Paris Reidhead delves into Psalms 8, exploring the profound question of what kind of being man is in the eyes of God. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing man's unique position as created by God, a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor, and given dominion over all creation. Reidhead challenges the prevalent secular ideologies that deny God's role in creating man and highlights the responsibility and rebellion of humanity against God. He contrasts the worldview that man is essentially good with the biblical truth that man is imperfect, sinful, and in need of redemption through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

What Kind of Being is Man? Part 5 By Paris Reidhead* I shall make no attempt to review at all today. There have been some tapes made and they are available of the other two or four sessions. We go directly to Psalm 8 and I want you to note that if you have a Bible with New Testament and Psalms, do turn to it. That you will be back to it again and again in the days that lie ahead. “Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! Who has set Thy glory above the heavens. 2Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength because of Thine enemy that Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 3When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, 4what is man that Thou art mindful of him? And the son of man that Thou visitest him? 5For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and hath crowned him with glory and honor. 6Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet. 7All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, 8the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. 9Oh Lord, our Lord how excellent is Thy name in all the earth.” (Psa. 8:1-9) I would list for us the first phrase in the sixth verse, “Thou madest him...” Now, there’s been a raging controversy over this for well over 100 years. “Thou madest him...” When my children were getting ready to go to the university we had a dinner time sessions because they were going to go to universities that have no Christian impact at all. Although, I’ll tell you about that perhaps later, how God used some at that school to bring one of my sons to a vital knowledge of Himself. But as they were getting ready to leave, I tried to instill in their minds two or three important facts. I knew from my own experience at the university that there was a tendency for teachers to confuse science and metaphysics. And so we would talk about a definition of science. What is science? And the definition we used at our table is that science is the observation, classification and verification by experiment of facts and information. Observation, classification and verification by experiment. Well, that may be too restricted a definition, but at least the one we used in our house. And I’ve heard others that have been satisfied with it as well. And then I tried to point out to them that there were many splendid scientists who because of the prejudgments they had made failed to accept the limitations such a definition imposed on them. They were prepared to agree that science is the observation and the classification and the verification by experiment. But then they also wanted to have the explanation of what they had observed, classified and verified equally scientific. And because they had a Ph.D. or series of them, as the case might be, they were convinced that their explanation was equally scientific and failed to realize that the moment they started to explain they had ceased to be scientist and they had become metaphysicians. Now, I tried to get my children to make that distinction. I said, Now look, when they are telling you what they’ve observed, what they’ve classified, what they’ve verified by experiment, listen, listen carefully and you probably can accept all that they present. But when they explain how it happened, why it happened, don’t believe a word they say. Their authority ceases at the moment they begin to explain. They’re not scientist, they’re religionist. That is their own personal metaphysics, beyond the physical. That is their religion. “And if you can make that distinction,” said I to the children leaving the home, “so that you can listen to what they present as science and understand that and accept that, but also eject if you find that it disagrees with your own metaphysics. The explanation as to how it happened or why it happened because that is no properly science.” Well, it had a beneficial effect. I mentioned that in a service something like this, then afterwards someone came to me and said, “What do you think about the theory of evolution?” And I said, “Yes, that’s quite a theory isn’t it.” “Well, do you accept the theory of evolution?” “Certainly as a theory. I accept it as a, theory, but not as a fact.” You see the tragedy is that many of the men in our university chairs do not accept their own definition or at least my definition of science and proceed then to take a theory and to assign to it the weight and the value as though it were a fact and present the theory as though it were a fact. Well, this becomes, I don’t object to the theory of alchemy either. You know that had a great deal of many supporters in the years gone by. That you could by certain processes change lead into gold. I think they have a right to it as a theory and I accept it as a theory. I’ll even go so far as to say I accept as a theory the idea of bringing commercial wine from Portugal to make mayonnaise. It’s a good theory. But when you present it as a fact it becomes a crime. People go to jail for not distinguishing between a theory and a fact. And collecting money for the support of a theory is held to be a crime. And I would suggest to you that setting forth a theory as a fact if it had anything to do with a pocketbook would equally be criminal. But since it doesn’t, all it has to do with is eternal destiny of men and women; we permit it to go unchallenged because it doesn’t affect the decimal point. You see, the only thing that society really is finally concerned about is the decimal point. That is the supreme architectural unit in the universe is the decimal point. Where it is? How far to the right or to the left? That’s the important thing. And so we have laws that say you can’t present a theory as though it were a fact and collect money for it. But you can present a theory as though it were fact in the university and collect souls from it and nobody seems to be upset about it. But it’s terribly important for us to accept as the Scripture says that “Thou madest him...” Now, someone has said to me well how did He do it? I said, what’s our definition of science? The observation I wasn’t there to observe and the classification and the verification by experiment. If I tell you how He did it, it will be nothing but Reidhead metaphysics and you don’t need to pay any attention to that. He hasn’t told us precisely how He did it. I accept what He said but there may be something He didn’t say so as far as I’m concerned, I haven’t any, there’s no intellectual necessity. By the way, the only problem I’ve ever had with the Bible occurred when I was a student at the University of Minnesota. I really was thrown into a tizzy. I had come from a very fine Bible school and went to the university and came under the impact of all of this intellectual metaphysics or pseudoscientific metaphysics; metaphysics in the name of science. And it threw me, really it did. And I began to question everything. And finally I went back to the book and I started reading it. I was going to read it through and I got hung up on the first four words. I figured, I wasn’t terribly smart, haven’t improved much since, but I figured that if I could accept the first four words I wouldn’t have any real problem with any of the rest. Because the first four words are “In the beginning God...” (Gen. 1:1) And if the human mind can grasp the fact that there was a being, an intelligent, self-existent, self-supporting, willing, choosing being, that existed before the beginning, then we aren’t going to have any question about anything else because that’s totally other than everything in human experience. And so the only real intellectual problem I ever had with the Word of God was “in the beginning God.” And when I came to the fact that I could accept that, then if He had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I wouldn’t have any real problem with it because He had existed long before there was a Jonah or a whale. And if He could exist apart from all others and dependent upon none before the beginning, then I had every confidence that anything that he proposed to do He was adequate to do. So the how of it or to explain how He made man that actually doesn’t impress me as being a valid challenge. Because I can’t explain precisely how He did it, but not for a moment makes me question the fact that He did it. Now I realize that this may have a problem with some but may I ask you, what is electricity? If we’re going to go to definitions and explanations as to why. What is electricity? Well, I made a statement up in the Cranford Alliance Church years ago about dealing with the Trinity. I said no one can explain how God exists in three persons. But I said I don’t feel terribly bad about that. No one has ever defined electricity. And, afterwards a young chap our Intervarsity representative in the area who had been in the service took me to the train. And he and his girlfriend, we were sitting in the car going down to the train that took me back to N.Y. And there was a green light on from the dash, you know. And he said, “Boy, I’m sure glad that those college kids I invited didn’t come.” And I said, “Why? Oh,” I said, “look, what did I do? Have another attack of foot and mouth disease? I do that. I have that occasionally. What did I say?” “Well,” he said, “you said that no one has ever defined electricity.” I said, “Yes. I said that. I think that’s right, isn’t it?” “Why no.” He said, “Any Sophomore in college knows” ... of course that’s the time when you know more than you’ll ever know again, so you’d expect it to come then. And I said, “What is it?” “Why,” he said, “electricity is the flow of electrons from the negative to the positive pole.” “Gee,” I said, “that’s helpful. One little question though. What’s an electron?” And even in the car I could see him blush with the green light on his face. A green blush is a most unusual kind. He sort of chokes on it. You can’t define by itself. An apple is not something that falls from a tree, you know. What happens does not explain what it is. Now, if we don’t know what electricity is. You heard of the fellow that was in the class in the afternoon after a big starch lunch in the school dining room and the butterflies are buzzing and the spirea in the spring and he’s half asleep and the professors worried with it and he says, “Miss stand up. Miss stands up. What is electricity?” And he scratches one cheek and the other cheek and rubs his hand and he says, “Oh professor, before I came to class I knew that I’d forgotten.” And the professor’s words said, “Just think, only you and God knew and now you forgot.” I don’t know how God made man. I know He did. I know He did. And I know that He made him in His image and in His likeness. He made him a little lower than the angels that He might crown him with glory and honor. He gave him dominion over all that He has made. Now it’s on this that we have to rest. Man is a responsible creature. We talked about some of the things he has. The area in which man is most like God it seems to me is in the nonmaterial aspects of his being. The fact that he has the ability to think and to feel, and his emotional capacities and to will. That these are the areas into which His likeness to God. That he has the power to imagine, to see what isn’t as though it were. And then to take the appropriate steps necessary to bring what he has seen into being. Now we accept this definition of man that he’s a thinking and a feeling and a willing being that is responsible for what he thinks. That he has the power to decide what he will think. That he has control over his mind. I would go so far as to say that the only part of your being over which you do have control is your thoughts. You can’t control, as we pointed out last week, what you smell. You can’t control what you hear. You can’t control even what you feel. The people in Honduras the other night felt something, but they couldn’t control it. It’s what the can control, what you can control, is what you think. You can’t control what people say about you, what they do to you, but you can control your response to what they say and do. I would go so far again as to say that no one can hurt you. Nothing that happens to us hurts us. It’s what we do about what happens to us, that hurts us. Oh they might behead us. But if we know and love Christ all that has done is to send us by express into His presence. They might hit us, but all they’ve done is bruise the flesh which either will heal or won’t heal but the flesh is not me and someday it will be laid by. I am a thinking, feeling, willing being that will always be somewhere thinking and feeling and willing. And I will someday leave this robe of flesh. I stood so many times in pastoral ministry at the bedside and watched as the last gasping sobs would come from the dying person and when the breath subsided and the last gasp was over, look across at the tear-stained faces of those on the other side and say “He’s gone.” What do we mean? He’s gone to be with Him, into His presence. To see Him. To step through a thin gossamer veil into the presence of Him we love. God. God. But there is the form, eyes still moist and flesh still warm and yet gone. It’s that part that goes. That’s the part that will be forever thinking, feeling, willing. “The rich man in hell lifted up his eyes” and said “Father Abraham...” (Luke 16:23, 24) Feeling, thinking, choosing, willing. This is what man is. He lives in a curtain of flesh. He lives in a drapery robe of flesh. And it becomes the tool for implementing him. But you see sin did something to man. Man was an inverted pyramid as God made us. It was the spirit that knew God. There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Lord giveth him almighty. And our fulfillment was to come from Him and the spirit was that part that’s in fellowship and union with Him. Then if you wish the soul and the body with an inverted pyramid. And the body touching the earth. Only enough for sustenance. Only enough for expression. But with sin like a Salvador Dali picture where the watch begins to melt and flow, so was sin coming in that pyramid sort of begun to melt and flow. And what happened was it became something like this. It became man is plastered to the earth. He’s now by virtue of his rebellion against God and this enormous crime of sin, he’s earth plastered, if you please. He gets his comfort from the weeds of the earth. He gets his illusions of peace from the fermented misuse of the foods of the earth. He’s an earth plastered being. And then the soul that has a little bit of response to it and then the spirit of the undegenerated man. Is that the pulse that knows but that has no contact. There are some in other cultures as in India where they recognize that this pyramid once was and that the earth plasteredness of man is inappropriate to him and so in India you’ll find the efforts made to discover God by the abnegation of the flesh. You’ll see the Faceea sitting in with the fire cow dung and there he is with these little fires all around him and smoke coming until his body gets almost like leather from the ashes and the toxicants in the smoke. Thus he’s saying, living in death, living already on the fire. Before I’m dead I have no regard for the body. Or he lies down and puts a mark in the soil with his fingers and then gets up and stretches out as far as he can, puts his toe in the mark his finger made, lies down prone on the ground, prays while he’s down, marks with the finger, and so crosses the subcontinent. In a vein, empty effort to meet God and to know God because he knows that there’s something there. He is incomplete. You see when God made us, He made us in such a way that nothing in the universe can fulfill or satisfy or complete us but God. We’re made for God. When God made me and you He made and carved in us an empty place so enormous that only God can fill it. Nothing in the universe can fill this man but God. We’re made for God. And we either know God or we live our lifetime in the futility and the frustration and the emptiness of never knowing our reason for being. This was a great mercy on God’s part. An act of tremendous kindness. Augustine, who had spent for many years of his life in this earth plasteredness seeking somehow to quench and satisfy the pressures and the needs and the longings of his spirit. He cried out on one occasion “Oh Lord, Thou hast so made us that we cannot rest until we rest in Thee.” And we’re made for God. If you read the book of Ecclesiastes, what you have is the preacher giving a description of the efforts that he made to satisfy his heart and need apart from God. And it’s astounding when you discover that all the things that challenge and entice and allure most, he had at his command in a measure none of rest of us will ever be