Identification Truths Plus 2012
Mike Doyle · Jan 15, 2012
Identification Truths Plus, No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926258176876

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Get finished with a little bit of identification history last week. I'll try to finish that up quickly and then we can get to the lesson number two. We talked about last week that there is a difference between growth truths and birth truths. Salvation is as wonderful as it is. If all you know are the birth truths, it's not enough for you to grow spiritually. And so the growth truths, which we're going to focus on over the next weeks and months to come, primarily came back into focus in the English language through a man named John Darby, who was an Irishman, lived in 1800-1882.

He started the Plymouth Brethren movement, which he probably was, at least for a few years, the best example of how the body of Christ ought to function But then it began to deteriorate because they started to focus on how they were meeting rather than why they were meeting. And so they split into open and closed. How do you propagate a denomination if it's called the closed brethren? How do you get in? And so it splintered and from there came what is known as the Keswick movement. And the Keswick movement was really kind of cool for what it did.

They were conferences about a week long, each session. They had really good teachers. It started in England and ended up coming to the United States. They would send out programs around and invite people to come. You would go for a week and would be concentrated. Five days, six days, you'd study the truths that were going to take a year to go through. It was really beneficial. except for one built-in flaw. What do you think it would be? If I took one of you and said, okay, here's what we're going to do. Starting Monday morning, for six days, you and me, identification interviews, and by Saturday you're going to have it. What's the problem with that? Our brains only hold so much. It's time. Spiritual growth takes time. And as important as the information is, in order for it to have an effect, a conditional effect on you, it takes time.

So at the end of the week, these people would all dissipate to wherever they came from. Who was going to keep them on the track, keep them going, keep nourishing them? because the churches at that point, most of the churches had no idea about what identification was and how it was to be implemented and that kind of thing. So eventually the Keswick movement ran out of good speakers. They started to get infiltrated with people who were well-known celebrity pastors and teachers but who knew nothing about the growth truth. And so therefore it dissipated into almost nothing.

There's still some of it by name only. There's a group up in Windsor, Colorado that claims to teach, to be a Keswick group. I looked over their website and it's pretty cool what they're doing except I couldn't find in their literature the place where the cross of Christ had the center. And without the cross of Christ there is no growth.

We talked last week that what Darby brought to the table was, I had a dozen things, assurance of salvation, a complete acceptance by the Father of us in his beloved Son, the Church as the body of Christ, the absolute distinction between Israel and the Church, and that's a really important one as we go forward, and so therefore the distinction between law and grace, the basic cuss word in Christianity called dispensationalism. What does it mean? Pre-tribulation, pre-millennial rapture of the church, a lot of light on prophecy, and then the identification truths were brought into focus, deliverance from the reign of sin, not sins, but sin itself, and the old man via Romans 6 truth, our freedom from the principle of law via Romans 7, and our position in the Lord Jesus at the right hand of the Father and God's purpose to conform us to the image of Christ. John Darby brought all of that back into the argument. All of it. It wasn't there before him.

So, then from the Keswick movement we graduate to what I would call maybe just literature. What began to happen is these Brethren guys and some of the early Keswick speakers were pretty prolific authors and they wrote lots and lots of material. Darby, Kelly, Coates, Stoney, McIntosh, all of those people came out of this movement. Most of that material survives to today, although a lot of it you really have to search hard on the web to find it.

There are a lot of really good authors that their information has just sort of disappeared into domain space someplace. So that was kind of the next step in spiritual growth and then in the 50s and 60s and 70s there were a few guys around that were contemporary authors who continued to publish and teach these truths but there weren't many of them because reformed theology was coming into its heyday in which it heydays here now. So what do we do today? How do we deal with, if you want to grow spiritually, how are you going to do it?

Meet with other Christians. Meet with other believers. Okay, good point. Should the other believers kind of know what's up? Absolutely. So how do you know? Test it against the Word of God. There you go. So it's the Word of God. It's really important. There needs to be, I've always thought that the job of the local church was to equip saints for the ministry. It's the job of this church to do the teaching and do the equipping and do the preparing of those who will, in turn, teach others. So, what do you think the most difficult thing to find in Christianity is today? A church?

Yeah. Where are you going to find them? You know, I distribute Miles Stanford's books on the web, which means I have lots and lots of contacts with people all over the country. That's the number one question I get. A guy called me last week from where the heck was he from? Somewhere in Minnesota. He said, boy, you know, I'm I'm really loving these growth truths and I'm growing up.

But nobody around here I can find understands why they think I'm nuts. They don't know what I'm talking about. My death with Christ, my burial and resurrection with Him, nobody wants to talk about that. Do you know of any good churches around here? I don't know. I mean, I know a handful, but they're spread all over the place. So it's hard today.

There are lots and lots of believers who have awakened to the growth truths who are isolated. And thank the Lord for the internet because that's one way you can communicate with them. And you'll find as you grow spiritually that these growth truths will start to connect with you and that person and this person and that person and that will create an environment where God spreads the deeper truths of the Word of God. He does it that way. So that's one reason why it's important for us to be up to speed, so to speak. on what the growth truths are, what the identification truths are, what our position in Christ is, who we are, where we are, and what we have. Because those are the three big questions.

If I said to you, who are you, what would you say to me? I'd say a child of God. A child of God. What does that mean? If I'm a child of God, what does it mean? Does it go as far as to say that I am a legitimate, organic offspring of the God of the universe?

I'm his son in every respect of the term? Does that mean that? Does it mean that I'm entitled to all of the things that Christ is entitled to? Yes, it does. Does it mean that I'm a priest? Does it mean that I'm blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies? Does it mean that I'm totally and completely positionally free from sin and the law? It means all of that. It means all of that.

And if I said, where are you as a believer? Where are you? From a positional standpoint. Randy's going to talk about position for a couple of weeks. If I said, where are you today? From a biblical standpoint, where would you say you were? Seated in the heavenly places? That's exactly right. That's where you are. You're seated in Christ in the heavenlies. How do you know that? Because the Word of God said so. Real simple. He said so. And so then what do you have? If you're a son seated, what are your possessions? Rather than ask you what they are, what possessions don't you have? None.

Ephesians says that you're blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. And guess what? That word blessed there is not in the future tense. It's in the perfect tense. You have been and continue to be for all eternity blessed with every single blessing. So you're going to say to me, but I don't have a Mercedes. Why not? They don't make them in heaven.

So if you know your position, and you know who you are, and you're going to live all eternity as a glorified son of God, how cool is that? Well, I don't think we will enter into who we are and what we are and function if you are a king, you ought to act like one. If you come from Hollywood, you're always trying to act like somebody you're not. But if your last name happens to be Windsor, and you live in London, and you're a prince, do you have to try to be a prince? No, you already are one. So act like one. You already are a king. So act like one. You are already a son of God. Act like one. You don't have to act like one to become one. You act like one because you already are one. So, let's turn to the first set of questions. And we're going to start with the basics. And the basics are, why did God create you? Why'd he do it?

I mean, if I was God, I wouldn't have bothered. You guys aren't worth it. Okay, why did God create you? Because it's his nature, like he couldn't help himself. You think God did it because it's his nature and he couldn't help himself? He just thought, oh Karen, I've got to create you so I can have you around. And then break the mold. That's right. Why did God create you?

The first glory. Yeah, he did it for his glory. Now, God does everything, everything for his glory. He does it to glorify himself, to demonstrate it, and to show it. Now, think about this. By creating, does God add anything to who he is? I mean, when he created grace, did he say, oh man, it really adds to my stature. I've created grace. No. But he has created objects who can appreciate his glory. and can see it and he can glorify himself to his creation. Now, when I say he created everything for his own glory, what does that mean? I mean, doesn't that sound pretty self-centered? You know, that God just whipped all this stuff together so he could look what I've done?

No? Come on, challenge me. He wanted fellowship, he wanted creatures who could appreciate who he was, that he could love them and they could love him back. He didn't need that though. You have to understand that. He didn't need that to make himself any greater than he already was. Alright. What question did I just... I've got two in my mind. Which one did I just ask? What does glory mean? What does glory mean? Isn't that the true essence?

So isn't it like he couldn't help himself? Okay, so sum total of his intrinsic attributes is the best definition I know. It's who he is. And his attributes are not just, well he acts this way a certain way. When you talk about the glory of God, his character radiates out of his being. It isn't that he's all powerful, that he possesses power. He is the thing, power. It isn't that he possesses anything, he is things. And so he wants to manifest that power or that glory to his creatures.

And so because the very essence and core of God's being is love, He creates so that those that have, like us, are sentient beings, meaning that we have the ability to apprehend and understand who God is. He wants us to appreciate who He is and to be loved by Him and love Him back. It's not self-centered. It's totally the other side of the spectrum.

He did it because He's a loving God. And a creative God. Yeah. He didn't have to go to Wal-Mart to get the parts. He just did it. So, if he created to glorify himself and to manifest his glory, then let's read a Genesis, somebody who can read English, here's the verses I want. Genesis 121, 124 and 125.

And God created great sea monsters and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth break forth a living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping things, and the beast of the earth after its kind, and it was sour. And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after its kind, and God saw that it was good. Okay, what does after its kind mean? You had children. What's that? But if everything that God created can reproduce after its kind, then doesn't that restrict what kind it's going to be?

So you don't ever see cow birds. Well, you do. I've seen a few. But bird cows you haven't seen. In other words, evolution is really idiotic because If God's creatures are going to produce after their own kind, then they're going to produce what they are. It's true in biological terms. It's true in zoological terms.

Trees that bear fruit, I mean we can manipulate them, but an orange tree is an orange tree. An apple tree is an apple tree. How many different varieties of apples there are? Lots of them. But they're still apples. They're not pumpkins. Birds reproduce birds. But you can crossbreed them. But you can't crossbreed a bird with a dog. How many varieties of dogs are there? Jillions of them. But they only produce dogs. You can't crossbreed a cat and a dog.

So, producing physically after its own kind is a really important principle when it comes to spiritual understanding of identification. Because, well let me finish this, every living creature that God made can reproduce itself, but only in its own likeness. Man can manipulate the reproduction of these creatures because God gave him the dominion over them, But man cannot change the essential nature of the species. There are no dog cows, cat snakes, that kind of thing. Now the next question is, did God create after his own kind? What do you think? Sure he did. In his own image? Yeah. So what did he do if he created after his own kind? He didn't create deity, did he?

All right, verse 26. Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Okay, in 2-7 I'll read, And then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. and man became a living soul or a living being. Genesis 5, the book of the generation of Adam, in the day when God created man he made him in the likeness of God. Verse 2, he created them male and female and he blessed them and named them man. in the day when he created, they were created, verse 3, when Adam had lived 130 years he became the father of the son of his own likeness according to his image and named him Seth.

Moved down the road pretty fast. So when God creates after his own likeness, and he creates this guy Adam, right? Adam probably was pretty cool. What about Adam is like God? What does Adam have that is after God? It's likeness. Now think about, what's the makeup of Adam? He's a three part being. What's he got? He's got a body, he's got a soul, and he's got a spirit. Right? Now, do all three of those come after the likeness of God? Maybe not Bonnie. Yeah, not Bonnie. Unless it's Christ, eventually. Eventually.

Christ is obviously the prototype man, but what is it unique about Adam that made him like God? And made him different from all the other creatures? He was from God. What's that? He was from God. We produce with other people like us who are flawed and sinful and everything, but Adam came from perfection.

Well, let me go at it another way. With the premise that God wants to glorify himself and manifest his glory, it would make sense that he would create a creature who could do that. I mean, it would be something if I painted a picture and I started talking to the picture. Well, if it can't talk back, if it can't appreciate me, the artist, what am I doing? So what God did was he created a man who had personality.

He had an intellect. He could think. He had emotions. He had a will. And so there could be communion and fellowship and cooperation between the two of them. You see that? So what's like God? He's got a personality. He's a person. My Labrador Retriever, Zeke, as cool as he is, isn't a person in a human sense. You see that? So he creates Adam as a person. So one person can communicate with another person.

The other person was God. He gave him intellect. He gave him the ability to do what? To apprehend the things around him, to think about them, to correlate him in his mind and to use his will and form judgments about him. He was so perfect that God said, I'll tell you what Adam, you name all the animals.

Pretty cool. Now that alone tells us a couple of things about who Adam was in terms of his likeness of God. He's the head guy. God's the head guy. He gave him dominion over the earth. God has dominion over everything. So does Adam, just like God. He's in charge. He names the animals. He tends the garden. He makes decisions.

He can walk in the cool of the evening with God himself. Now I can walk in the cool of the evening with Zeke, and Zeke's going to chase the ball and he's going to wag his tail, but I can't talk to him about the Broncos. He doesn't care. I can't talk to him about about what I read in the Bible this morning because he doesn't care. I can walk with my wife though and we can have a conversation the whole time because we're like beings.

Adam was a like being as God because he could communicate with him. He could understand him. He could receive information. He could receive the love of God and he could reciprocate. See that? That's really special. because it's the first time God created all these animals and all these things. None of them could do that until Adam came along. Now do you see how creating a being like that would manifest God's glory? Because everything that Adam did, because he was like God, would manifest God's glory. Who he was.

Another thing though, that God is sovereign and man was made subject to God. He was subject to God's will, and I'll be surprised, well I won't get into any arguments, which is perfect freedom. Is being subject to God's will perfect freedom? Well sure, it'd have to be. If you're subject to God's will and that's the way He created you, that would be perfectly free, wouldn't it? The problem we have is that we're not free to be subject to God's will most of the time. I would say that God is essentially a spirit, wouldn't you say that at this point? Therefore, man, who is similar to God, possesses an immortal spirit, doesn't he?

Man resembles God in respects without being equal to him, and man's likeness to God is what truly distinguishes him from all the rest of creation. Man is a personal being with the power to think and feel and decide. He has the ability to make moral choices and the capacity for spiritual growth or spiritual decline.

In the beginning man loved God and he was a holy creature. There wasn't any issue about God trying to get Adam to love him. He did. It was part of what he was created to be. And he was holy. What does holy mean? I like defining terms. It means to be set apart.

So Adam was set apart to God so that he could love God and he could communicate with God. I would say that Adam's likeness to God was not necessarily physical, but it was in the matter of personhood. God is a person, man is a person, so two persons could communicate. Okay?

Now, here we go. How do you describe, question four, how do you describe the principle of reproduction? you can do it biologically. From a biological standpoint, when life begets like, there's a fixed progeny. Now, how do I get at this point? This is an interesting point because God doesn't God creates all of the creatures that he has with the ability to reproduce. Now, here's one interesting thing.

When God first created in the garden, Adam was by himself. He didn't have a partner. So he was the one biological being that couldn't reproduce because there wasn't another creature to reproduce with. Which means that all creatures that he created, he had to create two at a time, right? one male and one female.

And so, when God created man, did God have a blueprint? I'm at question five now. If I say, look, I want you to Once in a while I create an experiment for the kids, well I have to go find out how to do it. So there's a blueprint. When God created Adam, did he have a blueprint? Sure he did. What was it?

Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Now if you look at Hebrews 1, it talks about the Lord Jesus that he is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature. So now, we're talking about the Lord Jesus as a man. Colossians 1 says that He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by Him all things were created, both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. Thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, all things have been created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He's the head of the body, the church, etc. So God created Adam exactly like what Christ was going to be, except for deity. So Christ was the blueprint.

Christ is actually the first man. You see that? He's not the first in time, but he's the first in position. He's the prototype. So Christ is what we call a representative man and Adam is a representative man. Ever heard those terms before? If I say to you, Adam is a representative man, what do I mean by that? He's the head of the human race, right? He's the first one. He shows up, or is created, and here he is, and God says, as we would say today, you're the man. You're the man. You're the representative man.

