If you will turn with me to the prophecies of Isaiah, chapter 43. Isaiah, chapter 43. I want to read some very well-known verses, from verse 1.
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
And He that formed thee, O Israel:
Fear not, for I have redeemed thee;
I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine.When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.—Isaiah 43:1-2
Shall we bow together just in a word of prayer?
Dear Heavenly Father, we are so glad that we have been able, by the power of Your Holy Spirit, to open up our hearts to You in worship and praise. And now, Lord, as we come to Your Word, we want to confess our absolute dependence upon You, both for speaking and for hearing.
Lord, unless You are that ability, that anointing, Lord, my speaking and our hearing will all be in vain. But Lord, You are the One who not only brings to birth in our hearts a word, but You are the One who gives the anointing by which that word can be communicated to others. And You are the One who gives the anointing so that we hear what You are saying in that word, and are doers of it.
Lord, we just give ourselves to You afresh, and we pray that You will make the ministry of the Word this evening, as You have made it yesterday and this morning, very precious to every one of us. And we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
When I considered this conference this year, the only word that was in my heart was these well-known words in Isaiah. I have had them in my heart for over two years.
Two or three times I thought the time had come to share them, but each time the Lord thought differently. I do not know why, but I had all the meditation and reflection. On one occasion, it came right to the actual time, and at the last moment the Lord gave me another word altogether and took us into quite a different direction.
And so this passage has lain—I do not even know why—in my heart for two years. When Brother Stephen wrote and asked me whether I had anything in my heart for this time, I hardly dared tell him that I had this passage, because I feared the Lord would do the same thing again and divert me at the last moment.
And I do not even know why the Lord has given me this word, to be perfectly honest. I think of another prophecy by Isaiah: “Who is blind as My servant?” I honestly do not know why the Lord has given me this word.
There are words which the Lord gives which I get very excited about and thrilled about. I am not saying that this is not something I am excited about, but I do not know the reason why the Lord wants this shared, I take it, at this time.
Then I think to myself, “Well, what is the point of bringing this kind of word to all the folks here? They all know this anyway. This is so simple.” None of those great mysteries about the Body, or the testimony of Jesus, or the Book of Revelation, that Dana loves so greatly.
And yet there has to be some reason why the Lord wants this particular word shared at this particular time, as far as my responsibility for this time goes.
In this passage, which I suppose all of you—even those of you who hardly ever read the Old Testament—must know, there is, to me, a key in three words: “Thou art Mine.”
That seems to me to be the key to this marvellous statement of the Lord. It is not the rivers we have got to go through, the waters that are not going to overflow us, or the fire that we might pass through and the flame that will not kindle upon us.
It is this incredible statement by God Himself concerning you and me: “Thou art Mine.”
And we cannot get out of it. If He had only left Jacob out of the picture, a lot of us could have felt, “Well, He is not talking about me. He is talking about very elite saints—those people who never think an evil thing and never do an evil thing.”
But it is to Jacob that He addresses these words:
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
And He that formed thee, O Israel:
Fear not, for I have redeemed thee;
I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine.When thou passest through the rivers, I will be with thee;
And the waters shall not overflow thee.
When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
I think there is a tremendous security in the fact that we belong to Him. Most of Christianity tends to put the emphasis on the fact that He is mine. And, of course, that is absolutely true.
If you are a child of God, the Lord Jesus is yours. All the fathomless, unsearchable riches of God in Christ, all the infinite fullness and power of the Godhead in Christ—it is all yours. Every blessing: you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ.
Every single need of yours God will supply according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. The Lord Jesus belongs to you, and it is true, as the old hymn says in its chorus, “Mine, mine.”
But it seems to me that that is where Christianity has tended to put the whole emphasis: “Mine, mine, mine. He is mine.” I am so glad that the Lord says here, “Thou art Mine.” I find a tremendous security there.
After all, of course, when you are young, you do not think so much about this. When you are young, you feel that you have a bit more strength and power, and you think, “Well, I am going to hold on to Him. Whatever comes, I am going to hold on to Him. He is mine—an unspeakable gift of God to me. I am going to hold on to it.”
But when you get a little bit older, and a bit more knocked about, and have gone through a few more experiences, you come to the place where you almost wonder whether you can hold on to Him. Sometimes it seems as if the clouds and the storm obscure Him altogether, and then you wonder whether you have lost Him.
What a security there is in knowing, “I am His.” Whatever storm comes, it is never going to loosen His hold on me. Divine love has taken hold of you and has taken hold of me, and is not likely to let go. No one is going to pluck you out of His hand. You are His.