privileged to experience should we wish to do so. For instance, power. He came to the throne of his father David and the neighbors had subdued and they saw in Solomon wisdom and strength of character and intelligence and so they didn’t want to make war with him. And thus he became the king of all the kings in the neighborhood, in the area. They’re all sent tribute to him and no one wanted to meet him and engage with him. And so here he could sit on the throne and say all other potentates respect me and pay tribute to me, and I in a sense am the king of all the kings. Oh soul are you satisfied? Did this make you happy? Did this complete you? Did this fulfill you? And the answer that he gets comes back and says vanity of vanity, emptiness of emptiness, or as one that’s translated as soap bubbles of soap bubbles. It looks pretty until you get it and then you get it and you haven’t anything. That’s what he had done. Then in the next thing he tried after he had tried, this was possessions, things that he could make the works of his hands. He had great wealth and so he looked to things. He began to build. Every place when you travel in the holy land, travel in Israel or every place you go, he had a palace and stables. He has to have more horses than all the rest of the world put together. Solomon’s stables. I mean you could throw a stick and almost hit it. He had stables. He had gardens. He had ponds and fountains and summer houses and spring and fall houses. And he built because it was creative. It was the exercise of his imagination. He could dream and bring the dreams into being. A friend of mine, very wealthy said, “The only benefit you get out of money after you have enough for your own security is have the opportunity of implementing your imagination.” And Solomon could do that. And when he had made all these magnificent things he said, “Now, are you satisfied?” And the answer that he got back was “vanity of vanity, all is vanity” (Ecc. 1:1) Then he tried wisdom. He brought to him teachers the wisest of the world. And he learned all that they could give and when finally he had exhausted their store of knowledge, he went to God and asked God. And God gave him wisdom, so that he could write the book of Proverbs. And if you don’t think that isn’t wise, you write the book another edition. How many deathless proverbs have you written in the last week or so? This was a wise man to be able to take human experience in its universal form and couch it down to a few words. Every time you start to write a proverb it comes out something like a stitch in time saves nine. You want to change it to 6 or 7 or something like that. It’s hard to write proverbs. Solomon did. He was a wise man. And finally the teachers he brought to his court, sat at his feet as his pupils. And he taught them what God had taught him. And when he was the wisest man in the world. He said, Now, soul are you satisfied? And the answer he got back was vanity of vanity, emptiness of emptiness, nothing is satisfying. And finally he tried pleasure. He had no satisfaction from power. No satisfaction from possessions or things. No satisfaction from wisdom and knowledge. There had to be some other area. And there were those who sold all they had for pleasure. And he said he kept not back from anything that his ears had heard or that his mind had imagined. He did everything that anyone had ever done. Anything that he had ever heard about and anything he could invent. It had the effect of satisfying his appetite for pleasure. And when he had exhausted everything, he got a reputation of a voluptuary. So they began to send him wives, 1,000 wives and concubines. He just gave everything to this and when he was jaded and exhausted, but nothing could stimulate him or excite him or stir him at all. He said, Now, soul are you satisfied? The answer he got back is that melancholy, soap bubbles, emptiness, vanity. Why? He said, What’s the end of it? It is just to be born to live, to dance, and to die. Is that all there is? No. “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.” (Ecc. 12:1) Don’t spend your life trying to satisfy yourself with something that isn’t capable of doing it. You’re made for God. And nothing in the universe can meet you, fulfill you, complete you, but God. Now, that’s the man that He made. We were made for Him. Made in His image, made by Him and made for Him. We are thus the object of God’s love. God would pour His love upon us and so fulfill and complete us. Reveal Himself to us. And we in turn pour our love upon Him and reveal ourselves to Him in such a way to satisfy the ancient longing in His heart as Father for children, who loved Him as bridegroom for a bride, who delighted in Him. Thus so He made man for Himself. Now, if we understand that and we accept that, then anything that comes in to challenge that or any premise that is counter to this we have to regret as far as being committed to the Word of God and the truth of God is concerned. We’re not surprised, not surprised. In the experience, my wife and I had in Africa; we went into several tribes that had no contact with missionaries. And in some we were the first to ever come with the name of Christ several groups three at least; Marjorie was the first white woman that they had ever seen. And so we had an opportunity to see people had been living as it were unbroken exclusion from all of the stream of history and cultural. It thus amazing to me and astounding to me to discover how much they knew that I had not been lead to think they would know. I found out for instance, they knew the name of God as distinct from Satan. They knew the name of God. The only way of obtaining that information was to pick up a stick or a stone and say, “Who made it? Who made it?” And they would give you one name. Who made