What does that mean? It goes back to like begets like. What does it mean? It means that every human being that came from Adam would be just like Adam, every single one of them, all of them now. That's kind of cool in a sense, as long as Adam behaves himself. Adam would, what would be instilled in all those who came from Adam was everything that was from Adam.

Genesis 2.23, and the man said this is, when Seth was born, he said this is, I'm sorry, Cain was born, he said now this is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she has been taken out of man. I'm sorry, he's talking about Eve there. How did Eve get created? Out of Adam. Okay? So she's just like Adam, just a different sex. But she's spiritually just like him, soulishly just like him, her body's just a little different. Okay? So she comes from Adam. So she, in most characteristics, is going to be just like Adam, right? Okay.

So, a representative man, simply put, means that everybody, every offspring of that man is going to be just like Adam was. He's the representative. That's a really important point to remember as we get farther on into identification. Because everybody in this room, your representative man has changed. So in what respect was Adam's likeness to God?

And I looked at 1 Corinthians 15.45 Somebody read that. So also it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. Okay, the first man, Adam, became a living soul. So he is... 1 Corinthians talks about the fact that he became a living soul. What does that mean? Maybe we ought to talk about that for a minute.

Can you distinguish between the spirit and the soul? Are they two entities in a human being? Lots of people, lots of Christians think there's only one and they just are interchangeable terms, but that's not true. If you have a soul, which you do have, what are its properties? What can your soul do? It has emotion, it can feel things. What else? Personality? Personality? Personality is more than just soul.

Understands conviction? Sure, it can understand things. It has ability to comprehend. Will? And it has a will. It can make a choice. So it's basically what a soul is. It's mind, emotion and will. What can your spirit do? That's a really hard question because we think, well, if I have high emotion, I must be spiritual. No. Your spirit interacts with God. What does it have the capacity to do? If you're going to get direct communication from God, where are you going to get it to? Your spirit, not your soul. Do you have a sense of it? You may sense that it's there. right and wrong. You have a sense of guilt. I mean, what are they called? It's not guilt. Conscience. What's that? Conscience. Is conscience part of your spirit? It could be. It could be.

Your spirit is the part of you that directly communicates with God. When Adam is walking in the cool of the evening with God, you think they're both walking down the road. He's just fellowshipping with God and doing it spiritually. With the spirit, we're talking about it interacting with God, but wouldn't it also, it's subject to one or the other. Either it's subject to the Lord and you're walking in that, or it's not, and that spirit is separated, so if it's separated, then those who aren't, what is their spirit? Now, let me tell you something. There's always somebody in my class that jumps ahead. Are you on my chart? And you're it. That's a good question. We'll get to that. That's a great question. I have a slower question.

Is our spirit different from the Holy Spirit? Because the Holy Spirit is a person in and of himself. He's part of the Triune Godhead. But as believers now, and again, We're indwelt by this person, the Holy Spirit. So our spirit is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. That's right. The Holy Spirit translates what we feel in our soul. It helps translate that to the Godhead.

Let me give you a good anecdotal. It was told me by Myles Stanford. He was a really good author. He told me one day that the Spirit of God would give him something that he wanted to write in 15 minutes in his spirit, and he'd have it all. But it took him six months to get it out of his spirit through his soul on a piece of paper so that somebody else could understand it.

So your spirit can get, and we've all had revelation. You're reading the Bible one night and you go, oh, I never saw that before. You may not even be able to articulate it at the time, but now you have it. Where did you get it? You got it in your spirit. It's like the light went on, right? And it takes some time after that to where it can be verbalized.

We're going to do a whole section on the Holy Spirit and the life of the believer. The last part of this class which will be in the fall of next year is the person and work of the spirit and so it'll be cool but hopefully we'll be spiritually smarter than we are now. So Adam's likeness to God is that which was in man that is essentially after his own likeness as spirit. A spirit that is kept in living union with God is never for one moment infringed the laws of his divine union and cross over to control or to take counsel with or be influenced by his own soul or self-consciousness, life, self-conscious life, the reason, will and desire of an independent thing.