Again, I know that I do not want to put the cat amongst the pigeons, as we say, but I personally am so glad that my salvation does not, in my estimation, finally rest on the decision I made concerning Him.
I would be very afraid if my salvation really rested on my choice of Him. I remember those words—mysterious and absolutely accurate, although beyond my understanding:
Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you.
—John 15:16
Now, some people get terribly worked up about this because they think, “He is not going to introduce Calvinism, is he, into this time?” I mean, surely there is such a thing as human responsibility.
I have no doubt that there is such a thing as human responsibility, and I have no problem about preaching the gospel and demanding some kind of decision on the part of those who hear. But when we have said everything, I have to say this: in some mysterious way, beyond my little finite mind, I discover that the Lord chose me.
How it all works out, I do not know; and whether I shall ever understand it, I do not even know. But in some way, as far as I can see, I see that the Lord chose me and chose you. You are His, as He says in this word: “Thou art Mine.”
I think of one or two other little words before we move to the aspect of it for the evening. In Malachi 3:17, the Lord says:
And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts,
Even Mine own possession, in the day that I make.
Well, I know we live in the days of the latter rain, but this is true. Dana reminds me of a marvellous occasion in Jerusalem. On one occasion, we were praying for rivers of living water to come into the meeting. We were in the vestry praying, and all of a sudden there was a terrible crash. The cistern on the wall of the toilet came off the wall and collapsed in front of us, with water shooting all over the place.
It was too much for me. I said to the Lord, “Lord, we said rivers of living water!”
Well, we need these kinds of showers, and no doubt some of you have been praying for some kind of rain. Apparently we have got it.
Now, this is a wonderful word, this word in Malachi 3:17: “They shall be Mine, saith the Lord, Mine own possession in the day that I make.”
Or I think again of the words of the Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 2:9:
But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
A people for God’s own possession,
That ye may show forth the excellencies of Him who called you
Out of darkness into His marvellous light:
Who in time past were no people,
But now are the people of God:
Who had not obtained mercy,
But now have obtained mercy.
Now, in this wonderful statement that the Lord made through Isaiah in chapter 43, I see four ways in which we are His. First, we are His by creation.
Well, I am glad some of you have brought umbrellas. That is all I can say.
Well, what do we do? Go wrong? Well, it does not worry me. I have been through many more things than this. And we have got a promise:
When thou passest through the rivers, I will be with thee;
And the waters shall not overflow thee.
One wonders, of course, whether we are going to have a fire as well.
Anyway, I see that we are His in a fourfold way, and it is rather wonderful for us to consider in the four times that I have responsibility.
Well now, you had better get out of the way, those of you who can, and then we will continue, so we will not be disturbed. Anyone can know where places are that are dry.
It is coming through up there on the balcony as well, on the floor. Do they have a hole in the roof? It is coming through up there.
Well, I am glad the Lord has arranged this to fix this message well and truly in your mind.
Now, are we all right? Can we go on? Tonight I want to very simply talk about the fact that we are His by creation.
Although it may sound very simple—amazing to many of you who are older in the Lord—what has this really got to do with us? It has a tremendous amount to do with every single one of us, because God claims Jacob by creation as well as by redemption.
When we think about it, it brings us to one or two quite simple but foundational truths. God’s claim on Jacob is that He created him: “Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob.”
God formed Jacob. There was not a single facet of his twisted character that God had not foreseen and foreknown. His whole genetic history was under the sovereign government of God.
God was not only behind the kind of genes that made up the temperament and personality of Jacob, but He was, in many ways, One who knew the depths to which Jacob could stoop. And God’s claim on him was, “I have created you, O Jacob.”
Now, God’s dealings with you begin long before you were converted. If you think that God only started with you on the day you were converted, on the day you were born again, you really do not understand your salvation.
Actually, God’s dealings with you as a person go back before your natural birth. When you were in your mother’s womb, the Lord knew you. Long before you ever came on the scene, the Lord knew every single thing there was to know about you.
You do not even know your genealogy. Most of us do not know. We might go back to our great-grandparents, or even our great-great-grandparents, but how many of us really know the whole family tree?
And yet God has foreknown you and has watched over your genetic history. You are not a coincidence. You are not a mistake. You are not just some little bit of humanity that somehow God saved and then got interested in.
From before the foundation of the world, God knew you and knew everything that was to make you a unique personality in His Son. Though you may have been born into a fallen world with a fallen nature and a self-centred constitution, still God was behind everything that you are today, if you understand what I mean. He was not the author of your sin, but He is behind everything to do with you.
That is what I find in those amazing words: “Jacob have I loved.” If He had only said, “Israel have I loved,” many Christians would have been more comfortable. They would have said, “Well, of course, the Lord loved Israel because the Lord only loved the saint once he had gone into the place where He wanted him to be in life.”
But the interesting thing is that God says, not, “Israel have I loved.” He could have said that. But He said, “Jacob have I loved.”
Again and again and again in the Bible, God is known as the God of Jacob, as if God wants us to know that at the lowest common denominator in human character, He still can say, “Jacob have I loved.”
Now, I do not know about you, but I find this tremendous. So I come back to this word: “Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob.”
Some Christians have a terrible argument with their personality. Some people are by nature rather cautious or retiring, and they feel that they should be outgoing and exhibitionist. Those who are very extrovert in nature have a terrible battle with themselves and feel they should be very cautious and restrained.
Those who are by nature colourful and vivid people feel they should be drab and colourless. You know, they have a kind of sneaking suspicion that they should be little worms that crawl around in the earth, sort of thing.
Then those who are by nature very quiet and low-lying feel that they should be more dynamic and more out on top. And so there develops within us a kind of battle with ourselves. Actually, we end up having an argument with God.
We sort of say, “Why have You made me so?” That is really what it comes down to, because we would not say that. We say, “The Lord does not like this.” But actually, God knows your genetic history, and the personality and temperament you have got are all part of His plan.
Not the sin, not the self-centredness, but the actual personality and the actual temperament—that is all part of God’s plan. When you and I come to a very simple recognition that He created us, we start to go places with God.
Otherwise, we fall into the trap all the time of projecting a kind of artificial image concerning ourselves. We believe we should be this, but God does not want us to be this. God has made us in a different way.
One sometimes goes into meetings where you can hear everyone has modelled themselves on a particular brother or sister. They all pray like them. They all behave in the same way. It is a kind of feeling we have within ourselves: “That is what I ought to be like.”
But Jacob was Jacob, and Isaac was Isaac, and Abraham was Abraham, and Joseph was Joseph, and Moses was Moses, and Joshua was Joshua, and David was David. Is that not so?
When we come to the New Testament, you may have a Matthew, and you may have a Mark, and you may have a Luke, and you may have a John. Every one of them is distinctive, and their personality comes through even in the way that they present the story and history of Jesus.
Now, have you ever thought about it? Why did the Lord not steamroller the whole thing out and reveal Himself as one kind of personality in all four? But He did not. He is so great, He needs a Matthew, and He needs a Mark, and He needs a Luke, and He needs a John to reveal this fourfold greatness of the Lord Jesus.
When you come to the letters of the New Testament, you do not have to study your New Testament for very long to be able to tell the difference between the style of John the Apostle, the style of James, and the style of Paul. Or am I being stupid? Are they all the same?
Paul says things that James would never dream of saying, and yet James is as inspired by the Holy Spirit as Paul. Paul says that a man is justified apart from works, and James says that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. But actually, they are saying the same thing.
James is saying, “You have not got faith unless it works.” Paul is saying, “If you think you can do good works instead of faith and so get saved, you are in a false way.”
And then John never did see anything in between. He was always either black or white.
Now, would you not have thought that if the Holy Spirit really got into these men, He would steamroller out all these little eccentricities of their personality and style, and we would have one common style? You would not be able to tell the difference between John and Paul, or either John or Paul from James.
But no, they are all quite distinctive. That is why this matter is of such importance to you and me.
If the enemy can get you and me into a battle—a false battle—over our personality and over our temperament, he has won a very big position. From then on, we start to project a false image of what we think God wants you and me to be.
In the end, we end up with a projected image that everybody sees, but the real you and me are trapped in a dungeon inside and never see the light of day. The real self is locked up down underneath somewhere.
Now, how in the world is the Lord to conform you and me to the image of His Son if He cannot even get at us? When all He can get at is a projected image instead of the real you? Do you understand what I am trying to say?
So what I am saying this evening is, in my estimation, of very real importance. It is Jacob that God created.
When God took hold of Jacob, He was not saying to Jacob, “I want you to be Isaac.” He did not say to Jacob, “I want you to be Abraham.” He did not say to Jacob, “I want you to be Moses.”
Even when Jacob became Israel, it was still his own personality and temperament filled with the Holy Spirit, broken through the work of the cross, with the beauty of the Lord upon him.
Then there is another matter I would like to talk about this evening, in these rather more difficult circumstances. What was God’s original design in creation?
