Intersection | Plato vs. Paul

How are we doing in River Point Church?

You guys good?

Hey, I want to do this right away.

First of all, I want to welcome you guys in front of me, the Richmond campus.

I also want to do this.

Can we make uh a lot of noise at the Richmond campus for all of the people in our Overflow building?

We ran out of seats at this service.

For those of you in Overflow, uh, we want it to be the best possible experience.

We're sorry we wish we had seats in here for everyone, but I love this problem, man.

That is a good problem.

Uh also for those of you if these big crowds aren't your favorite, we have a 1230 service at this campus, and it is about half to sometimes three-quarters full.

So you can have almost your own row sometimes if you play it right.

So if that's you, uh social distancing, that's your thing, man.

The 1230 uh is for you.

I also want to welcome everyone at the Missouri City campus.

We love you guys over there.

Um, everybody downtown at our West End campus.

Hope you're having an amazing morning.

Watching online, we got a lot of people on vacation as they should be.

If you happen to be watching on uh vacation right now, uh welcome.

We're grateful for technology.

And then come on, every campus, let's let these gentlemen let them hear it from you guys.

All of our men at the Ramsey unit, our God behind bars campus.

We love you, gentlemen.

All right, fair warning.

I'm hyper today.

I can't sit still.

I'm hyper every day, but today I'm really hyper uh for a multitude of reasons.

Too much sugar, coffee, etc.

And then I'm so excited about this new series because this one has been in uh my holster for the two years since I've been here.

I've been waiting for the time where it felt right to do this series, and it finally just felt right.

And so I'm gonna ask you guys again at every campus to just lean in.

It's a little bit, uh, when you hear it on the surface, it's a little bit out of pocket compared to maybe some of the other things that we discuss.

I'm just gonna ask, I haven't earned it with you all uh per se, but I'm gonna ask for a little bit of trust.

If you'll stick with us, we are gonna get there, and I really believe uh with all of my heart and all of my passion that this series is actually gonna be maybe what I would call a blessing in disguise.

And so let's do this, man.

Let's just uh lock in and we're gonna get going.

This series uh we've titled Intersection, and it's really titled that simply because we are going to, for the next four weeks, be looking at the intersection between our faith, you know, the the reason we're here, right?

Our faith and ready for it?

Science.

And in science, you can add mathematics.

Uh, where are my nerds at?

I expected to hear a little more like, amen, praise God, let's go! Come on, guys.

Where are you at?

This is for you, man.

Um, no, but but the reason, and let me tell you how this came about and why I'm so passionate about it uh for a lot of reasons.

But growing up in the church as a kid, I was a ministry kid, so I was open, I was there every every moment the doors were open, and I have forgotten way more in the sermons than I'll ever remember.

But part of that is because as a young kid, especially teenager, uh, once I started sitting in the adult side of things, I was a little more checked out.

And one thing I remember though, and some of you may have felt this, I was a kid in church in the 80s and in the 90s, and one thing I remember subconsciously and now even consciously is it wasn't said this blatantly, but there seemed to be this big chasm or this big line drawn between God and between science.

Do you ever remember that?

And there were really two fundamental reasons uh or two issues of science that really uh made this kind of thing happen, which was number one, you know, the Darwinian approach to evolution, you know, because of what we read in just Genesis 1, 2, and 3 alone, you're like, how can I have my faith in God and in the Word of God?

Uh, well, this is apparently how we came to be, right?

And so it was this kind of saying it or without saying it, God, good, science, bad, God, good, science, enemy.

And I couldn't say anything about it.

I didn't have language for it, but there was always something in my teenage gut that that just didn't sit right with me.

That felt small to me.

That felt, and and and and I couldn't have said it then, but I can say it now, that felt condescending to me.

It felt like a dismissal of that, that simply was a bit of a poor um witness on our part.

And then I'll never forget this.

