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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Carlos Moretta

Permanent  Weight Loss

You know, in grace of God, almost toward the end of residency, I have a month and a half, and God is so good.

But in residency, what happens is when you are in conference and the attending asks you a question and you don't have the answer, what happens is he says, Carlos, Why don't you go ahead and prepare for us a presentation on hypertension or essential hypertension or something like that.

And in doing that presentation, because I didn't have the answer before, I learned.

So I want you to know that what I speak today is what I've had to myself sit down, dissect, digest and learn for myself.

This is my experience so don't be mad at me, please.

I'll Say like Pastor Skeet, say you love me, brothers.

You can see the design here on the screen.

It's basically a collar for your stomach.

There is a collar around the cardiac portion of your stomach, and it's lined with saline pouches on the inside, connected to a catheter.

That catheter extends to a subcutaneous area somewhere on the pectoralis, or just underneath the clavicle.

And essentially, what you do is, you inject saline into the port that's embedded subcutaneously.

And as you inject saline, you can imagine what happens at the collar.

So what happens is it restricts food flow into your stomach, and it often creates even a pouch above the collar, you know, essentially a smaller stomach.

So it gives the brain a signal that, you know, I'm full, I don't need to eat more.

And so it, How many have seen this advertised on the 10 freeway?

And I never understood until I actually sat down and researched this.

I mean, it has an overweight person on the scale on the billboard with his hands raised above his head, you know, like success, you know.

And I often think to myself, you know, the same willpower that you have to use or employ to control what you eat and how much you eat is the same willpower that you have to use or employ to control what you eat and how much you eat is the same willpower that you have to use to control whether or not you inflate the cuff or deflate the cuff.

But this thing can stay in your body for life.

So it's just another control mechanism, an external control mechanism for your stomach or your weight issues.

My sermon today is entitled, Permanent Weight Loss.

Heavenly Father, I Thank you for the opportunity this morning.

And I do like the idea, Lord, that you would make me a rusty nail today and hang a portrait of Jesus that all might see.

Thank you for this opportunity, Lord, and may the words that I say be sweet words from the throne of grace.

Now y'all, we're a tough crowd here at Advent Hope, so I want to see smiles.

OK, let's support the young preacher who doesn't do this every day.

So you might be saying, Carlos, you know, this isn't for me.

Maybe I came to the wrong place for a sermon today.

I go every Sunday morning on a run and during the week as well.

Well, I may submit to you that this morning may not be such a lean and not so mean Adventist machine.

That there is this concept called Denial that we want to explore this morning.

Now, this is a very, very well-known text, and we all have read it at 1 point or another.

Hebrews 12.1 And it says, Scripture says, wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight in the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." So let's dissect this a bit because, you know, here at Advent Hope, when I started coming 4 years ago, I've heard at least a dozen sermons on what sin is and what it's not.

But here Paul makes an interesting distinction.

He puts the word weight before the word sin.

And so I started thinking, Lord, what is weight?

We've heard sermons here from this platform and this pulpit spoken, preached.

Now, I hated that class, and it kept me out of school for about, out of dental school for about a year because it just didn't, with my brain.

And I remember that it had, somewhere in the equation of weight, there was mass and gravity, 2 elements that are annoyance for me as I grow older.

But essentially, Weight had to do something with mass and with gravity.

And there aren't very many texts in the Bible that mention the word weight.

Usually it's in the context of importance or measurements.

But here in Hebrews 12 we find that this word weight is more in the context of burden, more in the context of responsibility.

So here's my question this morning that you can ponder.

Beyond its frank definition, the consequence of sin is that it separates us from God.

I submit to you this morning that weight may be the many roads that can lead to sin.

And in many instances, weight can actually be a good thing that leads you to sin.

A good synonym for the word wait, I think, would be distraction.

Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Kings chapter 13.

Now I'm going to give you a little bit of background.

This is a very, very – I just want to stick lean 1 important aspect of this passage.

But remember at this point in this context, the people of Israel had been divided.

Solomon had been prophesied to by Shami'i or Shammai'i, however you want to say his name, essentially said that because you have led the nation of Israel astray from God, your nation will be rent in 2.

And so what happened was here was Solomon relaying to his son, Rehoboam, saying, look, this is the prophecy and it will happen, but let me tell you how to keep the nation together.

Essentially, the nation of Israel, the 10 tribes seceded from Rehoboam because Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, placed a very stiff hand on the people of Israel, even more stiff than Solomon, right?

And so Jeroboam, who was an advisor to Solomon, was placed, was assigned the kingship, became the king of the 10 tribes.

So Jeroboam, excited with this new position as king of the 10 northern tribes, was scared of losing his people.

Well, because chiefly his 10 tribes weren't located necessarily close to Jerusalem, where it was customary for the children of Israel to worship, right?

So he decided, in his eagerness to maintain the solidarity of his nation, to establish 2 places of worship.

1 of them was in Dan, and the other 1 was in Bethel, right?

And he tried to convince some of the Levites, please stay around and officiate, officiate in the temples that I've established so that the children of Israel don't have to go all the way to Jerusalem to worship and then probably fall into the sway of Rehoboam and stay with Rehoboam and essentially come out eventually and kill Jeroboam.

This is what Sister White tells us in Prophets and Kings.

They said, no, no, no, no, I'm not getting involved in that.

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Permanent Weight Loss

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