NEC 2014 Camp Meeting: Transformed Agents

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

NEC Youth

Don Mackintosh

Nutrition, the Brain, and the Glory of God

I want to just ask the Lord to be with us again and then we'll begin our journey this week together.

We're going to look at some very practical things together today.

And in your program it says, Nutrition in the Brain and for the Glory of God.

And so let's just bow our heads and ask the Lord to be with us.

Father in heaven, we're grateful that we can come this morning and we can come boldly because of what you have done through your Son, our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.

And today we ask your presence to be with us, Holy Spirit, that we could rightly divide the word of truth and understand more things practically as young people for your cause.

May we be transformed and may we be a part of a transformation in this generation, we pray in Christ's name, amen.

All right, so today what we're gonna talk about is nutrition, the brain, and the glory of God.

Then tomorrow we're gonna talk about moral purity and the glory of God.

We'll look at some statistics and what not dealing with those subjects.

The next day we'll look at addictions and the glory of God.

So we will be getting to addictions and then finally doing good for the glory of God.

That's going to be our little series today, Transformed for the Glory of God.

You know the Advent movement is built around a core doctrine and that core doctrine is the Sanctuary Doctrine.

How many of you love that doctrine of the sanctuary.

Of course everything about that sanctuary points to our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, what He has done, what He is doing, what He will do.

What you have done He can undo and He can redo you so you can do for him.

So this is going to be, you know, really looking at some implications of the sanctuary.

When you look at the sanctuary in terms of nutrition, it's interesting that when people were outside the sanctuary, they were, as they looked at the world from the pivot point of the sanctuary, everything outside of God's center, His will and His way was seen as unclean.

When you came to the sanctuary, you couldn't bring an unclean animal to sacrifice.

You couldn't bring a pig, for instance, or a crocodile.

There were only clean things that you could bring.

When you went into the courtyard there, you only brought clean animals to represent the Lord's spot or blemish.

Then you went into the holy place, and in the holy place you had grains and grapes, and you also had olive oil there as well.

And you can see a pattern now moving from unclean flesh to clean flesh, now no flesh, and then finally in the most holy place you had manna, and you had almonds that were memorialized.

It was as if God was bringing his people back from, or away from things that were unclean, to things that were clean, and the things that were the cleanest.

How many can see that as you look at the sanctuary?

In fact, it was pointing back to the original diet.

God said, see I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed and to you it shall be for food." The nutrition of the people of the world had become confused all the way from Eve on down and it had also, what had come with that confusion were all kinds of problems, not only physically, but also emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

And so there was this call back to the glory of God, and what was memorialized in the most glorious part of the sanctuary was the original diet.

The original diet that was seen there, kind of symbolized in the most holy place, pointed back to Genesis 129 with fruits, nuts, and grains, and later vegetables.

1% saturated fat, 7% fat, 78% carbohydrate, 15% protein.

If you get this down, if you eat this, you're going to have the ultimate setup to be intellectually superior in terms of your brain function.

Carbohydrates are really what make the brain go around.

You add some seeds to that, hopefully omega-3s and whatnot that fight against depression, which is a big problem in England.

Suicide and Alcohol-related problems afflict England as well as the United States.

So this original diet going back to the original diet for the glory of God.

Now the problem is, here last week, or 2 weeks ago I was down in Southampton speaking, and I looked at their objectives for that particular city here in England, and they were saying, look, all the top 15 things that should be done.

Fascinating, as I looked at their list, that 11 of the 15 things only the Adventist church could really do.

In other words, as you look at what the needs are in this country, there are great needs.

1 of the slides they had on their document there in Southampton was looking at the major causes of death in England.

Then suicide, traffic violations, murder, and HIV.

Many of these things, If you turn this in reverse, it's also interesting, but many of these things people become afflicted with or get habit patterns with when they're very young.

And young people, I'm talking to you today, you have a great role to play.

I'm talking to the adults just before I talk to you, that you could actually be more powerful than that body of people in addressing the needs in England and addressing the needs in the church as well when you look at this.

In America, there are also dietary problems.

By the way, some of you are like kind of salivating here about chicken.

By the way, chicken, just to give you some bad news to begin to bring it into focus, is probably 1 of the worst foods you can eat for your brain.

It has tryptophan in it, it goes across the blood-brain barrier, it has been shown to be directly related to mood variability and depression.

So if you wanna have depression and mood swings, eat foods high, rather, in arachidonic acids.

It's definitely shown to be directly connected to mood swings and whatnot.

But if you want optimal brain health, avoid chicken.

Now in America, the US per capita meat consumption, you know, went from 140 pounds all the way up now to like over 200 pounds in 2005.

There's an obesity crisis just like there is here, and it's because of the foods that we eat day in, day out.

Another big problem in the American subculture, or culture, and in Western diets, is also cheese.

This is something that afflicts Seventh-day Adventists as well.

When we come to our addictions lecture, I'll show you the addictive properties of these foods.

And this is really a matter of chemistry.

Once you start eating it, it's very addicting.

But notice cheese consumption in America.

From 1900, where less than 3.8 pounds of cheese, which someone might eat at a meal these days, then you have it skyrocketing in the 70s and 80s all the way up to a massive quantity of over 30 pounds per person.

This is driving an obesity crisis, this is driving a health crisis, a diabetes crisis in our country as well as this country, and it's largely an addictive process, and I will show that to you when we get to our addictions lecture.

These are the types of things that if I can encourage you, in a way I never was encouraged when I was your age.

If I could encourage you today, and you make changes today, I'm gonna actually call for you to consider to make a change, all right?

If you make changes today, it will help you physically, it will help you emotionally, it will help you mentally, it will help you spiritually.

And it will not only help you, it will help your kids, your grandkids, and your great-grandkids.

How many of you wanna help all those people?

All right, well then we can close right now then, just sign the card.

But let me give you some more information.

You see, the problem is, this is now slides from Adventist.

In the Adventist subculture, we got people that know something and they don't do it.

These are vegans, lacto-oval, pesco, vegetarian, semi-vegetarian, and non-vegetarian.

If you eat a plant-based diet like the original diet, you're not gonna have as many problems with weight.

Back to Menu

Nutrition, the Brain, and the Glory of God

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine