Major Ian Thomas emphasizes the necessity of identifying with Christ's death to experience His resurrection life. He explains that true Christian living is not about self-effort but about allowing Christ to live through us, highlighting that every believer has already experienced a spiritual resurrection through faith. Thomas warns against seeking glory without recognizing the need for the cross, illustrating that genuine transformation comes from surrendering to God's will and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide our lives. He stresses that understanding how God created man is essential for grasping the gospel and the divine logic behind it.

Do you know what happened in the east this morning? Can't catch you up twice on that one. The sun rose. We talked about that last night. But remember, there's no sunrise without sunset. That was as true for the Lord Jesus then, as it is true for you and for me now. Before ever the Lord Jesus could share with us his resurrection life, he had first to die. Take our place upon the cross, a vicarious sacrifice, whom God made to be sinned, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him and share the glory. That's why you and I have first to go with him into death before we can share his resurrection life. It's life out of death, as sun rises, light out of darkness. It's so beautifully explained for us in the epistles of the Colossians. Let me read it to you. And I'm using the Amplified New Testament in the first four verses of the third chapter of the epistles of the Colossians. If then you have been raised with Christ to a new life, it's not a patched up life, it hasn't been made over, it's a new life. If then you have been raised with Christ to a new life, thus sharing his resurrection from the dead, aim at and seek the rich eternal treasures that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds, keep them set on what is above, the higher things, not on the things that are on the earth. For as far as this world is concerned, you have died, and your new real life is hid with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is our life, not will be, is right now, when Christ who is our life, when he appears, then you also will appear with him in the splendor of his glory. Identify with him in death, who suffered a death like ours, so that we might now enjoy a resurrection like this. Explicit, as it is recorded for us in the first chapter of the second chapter of the epistles of the Ephesians. Beautiful, the way it's rendered in the Amplified New Testament. Let me read it. Even when we were dead, he made us alive, together in fellowship and union with Christ. He gave us the very life of Christ himself, the same new life with which he, God, quickened him. And he raised us up together with Christ, and made us sit together with him in the heavenly sphere, by virtue of our being in Christ Jesus. Now, this isn't relegated to the future. This isn't in the then and there, it's in the here and now. He made us alive. In other words, every redeemed sinner has already enjoyed a spiritual resurrection. Resurrection means that that life previously possessed, once forfeited, has now been restored. That's new birth. That's called regeneration. Not by any works of righteousness, which we have done. According to his mercy, he saved us by the washing of regeneration, the renewing of God, the Holy Ghost, the coming back of somebody, God, the Holy Spirit, to live in somebody. And a Christian is somebody living in somebody. That's why the only genuine explanation for the true Christian life is Christ, somebody living in somebody. That's the only explanation that the Lord Jesus would ever allow, as we discussed some of this this morning, for the quality of the life that he lived on earth. Somebody living in somebody. Don't call me good. There's only one said Jesus who's good, Luke 18 and verse 19, God. And he wasn't saying he wasn't God, he was simply saying that though God, he had emptied himself, humbled himself, made himself of no reputation. The New English Bible says he made himself nothing, and was born a human being, so that he on earth might be a body wholly filled and flooded with God himself. And that life that he shared then, the life of the Father, clothed with the sinless humanity of the Son, is the very life that you and I receive in the moment of redemption. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, if he, God the Holy Spirit, has not taken up residence within your redeemed humanity, you're not a Christian. If any man have not the Holy Spirit of Christ, he's none of it. Don't you know that Christ lives in you, except you be a reprobate. That's an old-fashioned word that means counterfeit. This was almost the last thing that Paul had to say at the end of two long epistles to the church in Corinth. He says examine yourself whether you'll be in the faith, prove your own selves, don't take it for granted, don't let anybody take you for a ride and dump you on the periphery of reality. He said don't you know that Christ lives in you, unless you're a reprobate, counterfeit. If Christ doesn't as yet live in you and you profess to be a Christian, you're a phony. You may be playing church, but this is the record God has given to those who are redeemed, eternal life. And this life that he has given is in his Son. He that has the Son has life. He that doesn't have the Son of God doesn't have life. And a person who doesn't have life is dead, fit only to be buried. But before ever you and I can enjoy