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Amazing Facts

Joe Crews

Horns and Halos

You don't need a good reason, just go ahead and do it.

Schizophrenia is a tragic emotional problem in which the individual has a dual personality.

It's now known that every person has 2 natures which are totally opposite from each other.

I'll be back in a moment to talk about horns and halos.

Hello, this is Joe Cruz and the Amazing Facts broadcast, facts which affect you.

You know, 1 of the most popular and well-known parables of the Bible is the 1 about the prodigal son.

And to my mind, 1 of the most striking sentences that gives meaning to the rest of that story is that little line, he came to himself.

Now don't pass lightly over that, friend.

Volumes could be written about that sentence.

You see, this is the judgment of Jesus on human nature.

What he was saying was really that the prodigal was not himself in what he was doing, at least not his real self or his whole self.

It was only after he decided to go back home that he became his whole self, the self of which he was born.

Unfortunately, he was only expressing a part of himself and it happened to be the worst part.

Did you ever think that Sin is really a spell which dazes the mind, steals away the reason, and clouds the will?

From the beginning to end of Scripture, the same sordid story of sin speaks.

We see it in other people and just marvel over it.

We can't understand why they don't wake up and snap out of their spell of sin and stop doing such foolish unreasonable things.

We remember Samson, for example, and how he was bound and deceived 3 times by Delilah.

Now why did he tell her the secret when he knew her intentions were to destroy him.

We think that Sapson was a fool for his naive dealing with Delilah.

Yes, but there we see the spell of sin and all its strength.

I think most pastors understand what I am talking about here because they have dealt with men, women, and young people who were involved in sin.

Sometimes an individual is threatened by sin to such a degree that his security, his home, his eternal life is at stake, yet that very person will not break with it.

Why is it so easy to see transgression in others and yet be so blind when we're involved emotionally ourselves?

The answer to this question lies very deeply within the secrets of human nature.

After all, friends, what do we know about ourselves?

A father had just punished his little boy.

Towering over him, he asked the question, Will you be good now?

And looking up into his eyes, the little boy said, Well, yes and no.

And I think all of us can understand that little boy's answer Because that's how it is with each 1 of us.

We're not all horns and we're not all halos.

There's a conflict, in other words, taking place in our lives.

We don't need any deep theology to tell us about it either.

From our own experience we know about those dark, unmanageable elements within us that we can't explain.

We know about those ugly feelings and unholy feelings that seem to gush up from the unconscious depths of our nature sometimes.

For no explainable reason we are cross, peevish, and sometimes downright mean.

We say, well, I wasn't myself, or something got into me, or I don't know what got into me.

The fact is, friends, that there are 2 natures struggling within every human heart.

There's a spiritual nature and there's a carnal nature also seeking to dominate the life.

Now there's always 1 class of people who seem to bring out all the horns on my head and make me forget that as a preacher I'm supposed to also have a halo.

The people who try my religion the most are those who meet every failure in themselves or in others with that superior smile and that old cliché, well, you can't change human nature.

What did they mean by that statement, you can't change human nature?

If they mean only that we will always have trouble with the horns, then of course they're right.

We'll always be struggling with that lower nature.

If they mean that we can't hope to get rid of the great driving instincts with which we were born, then they're still right.

Who wants to get rid of his sex, his ambition, his power to shape life, his temper, his desire to excel?

Not Even God would take these things away, friends.

These are qualities that make us real men and women.

They simply have to be controlled and rightly directed.

But under proper control, they can be very sacred and excellent factors in the human life.

But if those people mean what most people mean when they say you can't change human nature, they mean that sin is natural, that human nature is synonymous with being weak and wicked, and that that condition is fixed and final and we can't do anything about it to change it.

Now if that's what they mean, friends, and I believe it is, then I say that that is simply a lie.

The whole plan of salvation is designed to break the power of sin and to change human life.

Now somebody says, well, you don't understand my background.

You don't know about my inherited weaknesses.

And then there's another argument, too, that's become very popular.

I was born on the other side of the tracks.

I don't understand, of course, about your heredity or anybody else's, but I don't have to.

Have you ever heard about Nazareth, that beautiful little village where Jesus lived and grew up as a child in youth?

The beautiful surrounding hills bore powerful evidence of the Creator God.

But there is something else about Nazareth that we should understand.

It was 1 of the most ill-reputed places, I suppose, on the face of the earth at that time, and that raises a very interesting question, doesn't it?

Why did Jesus choose to live in such a place with such an awful reputation for sin?

There were thousands of other clean, respectable villages where he might have lived, but there in Nazareth he had to rub shoulders daily with some of the most perverted young people.

Jesus knew there would be other cities like New York, Chicago, London, Shanghai, San Francisco.

He knew that individuals would have to live in the environment of those wicked places and gain the victory over sin.

So Christ came to live in a place that was just as low and evil as any earthly place could be.

He gained the victory over that environment to show that it's possible for us also to gain the victory.

He exercised no power in gaining that victory that we may not have through faith in our Heavenly Father.

No 1 ever lived under greater conditions of temptation than Jesus did.

He was tempted in all points like we are, the Bible says, yet without sin.

What an encouragement it is to see Him living in that wicked Nazareth and still overcoming temptation.

He was a boy who would not bend in the slightest of the waves of evil influence.

Every young person especially should be encouraged by that tremendous example.

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Horns and Halos

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