It was 1989, it was a Sunday morning, and just like you guys are right now, I was sitting in a chair in my church, and the pastor started to get up and he started to preach, and so I started to hunch back in hopes of getting a nap from what I was doing Saturday night, and uh kind of checking out, and halfway through the sermon, the pastor starts to introduce this man who I happen to know because I went to school with his kids, and we lived in the same neighborhood.

Now, I didn't really know this guy because he was uh an intimidating man.

He was about 6'3, he always dressed to the nines, he was actually the chief counsel for the denomination uh that I grew up in in church, and uh from what my parents had told me, and then listening to him talk, I knew it was true.

He had somewhere between a 120 and a 130 IQ, and the pastor called him up to give a testimony.

Now, he was a board member, but I had never heard him talk in church before, and so I was a little bit interested, but not that much, until he said the first sentence out of his mouth.

Here's how he started his testimony.

He said, real deep intellectual voice, he said, I came to know God through mathematics.

And I went, wait, what?

Science, mathematics, I mean, all those, like God, good, bad.

How could you possibly come to know God, right?

Because we believe by what?

Faith.

How could you possibly come?

But I loved it.

Something in me said, thank you, because I always felt like, man, we're we're discrediting something that is actually a gift from God when it is used for his glory.

And I can't tell you how he actually ended up saying he came to know God.

I wasn't smart enough, I'm still not.

But the bottom line was this, and we can't miss this.

God met him exactly how God made him.

He didn't meet him how Chad needed to meet God.

He didn't find God the way you might need to find God.

God took that beautiful gift he gave him in that 120, 130 IQ brain, and he spoke to him there.

He found God in mathematics, and do you know what he said?

God is the author of mathematics.

We make it secular.

Well, all of the church stuff is sacred, and I hate, and I this is just how I'm wired.

Not all of you are like this, you don't have to be like me.

But when God was forming me, Chad Brugman, in my mother's womb, fearfully and wonderfully, he gave me, just like you, a distinct personality.

And one of my personality traits, and some of you might be like me, I am a bridge builder by nature.

I don't like conflict.

I know it's a part of the human experience, but I hate it.

But what I decided was since I can't ever get away from it, I want to learn how to be good at it.

I want to be a bridge builder.

I want to quit all the fighting.

I want to quit all the divisiveness and dissension.

I want to quit calling everything secular or sacred.

Can I remind us God is the creator of everything?

Everything.

Now, the reason we've created those divides, and let me pull from C.S.

Lewis, and I've told you this before in his book, The Screwtape Letters, he said this the devil has never and will never have one ounce of ability to create anything.

Therefore, what?

The secular divide is not an appropriate way of saying it.

Only power he has, and it is limited, is to pervert that which God created.

So I will not, and I am defensive for all my nerds out there, I will lovingly defend these beautiful disciplines like biology and neurology, psychology, physiology, and every other ology, our college, all the other ologies we can we can name.

I am defensive of that because that's where God's meeting people at.

Now, are are we limited in its practice?

Yes, because we are limited in our practices.

I'm a limited preacher in what I can teach to you guys and preach to you guys because I have a certain degree of understanding and and and at some point it just drops off.

And you know how else God wired me?

I have this righteous anger for we humans loving to find ways over time to put God in a box.

And I don't know about you, but I don't want to bow a bended knee and worship to a God that I can contain in a box.

I want a God where the wonder and the awe is expressed in everything that we go looking for the wonder and the awe.

And so for the last couple years, man, as a college dropout, someone who barely graduated high school, I have been geeking out for the last two years on all things uh science, specifically for me, neurology.

I am so fascinated with what I am learning, and I'm still in 101 for sure, but I am fascinated what I'm learning about the human brain.

So, we for the next four weeks, if you guys will trust this process, we are going to hopefully uh crush some of that secular and sacred divide between God and science, and we're gonna see in the most holy way we can how to bridge that gap.