You know, when God first created man and breathed into him, and man became a living soul, God created you and me as tripartite beings.
That is, there is not a human being without a spirit, without a soul, and without a body. Angels are spirits. They do not have bodies like you and me.
Animals, the animal creation, also have a kind of soul, but it is not eternal. Anyone who knows anything about animals knows that they have personality. Two dogs are not the same. Two cats are not the same. I understand—though I have never gone into it deeply—that even two fish are not the same. Those who catch fish tell me that even fish have personality, relatively speaking.
But man was quite unique, because man is the only being created by God that has three parts to his being: spirit, soul, and body.
If we look at 1 Thessalonians 5:23, we read:
And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly;
And may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire,
Without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, I cannot understand why so many theological seminaries teach that man is bipartite—that is, he has only soul and body—and that the spirit is merely another name for the soul. They say the spirit is, as it were, the spiritual side of the inward man, and the soul is the more emotional side of the inward man.
But I do not understand that, because why does Paul, by the Spirit of God, say that your whole being may be preserved entire—your spirit and your soul and your body?
Then again, I find it very interesting that in the Hebrew letter, Hebrews 4:12, we read:
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
And piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit.
Now, what in the world does that mean if the spirit is another word for the soul, and the soul another word for the spirit? Why does it speak of the Word of God dividing between soul and spirit unless the soul and the spirit have quite distinct functions?
I say that this is quite important. Nor is it confined only to the New Testament, for even in the Old Testament we have intimations of it. For instance, turn to Psalm 131. Listen to this:
Lord, my heart is not haughty,
Nor mine eyes lofty;
Neither do I exercise myself in great matters,
Or in things too wonderful for me.Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul;
Like a weaned child with his mother,
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.O Israel, hope in the Lord
From this time forth and for evermore.
Now, may I ask: has anyone ever thought about it? Who is doing the weaning? Do you understand what I am getting at? Who is doing the weaning?
“I have weaned my soul within me. I have stilled my soul within me like a weaned child.” Now, does that mean my body is stilling my soul? Well, that is strange, is it not, if this old flesh is getting hold of my emotions and saying, “Shut up”?
No, it seems to me that there is an intimation here that it is the spirit of the man within him. The spirit of the man is, as it were, taking authority over his own soul and saying, “Shush.”
Have you ever thought of this: “Be still, my soul”? Well, who is talking to whom? It cannot be a soul talking to a soul, can it? Then it is not his body talking to his soul. Think about it for a moment.
It must be his spirit that is talking to his soul and saying, “Be still, my soul.” Or I think of another one. I think of Psalm 103. You all know this well enough:
Bless the Lord, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Think of that. Who is talking to whom? It must be the spirit of the psalmist that has risen up to take its right position and is saying to his soul, “Now, my soul, bless the Lord. Do not sit there in a sulk. Do not sit there like a wet blanket, all melancholy and under the weather. Bless the Lord.”
And then everything that is within me, bless His holy name.
I think of a marvellous little word that may have come to some of you, may catch many of you, and may have escaped others. In Luke 1:46-47, we have that wonderful Magnificat of Mary:
My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
Now, did you get that? Listen again very carefully: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”
In other words, Mary’s worship began in her spirit and spilled over into her soul. Some people find the death of the soul. I mean, Christian maturity: “You must be very careful—it is soul.”
Now, I must tell you that some places I go into, it is, from beginning to end, gross, noisy soul. But then I sometimes go into other places where it is supposed to be all spirit, and the soul has been so trampled upon that nobody is able to be normal.
How can you be normal if your soul does not magnify the Lord? It is impossible, is it not? I sometimes think there is a certain branch of Christianity where we would like to annihilate the soul. But, you see, you cannot deal with the spirit without the soul.
Once the Holy Spirit, by the Word of God, has done that surgery, dividing between spirit and soul, then what begins in the spirit can go over into the soul. What do we get? We get hymns, we get songs, we get poetry, we get ministry, we get all kinds of things.
Where else do you think it comes from? You cannot do without the soul. It begins in the spirit, but it comes through the soul.
The Word of God says, “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.” In other words, your spirit is the only thing, in essence, in you and me that is of the same substance as God.
It is why you and I are eternal—in one sense, undying. Because when God breathed into man, He breathed into man something of His own being, if you like. Do you understand what I am trying to say?
I do not mean in a salvational way. In our very creation, we have a substance we call spirit, and this substance is of the same substance as God.
Let me take you to Ecclesiastes 3:11. Here you have a very difficult word. In the Hebrew it is a little easier:
He hath made everything beautiful in its time:
Also He hath set eternity in their heart,
Yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done
From the beginning even to the end.