the tree and they would give you one name. Who made you and the same name. Who made, made, made. Always this one person. He might be described as where he lived, Neallege (Nhialic) the one who is above. Onenamesh the one who is the head of the river. These people were at the west side of the Ethiopia Mountains and rivers came down out of the mountains. They saw the sun come up and they thought that Onenamesh lived there where the sun came up. That He came out of the hole in the ground. There at the top of these mountains that they had never seen. Onenamesh, this one that was above, He was the one that made. He was the one that controlled. Made them. I found out that they knew that certain things they did were wrong. Is it wrong to murder? Is it wrong to steal? Is it wrong to? Is it wrong to? Invariably, what is wrong? A change with another person. What does Onenamesh want you not to do? We put it in a variety of ways so that we weren’t just sort of prejudicing the answer. It came back again and again. This not to be questioned or found strange. In Romans the second chapter, verses 14 and 15, we are told that “when the Gentiles, the Pagans, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts.” In other words, God didn’t leave men without a witness. He put it on our hearts. He wrote it there. That He is and that He is holy. And He expects man to do certain things and to reframe from doing certain things. And after such a session with the little local chief, and there weren’t many people maybe 700 people, there were two or three chiefs in that 700 people. I saw him going by the next day with a chicken in his hand. “Where are you going? Are you going to offer that to Onenamesh?” He burst out laughing. “Onenamesh, why would I give it to Him? He never bothers us.” “I know but you told us that He made you. You told us He was going to punish when you died.” “We don’t know whether He wants chickens or what He wants. He never told us what He wants.” I said, “What are you going to do with the chicken?” “That’s for the evil spirits. I have a cow that’s sick and witch doctor tells me the evil spirit is making my cow die.” “But that is Satan.” “Yes, I know. You see Onenamesh, He’s alright, and he never bothers us. And we don’t want to waste our chickens on someone who may not want them. We’ve got to use these chickens for the evil spirits.” So they can tremendous perception. I hadn’t been in any course that I had had for preparation for being a missionary. No one had told me that I could accept this degree of perception when they’d no contact to our knowledge with the Bible at all. Now there was no revelation of Christ. No word for love. When I was translating John 3:16 into that language, I couldn’t find a word for love. It wasn’t in their vocabulary. It wasn’t in their thinking. It didn’t exist. They had 400 words for grass and grasses and not one word for love. Because they lived by grass and grasses but love, what was that? And finally one day a baby had died. 98% of the people in that tribe, that small tribe, had syphilis. It was just rampant, an epidemic in the area. And the baby had died. And my translator or my assistant said “use the word.” And I said what’s that word? And he repeated it. And the word was this: Mother cries for her first born son when it died as a baby. That was how I had to translate John 3:16. “For God cried as a mother cries when her first born son dies as a baby for the world.” There was an insight. You mean that Onenamesh, the one who made the world, He cried like a mother cries when her baby died. That was there’s no word. The closest we could come was a concept of love. Now, this is what they had. You see God stopped the mouth of Satan. He wouldn’t let Satan claim the testimony. The witch doctor was there controlling the lives of the people with fierce and vigilant attacks upon them. But at no place, at no time did he ever claim that man had come from the beast in the field around them. Or that man was not made by God. Here were people who had no contact at all with anything approximating culture or civilization or history. And yet, they knew that God is, that God is holy, that God made the world. And they were responsible to God. And that they did the things they did. Why do you murder? Because we want to do them. And their sacrifices were to Satan, because he tortured and tormented them and tyrannized them. The way they dressed, the kind of house they lived in, the food they ate and didn’t eat, was all controlled by Satan. They crawled into their homes like beasts. They didn’t have a door. The first thing that they did when they came to Christ was to cut a door in the side of their house. Why did you cut that hole out? “I’m a child of God. I’m not under the power of Satan. I’m not going to crawl like a snake does into his hole. I’m a man. I’ll walk in. God loves me and Christ died for me.” First thing they did was put a door in because under the tyranny of Satan they were forced to...couldn’t wear clothes. Couldn’t eat food. We grew tomatoes in our station. Blief, our gardener came and said, “Do you mind if I eat tomatoes?” “Why no, Blief, go ahead. They’re very good for you.” He said, “I know they are.” “Why don’t you take these plants out and plant them at your house?” “Oh no. Oh no. If I planted that tomato at my house and ate one over there, I’d die.” “Oh Blief, why would you die? You eat them here. Sometimes when you don’t ask for them, but that’s alright. You eat them here.” “Oh yes, because you see your spirit is bigger than over in the village. But if I go there the evil spirit, I’ll die and my baby will die.” What they ate. What they did. Everything was under the control and domination and pressure of satanic personalities. Now, we would therefore expect that in cultures places where there