So I want to start by reading just a quick one sentence from King Solomon in the book of Proverbs.

This is a book of wisdom, we call it.

Proverbs 25, verse 2, he says this he says, It is the glory of God, or to God's glory, to conceal a matter.

Proverbs 25:2

Says, to search out a matter is the glory of kings, which was an ancient poetic way of saying is a noble thing.

It's the glory of God to conceal a matter and to search out a matter is a noble thing.

Now I love the late great theologian and pastor, rest in peace, sir.

His name's uh Eugene Peterson, and he gave us this gift uh in his old age.

He wrote this uh paraphrase version of the literal translations of the Bible with beautiful modern poetic language.

It's called the message.

I always have the message next to me when I'm reading my little translation just to see his take on it.

Let's read that same verse again in the message paraphrase.

He says, God delights in concealing things, scientists delight in discovering things.

And I just absolutely love that.

But when I first read this proverb, I was in my 20s and I was a newer believer.

And I don't know about you, but you know what my first thought was?

My first thought was, God, this sounds like a cruel game of divine hide and seek.

Like, God, we got enough problems down here.

We got enough corporate and personal ignorance going on around here.

Why would you conceal stuff from us?

If the truth is what sets us free, why would you put us on this kind of journey that seems arbitrary and possibly even cruel?

We need to know the truth so we can come together and quit fighting about it, right?

But here's the truth.

Come on, ladies, you know what I'm talking about.

When he says it's the glory of God to conceal a matter, it's the glory of kings to search it out.

Ladies, here's the word I've been hearing you use lately: it's this word pursue.

I just want to be pursued.

I just want him to pursue me, right?

And you know why you're using that word?

Because it's true.

It's how God designed it.

There is something about love that is found in the pursuit.

This is why when we are seen, when we are known deeper and deeper and deeper in any relationship, including marriage, we feel more and more loved by the person who's pursuing us, right?

We feel wanted.

And so this isn't a cruel game.

This is God going, no.

Our love for each other, for for you to me, is gonna be uh strengthened and established in the pursuit.

This is why Jesus said, ask and it'll be given to you.

And then he says, What?

Seek and you will find, knock, and the door will be opened.

Hebrews, speaking of the intersection of faith and science, Hebrews 11, 3 says this.

By faith, that's huge.

Because now we're talking about the other side of this.

It's first by faith that we understand that the universe was formed at God's command.

Not science, not by quantifiable, testable research.

It's by faith.

What's faith?

Being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you can't yet see or quantify.

So we start with by faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

And then three verses later, he doubles down and says this therefore, without faith, it's impossible to please God.

Here's why.

Number one, because anyone who comes to him, first and foremost, must believe that he exists, that he is the intelligent designer behind all of this beauty and awesomeness that is creation, but then listen secondly, and that he rewards those who earnestly what?

Seek him.

In my younger years of preaching, I boiled seeking him down to what we hear a lot about in church, as we should.

Pray more, and God will reward you, whatever that looks like.

Read the Bible more, God will reward you, whatever that looks like.

Know the Bible, and if it's really crazy, maybe fast a bit.

Serve more, give more.

And in the seeking, and listen to me, all of that are pieces of pie when it comes to seeking God.

They're fundamentally significant, but it is so much more than that.

Ever since I started my little 101 journey of learning about this thing called the human brain, do you want to know what the result has been?

I am up here hyper and passionate and spitting on you guys, talking about it, because do you know what it's done?

And I just have the 101 Cliff Notes version so far.

Do you know what it's done?

It's brought a new degree of wonder and awe to the magnificence of our Creator and our intelligent designer, God, into my life.

It's enhanced how I read scripture.

It's made sense of things like the book of Psalms.

This roller coaster ride of endless human emotion and suffering and ecstasy and joy all in the same book.

And now I'm starting to neurologically see what these people were going through and experiencing biologically and physiologically while they were writing it.