his resurrection, we have to go in his direction to the place of death. You see, you have to earn it. Go west with Christ and die if you want to share his glory in the east. Do you remember what Peter McTonagh told us this morning about Lot? Which direction did he go? Lot journeyed east, Genesis 13 11, and went down. He did what so many seek to do. He wanted the glory without recognizing the need for the cross. You've got to go west if you want to shine with the glory of Christ in the east. There's no sunrise without sunset. That's why you see there are so many who are biblically schooled, doctrinally sound, legalistically correct, morally house trained, and full of enthusiasm, and spiritually sterile. They're trying to gain the glory by moving in the wrong direction. East instead of west. When you go with Christ to the west, he leads you to only one place, the place where he died. So then you can say with the apostle Paul, I am crucified with Christ. I've identified with him, myself with him in death, recognizing that I deserve no more nor less than what happened to the one there who took my place, sentenced, executed, and buried. Nevertheless, I live, if not I. For he having suffered a death like mine, I now share a resurrection like this. Marvelous. Unless you travel west to the place where he died, you'll never share with him the glory of his resurrection in the east. You'll be spiritually sterile. I thought I'd introduce you just for a moment to two of my friends. I always carry them in my pocket because it's so much less expensive than paying their claims there. I get all kinds of letters from all kinds of people, and they're always very fascinating. And you know, it's where the rubber hits the road. And I have found that to read some of these letters is the quickest way to introduce those who have a hunger for God to the reality of sharing his resurrection. Greetings in Jesus' name. I first became acquainted with your ministry in July 1975 as I was visiting my brother-in-law in language school at the Rio Grande Bible Institute in Edinburgh, Texas. Then he added this. I was not ready to receive the truth of the imparted life. In other words, to him, all this stuff and nonsense about Jesus living in us, and he alone the one who can do it, and never will nor can unless you let him. He considered that was passivity. I was not ready to receive the truth of the imparted life of Christ. I was on my way to the mission field of Brazil, and I had plenty of energy, plenty of ideas as to how I would do mission work. He was just visiting his brother-in-law who was still only in training for the mission field, but he was the finished article. My soul-winning efforts during college were fairly successful, and I figured that to carry it through on the mission field there was no bigger hindrance than learning a new language. And then he summed it all up in two words, or three. I was 23. I mean, what else do you need once you're 23? When you've been through a mission Bible college, prepared to enter the field, and all you've got to do is learn a new language, and you're completed. And the missionary Bible college that he went to was soundly evangelical, fundamentally based on the revelation of God's Word, but there was a missing factor. He was moving in the wrong direction, east instead of west. He was seeking the glory without recognizing his need of Christ's death. I praise God that in his love and mercy he saw the desire of my heart really to love him. But I had incomplete knowledge. I was trained, and this is the sad part, you see, of the story. I was trained to go and burn out for God, and that is just exactly what I did. Let me say we struggled through three terms before God. That normally represents 12 years on the mission field. Three terms of four years before furlough. Let me say we struggled through three terms before God brought me to the point of realizing that he wanted to be the fire in my life, as I yielded to his indwelling presence, allowing him to be God in my life, to minister through me to sinners and to saints. It was a slow, painful, agonizing death to self. But I rejoice now in him today for the glorious freedom of allowing Christ to be my substitute in all now that I do and say. Trained for 12 years of slow, painful, agonizing death to self. Isn't it sad that a man has to agonize for 12 years before he discovers the first basic principle of the Christian life that you and I are fit for no more than what happened to the Christ who died for us, so that we, he having suffered a death like ours, we now might share a resurrection like it. Does it take three or four years in the theological college, a mission training school, and 12 years on the field to learn what it means to be a Christian, to learn what it means to be a missionary? So how old do you have to be? What degrees do you have to earn? Well I got another letter which was very exciting. It was a small boy that I first met when I invited him to Capon Ray and hadn't seen him for 30 years. I hadn't even heard from him. I remembered and recognized his name as soon as I saw the signature at the end of the letter, but for 30 years we'd been totally out of contact, the one with the other. Just recently I spoke at a large conference on the theme to which you introduced me when I was barely 14 years old, just a kid of 13. You invited me three times to be your guest at Capon Ray Hall in England, and as a result I was there many times after that. It was there that I heard you explain the truth about Jesus Christ, that it is he that lives his life in and through us. Something so very different from our trying to live our lives for him. It was a principle that established me in the gospel, and from that day a central principle that gives me peace and confidence in Christ. I was three years in military service in the Far East. I was for two years teaching in a medical school in Uganda, Africa, followed by theological training in Oak Hill Theological Seminary in London, then two years as pastoral assistant before I became the rector of a parish in the inner city, and now for the past seven years I've been a professor in a theological college in the United States. It was a fantastic lesson which I learned as a young Christian, a kid of 13, in Manchester, England. It is a glorious spiritual truth which I continue to share with others. How old do you have to be? How long do you have to spend in seminary? Well when my wife forwarded this letter to me, she always opens my letters just in case there any checks in them, she sent me a newspaper cutting. The Reverend Terry Kelshaw has been appointed to be the Bishop of Rio Grande, a territory that stretches from New Mexico to Big Bend in Texas. Altogether 700 miles long by 400 miles wide, approximately twice the size of Great Britain. So you plant a seed in the heart of a little kid of 13, and you don't see him for 30 years, but you finally hear from him again, and he's been appointed the Anglican Bishop in a territory twice the size of his own country. Does that sound complicated? You see there's a divine logic, and I don't mean by that human tradition. Paul mentions this in the same Ephesians of the Colossians, from which I earlier cited. It's in the second chapter and the sixth verse. Colossians chapter 2 and verse 6, As you have therefore received the Christ. As. How did you receive the Lord Jesus? How much you pay? What list of good works did you have to present to God to get his approval? How many letters of recommendation? How did you receive Christ? Well I know how I received Christ, nobody knew, I just bowed my head as a kid of 12 in a big marquee, where a man who wasn't even a preacher except that he had learned how to preach as a businessman, and by that I mean that he had learned to communicate to kids of my ilk a truth that was calculated to revolutionize my life. We called him bubbly head, because he frothed at the mouth when he spoke. It was very helpful to me, because you see instead of looking at the tent pole or the earwigs climbing up and down the tent, I watched the bubbles. It's fantastic, and it was a wonderful game, it wasn't just one game, it was a series of matches, because you see on one side of his mouth there would develop a bubble and it would get bigger and bigger and bigger, but at the same time there was another bubble on the other side, and that got bigger and bigger, and it was a matter of which is going to burst first, you see, I mean it was fantastic, and finally the one on the right hand said burst, and that was a point for the other side, but by the time that one had burst, you see, and had produced a new bubble which was growing, the other one burst, and that was one all, and I kept the score all the way through the man's talk, and that man could produce bubbles like a laying eggs, it was fantastic, and when at the end of his talk where he talked about the good shepherd who lay down his life for the sheep, my sheep hear my voice, I know them, they follow me, and I give to them what a man is born without, every boy, girl, man or woman born into this world has been born lifeless, alienated from the life of God, dead in trespasses and sin, but the Lord Jesus says that sheep that hears my voice and follows me, I give to him eternal life, having given myself for him, I give myself to him, that life for which man was created that he lost in Adam, and he said did you ever thank him, well I never thanked him because nobody ever told me, but I thought that was pretty smart, so in the silence of my heart unknown to anybody I said Lord Jesus, nobody ever told me that you died in my place, I didn't know that I had to give you a personal invitation to become my saviour so that I could become a Christian, I was taught from the year dot that because my face was white and my name was Thomas and I lived in England and I'd been christened and vaccinated that I was a Christian, nobody ever told me, I'm sorry to keep you waiting so long, but I want you to know that right now I receive you as my saviour, quarter to nine, Saturday night 13th of August 1927 and I've never had one cause to doubt from that moment to this that I passed from death to life and Christ has been my saviour for 67 years, it just took bubbly head that's all, just the gospel and a bunch of bubbles wonderful as you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him as so, how did you receive him, recognized your need, held out an empty hand, took what God provided and said thank you, how are you to walk for him, exactly the same way, you receive him as your redeemer by recognizing that he can do what you cannot, for you can no more become the Christian that you're supposed to be apart from his death for you, any more than you can be the Christian you become apart from his life in you as you have received him, recognizing your need and saying thank you, so walk in him, recognize your need and say thank you, thank you for dying for me, thank you now for living in me, it's all so simple isn't it, who can make it complicated