That was really confusing. I should read it again. It's a quote from T. Austin Sparks. I'm going to read it to you again. And by the way, I recommend this book to you. It's a little difficult to get through. It's called, What is Man? Written by T. Austin Sparks. Probably written in the 50s, maybe 60s.

I think I might have it. Yeah, I think I gave it to you. Maybe I'll bring it in if anybody wants it. Well, and you can get, there's a church in Oklahoma. What town? Emmanuel Baptist Church or something, they reproduce Austin Sparks writings for free. I'll bring that in for you if you want to read some of his stuff. Most of his stuff is really good. Here's the quote again.

A spirit that is kept in living union with God is never for one moment infringed the laws of its divine union and cross over to take counsel with or be influenced by his own soul or self-conscious life. The reason will and desire as an independent thing.

What he's saying here is that Adam and his makeup, his spirit controlled who he was. That's not true after the fall. After the fall your soul controls because your spirit dies to God so that the link is broken. We are so used to being soulish beings, where we operate on emotion, mind and will, that part of spiritual growth is learning what it's like to live spiritually. To live under the control of your spirit indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Man essentially, and this is my opinion now, man essentially is a spirit that has a soul that lives in a body. He's not a soul that somehow has a spirit over here and he is a body. He's not any of those things. He's a spirit who has a soul. And you're talking about believers. I'm talking about every man. The issue is whether your spirit is alive or not.

If you're a person of evolution, you can love, you know what truth is, you can be faithful, you can be holy, you understand what justice is, you have the power to reflect, you can taste things, you have the power to compare things, one with another, you have the power to admire things. Wow, that's pretty cool.

You are aware of the fact that you know things, right? Not only do you know things, but you're aware of the fact that you do know them. And you can feel the pleasure of knowledge. You know what that's like? I just finished reading kind of an interesting book and when I was done I thought, wow, that's pretty cool that I know that stuff now. I didn't know it before. It was something to do with the Second World War.

We have the power to impart knowledge to others. We have the power to plan future learning and events. We have the power to discover efficiency and final causes of things. We can enjoy the pleasure of discovery. I think that's what drives Baha'u'llah. In that lab it is, the pleasure of discovering these things.

You have imagination. Wow, that's a cool thing to have. You have the power to know the Creator and the Lord of all. You have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. You have consciousness of integrity and well-ordered and perfectly balanced passions. You get all that stuff from God. It's interesting even an unbeliever would recognize those things.

Well, I'm talking about now Adam before he fell. And that's the next question. After man fell, what was God's opinion of him? What happens to Adam when he goes in the dumper? Does the image and likeness of God stay there? Some of it does. He doesn't cease to exist. He doesn't cease to be three-part being, but you don't have to go here.

If you go to Genesis 6.5, my question was, after man fell, what was God's opinion of it? That's a pretty important question, don't you think?

Well, Genesis 6.5 says, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Walk up to somebody today and tell them that. You know what? I've been looking at you, Mike.

So God's opinion about man totally changed when he fell. But he knew we were going to fall. So how could it change? Because man changed. Man no longer had the chronological perspective. Not his eternal perspective, but chronologically man at that point in the fall had changed. When he created Adam he didn't look at Adam and say that's not perfect.

In Genesis 1.31 it says that God saw that all he made and behold it was very good. And there was evening and morning on the sixth day. When he was finished creating man he said, that's good.

But by the time he gets to Genesis 6.5, not so good.

So, what the word teaches about the depravity of man could not be written by man because he does not have, hello, sufficient perspective to form a worthy conclusion. Man, natural man, doesn't have sufficient information to form a good conclusion about himself. No man comes to Christ unless the Spirit leads him. And one of those processes is to recognize that I'm lost. Man doesn't have the capacity in and of himself to recognize that he's lost. Do you agree with that? No, he doesn't. And unless the Spirit of God shows him, he's just going to stay where he is.