Now, in the Hebrew, it is olam. Some people put “the world,” but that is not the meaning. In Hebrew, when we use this word olam, we mean, in a sense, that which is timeless, age-abiding—something that goes beyond.
God has put within man a vacuum—a vacuum, if you like, made of the same substance as Himself. It is so difficult to put this correctly theologically, so do bear with me.
He has placed within you and me a vacuum. It is not the answer, but when it is indwelt by the Spirit of God, then a human being can begin to discover what the work of the Lord is all about. But until a man is born of God, his spirit is there, yet he cannot understand anything about it.
That is why every human being can never rest by being an animal. Even the most depraved human beings, who spend their whole time satisfying their physical appetites, still have within them some kind of sense that they were made for something more than this.
It is eternity within their heart. It is the spirit of the man. Even when debased, even when dead in trespasses and sins, even when alienated from God, still that spirit of a man is, as it were, the vacuum that only God can fill.
It does not matter what human being it is, what colour he is, what nationality he is, what race he belongs to. Every human being, if he fills that void within him with the world, with the things of life, with marriage, with home, with family, with career, with everything of time and sense, he piles it all in and still is unsatisfied.
Still he is dissatisfied, because that spirit within the man was made for God and can only ever be fulfilled when that man is born of God, and when that spirit within him is raised to walk in newness of life.
When the Spirit of the Lord comes in and dwells within it, He brings about a union with God. How can I, a Jacob-like creature like me, how can I, flesh and blood, be joined to God, who is Spirit? How is it possible for me to have a union with God which is eternal?
How could it be possible for it to be said of me, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit”? How can spirit be joined to soul? How can the Spirit of the Lord be joined to flesh? But it is my spirit within me that God created me with.
That spirit, when it is raised to walk in newness of life, when it is born of God, is joined to the Lord and becomes one spirit with the Lord. Oh, my dear friends, it is most wonderful.
But even in fallen men there are things about our spirit. In our spirit is centred conscience. The old Quakers used to say that there is a light within every unsaved man that is of God, that is from God. They meant that the spirit of the man is the candle of the Lord.
In that unsaved man is a conscience, and that conscience, even in the most unsaved man, will lead him to God if he will only listen to it. But when there is a seared conscience or a hardened conscience, then a man loses all sensitivity even to his conscience.
But when God created us in our spirit, He placed conscience. This is what the unsaved men and women of the world who have never heard the gospel will be judged by in the day of great judgment: how did they react to their conscience?
In our spirit there is a thing called intuition. Sometimes it gets mixed up with the occult, sometimes it gets mixed up in black magic, sometimes in Satanism. But intuition was something God placed in us.
These three marvellous things—union, conscience, and intuition—are all in our spirit. But we are not only spirit. We have souls.
Our souls are, we could say, our personality, our temperament. This is where they are based: in our soul. There are three things in our soul: emotion, will, and reasoning power.
I say it again: there is emotion, there is will, and there are our reasoning faculties. All of us live on one side or the other. Some are very emotional and do not think things through too much; others think things through very much and are not too emotional.
Or we have wills which, when wedded to emotion, become horrifying; or, when wedded to reasoning faculties, can become just as horrifying.
And thereby, creating us like this, when He said, “Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,” Jacob had a spirit. In his spirit he had a conscience, and he did things against that conscience. He had an intuition, and he overrode it.
Jacob still had all this capacity for union with God, yet he was not united with God. He had a soul. I mean, he had emotion, and he had will—did he have will?—and he had reasoning power.
But God did not create you and me with merely a spirit and merely a soul. There are Christians who seem to think that one day we have got this Greek idea—but it is not a revelation within the Bible. It is the Greek idea. It comes from Socrates and Plato and all the others. It has gone right through the whole Western culture like a dose of salts.
So the attitude is that if you and I could only be done with the body, we would be pure. Spirit is pure; flesh is wicked.
And so you know many Christians with this diseased idea that anything to do with the body is evil, and everything to do with the spirit is pure.
It is a strange thing that the Apostle Paul did not say, “I pray that God may preserve you wholly, that your entire spirit be preserved.” Nor did he say, “I pray that your entire spirit and soul be preserved.” But he said, “I pray that your entire spirit and soul and body be preserved entire in the day of Jesus Christ.”
We have got bodies. We are not going to be some kind of angelic creation. One day, if the Lord tarries, we are going to have bodies. I cannot wait for them. We are going to have bodies that can go through walls, and can go up and can go down, and can still eat things, and can recognise one another.
