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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Zeno Charles-Marcel

To Be or Not To Be

And I have a little confession to make this morning.

The whole world doesn't revolve around internal medicine.

As a matter of fact, my confession is that I have a problem.

And some of the dentists might talk about waxing and so on, but that's not that.

I have a wax problem that is an internal medicine problem that has a surgical solution.

Now, that's kind of odd, but we'll get into that a little bit.

Now while you know probably a little bit about me, if you've read any of the little things that talk about who's going to be speaking this morning.

I don't know very much about you, so I'd like to, if you wouldn't mind, I'll ask you a few questions.

Okay, so how many faculty members are here?

Can you just raise your hand, anybody with faculty?

OK, we have a smattering of faculty members.

Now, how many of you, this is going to get a little bit more personal, How many of you over the course of the last week did something that you know you shouldn't have done?

How many over the last week committed at least 1 sin?

All right, so it's safe to say that I am here today with a group of sinners.

Okay, so with that in mind, I am going to assume that I can speak openly.

Okay, 1 sinner talking to other sinners about how to deal with this problem that we have.

You see, I told you that I have a confession, and my problem is that I have a wax problem.

The thing is, some of you may have the same problem.

You may also have the same wax problem that we have to deal with.

And hopefully today we can get some insights into how to deal with that.

While they take their seats, maybe we can bow for a word of prayer 1 more time.

Our Father in Heaven, we want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to come to you in prayer and in supplication to ask you to please help us to be the kind of people that you want us to be.

To be people who, at the end of it all, will be able to escape this planet alive.

To be able to breathe the air of heaven firsthand.

Lord, if there's anything that I'm going to be talking about today, if there are any thoughts that I have that are not what should be discussed, I pray that you'll banish it from my mind and I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts will be acceptable in thy sight.

Now, we believe that the Holy Spirit is here.

And it is with that hope, with that anticipation, we're going to talk a little bit.

Now, anybody here knows anything about wax?

Well, the story is told from the Greek and Roman times that there were some issues relating to wax.

Sometimes great sculptors would make a statue or some kind of sculpture.

But instead of doing it all in marble, they may be a little bit aggressive on 1 point or take out a little bit too much of the stone in another.

And so what they would do is they would fill the defect with wax.

And by putting the wax there and coloring it over, looking like the marble, it would appear as if the sculptor had done a perfect job.

As soon as the heat would come, people would realize that the sculpture had some defects.

We all, I think most of us here would admit that we have some defects and we have some wax issues to deal with.

But part of the problem is that we don't fully always understand the nature of our problem.

And we might think that everything really is all right, and everything is OK.

As a matter of fact, I'll tell you what was going on with me.

I used to sit and hear good, good sermons and talks and I would read, And they never really penetrated because I was intellectually dealing with what I was reading or hearing.

It wasn't dealing with me, you see, because after all, if you get to know me, I'm a pretty good guy.

As a matter of fact, if I got to know you, I'd find out that you're a pretty good person too.

And so we might go along thinking that we're all good, nice people having a good time and never really taking the time or having the inclination to get down to the real issues.

You see, we have defects that we fill up with wax.

If I were to ask you some questions about how you run your life, I may begin to evaluate you by my standards.

And I might say that you are doing far better than I am.

And if I told that to you, you would feel that you are doing really well.

But is that the way we really should be evaluating how things are?

Is that the reality that God sees, and is that the reality that he wants us to be able to deal with?

Well, 1 of the monuments on this campus at Loma Linda is the sculpture, the statue of the Good Samaritan.

Yeah, well, to date myself a little bit, we were here when that statue was unveiled.

And I remember the unveiling and all of the issues that went on around that.

So the Good Samaritan is a good metaphor for Loma Linda, because that's 1 of the hallmarks.

When you see the name Loma Linda anywhere, you see the statue, because this is something that is important.

So Would you think that people at Loma Linda, all of us, would be familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan?

OK, now I'm going to tell you about a story, actually about an experiment, that was done back in 1973 by 2 researchers, Darley and Batson.

And what they did is they had some students.

And they had these young people involved in this research, serious educational research.

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To Be or Not To Be

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