HopeLives365

Guest (Male): Now what are your life commandments? What motivates you? What’s the moral compass you live by? What criteria have you chosen to live your life by? Have you written out your life commandments?

Guest (Male): This is Hope Lives 365 with Pastor Mark Finley. Today’s message, Commandments for Daily Living, Part 1. Enjoy and remember you can always catch up with past messages and stay up to date with Hope Lives 365 and Pastor Mark by going to hopelives365.com. And now, Pastor Mark Finley.

Mark Finley: Have you ever wondered why we act the way we do? Have you ever thought, why did I ever do that? Have you ever said something and said, why did I ever say that? Have you ever had that experience in your life? You’ve done something and at night you reflect back over it and you say, why did I ever do that?

You have said something to somebody, maybe you didn’t sleep well the night before, you had a very difficult day in the office, and some of your staff said something to you and you snapped at them a little bit, and you came back and said, why did I ever say that? Maybe you’ve had a difficult time at the office and you’ve come home and said something to your wife or husband that you wish you would not have said. Have you ever had those kind of experiences?

Have you ever wondered what prompts my actions? What motivates my particular behavior? What factors actually shape our moral ideals? What factors shape our values? What factors shape our priorities?

Now our self-awareness and the image of who we are is the product of a number of things. It’s the product of our early childhood influences. It’s the product of the impact of the words of those around us. You may or may not be aware that recent studies indicate that the most vulnerable time in a child’s life for the words of those who speak around them are between eight and ten years old.

When a child is between eight and ten years old, the words spoken by their parents, by their teachers, have the most impact on their lives, according to research. So why do we do what we do? Well, it’s certainly we're the product of our early childhood influences, we are the product of the impact of the words of those around us, we are the product of our thoughts, our environment, our choices.

And so our hereditary tendencies and the environment that we live in, plus our repeated thoughts and actions and choices, they often shape our characters and they become life commandments. Now a sentence that I’d like you to underline is, what is a life commandment?

So according to John Savage, you see where I’m reading on the text? In a book called Listening and Caring Skills, Savage says this. He says, life commandments are the deep inner belief systems that act as the internal guidance gyros of your mind. So what’s a life commandment, everybody? It’s kind of an internal system.

Now these life commandments, whether we know it or not, govern our behavior. All of us have life commandments. Some of us know we have and some of us don’t know we have them. They’re the moral compass that directs our thoughts and actions. So are these life commandments like a moral compass?

They are the result of our hereditary tendencies, they're result of our environment, they're the result of our choices, they're the result of our actions. So they, these life commandments govern our behavior. They’re like a moral compass that directs our thoughts and actions. They are the deep personal belief systems we understand about ourselves, our relationships and the world around us.

In short, a life commandment is the lens that you look at life through. It’s the lens that you look at life through. Now what adjusts that lens? Some part of the adjustment of that lens has to do with our heredity. Some has to do with our environment. Some has to do with our past choices. Some has to do with the way we think and our self-talk. All of that is part of what forms these life commandments.

Here is the incredible good news. The Holy Spirit is in the business of reshaping our thoughts, of empowering our actions and renewing our minds. I want you to look at three texts, and I want to look at them with new eyes. The first is John chapter 16, verse 13. John chapter 16, verse 13. I preached on this text for years and did not understand what it meant.

And to me one of the amazing things about the inspiration of the Bible is the fact that you can read the same text and new truth will leap off the pages for you. We’re looking at John chapter 16 and we’re looking at verse 13. And Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit, and he says, howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he’ll guide you into all truth.

I preached that text in evangelism for years with the idea that the Spirit of truth would come and he'd guide people into the Sabbath truth, the state of the dead truth, etc. And I think that’s true, but I don’t think it’s the full impact of what Jesus meant by the text.

When he says the Holy Spirit is going to lead you into all truth, what Jesus is really saying is the Holy Spirit’s going to lead you into truth about God. He’s going to lead you to understand the nature of God, that God is loving and kind and gentle and compassionate. He’s going to lead you to understand the truth that God is forgiving.

He’s going to help you not listen to the lie of Satan, because Satan says that you are so fallen and so worthless and so condemned that you can’t possibly be saved. So Satan is going to tell you lies. He’s going to say you’re locked into your environmental tendencies, or you’re locked into your environment. Satan’s going to say you’re locked into your hereditary tendencies.