Some people say, “Will we be able to recognise one another?” I think there will be a kind of inner intuition by which we shall know one another, even if we do not look quite the same. I know some people are dying for the day when they will not look quite the same.
We shall know one another. And anyway, just supposing we did not, do you think our Lord would not introduce us? Within a few moments He would have angels going all the way through, introducing so-and-so to so-and-so to so-and-so. “Oh, I never knew you. You two look different!”
But I do not believe it will be like that. I think there will be something within us by which we recognise one another. I will not need to be told who Abraham is. I will know him.
Somehow, I think I am going to know who Jeremiah is and who Isaiah is, and I will not get Isaiah mixed up with Jeremiah, or Jeremiah mixed up with Anna.
But, you know, we have bodies. God created us with bodies to locate us. I know that is not always so, but still, you are meant to be located. You are not meant to be wandering around in a kind of ethereal cloud, dreaming away. You are supposed to be located.
Here you are. Here is your body. You are sitting in a chair, and actually your spirit and your soul are located there. Well, I am very glad they are. What a terrible business it would be if your spirit were wandering over there and your soul over here. What would we do?
You are located. If you want to get to me, you come to this body, do you not? Because that is where I am located.
My body is the least thing about me in one sense. It is my spirit and my soul that are the important part of me, but I am located here. One day, I am going to be located in a new heaven and a new earth, and in the ages to come, still in a redeemed body. Think of that.
Well, I am going to have to move in a moment now, because the water is coming over here now.
But anyway, let me watch the time. The great thing is this: if you and I can only begin to understand something of God’s original design in the creation of man, it will preserve us from a thousand errors.
It will preserve us from the error of considering the things that are soulish as spiritual. It will preserve us from the error of somehow thinking that we must destroy our soul in order to be spiritual. It will preserve us from the error of thinking that our bodies are unimportant.
My dear friend, your body is tremendously important.
I know this will put a little bit of a cat amongst pigeons, but let me say it. I cannot understand these Christians that get cremated. You will probably think I am being horribly superstitious, and then you will probably put it down to my being Jewish.
My dear friends, I think it is a terrible thing to be cremated. I do not mean by that that you will not be raised. There are people who could not help it, who got burnt in fires. There were martyrs who were burnt in fires in the Inquisition and elsewhere, and God is going to raise them up. Every part of their bodies is known to God.
But I would never adopt a heathen custom. It has never been known amongst the people of God, such a custom. Why? Because even Satan had an argument and a confrontation with the archangel Michael over the body of Moses.
According to most evangelical Christians, they would say, “What does it matter about Moses’ body? He is in paradise. He is with the Lord. Let Satan have his body. It is not worth anything anyway. The worms are going to eat it. It is going to decay. One day he will have a resurrection.”
But that body of Moses was so precious that Satan, when Moses had gone into the presence of the Lord, tried to obtain the body.
That is why it says in 1 Corinthians 15 that when we bury the body of a believer, we bury a miracle. It says we do not bury the body that shall be, and yet somehow it is like a seed.
That very body is one day going to be reconstituted in a miracle of resurrection power and glory: a body without sin, a body that is a resurrection body, and yet still a human body.
Why, our lovely Lord Jesus has as human a body as ever He had. He even has still the marks in His hands, and in His side, and in His feet. It is not a different body. It is the body that He walked with here on this earth, but it is a resurrection body.
Oh, brothers and sisters, how marvellous it is just to consider for a few moments the original design of God, where He said to Jacob, “Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob.”
You might have fallen. Sin may have got into you. You may be allied to the powers of darkness. Demonic forces may be influencing you. But still God created you—spirit, soul, and body—and there is a way out for you.
Do you remember that there was a tree of life in the Garden of Eden? I have no doubt that there was an actual tree, myself. I do not have any problem with this.
Since there was an actual garden and an actual allotment of earth, with actual plants in it, and they were actually tending it, it seems to me that there was an actual tree. What I do not think it was, was an apple tree.
Some people say it was impossible that it was knowledge, and I do not know. But do not immediately symbolise everything. It was a tree. God said, “If you eat of that tree, you shall surely die.”
God’s original plan for man was that, in some marvellous way, he should be led by the Spirit of God to partake of the tree of life. Or, to put it in terms that we would all understand, he would come to receive the Lord Jesus. He would become one who would be born of the Spirit of God.
Do you understand? For when Adam was created, he was created innocent; he was created sinless; but he was not created perfect.
In other words, he was created without sin, and he was created innocent. But if he wanted to be a complete human being, he had to take certain steps, I think.
