Hulk Help Series

(SLIDE 1) Heroes vs. Villains

Pt. 3 - Hulk Help

I. Introduction

Every Friday night I would sit in front of the larger than a couch tv to watch this show. The show was CBS for 5 years from 1978-1982 and had 80 episodes. The show chronicled the life of David Banner, a physician and scientist employed at California's Culver Institute, who is traumatized by the car accident that killed his beloved wife, Laura. Haunted by his inability to save her, Banner and his research partner, Dr. Elaina Marks, study people who were able to summon superhuman strength during moments of extreme stress. Obsessed with discovering why he was unable to exhibit such super-strength under similar conditions, Banner hypothesizes that high levels of gamma radiation from sunspots contributed to the subjects' increase in strength. Banner conducts an unsupervised experiment in the laboratory, bombarding himself with gamma radiation. However, the radiology equipment has recently been recalibrated, and Banner unknowingly receives a massive overdose. He initially thinks that the experiment has failed, but, when he injures himself while changing a flat tire, Banner's anger triggers his transformation into a 7-foot-tall (2.1 m), 330-pound (150 kg), green-skinned, superhumanly strong creature who is driven by rage, and has only a primitive, sub-human intelligence. This hulk, played by the retired body builder Lou Ferrigno, was unleashed when Bruce Banner would experience stress, anxiety, and most of all anger. The unexpected and destructive outbursts cause Banner to become a transient traveling from one town to another hoping to somehow learn to control the hulk inside of him. One of the famous lines that ran as part of the intro of the show was mild mannered, reserved Bruce Banner telling a reporter that constantly hounded him, "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry". Bruce Banner knew he needed Hulk help!

I am pretty sure that in this room today there are many of us who need some hulk help too. Did you know that there is a Hulk in the Bible? He doesn't turn green and it is doubtful that he was muscle bound but much like the comic book character this mild-mannered man battled the Hulk inside of him. I think we need to examine his life just to see if we might find the Hulk help we need.

Text: Exodus 1:22, 2:1-15, 3:10-11, 4:10; Numbers 20:2-3, 8-12 (TLB)

Then Pharaoh commanded all of his people to throw the newborn Hebrew boys into the Nile River. But the girls, he said, could live.

There were at this time a Hebrew fellow and girl of the tribe of Levi who married and had a family, and a baby son was born to them. When the baby’s mother saw that he was an unusually beautiful baby, she hid him at home for three months. Then, when she could no longer hide him, she made a little boat from papyrus reeds, waterproofed it with tar, put the baby in it, and laid it among the reeds along the river’s edge. The baby’s sister watched from a distance to see what would happen to him. Well, this is what happened: A princess, one of Pharaoh’s daughters, came down to bathe in the river, and as she and her maids were walking along the riverbank, she spied the little boat among the reeds and sent one of the maids to bring it to her. When she opened it, there was a baby! And he was crying. This touched her heart. “He must be one of the Hebrew children!” she said. Then the baby’s sister approached the princess and asked her, “Shall I go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” “Yes, do!” the princess replied. So the little girl rushed home and called her mother! “Take this child home and nurse him for me,” the princess instructed the baby’s mother, “and I will pay you well!” So she took him home and nursed him. Later, when he was older, she brought him back to the princess and he became her son. She named him Moses (meaning “to draw out”) because she had drawn him out of the water. One day, many years later when Moses had grown up and become a man, he went out to visit his fellow Hebrews and saw the terrible conditions they were under. During his visit he saw an Egyptian knock a Hebrew to the ground—one of his own Hebrew brothers! Moses looked this way and that to be sure no one was watching, then killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. The next day as he was out visiting among the Hebrews again, he saw two of them fighting. “What are you doing, hitting your own Hebrew brother like that?” he said to the one in the wrong. “And who are you?” the man demanded. “I suppose you think you are our prince and judge! And do you plan to kill me as you did that Egyptian yesterday?” When Moses realized that his deed was known, he was frightened. And sure enough, when Pharaoh heard about it he ordered Moses arrested and executed. But Moses ran away into the land of Midian.