It was sometime near midnight when the state police found Pop Greenman. He was sitting quietly in the cab of a pickup truck almost 200 miles from home Pop wasn’t hurt, or even particularly upset. Just a little cold and bewildered. His truck had run out of gas, so he had coasted to the shoulder of the interstate and parked. He really wasn’t sure how he got there—or where he was going.
So he just sat. Waiting for something, someone.
Once the pickup was identified, it didn’t take long to get Pop home. The elderly man lives with his son’s family. Apparently, he had borrowed his son’s truck to pick up some items at a hardware store a couple of miles away.
Once he had backed out of the driveway, however, Pop had become disoriented. He was driving, but where? He was passing through town, but why? Where Main Street merged onto the Interstate, Pop had slipped the truck into high gear and kept going. You see he suffers from Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer (älts’hi--mer)
- Disease of the Mind
- Disorientation
- Loss of memory
- Indifference to surroundings
Apathy
- Disease of the Soul
- Indifference,
- Preoccupation,
- Backsliding,
Scripture’s Alzheimer’s
Amaziah
2 Ch. 25:1-15 — Amaziah v.2 he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, but not with a perfect (not wholehearted devotion) hear
- v.2-3 - Started out right with justice on his fathers assassins
- v.4 - Followed the law
- v.7-10 - Listened to the prophet by sending home Israel’s mercenaries
- v. 11-12 (14) - Won victory over Edomites
- v.14-15 - Gave in to worship of other Gods
- v.16 - God will destroy
- v.17-24 (20) - Pride
- v. 27 - Murdered – Note: turned from following God
- James 1:8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
- James 4:8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
- Why was Amaziah double minded? - Why not Wholehearted?
Demas Answer
- Col 4:7, 9, 10, 11, 12 - Fellow servants
- Col. 4:14 - Luke the beloved & Demas
- Phi 23-24 - Demas listed in the faithful 5
- These had endured
- The frown of Rome
- Anxiety of imprisonment
- Sting of rejection
- The bite of the whip
- The smell of blood
- 2 Tim 4:7 - They carried on
- Demas with the greatest of the apostles
- 2 Tim 4:10a - Demas has forsaken me
- Why?
- 2 Tim 4:10b Demas betrayal - Loved this present world
- Temporal preoccupation, ease, pleasure
- This was Amaziah’s Problem – Demas Problem
Signs of Sp. Alzheimer’s
1. Disorientation
- Confusion
- Focus on our surroundings
- Caught up with the temporary
2 Corinthians 4:18KJV 18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 5:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
2. Loss of Memory
- Ps 78:11 - Israel forgot his works
- Ps 78:42 - Israel remembered not his hand
- In one year they saw:
- The Plagues of Egypet
- Red sea a highway
- Cloud of fire
- Tabernacle built
- Manna from heaven
- Law on stone
- Water out of a rock
- They lost their memory
- Unable to go into the land for 40 years
3. Apathy
- APATHY from two words — a-, “without,” and the root pathos, “passion.” No love
- The opposite is ENTHUSIASM from two words — “entheos”
- en meaning in or within,
- theos meaning God; — In God or God within
- Larry Crabb “Finding God”
* The core problem is not that we are too passionate about bad things, but that we are not passionate enough about good things. -
- Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf 1700-1760 German Pioneer of modern missions (His 24/7 prayer meetings lasted 100 yrs.
* I have but one passion; it is He, He only.
- Rev 2:1-6 - Church at Ephesus had lost their first love
- Jesus cries out repent
- Ro. 12:1 Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind
Some Questions
1. Who Am I?
- Can you say “I am a saved by the blood of the lamb
- I do not belong to myself
- My body, mind, time and energies belong to Jesus
2. Why am I Here?
- I am salt, a preservative for a decaying culture
- I am light for those who are blind and lost in darkness of sin
- I am in a war a warrior for the king doing battle with the enemy of our soul
3. Where Am I Going
- I know that this world s not my home
- Life is brief, a puff of smoke, a heart beat
- I am destined to out live the sun, the galaxies
- Today’s hurts and sorrows are but a blink of an eye
- Pop Greenman thought he knew his way
- It was all so familiar
- Somewhere between here and there reality slipped away and he was left stranded in a mental wasteland
- Amaziah would not listen and leaped into an ocean of lostness
- Demas drove his spiritual life through the guardrail of truth leaving his first love for this world
Establish Your Heart — Psalm 78:37
For their heart was not right with him, neither were they stedfast in his covenant.