There was a positive and there was a negative. There was the tree of life. God never said to him, “You shall not eat of the tree of life.” There was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but God said, “You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die.”
What did God mean, “You shall surely die”? Adam did not die in the day that he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Does that make God a liar? Actually, Adam lived to nearly a thousand years of age.
How then did the Lord mean it? What did the Lord mean when He said, “In the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die”? What God meant was this: in the day that Adam chose to be a self-centred, self-conscious man, in that day he spiritually died.
The tree of life, to me, is symbolic of another kind of man: God-centred, God-dependent, God-conscious. Or let me put it another way that you will understand better: Christ-centred, Christ-dependent, Christ-conscious.
That was the kind of man God intended Adam to be. Trees in the Bible are always symbolic of men, are they not? I think most of you know that.
This tree of life was symbolic of one kind of man. This tree of the knowledge of good and evil was symbolic of another kind of man. In that Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve made a choice.
What happened? In that day when man fell, his spirit died, but it was not annihilated. Some people think that when a man’s spirit is dead because of sin, it is no longer there. That is nonsense.
What it means is this. If I could take one of these electric light bulbs out of its socket and put it here on this little rostrum, and I said to you, “Is there an electric light bulb there?” you would say, “Yes.”
And I would say, “Is it the same as those electric light bulbs up there?” And you would say, “As far as we know, yes.” Then why does it not give light? If it is still an electric light bulb, how come it does not give light and those do?
And you would say, “Because it is not screwed into the socket.” It is as simple as that. The bulb is still a bulb, but it is divorced or alienated from the current.
When Adam and Eve fell, they were alienated from God. They were divorced from eternal life. They were divorced from the Person and life of God. It does not mean they had not got a spirit, but it means that that spirit was not functioning.
Now, I do not know whether this helps you or whether you are finding this terribly boring, but the fact of the matter is this: the Bible is very, very clear on this whole thing.
Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;
Neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.—1 Corinthians 15:50
Now, this is not just flesh and blood like this here, but the whole fallen man, this kind of man that we have become.
If you think about it for a moment, dear children of God, you will understand the whole of human history. It is not a question of whether you are good or bad. It is a question of what kind of man you are.
The best, even the most noble, have a fallen nature. We are self-centred, self-dependent, self-conscious.
Do you remember the first thing that happened when Adam and Eve fell? What was the first thing they did? They sewed themselves coverings. What a ridiculous thing to do. They went out, snatched leaves down from the trees, sewed them together, and made themselves shorts. The good old version says “breeches,” but I mean, that means shorts.
How come? They were self-conscious. They had never been self-conscious before. That was the first thing that happened.
And the second thing: they did it themselves. They never went to the Lord and said, “Lord, what shall we do? We have done a terrible thing.” They talked it over and they produced something themselves.
The most interesting thing of all was this: Adam said, “It was not me, Lord. It was her.” And she said, “It was not me, Lord. It was the serpent that You put in the garden.”
Self-centred. I have no doubt that Adam loved Eve, but the moment it came to his life, it was self first.
“If there is anyone who is going to be judged, it is her, Lord. I would never have done it but for her. You know these women! They are so clever, they are so cunning, they are so full of guile. Or, You created it all!”
What had happened to him? He had become a self-centred man. And Eve more or less said, “Lord, it is Your fault. Who put the serpent in the garden in the first place?”
Do you remember what the Lord said to them? “In the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die.” Do you remember what the serpent said to Eve? “Hath God said, In the day that ye eat thereof, ye shall surely die? Ye shall not surely die, but ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.”
In other words, what Satan said was a half-truth. He said, “If you choose to be the kind of man represented by this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will have the centre inside yourselves. You will not need God. You will be like little gods.”
This is the whole of human history. All the way through, down through the thousands of years of man’s history, in his noblest expression and in his most depraved and evil expression, it has been this kind of man that has been seen.
Thank God—but this is for tomorrow—thank God, there is another kind of man. Because the Bible says that Jesus is the last Adam. Have you ever thought about that? He is called the last Adam and the second man.
It is as if there is no other man, as if God is saying, “Look here: as far as I am concerned, the first man and everyone that came out of him is put away. Now we have a new beginning: a second Man.”
Out of Him will come many sons being brought to glory through His own work and with His own nature and life in them.
Now, when you begin to see it like that, I suggest to you that the New Testament begins to take on quite a different meaning. For instance, let me read you these words in 1 Corinthians 15:45-49:
So also it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul.