So now it's not just this beautiful spiritual note on how crazy life is.

Now there's science behind why David would have been writing the way he wrote when he was hiding in a cave on the run from the king that was trying to kill him.

He wasn't just writing this beautiful poetic stuff because we've been told as Christians to journal to God.

You know what was happening when he was writing these beautiful words?

His nervous system was being regulated.

He was being to feel safe again.

In a very precarious, dangerous situation in a cave.

He wouldn't have a clue that was happening.

We are blessed to live in 2026 where we can say exactly what was happening.

Because although the psalm starts out with everything that's wrong, read it till it's done.

It tells you at the end how much faith and hope and trust he has in God.

You can tell by the end I feel safe again.

Were there spiritual things happening?

Yes, but there were also the biological phenomenon of the regulation of the nervous system.

And I read that and it gets me excited about my faith.

It helps me understand us more.

It helps me get more excited about understanding scripture more.

Romans 1.20 says this for since the creation of the world, since day one, Genesis 1, verse 1, God's, hear this, invisible qualities.

Genesis 1:1

Can't see them, right?

His eternal power and his divine nature have been, this sounds like a contradiction.

What?

Clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.

What have we been given from God to start learning and understanding about what he has made?

It's called science.

Is it limited?

Yes.

Is it always going to be playing catch up to the full grand story of our Creator?

Absolutely.

Do we condescend to it and diminish its purpose because of that?

No.

We lift it up, we cheer them on, and as Christians, you know what we should be doing?

Praying for our mathematicians.

Praying for people in the science world.

Praying that God, whether they intend to or not, would continue to roll out and reveal through them and their processes his glory.

Because what ends up happening, we are uh uh things have been clearly seen by being understood from what has been made so that what?

People are without excuse.

Now hear my heart.

I believe the chief mechanism of evangelism on planet earth to spread the good news of Jesus, from what I read in scriptures, is us, the body of Christ.

Jesus left and gave us a great commission to go out into all the world, right?

And to make disciples, baptizing them like we're gonna do next week in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I believe that's the chief mechanism, but we we know from all of Scripture, it's all over the place if you look hard enough, that it is not the only mechanism.

God is literally convicting people about his reality, that he is the intelligent designer behind all this.

By what?

Creation.

I'll tell you just one way that affected me, even though I was already a believer in Jesus.

Having four children.

The first time I had, we when we had our first kid, and I only did it for the first kid because mean books, but I read a book.

Many of you may have too.

It was this book that every week it told you how much the baby's changing in the womb.

And I was just like I am now, blown away.

I'm like, that's that's my son in there.

And I would tell my wife, now he's this size, and I'd have a piece of fruit and I'd show him, now he's this size, and she'd be like, Shut up, I don't care.

I just want him out of me, you know.

But I and I I promise I don't mean to say this condescending to people who don't believe like I do about God, but I just don't know how you can look at just from conception on the absolute intricate nature of childbirth and believe it was just a random act.

And I say that with respect to people who disagree.

I want to build bridges with them, not, but I'm just telling you my story, my way of thinking about it.

Then that's just one small aspect.

And the more and more we start to see it, it's like, man, this is how people are without excuse.

And so I just want to stop for a minute in the middle of this today.

Um and I want to do this because I don't know that I've ever, in my 20-some years of being a pastor, ever done this, and I'm super excited to do this.

So at every campus, if you are in any type field, any type discipline that has to do with science and mathematics, and I'm talking if you're the elementary teacher, we know you're teaching biology, we know you're teaching chemistry, to some degree mathematics, that includes you up through high school, if you're at the uh professor level in college, uh um if you are doing research in any field of the sciences, if you're engineering, if you're in the medical field, at every campus, I want you to stand up because I want you guys to feel honored in this place right now.

Every campus, don't be shy, stand up.

Yeah, stay standing, stay standing.

Oh, this makes me happy.

Stay standing.

