Spirit in Man Unlocks the Mystery of God

Brethren evolutionists, materialists, atheists, and most non-religious people believe that human beings are wholly physical. That we're merely an animal. That we are the highest form of animals that there are. Now, of course, if we evolved from a slime pit or if we came from scum, or the oceans, we truly are just physical. And there's no difference in us than the animals. We, according to the evolutionists, are the highest form of animals. We're the top of the pile, so to speak. And, you know, we're up here, others are down here, but it's just because we've evolved further than they have.

And one day, eventually, you know, they'll be where we are. And they say this is a process that could have taken millions of years to happen, or perhaps billions of years to transpire. Now, as a side note, when you always talk about evolution, you talk about creation, there are major questions that remain unanswered. As an example, where did matter come from? Where does energy come from? Where does life come from? How was the sun created? Why is a planet not a sun? And why is the sun? Where did it get all of its energy and power, and generating capacity?

How did the earth become positioned exactly where it is, so that there could be life? Having the right orbit, the right tilt to it, proper rotation, balance of water and land, atmosphere, everything that you might think of. When you think of it, it certainly seems to give an indication of a designer. The answer of materialists is that given enough time, all of this naturally took place, that there was no God involved. You've heard the old story about, could a monkey type or create an encyclopedia?

And the answer is, given enough time. Now, you know how big an encyclopedia is. How many words, subjects. First of all, where does it get the typewriter? Where does it get the paper? Where does it get the knowledge to type on that typewriter?

And then, can you see a monkey chattering away on keyboard? And billions of years later, he's written an encyclopedia. There may be a time that he puts two letters together. Could be a time he puts three or even four. See, this is the way they reason. Could he put two together? Well, you say, yeah. Could he put three together? Yeah. How about four? Well, four, he could spell a word.

He could write a sentence. He could write a book. You know, somewhere the logic breaks down. Actually, one evolutionist admitted indirectly that God does exist. He didn't realize what he was saying. He poo-pooed the idea that God had existed forever and created everything. How did he think the universe formed? Well, he said that a small amount of energy existed. And there was an explosion called the Big Bang.

That energy was dispersed throughout the universe. And as it was dispersed, it was hurled into space. It continued to expand and then later on to contract with time. Now, when he was asked the cardinal question, where did the energy come from? He stated it always existed. So, notice the dichotomy. If the evolutionist is willing to say that something has existed forever, why isn't he willing to say that God existed forever? He's willing to say that energy existed forever, but he's not willing to say that an intelligent God has existed forever. So, he had to admit that something had to exist forever.

So, where did it come from? Is man wholly physical? Is man merely an animal? Are we just merely animals? Is there something more to us? Is there a non-physical part to us? Now, this question, I think, as you come to see today, is a very vital question. Because if man is wholly physical, meaning there is nothing spiritual, there is not a spiritual dimension or spiritual realm, or nothing in man, then humans must find physical solutions to all their problems.

And man should be able to solve their problems. But, I think, when you look around, it's not working. As far as we know, we've been here 6,000 years, and man's never been able to solve his problems. What government has worked? What economic system has functioned properly? Do psychologists and the medical profession know how to really cure people so that people don't get sick? You can go on with all of the problems that human beings are faced with. Physical solutions will never solve non-physical problems.

I've mentioned many times in sermons that human relationships are based upon spiritual principles or solutions. Now, the evolutionist would not agree with that. He would not agree with that at all. He would not agree that there are spiritual principles that govern all human relationships, that govern marriage, that govern how you rear your children, how you work for your employer, how he treats you, how you get along with your neighbor, how nations get along. They would not admit that there are spiritual solutions and principles that govern all of that.

Look at all of the problems that man is faced with. How do we solve these problems? If you really sat down and thought about it, I could spend the rest of the sermon just ticking off problems and telling you about some of the human problems we're faced with.

But right now, we are faced, if we don't come up or something doesn't happen, if there's not an intervention, with total annihilation, cosmocide of the human race. How do we solve wars? Why is peace eluded us? Well, take a look today. Look at Syria and what's going on there. Do they know how to solve their problems? No. You find the rebels trying to overthrow the government. Already been overthrown in Libya, Egypt, and a number of other Mideast nations. Look at Iran and how they want to wipe Israel off the map, into the sea.

Look at Iraq. Our solution is we go over there, we conquer them, we give them democracy, we walk away, and they will be a democratic nation. Well, they're already falling apart when it comes to democracy. What about Afghanistan? As far as I know, no country has ever been able to conquer Afghanistan.

They're fighting us and shooting us in the back over there. North Korea, if you read the recent prophetic times, has a missile now that can hit the West Coast of the United States. It can hit every country in the Far East and reach to Europe. So we find people arming to the teeth with rockets and guns and tanks, airplanes, boats, everything you can think of. And man always uses what he creates.

And there's going to come a time in the future when there will be a future Holocaust. How can we come up with the right government? Why do great nations come and go? Why have there been great empires like the Babylonian, the Persian, the Grecian, the Roman, Chinese? You can go on and on down through the ages. None of them still exist. Why can't we have good health, sound minds, happy marriages, cooperation, less crime, less violence, less murder?

All of these type of things. So when you begin to look at it, mankind is faced with myriad of problems. We have politicians, we have thinkers, we have theologians, everybody trying to articulate and come up with a solution to all of this.

Why isn't man able to resolve and to solve this? Well, Matthew 24 and verse 23, Matthew 24, 23, tells us that there's coming a time that the evolutionists, materialists of this world, may not believe in God, but unless there is a God who intervenes, man will do the unthinkable. He will destroy all human life off this planet. Notice verse 22, talking about the end time. Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved, but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened. Then if anyone says to you, look here or there, and so on.

But I want you to notice that no flesh would be saved. That means saved alive, left alive. All mankind would be destroyed. So the answer to all of this is quite simple. You can summarize it. Physical solutions will never solve non-physical problems. Let me state that again. Physical solutions that man comes up with on his own will never solve physical problems. The activities of the human mind, the way the mind thinks, are immeasurably more advanced than the activities of animal brains. However, the anatomy, the physiology, the biochemistry of the human brains is barely more complex than the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of whales, dolphins, and ape brains.

They can look at brains of animals and brains of humans. Some animals are bigger. Some are human brains about the same. They look just about the same. But yet the output of a human brain is so far superior to the output of animals. That animals seem to operate according to instinct, and they just do the same things over and over naturally.

But human beings are not that way. Animals receive physical information the same way that humans do, but they don't really comprehend it the same way we do, do they? They have the five senses. They see, they hear, they smell, they touch, they taste, so do we. But when they do that, a cow can be standing out watching a car wreck.

Let's put something a little more complicated. Looking at a garden. They see, all they see are plants. I think I'll go over there and chew on that. I don't know if they say, I think I will, but maybe they mosey over there and they chew on it. They see it, they can smell it, they can taste it, they can touch it, but it doesn't do anything to them. You and I can plant a garden. We can go out and we look at that garden, we lay that garden out, we reason it out.

There's got to be so much space. You don't put watermelons and other kinds of melons together. You space them out. We reason, we plant, we see it coming up, we mulch, we pull the weeds, and we grow vegetables. All of this is the output of our mind. You don't find animals doing the same things. How can this contradiction be explained? I think only by realizing that the human mind does contain a spiritual factor.

The human mind has a spiritual factor in it. Those people who believe purely in materialism don't seek spiritual solutions to their problems. What do they do? They fill the Bible out. They laugh at the fact that there is a God, that there are eternal principles, eternal laws of God. They don't start with the foundation that you and I start with. You and I have a foundation that we start with. It was a motto at Ambassador College when I went there. The Word of God is the foundation of knowledge.

The Word of God reveals the foundation. It's not all knowledge, but it's the foundation from which you build, you add, and it grows. Let's take a look at what the Bible has to say about the human mind, about human problems. Why do humans have a mind? Animals operate from instinct. We will see if you reject God, if you reject the idea that there is a spirit realm or the possibility that God has added something to our brains to give man a mind, and man will always, without fail, no exception, come up with the wrong solutions.

