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 Sermon > Spirit, soul and body |
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Title |
Spirit, soul and body(7) - The 1st lecture on - Spirit, soul and body(7) |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
1Th 5:23 |
Date |
2003-12-14 |
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[Scripture]
1Thessalonians 5: 23
"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
[Table of Contents]
Introduction: Importance of Spirit
Body
1) Definition of spirit
2) Change of spirit
3) Dead spirits and the Holy Spirit
4) Revival of spirit
Conclusion
[Introduction]
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Today I'll preach about spirit soul and body again in a few weeks.
For the past a few weeks we have learned the first dimension of spirit soul and body and today we continue to learn it. The first dimension of spirit soul and body is about a brief introduction of spirit soul and body mainly focusing on the flesh.
At the last time I preached about the soul. Briefly speaking, soul indicates brain cells and everything about the brains' function.
The first man Adam's soul played the role of a servant who obeys his spirit's command before he sinned. After he ate the forbidden fruit and sinned, his spirit died and he was cut off from the communication with God. As a result, Satan began to control his soul and plant untruth in his heart through his thought.
A person of soul like the sinned Adam has stored human mind and thought in his brain and has the human mind function sooner than spiritual mind when he listens to the word of God. So, it is not easy for him to have spiritual faith because hre does not accept the word from his heart.
From today, we will have the teachings about the spirit, the most important part of spirit soul and body. The reason we have learned body seen to our eyes and soul related to the function of remembering and thinking is because we have to learn 속 spirit. We must have some fundamental knowledge about the spirit to understand it well.
Only when we understand how man was created and what kind of spiritual function man has, will we be able to realize our invisible spirits.
I will preach just briefly about the spirit during this session of the first dimension of spirit soul and body, but you must keep this teaching in your mind and have it your spiritual food. The more you can understand about the spirit, the more strength and grace you will receive that is necessary for you to enter New Jerusalem.
So, I hope you will not lose a bit of this word of the wisdom leading to eternal life, and that you will be qualified to reach the throne of God our Father in New Jerusalem.
[Body]
When we ask people what the spirit is, some reply that it is invisible or untouchable. From their viewpoint, air and wind belong to the category of the spirit.
But God defines it differently. He defines it as what is immortal, imperishable, and everlasting. And in His viewpoint, the spirit is ever unchanging, and truth itself.
The spirit does not belong to this third dimension but to the fourth dimension. Our Father God is in the fourth dimension, so it is said in John 4: 24, "God is Spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
Then, do the children of God have the spirit or not? Surely they have spirit within them. When God created the first man, He breathed into the man His breath of life and the man because a living spirit.
Meantime, Adam sinned and his spirit died. From that time men are born with their spirits dead. So, nonbelievers have dead spirits within them because they have not received the Holy Spirit yet. This will be explained in more detail later.
Man's soul before Adam sinned was greatly different from that after he sinned. What happened to the soul of man when Adam sinned? The first man Adam was a living spirit and could have communication with God. He lived in the Garden of Eden and was taught only truth by God.
So, he had no untruth or evil in his heart. He did not need conscience that becomes the standard of judging goodness and evil. His heart was filled only with goodness and truth. In other words, his spirit played the role of heart and conscience.
However, when he disobeyed and sinned, his spirit died and the sin came into him.
Until then, he had known truth and goodness alone, but from that time he came to distinguish between goodness and evil and to have the relativity in him. And he was cursed because of his sin and became corrupted. At last, he became a man of flesh and was driven out of the fourth dimensional world to the third dimensional world.
In this manner, Adam was disconnected from the communication with God because of his spirit's death and had to live in this physical world. From that time on, he began to receive untruth little by little through Satan who controls the soul of untruths. In addition, he lost more and more untruth taught by God.
Meanwhile, truth and untruth became mixed in his heart. He used to have truth alone in his heart before he sinned, but because he received evil through Satan, in him there coexisted what is right and what is wrong, righteousness and unrighteousness, and goodness ad evil.
Man chooses good ness or evil with his own free will. And on the basis of what he has learned and input into his brain, he forms his own standard of judging what is right or wrong. The standard is his conscience. According to this conscience he knows goodness from evil and it causes him to do evil deeds or good deeds.
By the way, one's own conscience is not always right in the eyes of God. His own conscience is differently formed according to what he has been taught, what kinds of environments have influences his growth or what he has experienced.
If a good father and a good mother live only in goodness and truth and grow their children only in goodness and truth, the children will surely become good and true persons. But in that situation the children may have evil in their hearts because they are influenced by their teachers and friends even though their parents teach them only truth.
After Adam's sin, men's heart and conscience became completely different than before. Before then, men's heart was full of truth and goodness and their spirit was like their heart and conscience. But after Adam's sin, men's heart and conscience came to be under the control of their soul managed by Satan. So, those whose spirits are dead do evil deeds under the control of Satan and are destined to fall into hell.
As explained before, the spirit is unchanging, everlasting, and true, while what is not spiritual is perishable ad mortal. For this reason, those whose spirits are dead cannot escape from falling in hell.
Here we can find why men's spirit. Only when men's spirits are revived, can they be saved and enter heaven. So, God our Father sent Jesus Christ His only Son for our forgiveness, ands the Holy Spirit for our spirit's revival.
Concerning Jesus, the Word became flesh and came down to the earth. He taught the way of truth and opened the way to eternal life for us. And when we listen tot the word of truth and accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, is the Holy Spirit given to us as gift of God. The Holy Spirit brings our dead spirits to life again and leads us to enter heaven.
In this way, only when we accept Jesus Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, can our dead spirits be revived and we reach heaven. So Jesus proclaimed in John 14:6, ""I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
When we understand the teachings about spirit soul and body, can we realize the reason why Jesus is our only Savior and what the fundamental will of God the Father.
