Andrew Green is pastor of First Baptist Church in Marble Hill, MO.
In 1993 I still remember going to my cousin’s house and watching Jurassic Park. As a ten year old boy I remember sitting in awe as the mighty T-Rex attacked the two SUV’s filled with people and upon hearing the roar of the T-Rex I felt goosebumps. The movie was a hit at the box office and until the Titanic was released in 1997 it was the highest grossing movie in the American box office and as of 2013 the movie had grossed well over a billion dollars. The movie would spawn off two sequels and Jurassic World a fourth sequel is set to be released on June 12.
The movie today is one I watch anytime it comes on and just recently I realized that the movie was not necessarily as much about dinosaurs as much about man wanting to control things that are beyond their ability to control. The movie centers around John Hammond, a wealthy entrepreneur, trying to develop a park of cloned dinosaurs on a remote island called Isla Nublar. When the park is sabotaged Hammond loses control of the park and unwittingly he has put innocent people in danger including members of his own family.
In the spiritual realm we all have a Jurassic Park within us. We all have sins that we seek to control and maintain. We think that we can fence it in and that it will never hurt anyone but in reality our sin not only hurts us but destroys us. The Jurassic Park within us needs to be destroyed as much as the Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar needed to be destroyed.
We first find an example of this at the very beginning of the movie. The park is under scrutiny for being too dangerous to open to the public. During an accident a worker at the park is attacked and eaten by a Velociraptor. The investors of the park are concerned and John Hammond refuses to listen to his investors instead he enlists a group of people to tell him that his park is safe.
In our lives we continually refuse to recognize the power of sin in our lives. The Bible is very clear that sin is not something to make light of nor are we to play around with it. In the life of Samson, Saul, and King David himself we find sin leading them to destruction. Paul says in Romans 6:12-13 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, (ESV) we are to not play with it, touch, or even glare upon sin. For it is a powerful force that can lead us to destruction.
Sin even causes us to discount opinions of those we care about the most and leads us to seek justification for continuing in that sin. Hammond sought out the expert opinion of Ian Malcom, an expert on chaos theory, Alan Grant, and Ellie Sattler, expert paleontologists. Even though they themselves were overwhelmed with the dinosaurs initially they themselves recognize that the park was a dangerous place and was not something that Hammond or any human should be trying to control. Even Hammond’s own game warden Robert Muldoon told Hammond all the animals should be destroyed but Hammond completely disregard’s his advice due to the fact that he was marveling over his own manmade creation.
When we come into contact with the destructive power of sin we can quickly find that we like the temporary pleasures that it brings us and then seek to justify the sin we enjoy. Hebrews 11:25 calls the pleasures of sin as a seasonal thing. We enjoy it and we coddle it but in the end the sin comes and destroys us. Just as we find Hammond coddling the baby raptor hatching from the egg that raptor would eventually come to destroy the very park in which Hammond had created.
Another powerful aspect about sin is that it convinces humans that they can control the sin which they are partaking. Hammond believed that Jurassic Park could be controlled by fences, guns, and island seclusion. He believed that security was his answer. In the movie we quickly find that sabotage from within and the overwhelming power of the dinosaurs quickly causes the fences to fail and quickly those that once controlled the dinosaurs become the hunted.
People try to control their sins. We cover it up with lies, which is another sin in and of itself. We try to convince ourselves that our own little world we have created in which we are enjoying the temporary pleasures of sin will never spill over into destruction. This is never true just ask a person caught up in pornography or a person who finds himself or herself continually going back to the bottle. They fail to realize that the very sin they once sought to control is now controlling, hunting, and destroying them.
Once concluding though is sin when it spills over always hurts those closest to us. Hammond once again thinking he can control his park brings his two grandchildren Lexi and Timmy to see the park along with the other quests to his park. During the tour to see the park the power goes and the T-Rex escapes putting Lexie and Timmy in serious danger. If not for the bravery of Alan Grant the children would have died. To emphasize the great danger of the dinosaur’s four others would lose their lives before the rest would flee the island.
Sin always takes us down a road further than we want to go and we end up hurting those that we love the most. How many broken marriages, abused children, and broken have we seen because a person becomes engrossed in there sinfulness. Romans 6:23 says, For the wages of sin is death Hammond finds out that his creation leads to the death and danger of many that he dearly loved. When we play with sin and set ourselves up as our own god and enjoy the temporary fleeting pleasures sins we find that those closest to us are the ones that end up paying dearly.
In conclusion, as I age I realize more and more the destructive power of the Jurassic Park in me. The sin within me is constantly trying to control me and wrestle me away from the God and family I love. How many times that I have cried out like Paul in Romans 7, O what a wretched man I am who will come and save me, I do not know. But what I do know is that the answer to the Jurassic Park in our soul is the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Revelation 1:5 states that through the blood of Jesus Christ we have been delivered from our sins. Today, if you are struggling with the power of sin do not give up nor give in instead give yourself over to the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There you will find the power to destroy the Jurassic Park within you.