Absolutely. He won't be able to figure things out. It's not within man, as the Bible says, to direct his steps. We don't know how to go. With that in mind, let's take a look at the Bible in 1 Corinthians 1.

Notice that the Bible says the same thing. 1 Corinthians 1 will begin in verse 18. It says, for the message of the cross, in other words, the message, the good news about Christ, his sacrifice, salvation being offered to mankind, is foolishness to those who are perishing. They think the spiritual area is just total foolishness. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. So the wisdom of the wise of this world is nothing with God. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputor of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? This world's wisdom, God says, is pure foolishness. The man thinks God's knowledge and principles are foolish. It says, for since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believed. It says, for the Jews request a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom.

So you had your Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato. These guys were philosophers, and they were always seeking after wisdom and knowledge and understanding. But it says, we preach Christ crucified through the Jews' assembling block and to the Greeks' foolishness. Now notice in chapter 2 and verse 14, he makes this point even clearer. 1 Corinthians 2.14, Notice, Notice, Nor can he know them.

He can't know them because, why? They are spiritually discerned.

It takes the Spirit of God to reveal it.

The evolutionists and materialists are wrong in saying that there is no spirit or that God doesn't exist. Now what has been the response of religionists, theologians, down through the centuries to the evolutionists and the doubters? False Christianity today teaches that man has an immortal soul. See, they look at what the philosophers of this world say, the doubters, the materialists, the evolutionists. They say there is a spiritual component in man, and they call it the immortal soul. Notice the origin of the immortal soul concept. The immortal soul does not come from the Bible. I don't have time here today to give a sermon on the immortal soul. We've covered that before. But let me just cover something perhaps we haven't touched on before. Where did the Judeo-Christian religion find them? In other words, how did they creep into Christianity and Judaism? Notice the Jewish encyclopedia, what they freely admit about this. The belief that the soul continues its existence after the dissolving of the body is speculation. Nowhere expressly taught in the Holy Scriptures. In other words, they're talking about the Old Testament. The belief in the immortality of the soul came to the Jews from contact with the Greeks, and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato. Its principal exponent, who was led to it through the Orphic and Eucinian mysteries, in which Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely blended. So it goes back to where? To Babylon. And who was it who began to organize and push the false religion? It was Semiramis and Nimrod. We go all the way back to Genesis chapter 10 and 11. Plato is also the authoritative source for so-called Christian fathers. Origen and Trutelian, who two centuries after the death of Christ, introduced the immortality of the soul into the church as the church was rapidly becoming pagan. By that time, paganized Christianity. Most have assumed that the doctrines and traditions taught by what is called common or traditional Christianity have their origin in the Bible. But when you compare modern-day teachings of the church and the soul, as Plato wrote in his phato, you'll find they're quite similar. Notice what Plato wrote. It says, the soul is shown to be immortal. These are his words. And since immortal, indestructible. So if you have an immortal soul, it's indestructible. Do we believe there's such a thing as death? Well, to be sure. And is this anything but the separation of the soul and the body? Now, what does Christianity believe today? When you die, they think you immediately go to heaven. What goes to heaven? Your body? Oh, you can see the body in the casket. You can burn the body and have the ashes in a jug. No, they don't believe that. They believe that your immortal soul goes to heaven.

And notice, in being dead, is the attainment of this separation when the soul exists in herself and separates from the body, and the body is parted from the soul. That is death. Death is merely the separation of the soul and body.

Notice what Christianity teaches today. When you die, they say you immediately go to heaven. Then you say, well, what about the resurrection? The Bible talks about the resurrection of the body. They say, aha! Death is the separation of the body and the soul. So the resurrection is to raise the body, and you unite it back together with the immortal soul.

And so that's how they explain it.