The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual,
But that which is natural; then that which is spiritual.The first man is of the earth, earthy:
The second man is of heaven.As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy:
And as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.And as we have borne the image of the earthy,
We shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
Or again, think of it in this way, in the same chapter, 1 Corinthians 15:21-22:
For since by man came death,
By man came also the resurrection of the dead.For as in Adam all die,
So also in Christ shall all be made alive.
No wonder God could say to Jacob:
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
And He that formed thee, O Israel:
Fear not, for I have redeemed thee;
I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine.
Dear friends, we are living in a day in which we are going to see this kind of man, symbolised by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, brought to complete and full fruition.
We are going to see, if the Lord does not rapture us before, the most horrifying things done by man to man in the name of progress. Already we see it in abortion.
It is because God has created every human being in His image, even though fallen and depraved, that He has a claim on every human being. Every human being has to answer to the Creator.
All know what they have done with their bodies: whether they have abused their bodies with sex, abused their bodies by abortion, abused their bodies in other perversions, or whatever else. Every human being is answerable to God because God says, “I created you.”
Marx created no man. Nor did Mao. Nor has the Ayatollah Khomeini. Nor have any of the others. God has the supreme claim on every human being, whether they believe in Him or not, because He has created them.
Dear friends, we are moving into days when we will see this man, symbolised by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, overcoming all kinds of things. It is horrifying what genetically now can be done.
It is not actually being thus far divulged to the general public, because it is so horrifying. I suppose you know that within six years they believe a man will be able to give birth to a baby.
They are going to change the whole order of life, just as it says in the Word: they will change the seasons.
God dealt a death-blow, in one sense, to this fallen man thousands of years ago in a great civilisation called Babel, when they built a tower. We do not quite know what they were doing with that tower—whether it was astrological, astronomical, or whether it was man’s first attempt to get into space.
But whatever it was, we know that they were trying to join earth and heaven. And God said, “If We let them do this thing, nothing will be withheld from them.” So He blasted the whole thing, and they all spoke different languages.
This has amazingly arrested fallen man over thousands of years. But today, we are overcoming it. The degeneration of man physically is being overcome by medical science.
We are exploring space. We are overcoming the problem of language. We can, through the medium of television bounced off satellites, bring the whole world to watch events and prepare them in the end for some kind of world government.
Through the media, in the end, they can create a world public opinion.
I am glad I belong to another Man. I am glad I belong to the new Man. I am glad I have been born, by the grace of God, into the kingdom of God. Aren’t you?
And that is really where I leave you tonight, except to come back to this: we are His by creation. That is the first claim He has on you and me.
Therefore, dear friend, let us never despise what He has created.
May God bring our spirits into such a union with Him that we shall know His indwelling in our spirits so powerfully that we shall be enabled to take our place over our soul and body.
We will be able to say to our souls, “Be still.” We will be able to say to our souls, “I am going to wean you.” It is going to be a job, just like the weaning of any child is a job, but I am going to start it.
You, my soul, are going to become the vehicle for everything that God does in my spirit. Do you understand?
It is sad when a kind of inhibition comes amongst God’s people. There are no songs written, no poetry, no communication, no creativity—as if being spiritual is to be a kind of static state in which we do nothing.
But when we look into the history of the church, every time the Holy Spirit has taken over, every time the Lord Jesus has been re-enthroned, there has been an outburst of new hymn, new song, new worship, new painting, new creativity.
That is a spiritual man. A spiritual man is a man whose spirit, in union with the Spirit of God, in union with the Lord Jesus, is governing his soul and his body.
Listen, sisters, let us take care of this old earthen vessel. An earthen vessel it may be, but it is a temple of the living God.
Let us not devalue it. Let us not despise it. But let us make it to be a manifestation of the beauty of the Lord our God.
Oh, dear friends, there we are:
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob:
Thou art Mine.
Shall we pray?
Heavenly Lord, we thank You for helping us tonight to overcome some of the more unusual circumstances. We pray, Lord, that You will write in our hearts something of Your Word.
For some of us, Lord, there is nothing new about what has been said, but use what has been said to elucidate, clear up, clarify, and define things for us. For others of us, Lord, it may have come to us as something quite new. Bring it to us with all the force of revelation.
But Lord, preserve us from misinterpretation or any kind of extreme interpretation. Lord, will You, in Your own wonderful way, bring us face to face with the fact that You have created each one of us, and You have created us for Your glory: spirit, soul, and body.
Do this wonderful work, Lord, in revealing these things to us, and not only revealing it to us, but, Lord, making it flesh and blood within us. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.