Remember John 8, verse 44? Satan is a liar and the father of lies. So Jesus is the way, the what? Truth and the life. So Jesus wants to tell us the truth, the truth that we can change, the truth that we don’t have to be locked into our hereditary tendencies, the truth that environment doesn’t have to shape our behavior, the truth that no matter how we failed in the past, the Holy Spirit can renew our minds.

So Jesus wants to tell us the truth, but Satan wants to tell us lies. And the lies that Satan tells us are that your actions are largely determined by your heredity and your environment. That you are locked into some genetic DNA code that you cannot change.

So the Holy Spirit, and this is the good news, is in the business of reshaping our thoughts, empowering our actions, and renewing our minds. Now through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we can reimage our thoughts. Now what do I mean by the experience we can reimage our thoughts? We can change the way we think about a given situation.

The evidence for that is Romans chapter 12 and verse 2. And if you look at Romans 12 verse 2 it says this: And do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable perfect will of God. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And so the Holy Spirit renews our mind, he reshapes our thoughts, and he gives us new life commandments to live our lives by. We can make positive choices to reset the life commandments that we have inherited down through the ages.

Now there’s an article that impressed me a great deal, you’re still seeing it in the text, we’re still on the first page. There’s an article titled Science and the Bible and Epigenetics. It was actually part two of a series written by Mark Hodges. And he makes this insightful observation, and I want to read it for you, you can do some underlining as we do.

Hodges says this: DNA has long been considered the library of bio-information and the controller of the systems in cells and creatures. Now what does he mean by that? He means that for decades the thought was this: that in your DNA, there’s a certain library of bio-information, and that controls your cells.

And that bio-information that controls your cells predetermines your actions. That was the thought. Now I continue reading Hodges. This is what he said: Beginning largely in the 1990s, scientists have been finding this view unsatisfactory. What view unsatisfactory?

The view that the DNA genetic makeup of your heredity largely controls your behavior and what you do. What we see in the DNA of the cell or creature is not fully what we get in its body or behavior. Something else is going on between the instructions contained in DNA, that’s the genotype, and the result product, the phenotype. This something else has been termed epigenetics, meaning above genetics or outside genetics.

So it’s not the genetic predisposition to sin that leads a person to sin. There’s something outside this, and that thing that's outside is called epigenetics. Now Hodges goes on, you can underline this sentence if you’d like: Thus far epigenetics has been considered a biochemical switching system that turns bio-information in DNA on and off or dials it up and down.

Depending on the internal needs of or cues received from the environment. In other words, what Hodges is saying is this: you have certain genetic predispositions. But because you have that genetic predisposition doesn't mean that that gene has to be turned on or that gene has to be turned off. There are environmental factors outside, namely your choice, that turns that biogenetic thing on or off.

We’re still on the first page, you’re toward the bottom of the first page, and then we’re going to jump off our worksheets and go to some Bible studies and look at some other experiments, and we’ll come back to our worksheets at the end. So here’s Hodges' point: our DNA, don't miss this, our DNA is not the final arbiter of who we are and how we behave.

Our choices can either turn on or off genetic markers in our cell system. Now research indicates that our heredity or genetic predisposition is not the major determinant of our attitudes, our choices are. Now we’re going to stop there, we’re not going to go to the back of the page, because I want to share with you two or three things.

Some recent studies in epigenetics that were done at Duke University, and then I want to look at Jesus and epigenetics. I want to look at Jesus' pedigree, his lineage and see, and we’re going to compare Jesus' lineage to statements in the Spirit of Prophecy, and then we are going to look at some life commandments, ways they form in our lives and how we change life commandments.

Guest (Male): We’ll be right back with Pastor Mark Finley. We thank you for listening and hope you’re enjoying today’s message. Our mission is to attractively present the Christ-centered biblical truths of Scripture in a practical, relevant way to people around the world so that they may experience the abundant life that Christ offers and effectively share with confidence his life-changing truths with others. You can support this ministry and help us reach even more by going to hopelives365.com/donate. And now, back to Pastor Mark Finley.

Mark Finley: The study was done on agouti mice. The reason these are called agouti mice is because they have an agouti gene. Now the agouti mice are really interesting. This agouti gene predisposes the mouse to be overweight, and it predisposes it to be like a yellow pincushion.