That is not correct, as we know. There is no such thing as the immortality of the soul. The Bible says, the soul that sins is shall die. The word soul in the Old Testament is nayfish. In many places, in chapter 1, 2, and 3 of the book of Genesis, talking about animals, they're called nayfeshas. It just means a living, breathing individual or person or animal life. So both purely the materialistic approach and the philosophy of the immortality of the soul are wrong. So, you know, because a materialist approach is wrong, it doesn't automatically mean that the concept of the immortality of the soul is correct. As I have stated, there is a biblical solution to this question about the human mind, human existence, how are human problems going to be resolved? Man is not wholly physical. You are not wholly physical. There is a difference in our mind that gives us the capacity that we possess as human beings. We have an amazing capacity to think, to reason, to remember, to design, to know about one another, to create, and to think. The human brain must have a non-physical essence to transform it into a human mind. But what is that non-physical component? It's not the fabled immortality of the soul. That's not what it is. But what is it? How does it work? Let's go back to Job 32 and verse 8. Job 32 and verse 8. Notice what is mentioned here. There is a spirit in man, but the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding. Notice there is a spirit in man. That essence, that component, is the spirit in man. Notice how this is translated in the Jewish publication. It is a spirit in man that gives them understanding. The spirit in man is what enables us to understand, that enables us to think. The spirit does not think, but it gives the capacity to the brain then to be able to reason and to think. The spirit in man is not a soul. It absolutely has no consciousness apart from the brain. The human spirit does not reveal or teach material knowledge. Such knowledge enters the brain through the five senses. But remember this, the five senses are all physical. All the information, all the knowledge entering into our brains is physical knowledge. Such knowledge may enter the brain of a chicken, cow, goat, horse, but they won't comprehend it. They won't understand it. They won't be able to put two and two together, two and four, four and eight, eight and eight, sixteen and sixteen, thirty-two and thirty-two. It just doesn't work. They aren't able to compute that way. God told Adam and Eve, you might remember. Let's go back to Genesis 1.

Genesis 1, verse 26.

Genesis 1, we'll read in verse 26. God said, let us make man in our image according to our lightness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over all the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So we're made in God's image. Physically, we look like God. The minds, the talents, the abilities, the gifts come from God. God has also created us in His lightness when it comes to our ability to think and to reason. The animals are not created in God's image. They don't look like God. They don't have a mind like God has. They're created with instinct, and they operate according to that instinct. So God created us in His lightness to have a mind, to be able to think, to reason, to plan, to record, to read, self-awareness, self-consciousness, to be aware of others. Where does the spirit and man come from? Where does that essence come from? Ecclesiastes 12 and verse 7.

Ecclesiastes 12.

Now it's in here.

Chapter 12 and verse 7. Talking about man getting old, and one day he will die. When that happens, it says, "...then the dust will return to the earth as it was. From dust we are, to dust we shall return. And the spirit will return to God who gave it." God gives to man the spirit in man. That's where it comes from. When we die, it returns to God. The Bible is very clear about that. Now, when do we receive the spirit in man? The Bible does not precisely say. Years ago, we thought maybe when a baby was born. I think later on we wondered if it were closer to conception or sometime afterwards.

One just does not know precisely. So you can't be dogmatic about that. So we do find, though, that at death the spirit returns to God who gave it. So that explains where it comes from. At death the spirit returns to God. And how is it possible to have a resurrection? How is it possible that all who have died will live again? Let's notice in John 8 the promise that God gives to us. John 8, 28. John 8, verse 28.

Then Jesus said to them, When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself. He says, But as My Father taught Me these things, and I don't think that's exactly what I was wanting.

Well, I'm sure it's right here. Anyway, the Scripture basically says that all who are in the grave will hear His voice. Some will come forth to the resurrection of life, some to the resurrection of condemnation. And there will be a resurrection of all who have lived. Notice 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 22. 1 Corinthians 15 and 22. The same statement is mentioned all over again.

And verse 22 says, For as an animal died, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But each one in his own order, not everybody at the same time, Christ the first-roots, afterwards those that are Christ at His coming. So, all will be made alive, brethren, at some point. Now, notice over in verse 35 of this chapter, 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 35.

