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Ceres SDA Church

Anil Kanda

Brain Studies

Why don't we bow our heads for a word of prayer?

Why don't we get on our knees, and let's ask God for a very special blessing today.

Father, thank you so much again for today, and for the Sabbath, and thank You, Lord, for the fact You call us into...

And, Lord, we just want to pray that our hearts will be reverent and still before you, Lord, that we may hear your voice.

God, we pray and ask that every person here would have an encounter with you today, Lord.

Thank you for the promise in John that He who comes to you will in no wise be cast away.

Thank you, Lord, you cast out demons, but you don't cast us away.

The name of the sermon today is called Brain Studies.

And I'll be sharing some things from the Word of God.

I'll also be sharing some things from a book I've been reading recently by Neil Nedley.

And I think you'll really appreciate some of the stuff that we're going to talk about today.

I know that this is something that God desires us to understand like never before.

And I really believe that if you're paying attention, if you're watching, if you're still before the Lord, you're going to walk away really, really blessed.

But what we're going to be talking about right now is something very interesting.

Now I want you to imagine right now, I want you to imagine yourself in Africa, okay?

So here we are, we're in Africa and there is a tour guide with you and You are in a jeep, and you are going on a safari anybody ever been on African safari before I just want to say you are very blessed.

I cannot wait for the day that I get to go on an African safari.

You're there in an African safari, on an African safari, and your tour guide is there, and he's wearing these khaki shorts, and he's got this big ol' mustache, he's got kind of this ranger hat, he's got a shotgun in the back, and there you are, you're driving, and it's not 1 of those vans that are closed completely, this is 1 of those Jeeps, like those military Jeeps, it's just got a window in the front, and the reason why is because as you're on this safari the tour guide wants to show you all sorts of things on the safari.

So here you are you're excited about being in Africa and you're on this tour And he's right before you get in the Jeep.

He tells you this he's like you're gonna be really excited about all the things that You're gonna encounter.

We're gonna see beautiful Flowers that you've never seen anywhere else.

You're going to see some unusual creatures you may even see some wonderful lions.

So here you are, you jump into the Jeep, and you're thinking to yourself, you know, there's no cover over me.

But so you said, okay, I trust this guide, it's going to be very interesting.

So as you guys are driving together, you're making your way through, and about a few miles into the safari, you lose sight of all the other buildings, and now you're just in, just this complete, almost jungle and rural wilderness.

And you're there, and as you're just driving with this tour guide, all of a sudden he stops.

He stops and he says to you, take a good look at this rare flower.

So you look over the Jeep and you see this beautiful purple flower you've never seen before and you're just amazed and he's like that's wonderful you ever seen those before no you say never seen that before so he continues to drive and he stops and all of a sudden he says look over there look on yonder Do you see that watering hole over there?

And you look, and you see some hippopotamuses playing in that water hole.

So you're just like, wow, this is just a wonderful thing.

And here you are, and as you're just enjoying all these things, this tour guide is just stopping, and he's just giving all sorts of information about the land, about the wilderness.

And as he's just talking, all of a sudden, you look back and you notice this herd of bull elephants and they're angry and these bull elephants are just they're slowly moving towards you towards the Jeep and you're trying to get the tour guides attention but he's just like talking away right and he's just there and all of a sudden you're just noticing these bull elephants are starting to move faster.

Now let me ask you a very important question and want you to pay attention to what I'm about to tell you What is more important at that moment The precious things around you or the present circumstance The present circumstance in other words there is a difference between precious truth and Present Truth.

There's a big difference between precious truth and present truth.

Both are necessary, but folks, here's something to understand.

You really can't appreciate the precious truth when you're about to be trampled.

Could you just show me 1 more flower and here all of a sudden the bull elephants just crash right into your Jeep and you're flying like Superman out the Jeep.

You're really not thinking about the precious truths.

Here's what I'm trying to help you to understand.

There are many Precious truths in the scripture, but right now we need to understand present truth Can you say amen to that and what is present truth like never before is an understanding of the great?

Controversy and our Mind you would have just said the great controversy and our what?

We're gonna be take a good look at the life of Solomon.

Solomon so you're gonna find the story of Solomon in first Kings the story of Solomon in first Kings and if you have your Bible, please turn there now if you notice somebody around you without a Bible be a brother and sister and please say here's a Bible Okay, so everyone turn around just look to the person to the left and person to the right and if you see somebody without a Bible please pick up a Bible and say here you're gonna need this for the sermon okay we're going to first Kings chapter 3 first Kings chapter 3 if you're there go ahead and say amen a little bit of the context Solomon the young king had just taken the throne.

Now you can imagine his father was the most popular king of Israel at that time.

There was actually only 2 kings, So David looked even much better than he did because of Saul's negative behavior.

He did all sorts of great things, and he did much to unite the children of Israel.

The Bible says he behaved wisely in the house of the Lord.

He behaved wisely with the children of Israel.

And so when this king had died, you can imagine how Solomon, the new king, must have been feeling.

Imagine, to walk in the footsteps of David the king.

That was such a great thing, and you can just imagine how Solomon is feeling.

Probably feeling helpless, probably feeling like a little boy, probably feeling insufficient for this task.

How in the world is he going to run a kingdom when you have somebody like David who just ran the kingdom prior to him?

And you can just imagine what Solomon must have been thinking in the back of his mind knowing that his father, David, Had killed another man to have his mother So Solomon had a lot of things that were stacked up against him.

However Solomon in his early years decides to do something Look what the Bible says in first Kings chapter 3 verse 4.

Let's go there first Kings chapter 3 verse 4 Now the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for there was the great high place.

Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

The very first thing Solomon does is he gets a bunch of sacrifices and he puts them on the altar and he burns all these sacrifices to God.

He wants to make sure he is right with God.

He is trying to seek God about something and you'll see what happens as it develops.

Verse 5, at Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon a dream by night and God said, ask, what shall I what?

Now imagine this, imagine tonight when you're going to sleep, the God of the universe appears to you and says, son, daughter, what do you want me to give you?

Can you imagine some of the things that might have been going through your mind at that moment?

You'd be thinking, well, I'd really like a million dollars right now.

Really would like you to get rid of my neighbor.

We'd be thinking of all sorts of things we might possibly ask God.

But you see, here's something to understand.

The desire for what he was wanting was very present in Solomon's heart.

It actually was the motivation behind him coming to God.

So you can imagine when God just lays everything on the table and he says, Solomon, what do you want?

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Brain Studies

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