NOTE: I am putting my weekly sermons on the church website. It will be on for two weeks (usually posted on Friday) and then placed in the Archives area by date. You can download in a matter of seconds.
Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Sermon Title: "Search the Scriptures for Wise Living"
Scripture Lesson: 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Reverend Larry Gerber
Scientists are working with a new generation of drugs, to boost our brainpower and maximize our memory, forgetting that the key to wisdom has already been found, in a book. The Book.
There’s a chance that sea slugs and fruit flies may improve your own cerebral output. Research on these organisms promises to provide us with a number of innovative medicines to enhance the memory, including what some are calling “Viagra for the brain.”
Two renowned scientists and the biotech companies they founded are planning on it. Dr. Eric Kandal, Professor of Columbia University and the 2000 Nobel Prize winner for his study of cellular mechanisms of learning and memory, first started his research on sea slugs in the 1950s, when many people discounted any practical results. The founder of Memory Pharmaceuticals, Kandal firmly believes that within a few years there will be a pill that will dramatically improve one’s memory and lead to other medications that significantly alter the brain chemistry.
Tim Tully and Jerry Yin in Cold Springs Harbor laboratory in New York have demonstrated that fruit flies injected with a protein called CREB (c-AMP Response Element Binding protein) have shown a remarkable ability to retain memory. In the early ‘90s Tully, who is a genetic scientist and the founder of Helicon Therapeutics, teamed up with his colleague Yin, to produce fruit flies with photographic memories. Since that time they have produced similar results in mice. Tully’s Helicon and Kandal’s Memory Pharmaceuticals are engaging in scientific competition to discover those genetic breakthroughs that will lead to improvements far beyond memory.
This
is the advent of what others have called smart pills, or brain boosters.
Notice the nomenclature. These new drugs are called “smart pills,”
not “wise pills.” Perhaps there is a drug in development that will
enhance the memory. But there’s no correlation between upping your dosage
of brain boosters and suddenly gaining wisdom.
The apostle Paul understands the nature of wisdom. In his pastoral letter to Timothy, he advises his young pastoral colleague that there will be times when people will not “put up with sound doctrine” but reject the foundations of the Christian faith, grabbing anything that satisfies their particular curiosities. Wandering away from the foundational teachings of Scripture and tradition, the teachings considered to be reliable guides to knowing the God of Jesus Christ, they will latch on to teachers who gave them what they wanted or wander toward myths that satisfy their “itching ears” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
This is a startling indictment of the anti-intellectual milieu that has emerged in the early 1980s and continues today in American culture, beginning with New Age tomfoolery including harmonic convergence, crystals, pyramid power, and more, to the Left Behind series, The Prayer of Jabez, and The Da Vinci Code today.
What are we to make of a culture where millions of people, including Christians, embrace a well-written mystery novel that weaves history and fantasy without any regard for the question: Is this stuff true?
Well, no. Any first — year church history student in seminary can spot the errors just flipping pages. The Da Vinci Code makes the wildly outlandish suggestion that leaders in the Roman Catholic Church have conspired for centuries to keep secret the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the child born of their sexual alliance.
Which is fine, as long as it is clear there is not a shred of historical evidence to substantiate this claim. This book is a novel! Hello!
Well written and filled with tantalizing riddles woven around fiction written as history, the book is a great read. But that’s all. The less discerning, however, are seduced by it.
Many pastors haven’t read The Da Vinci Code or the Left Behind series for the same reason that lawyers don’t read John Grisham or watch lawyer shows on TV, doctors don’t watch ER, and forensic scientists don’t watch CSI.
Those who are led astray by books like The Da Vinci Code and other quasi-Christian proclamations are the ones who have no serious knowledge of Scripture or the historic teachings of the church. This is precisely the reason that the apostle Paul encourages us to be proficient in the knowledge of Scripture, so that we have minds and hearts that are capable of recognizing those teachings that sound vaguely Christian or spiritual, that titillate our imagination, but do not make us wise persons in the ways of God.
Paul seemed to recognize that we have an infinite capacity to believe speculative ideas that will satisfy our personal whimsy. This may be why he cautioned us to stay grounded in the Scripture that contains what is necessary for righteousness or what we might call wise living.
Reading novels — thought to be a scandalous and idle entertainment in the 18th century, incidentally — can be a profitable escape from the day to day.
But for wise living, we turn to Scripture. Here’s the text: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteous-ness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (3:16-17).
This is not to suggest that simply knowing scripture by rote is the point, or that we shouldn’t read anything other than Scripture, or refuse to address questions that challenge the faith. That kind of anti-intellectualism disguised as Christian piety leads to a rigidity that is unable to engage anyone who thinks differently.
What Paul had in mind was the ability to live so well in the narratives of the Bible that one comes to know intimately the living God. With the mind shaped by Scripture through a living relationship with God, one can confidently address challenges to the teaching of Scripture with discerning intelligence that would actually persuade people of an excellent way of life, grounded in wisdom and prepared for good works (3:16-17).
Paul’s advice to Timothy is embodied in the five imperatives of 4:2 — five smart pills if you will:
• Proclaim the message,
• Be persistent,
• Convince,
• Rebuke,
• Encourage.
The Bible is not simply a repository of facts to be learned. The devil can quote Scripture. Bible Brain Boosters won’t help.
We
come to know Scripture not to be mindless religious robots but to be lovers
of Jesus Christ, faithful disciples in a culture that offers up one panacea
after another, each promising a better life, holding out the prospect of satisfying
the deeper hunger of our hearts for God with a new religion or a new drug.
A daily smart pill might increase your memory, but a day spent studying Scripture
with an open heart and a searching mind will increase your love for God, make
you a wise person, and enable you to discern false teaching the next time it
comes to the box office or the bookstore.
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Source: Charles Hadden Spurgeon, sermon preached at the Tabernacle, London
Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766