Someone will say, How are the dead raised up? Okay, so if all the dead are going to come up, how are they raised up? And with what body do they come up? What kind of body will they have? Is God going to have to go out and search and find every molecule that was a part of their body? And reassemble it to be able to make a body? Well, notice. He says, Foolish ones, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. So it has to die first. And what you sow, you do not sow the body that shall be, but more grain, perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as it pleases, and to each seed its own body. And all flesh is not the same flesh as one kind of flesh of man, another flesh of animals, another fish, another of birds.

If the body that dies is not the body that comes up in the resurrection, how can the precise image, appearance, memory, character be preserved and translated into the body that shall come? How will the body coming be like that? Let me give you an analogy that perhaps might help to explain it. We've all heard this before, but I don't know of a better analogy. The analogy of the tape and the tape recorder. The tape recorder, if you have a tape recorder, and those are out of date now, as we know, but let's use the analogy anyway, you have a tape recorder.

That tape recorder houses all of the machinery and wiring that are peculiar to the operation, which is, if you put a tape in it, to reproduce sound, reproduction. Likewise, the human brain, the analogy analogous to the tape recorder, contains all the necessary structure, circuits, for its manifold responsibilities, which are sensation, memory, emotion, creativity, and so on. The recording tape imparts the capacity for auditory reproduction to the tape recorder. Put the tape in, and maybe you've got a recording of Mario Lanza singing from the student prints. So, you know, you've got a recording, and it reproduces it, and you can hear it, and you listen to it.

Well, at the same time, though, you can take a tape, and you can record on that tape. At the end of the Mario Lanza song, you might record and store the magnetic stamped impression from the tape recorder.

And now you've got a recording of that. Now, that's analogous to the spirit in man. The spirit in man imparts the capacity of creative intellect and self-conscious personality to the brain. Well, at the same time, the spirit in man is recording and storing the stamped impression from the brain. So, the spirit in man that God has given us stores everything that we've done, know, come in contact with, and that is stored there. Now, at death, the spirit in man, or the tape, is complete. It contains, at that time, every nuance of our life, every thought, personality, character, which makes us exactly the singular individual that we are. I can look around this room.

Your character, even though we are all developing godly character, is a little different than your character, and vice versa. We all have character that we're developing. Our thought patterns are a little different. The tape can then be filed until needed again when it is reactivated. That reactivation is called the resurrection. God will create a body, put the spirit back in the body, and all at once, you are a new person, whether it's on the physical level or the spiritual level. Notice in Ecclesiastes chapter 9 and verse 5. Ecclesiastes chapter 9 and verse 5 says, For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.

So rather than the dead don't know anything, the spirit does not operate without the body and the brain. The spirit of man has to be united with the brain to be able to know. So that spirit goes back, and it's just like a tape or a CD that you might have filed away. You might have dozens or hundreds of them in a cabinet.

And they're there. They don't do anything. They don't say anything until you put them into the recorder. And then they're able either to record or to produce music or sound that's on them. There is no consciousness to the human tape.

In order to reconstruct the specific person's consciousness and awareness from the spirit of man tape, the spirit of man must be reinserted into the brain. Therefore, a reorganized brain and body, whether it's physical or spiritual, depending on which resurrection you come up in, are necessary adjuncts to the spirit of man. There has to be a reactivation or resurrection, and then you have the original person. I think probably the spirit of man might also contain the DNA of a person.

Who knows what might be contained in that? Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 9. 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 9. We read, as it is written, So notice the unconverted state, man, it doesn't mean enter into his heart or his mind what God has prepared for him.

But notice verse 10. But God has revealed them to us through his spirit. So notice there is another spirit that the Bible talks about, which we're all familiar with, the spirit of God. It is the spirit of God that reveals spiritual knowledge, spiritual wisdom, spiritual understanding. Humans, cut off from that spirit, don't have that.

So the Bible reveals that there is another spirit, the spirit of God, that God can give to us. Let's notice verse 11, because it focuses on what we've been talking about here today.

Now notice the contrast.