Some of you might be in the science world because you don't like this moment, but I don't care.

I'm an extrovert, I'm gonna challenge you right now, and here's why I want you to stay standing.

First of all, on behalf of our church, thank you.

The body of Christ would not be the body of Christ without your endeavors, your skill.

God gave you those brains, desires, and resource to do what you guys do.

I am a better human, and I am better at what I get to do because of everyone at every campus that's standing up right now.

So thank you.

Secondly, is this, and I'll get you back down, I promise.

Please hear me at every campus.

I want this to be a commissioning moment.

Because you just thought, you know, I just I just research cancer, but Chad goes up and gives gospel sermons on Sunday.

So he's doing the real Jesus.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You guys, by default of how God has made you, you are evangelists, whether you know it or not.

You have an opportunity in your endeavors to uh pray to God every day and just say, God, may I bring as much possible glory to you through what I do as Much as the preacher man or anyone else and what they do.

You are ministers and evangelists, whether you realize it or not, and so we need you to do your work excellent and do it all for the glory of the Lord.

You guys can go ahead and sit down now, but I'm just grateful for y'all.

Couple more verses and then we'll get us ready for the next three weeks.

I I didn't say this up top, and I want to say this.

Week one is an introductory week.

Um just setting the stage is the only goal this weekend.

This is what I don't want you to miss, if at all possible.

Do not miss the next three weeks, because the next three weeks, um, and I'll talk a little bit more at the end, but we are gonna get into the weeds more.

We're gonna start really getting into some specific issues that are really important for the times we're uh living in.

But John 10 10 says this.

This is one most of us are familiar with.

The thief, talking about the devil.

This is Jesus' words.

We believe there is a devil.

I hate that reality, but we would be cruel not to talk about that reality.

Here's what the devil wants to do.

However, that's working in the unseen world, he wants to kill you.

God's the God of life.

He wants to kill you.

He wants to steal from every moment you have on this earth.

And ultimately the goal is destruction.

And let me make you righteously mad for a minute.

Do you know what his motive is?

Is to hurt God.

He doesn't give a rip about you.

He wants to hurt God, and you are the pawn.

You are the mechanism.

And his way to do that is to take the sacred things of God and his creation and give little subtle ways to more and more pervert what has always been meant to be sacred.

It says the thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy, but then what's Jesus say?

But I have come.

If you want to follow me, if you'd like to put your trust in me, here's my promise.

I have come that you would experience life and life to its fullest, to which I say, give me more of that, please.

Whatever that looks like, I'm on a journey like you are.

That word life, I love this word.

It's a Greek word Zoe.

Some of you named your daughters Zoe or Zoe.

If I would have had more than one daughter, it probably would have been her name.

I love it.

It means life.

When Jesus said, though, I've come that you may have life and life to the fullest, does it start at the cross and go through the resurrection?

Of course, but let's not put God in a box and say it just stops there.

What is the study of life or living organisms called?

Biology.

Like if he's the God who wants to give us full life, not just someday when it's perfected, but right now, Jesus, when he came, he said, the kingdom of heaven is upon you.

It's here now.

Not someday, now.

Then I don't know about you, but I want to start learning my 101 about biology.

I want to start learning more and more about the study of living things.

Because God is the author of that.

Biology matters, neurology matters, archaeology has played such a beautiful role in the validity and the storytelling of the word of God, neurology and all the psychology, all of the other ologies, when we dismiss those or condescend to those or categorize those, we do a great disservice to our faith.

And that is what this series is all about.

And so I'll end scripturally with this.

And before I read the two verses that are really important to our faith, I have to give you a few minutes of context from the old covenant so that we understand what's happening here.

In the book of Exodus, right around chapter 25, which is one of my favorite books in all of Scripture, for five straight chapters, it talks about one thing.

Now, if you're newer to the Bible, for one issue to get five full chapters hardly ever happens.