except human beings, they call them theologians and they have to make everything complicated so that you see other theologians can explain what they make complicated, it keeps the boys in business, as you have therefore received the Christ so walk, regulate your lives, conduct yourselves in union with and conformity to him, having the roots of your being firmly deeply planted in Christ, fixed and founded in Christ, being continually built up in Christ, for in verse 9 of that Colossians in chapter 2, in him, in Christ, the whole fullness of deity, the Godhead continues to dwell in bodily form, giving complete expression of the divine nature, and the marvelous thing is now that God has given to our Lord Jesus a second body in addition to the one he first gave him at Bethlehem when he was born a little bear, and in whom for 33 years there dwelt the whole triune Godhead, and in whose humanity he gave complete expression of the divine nature, but on the day of Pentecost when our Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, came to reinvade the first 120 who became members of his body, raised from the dead, alive again, so that in them today, indwelt in all the fullness of the triune Godhead, they might continue to give complete expression of the divine nature. What an incredible thing it is to be a Christian. You, he continues, are in him, you've been made full, you've come to fullness of life in Christ, you too are filled with the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and you reach in them full spiritual stature. This is the gospel, it has nothing to do with rules and regulations, a legalistic straitjacket. You see, Christianity, apart from Christ, is a dead religion. Holiness, apart from Christ, is a sheer impossibility, it's out of reach, and spirituality, apart from God, the Holy Ghost, is a nauseating fraud. You who were dead, in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, your sensuality, your sinful carnal nature, God brought to life together with Christ, having freely forgiven us all our transgressions. Now that's what it means to become a Christian, to be brought to life, to have restored to you, by the presence of our risen Saviour, that life that was lost when Adam fell and became alienated from God himself, dead. In trespasses and sins, this is the divine logic, not a human tradition. That's why he goes on then to say in the same chapter, in verse 8, see to it that no one carries you off as spoil, in other words, takes you for a ride, or makes you yourselves captive, mesmerized by his so-called philosophy and intellectualism, vain deceit, idle fancies, plain nonsense, following human tradition, men's ideas of the material rather than the spiritual world, just crude notions, following the rudimentary and elemental teachings of the universe, and disregarding the teachings of Christ. In other words, says Paul, don't let anybody kid you. I'm talking about the divine logic, not some human tradition, or man-made theological philosophy, a pseudo-intellectualism that leaves us destitute of life. I'll spell the divine logic out very simply, and we'll come back to it in the course probably the next one or two days, and in a moment I'm going to illustrate it, at least we'll take the first baby steps in illustrating the divine logic on the screen, which I hope you'll be able to see. Here's the divine logic in all its sublime simplicity. Every demand that God makes upon a man is, from God's point of view, completely illogical. Every demand that God makes of a man is, from his point of view, God's point of view, completely illogical. What is it that God has the absolute right to demand of a man who was created and is an image? Of whom he said, let us make man in our image, and in our likeness, and the likeness of God may he him. What then is it that the creator God has the absolute legitimate right to demand of a man whom he created specifically to advertise deity, to do exactly what the Lord Jesus did when he came to take God who is invisible out into the open where he can be seen? Well you've heard it already pronounced this week, God says, Old Testament, be ye holy, and that's when you get a bit hot around the neck, and you say, how holy? And God says, even as I'm holy, when you're as holy as I am, the God who created you in his own perfect image, you're okay. Last verse, fifth chapter of Matthew's gospel, said the Lord, ye be perfect, and you get really hot around the neck now, I mean you fidget, you wish you'd gone the show. How perfect? And said the Lord, ye even as your father in heaven is perfect, we demand nothing more of you than that you be as holy as the God who created you in his own image, and be as perfect as the Father God in heaven. Then you're okay. Any questions? Any reason why God should demand less of you than that which he had in mind when he created Adam? On the basis of whose logic? A fallen race of fallen men, deluded by the devil, for the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel should shine unto them, and reveal the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, who was the only real man who ever walked on earth since Adam fell. In point of fact, as we may have time to discuss, he was the only man, real man, who's ever been born. The only real man who's ever lived on earth, apart from Adam. When God first made him. But Adam wasn't born. Adam was created. The only real man who's ever been born is Jesus. Because he wasn't born the way that you and I were born. We are the fallen heirs of a