has been a history of association with the Word of God that it would not be particularly unusual to find that basic to the science, basic to the knowledge is the fact that God is and that God made man. For 125 years and more the attack has been on this very point. That God did not make man, but man is the product of other forces and influences and that he is not therefore the act or the product of God’s creative power and thus responsible to God. But he is the product of inanimate and unknowing forces that brought him up and consequently he has no responsibility to anyone. Schmalhausen many years ago wrote a book Why Do We Misbehave? And his answer was simple, man isn’t misbehaving he’s behaving, because he has animal ancestry and animal origin. If he behaves in animal manner, he’s being only consistent with himself. Why expect anything other than that from him? He doesn’t misbehave. He only behaves. There’s no such thing as wrong conduct there’s just human conduct. Because whatever man does he’s consistent with what he is, which is just the product of a process. That’s what been taught. That’s what’s being taught. And that’s what’s going to, I suppose, continue to be taught. But it’s not what we believe. It’s not what I believe. It’s not what this book teaches. “Thou hast madest him. Thou madest him.” Alright, now let’s go back and see some of the effects at this end. We have...I’ll just illustrate it. Here are two economic systems. One system goes back to about the same time as Darwin began his thesis and theory and so on. There came an economic extension and application of it. We come back here and we see that there’s a philosophy of life that says there is no God (if I had a blackboard I’d divide it and one side on the left side I’d put No God.) That’s the basic philosophical foundation of the system. There isn’t a God. Man is good. That is that man being as having the origin that he does is essentially good, that he can’t do really anything bad, and the only reason he behaves in a bad way is because there are exploitive pressures by certain superior individuals that restrict this man from having the things he needs in order to be him, his good self. And consequently, the next step up. Have you got it down here - No God. Man is good. He only behaves in a bad way because pressure is put on his environment by certain individuals that are renegade and then there should be centralized government that exercises the powers to remove the pressures so that man can behave in the good way, as the good being he is. Now, over here we start with something different. There is a god and He’s the God of the Bible. Man is imperfect. Man has revolted. Man has sinned. Man is a traitor and a rebel and an enemy and an anarchist. And because we know this to be true of all men and of ourselves, there’s the desire for decentralized government, just like if you’ve got to have cancer and can choose where, you’d better have it in your little finger instead of metastasized through your whole body. Because you can cut the finger off but when it gets through the whole system then it gets difficult. So we’ve had over here a system. Now, what we’re seeing today is that we as Christians are being asked to accept philosophical and economic systems that are contradictory to the basic principle. So if we understand the kind of a being that man is, what his origin is, what his responsibilities are, how God made him and why God made him, I believe it’s going to enable us to walk in this world of contradictory pressures and philosophies and to live more consistent for His glory. But I know this, that there’s only one way in the world that this traitor and rebel and anarchist and enemy can ever be subdued enough that he’s safe in time or prepared for eternity, and that’s to be brought to a personal, vital, experimental relationship with Jesus Christ through repentance and faith. We must be born again. We must receive Him who is life. Now, we’re made that way, we’re made for God. Salvation is not a scheme, it’s not a plan, it’s not a system of doctrines, and it’s not a list of scripture verses. Salvation is a person. And that empty place that we have in us just fits Jesus Christ. It’s “Christ in us the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27b) “Examine yourself said he. Prove yourself, no not your own self, but that Christ be in you, except ye be reprobate.” (II Cor. 13:5) Well, that’s the gospel. That’s the good news. And we’ve just seen a few of the things and a few intimations. Haven’t finished it by any means, but it’s been stimulating to me and a pleasure to be with you these three services and sessions. And I assure you that I am going to go on working on this and maybe sometime in the future we’ll have something that embodies it. I am grateful that you’ve made records of it. I would like to have copies of the tapes so that I can find out what I said. Like the speaker who said after his introduction. He said I am tremendously gratified with the introduction. In fact, after hearing it, I’m terribly anxious to see what a man like that is going to say. Father, we’re so grateful that we’re not only made in Your image and likeness, but through faith in Your Son remade. Father, we praise You and adore You for the gift of Your grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. Bless each person here. Each of us has needs that only a risen Savior is sufficient to solve. And may it be that some way because we’ve seen a little more of what we are and what He is, that we’ll release Him to be all that He wants to be in our lives. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen. * Reference such as: Delivered at The 4th Presbyterian Church, Discerners Class, Bethesda, MD on Sunday, August 10, 1980 by Paris W. Reidhead, Pastor. ©PRBTMI 1980