So you've got to be thinking to yourself, what could they possibly be talking about?

This has to be so important.

You want to know what it is?

It's how to build the temple, the specs.

What you're supposed to furnish it with, what the lengths are and what the widths are.

I promise you, if you've already gone through that in your year-long Bible reading, those five chapters, you were just like, get me through this so I can get to some good stuff that applies to my life.

But this is what's so exciting about knowing more and more about God's word, is you start to see what's really happening in those five chapters and how it relates to the story of Jesus and how it applies to us and Jesus and it's beautiful.

Because God, down to the to the to the square inch and cubit, tells them exactly how he wants this tent, this big glorified tent out in the middle of the desert to be built so that he can come and tabernacle was the old word for with them, be with them.

But it would be confined to this tent under the old covenant.

And the first question you should have is, God, why not just go, Moses, put a tent in the middle of the desert, make it about two football fields worth of size, and then I'm gonna meet you there because the building doesn't matter.

The brick and mortar, the the stuff that no, no, no.

God spends five chapters, I promise you, and he goes into detail, not just about the specks and size, but about the furnishings.

And it is intricate.

Now, here's why this is beautiful when you know what's happening in Scripture.

I love this stuff.

Is because the New Testament tells us that everything in the Old Covenant, this is why we still preach from the Old Covenant when it's appropriate.

We still refer to it.

Everything in the Old Covenant was ultimately a foreshadowing of preparing for Jesus to come to the earth.

Everything.

And everything in the New Testament is just looking back.

The cross is the crux of everything, the resurrection.

Old covenant looking towards it, and new covenant looking back to grow wisdom from that and live from that, right?

So, what is God foreshadowing in those five chapters in Exodus?

He's foreshadowing what we now know and we're about to read, which is this.

Let's read it.

1 Corinthians chapter 6, 19 and 20.

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

Paul says to the church in Corinth, Greece, do you not know that your bodies are what?

See what's happening here?

Temples of the Holy Spirit, who's not in a tent anymore, who's not around you anymore, who is in you.

If you've put your faith in Jesus, the Bible says, Romans 8, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead now lives in you.

Whom you have received from God as a gift through Christ Jesus, you are not your own, he was trying to tell them.

You were bought at a price.

Better word for bought, there is redeemed.

You were redeemed at a price, and then here's what he was trying to tell them.

Therefore, do what?

Honor God with your bodies.

Now, here's an interesting fact.

The only place Paul uses this kind of exact language, and this is huge stuff here, he's saying, is to the church in Corinth.

Why Corinth?

Why not Thessalonica?

Why not church in Rome?

Why Corinth?

And I'll tell you exactly why.

Because all of these new believers, everyone was a new believer back then, that were born and raised in Greece, they were born into a religion of Greek mythology mixed with philosophy.

That was their religion, that was sacred to them.

That was everything to them.

Just like our faith is to us.

That's how they lived and moved and had their being, was through the Greek gods and through uh philosophy.

And so, do you know, do you know what was happening?

They had pastors and prophets and evangelists and and and teachers, except they would have never called him that.

Do you know what they were?

Plato.

He was the prophet.

Aristotle before him, Socrates before him.

They were the prophets of that religion, the pastors of that religion, the great teachers of that religion.

Paul wasn't mad at them for that.

That's what they were born into.

Everyone around the world's born into some religious persuasion with prophets and teachers, right?

So Paul's not mad here.

He can sound it because he's using strong language.

Therefore, honor God with your body.

I don't hear it that way anymore because I know what's happening here.

Paul's going, you were taught by your pastor.

Plato was living about 400 years before Jesus came.

He was their last great prophet that had taught them how to have religious activity and how to live.

And Plato believed that the body wasn't a temple, he called it a tomb.

You can see it extensively in his writings.

He said, Well, while you're living, it's a prison.

It's encumbering what really matters, which is your intellect and your soul.

And he wasn't all wrong.