Some people may ask why they should attend church and live a godly life even though their dead spirits have already been revived to enter the kingdom of heaven.
But if our spirits are revived, the spirits have to grow in Christ and truth. It is like a newborn baby grows up to be a young man and to be a father. Our spirits have to grow continually after they are revived. It is natural that a living organism grows, but if a living organism stops growing, it is no more a living being.
Then, who revives your dead spirits and let them grow continually? He is the Holy Spirit. It is said in John 16: 7-8, "But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment."
The Holy Spirit convicts the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment and helps us realize them. In other words, He helps us to believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, to understand the spiritual meaning hidden in the word of God and to accept the spiritual word.
When we plant the word of God in our heart with the help of the Holy Spirit, the planted word becomes the spirit in our hearts. That is to say, God is Spirit and the Word is God, so the more we plant the word of truth, the more spirit the Holy Spirit gives birth to within us. In this manner our dead spirits have to be revived and to grow in the Holy Spirit. That is the way God wants us to live.
Through the way, we can restore the lost image of God and become His true children.
This process is shown in John 3:3-5. Jesus spoke the process of one's dead spirit being revived, "In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit."
He said that anyone can enter the kingdom of heaven only when he is born of the water and the Spirit. The water here indicates the truth, the word of God. So, being born of water indicates keeping the word in mind and living according to the word. In other words, when we plant the word of truth into our hearts and act by it, can we be born of the water.
Next, Jesus said that we cannot enter heaven unless we are born of the Spirit. What does it mean?
If you read the Bible one hundred times, can you understand the spiritual word of God? If you have not received the Holy Spirit yet, you cannot understand the spiritual meanings of the Bible although you read it mote than one hundred times, And you will not be able to plant the word into your heart or act according to it because you do not receive spiritual faith from God.
You can store merely much knowledge in your brain. Only when the Holy Spirit helps you, can you understand the word spiritually, receive spiritual strength to obey the word through prayer and live according to the word.
Thus, the Bible says that we can enter heaven when the Holy Spirit comes on us.
Let me take another instance. You want to become a good basketball player. You bought a book about basketball and have read it many times. Can you become a good player through that book? No. You can merely gain much knowledge about how to play basketball.
To become an actual basketball player, you must be trained by an actual coach. On the basis of the book, you must practice shooting a ball, dribbling it, intercepting it and the like. Only when you do all these things, you can at last become a basketball player. And when you fell encouraged and are good at all actions about basketball, can you become a good basketball player.
It's the same with the Christian life. No matter how much you hear and read God's Word, it's only in your head, not in your heart.
Without the help of the Holy Spirit, it is only a piece of knowledge in the head.
You cannot either believe it or it can be accompanied by action.
Only with the help of the Holy Spirit we can realize the Word of truth and have true faith in our heart, with which we believe without any doubt.
Only then, can actions be accompanied, the flesh be taken off and we give birth to spirit, and thus change into persons of spirit.
Likewise, the Holy Spirit is like a coach who teaches us and gives us faith to act.
Also, when you do not act according to God's Word, the Holy Spirit gives you uncomfortable feelings so that you can keep alert and pray, repent and turn away, and act out God's Word. The Holy Spirit leads you to become more and more of a person of spirit.
Therefore, without the help of the Holy Spirit, our spirit cannot grow.
Dear congregation, what will happen when we become more and more spiritual?
We become persons of spirit.
A person of spirit is one who completely puts the Word of truth in his heart and acts according to it so that his heart has become a field of good soil.
If we hear the Word of truth, open our heart and put the Word in our heart, the opposite things of truth get pulled out from our heart.
It is like the field will have more of good soil when we take out rocks and thorns from the field.
Also, the field becomes a good one when we pull the weeds out and plow it.
In the same way, he who sows the truth, acts according to it, and has the heart of good soil is a person of spirit.
Once you accept the Lord, if you put the Word of truth and act according to it with the help of the Holy Spirit as well, the things against the truth in you will be pulled out one by one.
Anger, hatred, envy, jealousy, judging and condemning others, falsehood, cunningness, and changing mind will be pulled out.
And when there is only truth in heart, we can say he is a person of spirit.
When one has true heart and untrue heart at the same time, he is not a person of spirit.
Therefore, only when we have all the words in the Bible in our heart and act within God's Word, can we become persons of spirit.
A person who has Word of truth in his heart and acts according to the Word with the help of the Holy Spirit is a person of spirit.
Once we become a person of spirit, our conscience and the heart also change into truth. Therefore, our heart is truth spirit.
Like the heart and conscience that Adam had before his fall were spirit, we can have spirit, soul, and body belonging to spirit.
[Conclusion]
Dear congregation, today, we learned about spirit.
Spirit is imperishable, unchangeable, and eternal, and is life and truth itself.
God created the first man Adam as a living spirit. But the spirit died due to sin, and human beings accepted evil through Satan. As a result, our consciences were stained with evil.
Therefore, we need a process for our dead spirit to revive and grow in order to go to heaven, and the process is being born again through the water and the Holy Spirit.
We should understand the meaning of this phrase well to lead a proper Christian life and enter heavenly kingdom.
If we do not live according to the Word of God yet profess, "I believe. I have received the Holy Spirit," we will not be able to enter heavenly kingdom.
Only when we hear God's Word, put His Word in our heart and act according to it with the help of the Holy Spirit, can we have true faith in our heart, change into spirit, and enter the heavenly kingdom.
John 3:6 says, "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit." Therefore, I bless in the name of the Lord that you will give birth to spirit everyday with the help and strength of the Holy Spirit, so that you will become person of spirit quickly. |
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