The word agouti is A-G-O-U-T-I. And so the mouse that is born with this agouti gene is always overweight. It always is not beautiful brown like mice are, but it's this sickly yellow. Secondly, which really interested Dr. Jirtle and Waterland, is the mouse always had a predisposition to cancer, and it had a predisposition to heart disease and diabetes.

These mice were ravenous, they overate a great deal. And so they had the gene. Their lives were shortened by life-shortening disease. So Jirtle and Waterland said, is there anything that we can do to affect these mice that are predisposed to heart disease and cancer?

And you know what they did? They changed the diet. They gave these mice a plant-based diet. They gave them a lot of onions to eat, a lot of leeks to eat, they changed their diet. When the baby mice were born, they had the exact same DNA. No change in the DNA of the baby mice.

But they were no longer yellow, they had brown skin. They were no longer overweight, they were healthy. And Dr. Jirtle said, wow, what is going on here? And he was so shocked because something as simple as an external factor like diet did not turn on the genetic predisposition of the DNA.

And let me read to you simply part of the research which I thought was so fascinating. Remarkably, the researchers affected this transformation without altering a single letter of the mouse’s DNA. Their approach instead was radically straightforward. They changed mom’s diet.

Starting just before conception, Jirtle and Waterland fed a test group of mother mice a diet rich in small chemical clusters that can attach to a gene and turn it off. These molecules are common in the environment, they’re found in many foods, including onions, garlic, beets, and food supplements often given to pregnant women.

Often being consumed by the mothers, the methyl donors work their way into the developing embryos' and chromosomes and into the critical agouti gene. The mothers passed along the agouti gene to their children intact, but thanks to their methyl-rich pregnancy diet, they had added to the gene a chemical switch that dimmed the gene’s deleterious effects.

That is remarkable stuff. It was a little eerie, Dr. Jirtle said, and a little scary to see how something as subtle as a nutritional change in a pregnant mother rat could have such a dramatic impact on the gene expression of the baby. Jirtle says the result showed how important epigenetic changes could be.

Environmental factors. Okay, how do you apply this to Christianity? Every single one of us are born with heredity tendencies. There is not one person here that has a bloodline that’s perfect. Every single one of us have skeletons in our closets. And you look back at the heredity, visiting the sins of the fathers to the third or fourth generation.

What does that mean? Does it mean God punishes you for your grandfather’s sin or your grandmother’s sin? Not at all. But this is what it means: that because of their moral failures, you have a predisposition to sin and a weakness toward sin that you would not have otherwise.

It’s not that Jesus punishes you because of the sin of them, it’s that the biological bloodline affects every human being. And so we have heredity tendencies. Not only do we have heredity tendencies toward sin, but there’s another problem. We’ve chosen to sin. And so we’ve strengthened those heredity tendencies.

And so these tendencies and our choices become life commandments that's built within us. Now I want to meditate a little while on Jesus' genetic code. Have you ever looked at Jesus' family tree and evaluated his pedigree based on his family tree? I want you to go to Matthew the first chapter.

Let’s look at some of the interesting people in Jesus' family tree. Jesus' family tree. By developing spirit-indicted new life commandments, we can change our pedigree, our lineage and our family tree. So I want you to look at Matthew chapter 1, and we’re looking at Jesus' family tree, and let’s think about a few people that are in Jesus' lineage.

We’re looking at Matthew chapter 1, and the first we’re going to look at a few women and a few men. Look at, for example, Matthew 1 starting with verse 1: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. The Son of David. David certainly didn’t have a pure bloodline, did he, to pass on to Jesus?

David had adulterous tendencies, he committed adultery with Bathsheba. He in addition to that had Uriah murdered. So David had some weaknesses, didn’t he? But you look further in the bloodline of Jesus. The Bible says Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar.

Well who was Tamar anyway? That was Judah’s daughter-in-law who pretended to be a harlot and Judah fell for her lie and he slept with her and begot two twins. And that’s in the bloodline of Jesus. Well we go back. Notice what it says. It says there’s Rahab. Who was Rahab?

She was the harlot that delivered the spies at Jericho. And if you look also, there’s Ruth in this pedigree, this bloodline. And you’ll notice it there, verse 5: Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab, Boaz begot Obed by Ruth. Who was Ruth? She was a Moabitess who was, they were a hostile foreign people.