He had a half-truth there.

But here's the deal: God is a trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right?

Now think about this.

We were made in the image of God, right?

So we are Trinitarian in nature.

How do we represent that?

Body, mind, spirit.

So Plato's saying, soul, spirit, beautiful, wonderful.

Intellect, most important, right?

The great Greek philosophers.

Body, problematic.

Always getting in the way of the two things that are sacred.

He called it a prison.

And they said, and you know what he said, you know what he called it when you die?

A tomb.

And he's got half truth there, right?

Because if you're dead in your sins, you're a dead man walking.

You're a tomb right now.

So he's not wrong there, but he's saying it's a tomb in the sense of not making space for eternal realities.

And so why does Paul say your body is a what?

Not a tomb, but a temple.

Your body is beautiful, special.

It's precious.

It's not a prism.

Your body's a temple, not a tomb at all.

And so this is incredibly important, and why we're spending a whole month focusing on the scientific implications of our body.

And that's what we're going to do for the next three weeks.

And I know what some of you are thinking, oh great, next week Chad's going to come up and talk about doing more CrossFit and eating more vegetables.

And I already know that.

Alright?

I don't need him to get up and make me feel worse about than I already.

That is not what we're doing at all.

I promise you.

And is there is there a place to talk about that kind of stuff?

Yeah, but I think we kind of already heard that before and know that.

Like, yeah, I should probably sweat a little more, detoxify, eat, eat some more natural foods.

Okay, we we know that.

When I'm talking about a series on honoring our bodies because we were a bot at a price, I'm gonna talk about some of the things that we are blessed to know now in 2026 because of scientists, because of mathematicians.

Some of the things we know about what's happening physiologically and neurologically in our bodies that are going to completely give us an opportunity so we choose to experience more life, more zoe, life and life to the full.

Does anybody want some of that?

Because I do.

That's why I love where we're going with this.

And so let me just give you a preview and then I'm gonna get you guys back out in that beautiful Houston heat.

None of you warned me about this.

In my interview process, no one said, hey, July, August, it's the devil's armpit.

It's but whatever.

Man.

I'm still getting used to it, y'all.

Alright.

So here's what we're gonna do for the next three weeks.

And I'm gonna say this, and it's gonna sound hyperbolic, and I don't think it's that at all.

I think next week, if there was any week not to miss, this is gonna be the most important week of all of them.

And they're all gonna be important.

But what we're talking about in terms of our bodies and biology and neurology, all that stuff, what we're talking about next week is happening in our culture right now, and it's no one's fault.

Like Paul, we're not mad at you, we just gotta confront this.

There is a pandemic level of dopamine, abuse, and deficiency.

And I'm not gonna say much more because we're gonna get into the weeds next week.

I do want to say this, moms and dads.

If you have kids that are old enough to hold phones in their hands all day, bring them to church.

If they don't come to church, you come to church.

Because we are gonna talk about, we're gonna do a sermon titled the dopamine dilemma.

Because here's what dopamine is, according to the scientists, they've funly named it the wanting chemical.

And I'll just read one sentence.

Dopamine is associated with the reward-motivated behavior, which is a good thing, right?

Keep in mind, dopamine is a chemical produced in the body that goes to the reward center of the brain.

That is an absolute gift of kindness and goodness from God.

But like everything in the human body and in life, there is a shadow side or dark side to everything.

And we are going to confront the epidemic level dark side of dopamine and the misuse and misunderstanding of it.

Dopamine is associated with the reward-motivated behavior.

It is the chemical that motivates you to take action, pursue rewards, and learn from positive experiences.

That sounds beautiful.

I want more of that.

But when it starts to go bad, and we're going to talk about how that's happening, man, you get a perverted form that is exhausting and tiring and impossible in our pursuit to find reward, in our pursuit to take action, in our pursuit to achieve.

And then the week after that, do a message called, I think I'll call it serotonin for the soul.