fallen Adam. And in Adam all die. The Lord Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost. That little baby boy was fashioned in the borrowed womb of a virgin girl by divine intervention. And for that reason, as I mentioned this morning, he came uninhabited by sin, inhabited only by God. You and I are born uninhabited by God, inhabited only by sin. He was the only real man who was ever born, or who ever lived since Adam fell. That's why in the 15th chapter of the first epistles of the Corinthians, the 45th verse, we're told the first man, Adam, was a living soul. He was created alive. He died. The last Adam, a quickening spirit, one who came to raise the dead, restore life to the lifeless. Verse 47, first Corinthians, chapter 15. The first man was of the earth, earthly. He was created. The second man, the only other man, was the Lord from heaven, Jesus. So every demand that God makes of a man is from God's point of view completely illogical. Only from man's point of view in his fallen condition is it utterly unreasonable. And it is utterly unreasonable in man's fallen condition. To try to tell a man in his fallen condition to be good is an exercise in futility. So every demand that God makes upon a man is from God's point of view completely illogical. Only from man's point of view in his fallen condition is it utterly unreasonable because, here's the third and last part of the proposition, in the divine logic there's a hidden factor that is absent in human reason. And that hidden factor present in the divine logic, absent in human reason, that which represents the margin of difference between what is divinely possible but otherwise cannot but be humanly unreasonable, that hidden factor is God himself. God himself. Because you and I were made that way. It takes God to be a man. He is the hidden factor in man's humanity that makes us functional. That's why the Lord Jesus, when he came to be the kind of man that he is God created man to be, said, without my father, the hidden factor, I can do nothing. The father who lives in me, the hidden factor, he does the work. What I say he does, what I say, what I do he, what I say he says, what I do he does. Look at me and see God, the hidden factor, clothed with the perfect humanity of one born of the Holy Ghost, uninhabited by sin, inhabited only by God. That's the divine logic. And the divine logic you see demands that you and I should know how God created man in normality. That's why the earliest thing that little kids should learn in Sunday school or at their mother's knee at home or dad's is how God created man. Because until you know how God created man, man in normality, you'll never understand what went wrong when he fell. Because normality is the only solid basis for accurate diagnosis. If a doctor didn't know what your temperature ought to be, normality, there'll be no point in sticking a thermometer in your mouth. He wouldn't take your blood pressure if he didn't know what it should be if you were normal. You hope when your car won't go and you take it to the garage that there's a mechanic there who knows how it was created. You're not always that successful. But it's only on the basis of normality can he shoot the trouble. So the first thing in the preaching of the gospel that you and I should make abundantly clear to every boy, girl, man or woman is how God created man. How on that basis he was intended to function. Then they'll know what went wrong when man fell. And for the first time they'll have an intelligent understanding of the remedial measures that God introduced to put things right. That's the gospel. Unless you do that groundwork and you introduce somebody to a relationship to Jesus Christ, it'll normally be on a commercial basis what they can get out of God or simply a sentimental affection that is devoid of substance. It'll be an emotional experience. But it won't be reality. So tonight just for a few minutes in the conclusion of this I'm going to begin to explain to you how God created man. So that we may then understand how he was intended to function. What it really means for a man to give God in his heart a place for God's feet. So that he can make the place of his feet glorious and beautify the place of his sanctuary. His habitation. And we'll discover what went wrong so that God had to write across a whole fallen race of human beings a Shabbat. The glory has departed. Then we'll understand why God sent his son. For it became him in bringing many sons back to glory. To make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering. That it was going to involve for our Lord Jesus in the sinlessness of his humanity that as I have indicated demonstrated the innocence of a pre-fallen Adam because he functioned on earth exactly as he as God intended man to be when first he made Adam. And what in the sinlessness of that humanity he had to undergo vicariously so that God without doing violence to his own righteousness might restore to man the life man lost in the day that Adam fell. Believing then as he did that a man can be man without the hidden factor. God. We call it humanism. That philosophy that is being taught in your high school and you let them do it. Nothing new about it. It was introduced by Satan when he persuaded man to believe that he could be a man without God. It's been picked up of course again and again all down the centuries. It was picked up again 75 years ago by a man called Lenin. And he introduced it in a tyrannical dictatorship to a whole nation. So that every child in Russia and those that were subject to his jurisdiction in the allied countries were reared to ridicule the idea of God. That man is no more than the most sophisticated end product of an evolutionary process that began with a big bang in space and then produced an amoeba. Aren't you proud of your ancestry? Every little kid was brought up to ridicule the idea of God or that man as a human being could be inhabited by another person. 