I know the human race that's outside of Christ who thinks that they live on the yellow line and if they do enough good stuff they'll move over to this side of the road. If they do a lot of bad stuff they'll move over to this side of the road. What's the reality? They're born and live here. There is no yellow line. The minute you conceive you're condemned. Period. That's God's view. But man's view is different now than God's because why? He sinned.

So question 10, how much of the original blueprint was left after man's fall? How much was left? His body was the same. But you know, didn't the body kind of deteriorate? Yeah, it did, but Adam still had ten toes and ten fingers and had a body and it would function. So he still had a body, that wasn't taken away from him, but it was going to die.

So here's the blueprint, the blueprint of you is that you're not going to die. But you sinned, so what the blueprint is and what actually is now are are very different. Except God when he put the tree in the garden. Right. And cool that he called it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's kind of interesting. We'll talk about that later. And he said to him, if you eat of this tree, what's the consequence?

You're going to die. You're going to die. What's the word death mean? Separation. You're going to be separated from me. I'm the source of life. It didn't mean you would cease to exist. It meant that you would be separated. Spiritually. Spiritually. And because you don't have the source of your existence in spiritual life anymore, your body is going to die. Because sin infected the whole creation. And that's the other thing about the representative man. When he sins, the entire creation falls. All of it.

Any of you have been fans of Star Trek over the years? Gene Roddenberry, who wrote it, must have been a Bible student. Because he'd go to these planets, right? And he'd meet these Klingons. You know what the Klingons had? Sin natures. Wherever he went, there were sinners. They all looked different, but they were still sinners. And that's the biblical principle. When Adam falls, because he's the head guy, the representative man, the entire creation falls with him. It gets subjected to vanity. Everything starts to die. everything begins to function as though it's being separated from God. So the body, although he still got it, because when God breathed into Adam the breath of life, that's why it's plural. He gave him more than one life. He gave him spiritual life and soulish life. He died spiritually, but his soul still existed.

In Zechariah 12.1, thus declares the Lord, who stretches out the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him.

Genesis 2.17 But from the tree of knowledge and evil ye shall not eat, and the day that ye eat ye will surely die.

Genesis 6.3, my spirit shall not strive with man forever because he's also flesh. Now man became something very interesting. He became this thing called flesh. Not only did he fall, but he became something that God didn't intend for him in the creation. He became this thing flesh. He got this thing called the sin nature. And I used to have a, and I probably ought to bring it in.

Everybody know what a bell jar is? Guys ever been in physics class? A bell jar is this glass jar that they hook the pump up to it and suck everything out of it and there's no atmosphere in there and so if you put like a marshmallow in there it'll fill up with space. Think about this, inside the bell jar is a soul and a spirit. And the spirit is the dominating factor. The spirit's big, the soul's kind of down here being controlled by the spirit.

Adam sins. The spirit gets deflated because the life of God leaves him and the example is that the soul gets infected with the sin nature and begins to fill in the space that's left. And so now man essentially operates from a soul standpoint with an infected soul via sin nature. And the spirit is squeezed out in the corner some place. The reason that I use that example was because when somebody is born again, spiritual growth is the process of reversing that order. Where the spirit begins to increase inside the bell jar, pushing the life of the soul down to where it's supposed to be. My own example.

So every human begets like Adam now, right? and the term that you would use to explain this. If I said to you, what term would you use just to explain the fact that every one of us and every human being was born just like Adam? What would you say that? Well, if you had to use one word, what would the word be? How about the word identification? Every single human being born on this planet is identified with Adam. They have no choice. That's who they are.

They have a choice in the sense that Romans 5.12 says that they sinned in Adam, but they are identified with Adam. So, the last question, give me 30 seconds. So why wasn't Joseph the Lord Jesus' human father? Because he had to break the chain.

That's why Genesis 3.16 will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. It had to be not Adam's seed.

You have an absolute identification with our boy Adam, and now we're going to see what God did about that. Which is a lot more than just forgive you your sins. Okay? Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your word, and how we thank you for the life that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, and how you carefully and succinctly help us to grow in the knowledge and grace of him. And we pray in his precious name. Amen.