This is another beautiful gift from God, man.

Serotonin.

The scientists dubbed this the feeling chemical.

And let me just read one sentence.

Serotonin is primarily responsible for maintaining emotional balance.

And everyone said, Hey man, my wife, she better be here next week.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

Are you here right now?

Shoot.

For maintaining emotional balance, which we could all get better at all the time.

Serotonin, instead of driving you to seek more, serotonin signals to your brain that you are satisfied and safe to fundamental desires of God when He created us.

To find true, authentic satisfaction and to live in a place where you feel safety, and he gave us this beautiful chemical in the brain called serotonin.

And there equally is a shadow side to misappropriating it.

And then last week is going to be fun.

Miss April Farmer's in charge of this one, and we always love when she's here.

And I don't know what she'll title it, I'll leave it up to her, but here's what we're going to talk about this thing called oxytocin.

Also known as the happy hormone.

Or also known as the love drug.

Because it promotes, oxytocin promotes positive feelings like trust, empathy, and bonding.

However, its main biological role is to facilitate social connection, which is a massive part of God's story with us.

Community, whatever else you want to call it.

Social connection and attachment rather than just what Paul was confronting in Corinth, just pure pleasure for the sake of pleasure.

I'll finish by saying this.

I missed this verse earlier.

1 Corinthians 15, Paul was continuing to kind of confront the Platonian philosophical approach to religion so that they could have church the way they were supposed to have church.

And he says this in, if you remember, can we put that back up?

It's 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

But he says this.

He says, if the dead are not raised, because in 15 he's talking about resurrection being the central part of our faith.

He says, if the dead truly aren't raised, then go with Plato's idea.

Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

In other words, cast off all restraint in terms of this tomb, this prison.

Use it and abuse it, man.

You only got one shot with it.

So do what feels good.

Do what feels good.

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

And so the ultimate goal is happiness when there's something so much better, holiness.

Because what I've learned about holiness is it can produce incredible amounts of happiness.

But happiness has no ability to produce holiness.

Right?

And so what we're going to do, and I'm going to get you out of here on time today, which is a mere God's already blessing this series if I'm getting us out of here on time.

I want to have one challenge for you, and then we're going to pray and end this thing.

And the challenge is this.

Would you, if you sign up to and want to, would you pick one thing that you might think is interesting in one of the disciplines of science, mathematics, if you want.

And would you just Google it and start doing a very Google-esque 101 version of something that maybe you've never thought much of?

That's how it started for me a couple years ago with the brain.

I was just hitting something because I wanted a question, so I used the right word when I was talking about preaching about fear, the abygdala.

I wanted to make sure.

And then all of a sudden I'm like, this is amazing, and I kept reading more.

I woke up the next day and I kept reading more.

And then I started to want to know about all the different parts of the brain and what they contribute to and all of this stuff.

And I started to see how that works with God's design, with our bodies and with the scriptures, and it was beautiful.

Would you just pick one thing and say, you know what?

I'm going to do a dive until we get back in.

Maybe start with dopamine.

Maybe just type in dopamine.

You'll be amazed at what you learn about this God-given chemical that He has given to us to thrive.

Either way, that's my challenge.

Here's what we're going to do.

I'm going to pray the blessing of God over you like I always do.

And I just want you to know at every campus, we will have people down front that would love to stick around and pray with you if there's something you really need.

We want to pray with you.

We want to believe with you.

We want to fight the good fight with you.

So we'll have that every campus.

So now, may the Lord bless every single one of you.

May He keep you in the grip of His grace.

May He cause His face to shine upon you and your family this week.

May He turn his countenance towards you.

I pray, God, that you would be great, radically gracious to every single one of us in the sound of my voice this week.

And God, all of us would walk out of the doors today with a peace that passes understanding, that guards our hearts and guards our minds.

In Christ's matchless, awesome name, we pray this.

And everyone said.