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Eden Valley SDA Church

Frank Fournier

The Physiology Of Victory

A couple of weeks ago I started a three-part series on the physiology of sin, the physiology of victory, and the physiology of the latter rain.

Now, don't get intimidated by the word physiology.

I went to the dictionary and it simply says, the biological process of.

In other words, we're looking at how sin works in our physical bodies.

We're looking at how victory works in our physical bodies.

This is what I've been trying to study with you, those of you who have been here.

And this was on our Wednesday morning lessons.

Now, obviously, some of you were not here, and therefore I'd better, how should I say, I'd better review some of the things that we've said, otherwise this morning's message is not gonna make any sense.

In our first lesson, we saw that the brain has many lobes.

Now, I don't pretend to be scientific and I don't pretend to understand most of this.

I'm just going to refer to 2 of the main lobes in the Bible, something that is relevant to what we're saying this morning.

As Christians, we've all heard of the frontal lobe, right?

The frontal lobe takes up about 30% of the whole brain, and it has to do with the conscience and spirituality and morality and judgment and reason and intellect.

And it's the place in your mind where you weigh right and wrong.

I had a cousin, and I don't know if I told you this or not, but I had a cousin, we grew up together, and he was a little bit younger than I, but eventually he got married to a girl in Wisconsin, moved over there.

And 1 day as he was welding on a tank, the tank blew up and it took his frontal lobe off.

Well, to look at him today, you wouldn't know a thing happened to him.

He looks perfectly normal, except for 1 thing.

He cannot discern between right and wrong.

And so the things that come out of his mouth make you blush, you know, because he doesn't know the difference.

He'll say stuff that you just look at him and say, where in the world is he coming from?

And he'll do stuff that you wouldn't do ordinarily in the situation you're in, because you have the ability to judge what things are proper when things are not appropriate for the moment, you understand.

But he doesn't have that ability because he's been lobotomized.

So that's what happens in the frontal lobe right here in your forehead.

Now, the other part of the brain that we want to look at, of course, is the limbic system.

The nucleus accumbens is also another name or at least it's part of it.

That's where the animal drives come from.

Your hungers and your thirsts and your appetites and your sex drives and your avoidance of pain, and it's actually the pleasure center.

Ellen White calls that part of the brain the lower nature, and there seems to always be a tension between the higher nature and the lower nature when it comes to spirituality.

In 1950, and I'm still just giving you the preview, not a preview, but a review of what we've been studying for the past couple of weeks.

In 1950, a couple of scientists decided that they would look into the limbic system.

They postulated that the limbic system was the place where the pleasure center in the human being was, the place where the pleasure hormones would be excreted.

Now, in order to be able to prove that, they made an experiment.

They put some electrodes into a rat's brain right into the limbic system and then they put the rat in a cage And as a rat would do, it began to investigate its little environment, going from place to place.

And it found a little shelf there in the cage, and on the shelf was a little paddle.

Eventually, the rat touched the paddle or pressed the paddle, and there was a signal sent through those electrodes to the limbic system, which released dopamine.

And dopamine is the pleasure hormone, you understand.

He felt so good, and there was so much pleasure involved, that as we would do, the rat did the same, he began to hit the paddle.

Every time he wanted a little fix, he hit the paddle over and over and over again to the point where he was able to neglect sleep, he was able to neglect eating or drinking, and you know where that would lead.

Question, is it wrong for a rat to experience pleasure?

Well, obviously not because the Lord created the rat with a limbic system, with a pleasure center, with a dopamine release.

There is dopamine in the rat and so there are some things that make rats happy.

Well, anyway, the problem with the rat, of course, is that he went towards pleasure in an excessive way, as a matter of fact, unto death.

And so, if he was human, we would say the rat sinned against himself.

Do you think that happens to human beings?

Why do you think that we have struggles in our own hearts with the same sin over and over and over again?

And then we come to the Lord and we say, as Paul said, O wretched man that I am, who is going to deliver me from this nonsense?

How come it is that I was able to quit smoking?

How is it that I was able to quit drinking?

How is it that I was able to quit cursing?

And all the rest, but I have this specific sin and I can't get over it.

Because we have a limbic system, a pleasure center, and when we sin, when we press the paddle, a little bit of dopamine is released and it goes like, oh, do you know you wouldn't sin if there was no pleasure in it?

What would be the point of sinning if there was no pleasure in it?

Yes, we may have pleasure, but hey, the person who experiences this verse, is he focused on the pleasure and the joy or is he focused on being in God's presence?

Pleasure is meant to be a byproduct of something else.

Pleasure is meant to be a gift from God, a byproduct of something else.

It's meant to be the result of some other cause.

Is it for the pleasure or is it for strength?

Is there a Bible verse that relates to that?

By the way, you're going to be using your Bibles this morning excessively, not sinfully, but excessively.

Ecclesiastes 10 verse 17, Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, at the right time, not between meals, in due season, for strength and not for pleasure or drunkenness, as it says there.

Pleasure is legitimate, but intemperance is not.

I'm ahead of myself a little bit somewhere along the way.

We saw these verses and we're still reviewing.

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The Physiology Of Victory

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