There’s Solomon who’s mentioned there and, you know, Solomon took multiple concubines and he was fascinated with pleasure. So when you look at Jesus' lineage, would you agree with me that his lineage from the human side, from the human side... Was Jesus fully God? Yes. Was he fully man? Yes. Can you explain that?

Great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh. So but was Jesus fully man? Yes he was. Was he fully God? Yes he was. Now I want you to think of Jesus' human lineage. Review and Herald, July 28, 1874. That’s Review and Herald, July 28, 1874.

Christ took human nature and bore the infirmities and degeneracy of the race. Christ took human nature and bore the infirmities and degeneracy of the race. Next reference, you’ll find it in the book Desire of Ages. It’s a very familiar statement, many of you are familiar with this.

It would have been almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man’s nature even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam, this particular quote I’m doing is from Seventh-day Bible Commentary, 452. The Desire of Ages text is one is next, but this is actually a Bible commentary quote.

Like every child of Adam, he accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. So Jesus accepted the working of the great law of heredity. So was that law of heredity that came through David, that came through Tamar, that came through Rahab, that came down through Solomon, did that have any impact on Jesus' humanity?

Yeah, it says here, he accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of his earthly ancestors. He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, to give us an example of sinless life. Next reference, Desire of Ages, 117.

For four thousand years, the race had been decreasing in physical strength, mental power and moral worth. Now I’ve wrestled with this and I’ll come back and give you an explanation of it. Christ took upon him the infirmities of degenerate humanity. Only thus could he rescue man from the lowest depths of his degradation.

What does it mean that Christ had been decreasing in physical strength? Did Jesus have the physical strength of Adam when he was born four thousand years before? Did he? Not at all. Not a chance. So when you look down the generations of the progressive degeneration, we see it physically, don't we? We can all accept that.

What then does it mean that Jesus, for four thousand years the race had been decreasing in physical strength, in mental power? Is the brain a physical organ housed in the mind? So was Jesus' mental alertness the same as Adam’s? It was not. Not in his humanness, that’s what I want to point out.

The one we struggle with was moral worth. What does it mean that Jesus' moral worth was different than Adam’s? Here’s how I understand that. Because of the deterioration of the human race with sin, Jesus' ability as a human being to resist temptation was not as sharp or clear as Adam’s was before sin.

So when I look at moral worth, I see that as weakness, weakness. That when Jesus is born, there’s a physical, mental and moral weakness on his human side as it comes to resisting temptation. Because in Hebrews chapter 2, verse 14 to 17, we read, in all things he had to be made like unto his brethren.

So the issue with Jesus was not that he was exempt from human weakness. It was rather that he was so committed to the Father’s will that sin lost its appeal to him. To please his heavenly Father was his life commandment. His life commandment as moral compass governed all his actions.

Now as the result of Jesus being prompted by, notice my language, prompted by, motivated by, and empowered by the Spirit. As the result of that, the negative influences in his genetic DNA were never turned on. It was not that he did not receive DNA. It was never, he never chose to sin, therefore he never turned on those negative influences.

You say, what about when he was a child? I don’t understand all that, but I understand this: the Holy Spirit protected him in ways that we can’t understand. The Holy Spirit protected him in ways as a child. But from the moment of the dawning of his consciousness, from that moment, he had certain basic critical life commandments. He was tempted in all points like we are, but yet never fell to sin.

Guest (Male): You’ve been listening to Hope Lives 365 with Pastor Mark Finley. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s message and remind you that you can find more in our many ministry resources at hopelives365.com. And you can support this ministry by going to hopelives365.com/donate. And now, a final thought from Pastor Mark.

Mark Finley: You know, I’ve had people ask me, what does it mean that Jesus was tempted in all points like we are, what does that mean? The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to be hurt. The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to be hurt.

Because Jesus has an infinite capacity to love, he has an infinite capacity to hurt. So Jesus was tempted physically, mentally, spiritually in areas far beyond anything we can comprehend. And anything we experience, he has already gone through. Not only did Satan tempt him on all points, but he tempted him with all power.

And so you have that aspect as well. Now Jesus depended on divine power for victory, and that same power’s available for us. Therefore we can come confidently, Hebrews 4, verse 16, to the throne of grace.