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 Sermon > Official Service |
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Title |
Spirit, soul and body(6) - The 1st lecture on - Spirit, soul and body(6) |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
1Th 5:23 |
Date |
2003-11-02 |
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Introduction
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Some TV programs broadcast documentary about the Animal World. Have you ever felt the mystery of God's creation and admired it?
For example, bats search for the place of food even in a deep darkness with the principle of radar and eat it. And spiders spin very strong and flexible webs. The webs can be compared to optical fibers.
In addition, there are many marvelous things that make us admire the creation of God such as salmons that have mysterious homing instinct, seasonal birds that fly thousands kilometers, woodpeckers that drill thousands times a second, bees that have amazing flight - flapping four hundred times a second.
So, it is said in Job 12: 7-9, "But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?"
If we watch in detail various creatures of God, we can find the eternal divinity and mysterious power of God's creation that go too far beyond human strength and knowledge. And it was man consisting spirit, soul and body that was permitted to manage and take care of all creatures.
We men do not look strong or quick like a tigers or lions. And they are not smarter than other animals in smelling or watching. Nonetheless they are called the lord of all things. What do you think the reason is?
That's not only because men have spirit but also because they have the strength to think with great brain working. With the intelligent strength God gave men, they have developed science and culture to this day and managed all things. The thinking competence and intelligent strength are related to the working of the soul of man.
We have learned our body spiritually until the last session and now let's delve into the soul and the kind of soul's working. I bless in the name of the Lord you realize the original nature of man and make you a person more pleasing to God.
Body
Dear congregation,
The Oxford dictionary defines souls as a person's inner character, containing their true thoughts and feelings or the spiritual part of a person, believed to exist after death. On the other hand, soul has different meaning spiritually.
Men's brain has many cells, and there is a great memory system in the cells. Let me say this in parable. Suppose you have a computer and have input many pieces of information in the computer. If you type a command language, the computer remembers and reproduces stored information and much other knowledge.
God made this kind of good memorizing system in the brain when He created the first man. Compare brain cells with a computer, remembering and reproducing stored information is "thinking process," and hardware, software and stored knowledge do all belong to the soul. In this way, the soul refers to our memory system, stored knowledge and thinking process. In brief, the soul indicates our brain cells and their functions.
In other words, inputting what you see, hear or are taught into your brain with the feeling and reproducing stored information and knowledge are all in the soul. You can remember something and think it because you have soul.
This way man memorizes what he sees, hears and feels since his birth and a great number of contents are input in it. For example, the soul contains everything necessary for living, language, alphabets, action types, social rules, and the like.
So, how much deal of contents would he have if he had lived for decades? But generally speaking, his brain cells are destroyed and memory system weakens if he gets old.
And his memory or intelligent quality varies according to how much does the soul contain. This kind of difference is evaluated as the measure of IQ (Intelligent Quality).
IG varies both according to the kind of genes inherited from parents and to the kind of acquired things like learning or experiences. And this difference of each one's IG causes each one to gain different results although everyone makes the same effort.
Just as the greater capacity a computer has, the many more things it stores and the more it functions, a person with the better intelligent quality can memorize many more things and utilize them more efficiently.
So, parents must not only rebuke their children for being poor at their study and should not force them to do something more than their ability. First they should discover their children's capacity correctly and help them develop their talent or quality according to the kind of their capacity. Only then, can it be possible for their IQ to develop on and on.
It is said that man has more than 10 billions brain cells. A great scientist made the best of them and used 15 % of the cells, and he was Einstein who discovered the Principle of Relativity.
On the one hand, a genius is said to use 5 % of them and common people are said to just 3 % of the cells but miss 97 % the rest of the cells. As for the people with the same IQ, each of them can develop their IQ according to the measure of their efforts.
On the other hand, people in Christ can plant what they learn into their hearts not by thinking process, the work of the soul but by their spirits, the work of the Holy Spirit. So, they can concentrate on studying and become great in the world if in Christ.
This secret of succeeding in study did I preach the other day, so it will be very helpful to you if you refer to it again.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Until here we have looked into what the soul is, and then, what does the soul work?
We can say our body plays the role of a vessel containing our spirit and soul. And the soul forms our character, nature, ways of living, judging standard and the like through the function of thinking, and greatly influences the kind of our heart fields.
Man's spirit is not so far away from his soul, but is closely bound up with his soul.
By the way, the function of soul performed within us today is different from that of Adam before he did not sin.
When God created Adam, He formed him from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into the man. Afterward the man became a living spirit. Namely, Adam was not a man of perishable flesh but a living spiritual being with imperishable flesh. He had flesh and bones like us, but his body was imperishable.
This man's spirit was the master of him, and his soul played the role of a slave only obeying the spirit. It was true that his soul had the function of storing knowledge and thinking it, but the soul followed the command of the spirit obeying the word of truth. For this reason, Adam was not followed by any kind of untruth or wicked thought.
However, Adam disobeyed the command of God and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As a result his spirit died the way God said, "You will surely die when you eat of it" and a great change occurred to him.
In this way Adam used to be a living spiritual being, but his spirit died and he became a man of flesh with his soul and body left alone and his spirit dead. And after the length of his life, his body was supposed to return to the dust the way he had been taken from it.
As for this fact, it is said in Genesis 6: 3, "Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal," and in Genesis 3: 19, "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."
Along with this change of Adam, all creatures on earth were cursed and doomed to subject to perishing in Adam because he had been the lord of all things but returned to the dust in the sin of disobedience.