So how can we know another person? How can we know ourselves? How can we have awareness and self-consciousness and all of this? It is through the spirit and man. So that's how we can understand men. You can talk to an individual, get to know them, see their personality, see their character, see their faithfulness, see their attributes, their gifts, and you get to know that person. You can read a book, you can see a movie, you can travel, and you get to know other human beings. You can read, you can go to school, and you learn about physics, you can learn about biology, you can learn about math, you can learn about psychology, you know, you have the capacity to learn.

If you have the talent, you can get out and build great skyscrapers, send men to the moon, build rockets, and all of that. That's because there is a spirit in man, and we can know that. We can know one another. You cannot know the things of a man except through the spirit in man. That's why animals don't know the things of a man. A chicken, a cow, horse, they don't know the things of a man.

Animals do not know. Animals with brains come equipped with instinct, automatic instinct, that is not present in mankind. You and I don't have that instinct. You can take a bird, it's born, next year it will come generally back to the same area, it will build a nest, although it didn't see its mother build the nest.

It will migrate. It does things automatically, it knows how to eat, and all of this. Man has to be taught. The spirit in man empowers the human brain with intellect, spiritual principles, and the things of God. Man naturally does not know. They seek God, God will impart them. Hold your place here, and let's go over to Romans 8-16.

Notice what Romans 8-16 says. Romans 8 and verse 16. The spirit himself or itself bears witness with our spirit. So the spirit of God can bear witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.

How do you know you're converted? How do you know you have the spirit of God dwelling within you? It should witness with our spirit. There should be an understanding, comprehension of spiritual principles. If we do wrong, there should be a guilt. Our consciences should tell us, you've sinned, you've done wrong. So God's spirit is there witnessing or working with our spirit.

If so, if children, then heirs and heirs of God enjoin heirs with Christ. So, brethren, there is the spirit of God and our spirit, and they do work together to give us spiritual knowledge. Now, let's back up to verse 12 again in 1 Corinthians 2. We found in verse 11 that man does not know the things of a man except the spirit of man, which is in him.

Even so, no one knows the things of God except the spirit of God, and God will give us that spirit. Verse 12, now we have received not the spirit of the world, so now we find a third spirit, the spirit of this world. This is Satan, his influence in this world. He broadcasts, he sends out wavelengths, he influences people's minds and moods, and he works on them.

So, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that we have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. So, we can compare one verse with another verse, we can compare spiritual principle with spiritual principle, and we grow in wisdom. So, brethren, you and I, as verse 16 says, are to have the mind of Christ.

The human mind, even though it is so great, yet it's so helpless, it cannot solve its own problems. We've been here for 6,000 years, and why has God allowed man to be on the earth and to go his own way, basically the majority of mankind cut off from the tree of life, so that man will learn his ways do not work. Only God's way works. Consider what the spirit in man signifies, the fact that we have the spirit in man, that the human mind operates with a spiritual dimension.

That's why it gives its ability to be a mind. That means, if it operates with a spiritual dimension, it means that there are spiritual problems that we have to deal with. The spirit in man adds spiritual problems to the physical human brain. So man is faced with spiritual things. When you analyze it, that's really the crux of the matter. That's why humankind is planning its own extinction. Human beings have spiritual problems, but only have physical solutions. Spiritual problems, physical solutions. And physical solutions will never solve spiritual problems. It will never.

We can choose any variation of what's going on through history. Capitalism, socialism, democracies, republican form of government, dictatorships. None of them have worked. We can be conservatives, liberals, republicans, democrats, moderates, tea party. None of them have the answers. Isolationists are...we can be internationalists, believe in monarchy or anarchy, self-help. We should take care of ourselves to the government, let the government take care of us, handouts. Have tariffs, opposed to foreign aid, segregation and integration. The end result is always the same. It doesn't matter who. Always would be the same. It will not succeed.

And man will ultimately end up headed to self-destruction. And that's where we are right now. We're closer to it today than we have ever been. Physical solutions cannot solve spiritual problems. That is why the spirit of man becomes the focus of all human knowledge. Because it enables us to understand, for the first time, true spiritual knowledge and the solution demands problems. Because the spirit of God can be combined with it and we can understand. So, brethren, remember, spiritual solutions are needed to solve spiritual problems.

Thank you.