75 years. What's happened to the Soviet Union? It lies in ruins. Morally, spiritually, financially, politically bankrupt. One of our staff members who's assigned to the one-time communist countries just two or three weeks ago traveled from Riga in Latvia to St. Petersburg. First class round trip for two dollars. 14 hours in the train because nobody else could afford the price. He traveled from St. Petersburg back to Moscow. 10 hours. Two dollars. First class. He traveled from Moscow back to Riga to return to Sweden. 12 hours. Two dollars. Six dollars. That's the condition of a country that believed that a man could be a man without God. A doctor or a solicitor today in Moscow earns twenty dollars a month. It was an exercise in human futility. But the extraordinary thing is this that man learns absolutely nothing from history only to condemn himself by repeating it. And the very philosophy that was taught then that has brought countless nations now to ruin is the very philosophy you allow your high school teachers, kindergarten teachers to teach in your schools. So that in the United States you're not even allowed today to take a bible into a high school. When Wycliffe translators are sending 130,000 bibles a month to a country that cannot be satisfied no matter how many millions they deliver because at last they've rediscovered there's a hidden factor that for 70 years, 75 years was missing in a nation that's been brought to ruin. Maybe we might learn something. If that were to happen to us what has already happened to them is probably what it's going to take. So it might be worthwhile discovering how God created man, how he was intended to function and what went wrong. Then we'll see the relevance of the remedial measures that God introduced to put things right. We won't have long, I'll only be able just to introduce you, but we'll pick it up probably tomorrow night. When it's dark it's easier to see, but we'll illustrate it from God's word tomorrow morning in the first session. So we'll, if we may have the projector or the whatever it is, thank you. We're going to have these lights put off so that I trust you'll get some idea of what's there on the board. Now you may think that looks confusing, like the blood system of a frog, but it's gloriously simple. This is a little diagram that I've been using for decades, whether I'm talking to a little kid of seven or eight or a gray-bearded professor from some university, because it represents the fundamental basis upon which you and I alone can preach the gospel intelligently. God is a trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You probably can't read this, that's the key, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And he put this tiny little planet into space. On it he created three forms of life, and they're described here. Vegetable, a form of life which is characterized by the possession of a body, but that's all that the vegetable has. It has physical life, it's capable of growth and reproduction, but all it has is a body, and by the varying shapes of the different bodies in the vegetable kingdom you recognize a cabbage from a spring onion, because they've got unique and individual bodies within their species. But God also created, in addition to the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom. And the animal kingdom is to be distinguished from the vegetable kingdom by the fact that God built into every form of animal life a behavior mechanism. It's called the soul, and that comes as quite a shock to some people to imagine that animals have got souls. Well of course they have. We won't take this moment to turn to it, but we may have the opportunity later, but you can make a note of it. It's the 30th verse of the first chapter of Genesis. Maybe rather than tantalize you, I should read it. Genesis chapter 1 and verse 30. To every beast of the earth, to every fowl of the air, to everything that creepeth upon the earth, insects and worms, fish in the sea, wherein there is life. Now that's the translation in King James, but the word life there in the original, the Hebrew, is soul, living soul. It's the word that is translated in the King James Bible in the first chapter in the historical chronological unfolding of God's creation by living creature. Same word, living soul. It's the word that is used when God commanded Moses, not Moses, when God commanded Noah to take two of every creature except seven of some and put them in the ark because of the flood. In the King James, creature. In the German Bible, lebende Geselle, because it's taken directly from the original, living soul. It's the same word, exactly the same word that is used in the seventh verse of the second chapter. Genesis 2-7. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, created, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became, exactly the same word, a living soul. In other words, he was created to be an animal. The fact that you've got a soul doesn't distinguish you as man from the animal kingdom, it simply means you're not a vegetable. That's encouraging. The teachers that tried to teach me Latin when I was at school never believed that I was anything but a vegetable. So that which distinguishes the animal kingdom from the vegetable kingdom is a behavior mechanism which the Bible calls the soul. We commonly describe the soul in Christian parlance as the heart, though most people don't know what their heart is. Maybe you didn't until now. It's your soul. The heart, of course, as a piece of language is simply a figurative term. There are certain parts of the world where they don't describe as the heart what we describe as the heart. We think it's the seat of our affections for some strange reason. I suppose because it beats a little faster when you see somebody you love, or just missed the bus that came around the corner in a hurry. But in the Lunda tribe in Africa where I have ministered, they don't talk about the heart as the seat of their affections. They talk about the liver, as many of you know. So when the young man goes to visit his girlfriend with a bunch of flowers, he says, darling, I love you with all my liver. And he means exactly what you and I mean when we say we love somebody with all our hearts. We laugh at them, and they laugh at us. It's the soul. And the soul or behavior mechanism is threefold in character. It's a mind to think with on occasions, emotions to react with, will to decide with. It's a behavior mechanism. And you exercise the will to motivate the body into action, behave in a way a cabbage cannot, in the area of your soul. Because your will, you see, operates under the instruction of the mind and the impulse of your emotions. So whatever governs your mind and whatever governs your emotions will ultimately direct your will and govern your behavior. That's why, as we've already been reminded, the sort of literature you read, the pictures you look at, the images are going to affect you the way you behave. Everybody in the world is trying to capture your mind, capture your emotions, so they can manipulate your will. That's why you have television commercials. Some business is trying to mesmerize your mind, so stir your emotions, that when you go to the store you'll buy their product. As Peter McDonald was trying to tell, they're trying to make you dissatisfied. So the one thing you need for satisfaction is what they offer. They're capturing your mind. And they'll usually, in the background, have a half-naked girl to stir your emotions. Then they've got you. We live in a propaganda world. In a political campaign, the politicians will be stalking the country with all their literature and television and radio broadcasts and whistle stops to capture your mind, so stir your emotions that they'll capture your will. And when they've got that, they've got your vote on polling day. That's the world you live in. It's a behavior mechanism. Whoever controls your mind, whoever controls your emotions, will direct your will. That's the soul. Now in the animal soul, that which teaches the mind and controls the emotions and therefore directs the will is instinct. It's a built-in computerized program. We don't know what it is. It's fascinating beyond words to describe it. If mum is asked by the small boy, who taught that spider to spin a web? Mum shrugs her shoulders and says, well nobody taught it, son. Instinct. She doesn't know what she's saying, but that's what it is. And it's incredibly wonderful. God brought it up. But instinct, you see, governs the animal kingdom. It's a built-in computerized program with a rigid interlock between the instinctive trust and the animal soul from which it cannot escape. It does what it does because it must. That's the animal kingdom. Two forms of life. Vegetable, animal. And the animal can be distinguished from the vegetable kingdom by our capacity to behave within a behavior mechanism called the soul. But God didn't create man just to be an animal, though physiologically we're animals. We're born the animal way. We bleed and breed and feed the animal way. But God didn't intend in man simply to have another animal. He could have made us that way, of course, and would have been far less bother. Because the animal kingdom at least does what God intended. It's functionally satisfying. But when God created man, he didn't want a creature that was merely functionally satisfied. He wanted a creature who would be morally satisfying. Because God is love. And the only thing that satisfies love is to be loved. The only thing that satisfies friendship is to be befriended. But love cannot be compelled. You can't go with your fists clenched to someone and say you're going to be my friend, you understand? I insist upon it. You men, did you get your wife that way? I didn't get my wife that way. I keep her that way, but I didn't get her that way. Love demands the free option. You've got to exercise a choice in order to love. So God made man differently. And just to save a moment or two, we're not going to turn chapter and verse, but you'd find it if you want to look at it before tomorrow. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 23. The word of God, God's revelation, discerns between soul and spirit. Man was given an addition to a soul what he didn't give to any other form of life on this planet, the spirit. That's why when you and I are to be functional, all three have got to be in operation and in sync, body, soul, and spirit. Except that in the Bible, they're put in their correct order. The God of peace sanctify you wholly, sanctify you wholly, spirit and conjunction, soul and conjunction, body. That's the 23rd verse of the 5th chapter of the 1st epistle of Thessalonians. The other verse, I confused to which I quoted, was the 12th verse of the 4th chapter of the epistle of the Hebrews. The word of God, quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing asunder between soul, mind, emotion, and will, and spirit. The unique capacity that God built into man that allows the creature to be inhabited by the creator, so that in man God places himself as the hidden factor who is indispensable to a man's humanity. A man who has a body in common with all forms of created life. He possesses a soul in common with every form of animal life, but uniquely, as the only creature on this planet, he possesses a human spirit. And the difference, of course, between the animal kingdom, governed by instinct, and man, is that God created man in such a way that he could be inhabited by a triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the person of the one whom I explained the other day, by mutual agreement between all three, is that member co-equal in deity with the triune Godhead, through whom a man can make himself available to God, and through whom God makes himself available to a man. And the role of the Holy Spirit within the human spirit is to play that role in man's soul that instinct plays in the animal soul. God himself teaching the mind. God himself controlling your emotions. God himself directing your will, so that God himself governs your behavior. That's the basis upon which God created man, and was given the moral capacity with a physical, visible, and audible body, to bring a physical, visible, and audible God out into the open, where God could be seen and heard. But it takes God in the man to be a man, functionally. Now, I'm going to use a very quick and ridiculous illustration, then I'll use, in conclusion, another which isn't anything like as ridiculous. Could you imagine that there was a dog that from its puppiest days, you know, was in kindergarten, and then in elementary school, and then in junior high, and then high school, went to college and university, and from the very beginning of that little dog's existence, it was taught again and again and again, that it didn't have a soul. That that was a fantasy, a mythology, that all he had got was what the vegetable kingdom had got, a body. Can you imagine that? If that little puppy dog was taught from the very word dot, you know, that it hadn't got a soul, it only had a body, what would be the only possible intelligent way for that dog to try to behave? Like a vegetable. Because that's all it's got in common with the vegetable kingdom, a body. So that dog goes out in the backyard, sticks his hind legs in the ground, holds out its paws and hopes to bear fruit. Well, you see, that is absolutely ridiculous. Well, you're right. But so is this, but far more serious. Suppose you've got a little child that's gone to kindergarten, or has got unregenerate parents who despise Christianity and poo-poo the idea of God, and then goes to elementary school, and then junior high, and high school, goes to college, university, and from the very beginning is constantly drenched with the idea that there's no such thing as God, that's mythology, that man is nothing more than an animal. He's the end product of an evolutionary process. The fact, you know, this curious religious idea that a man on earth can be inhabited by an unseen being called God, through a holy spirit, forget it. What would be the only intelligent possible way for that human being brought up from childhood to recognize there's no such thing as God, nor can a man be inhabited by his maker, what would be the only possible way him try to behave? Like an animal. That's humanism. That's what your kids are being taught in high school. And that isn't even funny. It isn't even ridiculous. It's the world you live in. And it was to remedy this situation that God sent his son, who said, I'm coming, that you might have life, stop existing like an animal, and begin to live on the basis of a spiritual regeneration, not by any works of righteousness which we have done, but according to God's mercy. He saves us in sending his son to bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that he, suffering a death like ours, forfeiting the life of God, we now might share a resurrection like his. When the Holy Spirit came back to the human spirit of the one who in his sinlessness was made sin, and was alienated from God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But three hours later he cried before ever he died physically, and on the basis of that reconciling act, risen from the dead on the day of Pentecost, he shared his resurrection life with those who having forfeited the life of God because of sin, and were born in a state of spiritual death, might come alive again, begin to live, and stop existing, and you hath God quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. He made you alive again, giving you the very life of Christ himself, who the only one who could, for he was the only man on earth who possessed the life of God, laid it down on a cross, so that restored to him he might now restore that life to you and to me, so that then you can say to me to live is Christ. Learning very painfully slowly to allow him by the Holy Spirit to teach afresh my mind, capture afresh my emotions, so that he can direct my will and restore the glory of God with a place in my heart for God's feet. Simple isn't it? That's the gospel. There is no other.