mind, strengthens my will.

I can say no. I'm in control. That's the kind of life God wants us to experience. So we have to be temperate in all things. And he says in Corinthians 9:27, he says, "but I keep my body under subjection.

" He says, "I keep my body in subjection. I'm not in subjection to my body." So what's Paul saying here? Paul is saying this, called of God as he was, so dramatically and miraculously on the road to emmaus, anointed as he was as a prophet, anointed as he was as a teacher, as a preacher, as a writer, in spite of all that, if he nonetheless allowed himself to become a slave to his own being, to the passions of his own body, he permitted himself to be this way, he said, "i, in spite of everything I have that God has given me, I could become a castaway." In other words, he'd go over the side of the ship and he wouldn't reach the heavenly shore. That's how far-reaching God views this issue of us having mastery over our own selves. It's far-reaching. We cannot enter into the experience of sanctification and have the characters that reflect fully the character of Christ if we're enslaved to the passions of appetite.

But God is the one who is able to give us the freedom to be free from those things and to truly stand as men and women free in Jesus Christ, and our bodies pure for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God's made every provision. I want to read from Peter 1:2-3. Peter 1:2-3, Peter says, "grace and peace be multiplied unto you, to the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life.

That's the theme, right? Life. Well, God's given us all the things that pertain to life and Godliness. Because as Christians, you cannot separate the physical life from the experience of Godliness, the Spiritual experience that's supposed to be dovetailed together. And so he's given us everything that we need in the promises of His Word, which we are to accept by faith. Know when God says, "if you call upon me, I will help you," you are to believe that by faith.

And when you've accepted that by faith, you know what we're to do, we're to act out our faith. In other words, we gotta act out what we believe. When God says, "if you are tempted, I will help you, you quote the promise, Corinthians 10:13. "There is no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation make a way of escape, so ye will be able to bear it." You not only claim it, but you act it out. You say, "praise God I'm free.

I'm free." That is the faith God wants us to exercise. Simplistic? Yes. Powerful? Yes. Does it work? Yes. And the more we become like little children and trust him, the more powerful and victorious we will be.

There again in Peter 4 it says, "whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises." These are things that God gives us which pertain to life and Godliness. "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." You escape that lust that's in the world and you can be absolutely a living temple, anointed of God, free in Jesus Christ. That's the joy of being a Christian. It's something we should be able to get excited about. Don't you think? It should! You know there's so many people out there today, they're enslaved.

They're in chains. They're shackled. They're not free. They want to be free. They don't know how.

We know the truth. All the more reason why we need to share it. So God gives us his promises which we must act on in faith. Having said that, I don't mean that God just doesn't write the book and gives the promises and then throw it down from heaven and say, "here, read the manual. You'll be okay.

" It goes further and deeper than that. The one who wrote the book is the one who also came down to this world, to live out these principles for us. Jesus came down to this world. And he took on our same fallen human flesh, sinful flesh as it's described in Romans 8:3, doesn't mean he sinned. He lived a sinless life in sinful flesh.

He lived an unfallen life in fallen flesh. He was tempted in all points like as we are. Jesus came down to enter into our own human experience. And he himself meeting temptation just in the same way that we have to meet temptation, overcome the physical appetites, he did as we have to. And that victory he got he gives to us when we come to him in faith.

And that's the Gospel, friends. And we must believe. Without faith it is impossible to please him. In Hebrews it says--sorry in Romans and Habakkuk it says, "the just shall live by faith." In Hebrews it says, "without faith it is impossible to please him: for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." So Jesus came down, he met the tempter, and he overcame for our sakes. But going back to our memory verse, John 10:10, Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and they might have it more abundantly.

" But that's not the whole verse. The preceding part of the verse says in John 10:10, at the beginning, it says, "the thief cometh not, but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy." Now who's the thief we're talking about who likes to come and steal from us, destroy us, kill us? It's the devil, right? He's the one who comes to steal Jesus' sheep. And we're the sheep. And there's no way in ourselves we can defend ourselves or fend him off when he comes to take from us the very gift of life in this life that God's given to us and steal from us every hope of having eternal life. But Jesus came to face off against the thief, to vanquish his power, so that we this morning can be free in Jesus Christ.

And the reason why this happened is because Jesus, when he came he took the fullness of our sins. And he died the fullness of our death, that we in turn can have the fullness of his life and the fullness of that eternal reward. And that, my friends, that beloved, that's life. That's living. That is the fullness of life that Jesus came to this world to give to us.

May God bless you all. And may we all this week draw closer to him who loves us, that we can have truly that eternal life. Free offer, offer number 153, "the surrender of self," a little book from Amazing Facts. You can get it by going to www.amazingfacts.org, or 1-866-788-3966 or -866-study-more, continental United States, it's yours free. God bless you.

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