It is said in Romans 8:19-21, "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
What change happened to Adam's soul after he sinned?
Before he sinned, his spirit could have fellowship with God who is Spirit, and he could be taught only truth, but after his spirit died he was cut off from communicating with God and his soul began to play the role of the master within him in place of the dead spirit.
Our enemy Satan and the devil control the working of the soul belonging to untruth. So, Satan that is against God began to plant what is against truth into the man's soul through the thinking process. Since then, Satan has planted evil, wickedness, sin and what is hostile to God.
Let me take an example. Suppose somebody strikes you. Then, Satan whispers to your soul inside you that it is right for you to strike him back. Otherwise, he drives your soul into evil tempting, "Do you not have pride? Never stand like a fool!" This way he plants into you the untruth that it is right to take revenge.
However, it's not truth at all. God's word of truth urges us that we should bless in prayer those who persecute us and love our enemies. But, Satan tries to input what is against this truth into us and plant it in the soul. As a result, he intends to make us think it is right to revenge and have it become our conscience and judging standard.
According to each one's conscience and judging standard formed this way, he comes to have self-righteousness and show various evil acts accordingly. The growth of a child testifies to this fact.
A newborn baby does not know what goodness and evil are, but only acts by instinct. But he receives wickedness and untruth from the world through thinking process as he grows up and gets influenced by his soul. At the same time, his heart becomes stained with wickedness by degrees.
Of course, the growth of evil in each one's soul is different according to the kind of his heart field and the kind of his growth surroundings. Nonetheless, evil gets stored in his heart as Satan inputs him with what is against truth through the thinking of the soul. As a result, his heart is compelled to become poor heart field far away from good heart.
In this way, men inherit the sinful nature from parents that has been planted in fathers and fathers through thinking process for so long. And, they continue to store evil and wickedness in heart through thinking process as they grow up. Then how stubborn, haughty and poor the heart of men has become!
In addition, untruth gets stored in heart through the work of the soul and the untruth becomes each one's judging standard and value judgment. Due to this self-righteous but wrong judging standard and value judgment, many people commit terrible sins the way they consider righteous in their own eyes. After all, they commit sins as cruel and beastlike as from animals.
So, it is said in Ecclesiastes 3: 18, "I also thought, "As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals." In other words, many people act like beasts having only soul and body because their spirit are yet dead before they receive the Holy Spirit.
In order to restore the image of true man and carry out the whole duty of man, you should have your dead spirit raised to life again. This will be explained in detail later when I preach about our spirit.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
There is one thing for you to remember when you understand the work of the soul. The thinking process of the soul requires a vessel containing thought - namely the brain.
By the way, what would happen to you if your brain is damaged in traffic accident? There some people save their lives, but fall into memory loss caused by brain damage. They cannot do nothing but eat, sleep or feel something. They are forced to become another men than before.
Then, what would occur to those people with memory loss when they enter heaven? By the power of God, they can remember all they forgot on earth. That's because it becomes possible for their soul to fully function after God has revived destroyed parts in their brain.
Likewise only our spirit will not enter heaven but our soul will follow the spirit then. That is because this soul belongs to the spirit and consists of only truth without any untruth of this world.
Our Lord Jesus said when He breathed His last on the cross, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!" And it is said in Acts 7:59, "While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.'" My spirit in these two verses indicates the spirit followed by the soul belonging to truth. In conclusion, the spirit of the saved goes into heaven along with the soul after they breathe their last.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Then, how should you use your soul to become a man pleasing to God?
I explained Satan brings doubt into one's heart by provoking his soul and drives him into untrue thought that is against God's heart. When somebody's soul is under the control of Satan, he is called a person of soul.
And this kind of person cannot accept the Word of God into his heart because human and self-righteous knowledge stored in his brain hinders it. As a result, he can neither understand the spiritual realm nor enter the dimension of spirit.
God our Father never wants His children to become persons of soul. They should naturally become spiritual because the Father is Spirit. For this sake, you should always keep yourself away from Satan's control by removing your thought of untruth. Instead, you should try to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit who controls your heart by obeying the word, and have your soul obey His voice. And when you hear the word, you receive it joyfully with "Amen" and continue to pray until you realize its spiritual meanings from your heart so that you can be filled with and inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Only then, can you have your spirit play the full role of the master in you far from Satan's control and can quickly enter the spiritual dimension enjoying the deep fellowship with God every day.
Conclusion
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Today I preached about the soul belonging to the body.
It is said in Genesis 2:19, "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name." This verse shows that Adam had already a great intelligent capacity when he was first created.
In this way, man has brain cells through which he inputs what he sees, hears or feels into them and reproduces the stored knowledge and information. All this is called spiritually the soul. The soul is liable to be under Satan's control, and really Satan has planted more and more evil into men's hearts through their untrue thoughts.
The reason we should learn the spirit, soul and body is because we should understand what the work of the soul is and restore our souls the way God wants. In other words, you should not let your soul be under the control of Satan but should have your spirit play the role of the master to manage and take care of the soul. This way you can become a person of spirit.
Only then, can you restore the lost image of God, regain the right fellowship with God the Father and enjoy Adam's authority and power to manage all things. So, as it is said in 2Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come," you can become a new creation in Christ.
Next time I will preach about the most important topic, the spirit belonging to the body. I bless in the precious name of the Lord that you may enjoy the privilege of God's children courageously through today's message and be guided to the way of blessings in the continual fellowship with God the Father. |
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