What is Man - Identity Crisis 8-2-23 Session 11-M

In this recording, Philip Black discusses the topic of whether man is made in the image and likeness of God. He explores why we don't always see God's likeness in the world and what hinders us from displaying His goodness and love. He shares his observations from reading Genesis 1 and 2, emphasizing God's love for His creation and His intention for humans to receive and enjoy it. He also delves into the importance of understanding mature love, human authority, and the power of imagination. He explains the significance of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the choice and consequences it represents. He concludes by encouraging listeners to seek wisdom and counsel from the Creator and not to distort scripture with preconceived notions. Hello, and this is Philip Black, and today we will continue with the topic that we have been discussing, and that topic has been, is man in the image and likeness of God? Of course, as we read Scripture, Scripture clearly tells us that God made us in His image and His likeness. So the real question is, why is it that we do not see a great manifestation of His likeness in the earth? What is it that is hindering man from being able to display God's goodness, His grace, His mercy, and His love and kindness? So today, we're going to try to answer some of those questions. At least, I will say that I will give you a few of my observations from reading the Scriptures. And of course, today we will be reading from Genesis 2, and before I do that, I would like to share this observation from just reading Genesis 1 up to 2 about how God has really displayed His love for His creation. And I want to take and say something on that word, love, something that has helped me to mature and understand that word better. Because love is not gratification, even though you may have a satisfaction when love is received. But a mature love is always a love that is concerned about the recipient of that action. I want to say that again. Mature love is always concerned with the recipient of that action. When God created all things that He had in mind for His creation, He had in mind the recipient which would be the animals and the humans that would occupy the earth. So, this was an act of love for humanity and for His creatures, for all creatures on the earth. So that is the reason why I say that I have learned through studying that I don't want to take that for granted. I don't want to take it for granted, the fact that He first loved me, as the Scripture says, He first loved us before we even knew Him. And when you think about that, and I'm going to share this part, I thought about the fact that when my mother was still carrying me, and I was not conscious of her, I was not conscious of the rim outside of her womb. So I did not have an understanding or a consciousness of her presence. But she loved me even though I was still in her womb. So this is what I think about when it says in Scripture that He loved me before I even knew Him. So that means, in that same fashion, that's what came to my mind is a mother's love when she's carrying a child, and the child is not yet conscious of that love. This is the love of God towards all His creation. And so the fact that we see ourselves in a human body now, and I'm speaking about the spirit man where God said let us make man in our image and our likeness, and this is the beginning in the spirit realm. So when God says here, and I'm going to read Genesis 2-7, it says, And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And I'm reading this from the King James. King James Version is where I'm reading this from. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Genesis 2-9, And out of the ground made the Lord God grow. Every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life is in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now one of the things that we need to see and understand that God has made these provisions, not man. And also when reading this testimony, as I would say his letter to us, is that at this time the human being did not have the written word. So he had to rely upon communications with his creator. Wow. Just think about that. Being able to speak with the one that created you, that made you on a daily basis. And so with that being said, I have a few thoughts as I was reading this letter. One of the things about it is, when God put the spirit into this body of flesh, this body for the first time came alive. That's what it says here. He became a living soul. But he became a living soul. So what was the basis that he would function? The word of God says that there is no law against love. What does that mean? And I mentioned it earlier, what love, mature love is. Mature love does not look to take advantage of something. It gives freely, unconditionally, for the benefit of the receiver. This is what the Lord has done for humans. He created this beautiful planet and the animals and all that man and the animals needed to live. And he freely gave it with no condition. Notice there was no condition when he made all of it. He made this for the creation of humans and animals to receive it. It was such a mature expression of his love and kindness towards us that it would not be something that would be easily comprehended unless we sat down and allowed the word of God to minister to us and reveal to us the heart of God. So here, he places man in the center of all this goodness that he made and says, and asks him to be able to say, do not eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil unless a penalty will come. So now, when we look at this, I think about the picture of good. I try to picture good in my mind and I say, he takes this man, this human, and sets him in the middle of all of his goodness. Just sets him there and says, enjoy. You can enjoy everything here except for this one thing. Now, when we look at this limitation, it first of all displays to me that man or the human, because when I say man, I'm really saying mankind, but I want to make it clear that we're speaking about humans, that human authority would be limited. I'm going to say that again, human authority would be limited. And that means that mankind would not have absolute authority in the earth because God put a limitation on what tree that the human should consume of. Now, because God has given us a free will, that free will allows us to exercise the imagination. Just as God has in his mind the ability to imagine, all it means is that he can see the thing, the images, before he brings them into existence. And in the likeness of God, man also has that ability to imagine. But what causes those things to manifest in the natural realm is the human's ability to exercise a free will. Because man has the ability to imagine as his maker and creator, he can imagine anything. This is what caused the Lord to come down from heaven in Genesis to deal with the situation at the Tower of Babel. That's what we call it in the King James. It's because he said, they can do whatever they imagine. That is the power of your imagination, of my imagination, and that is the power that we have when we will to bring forth the thing that is in our imagination, it can be used for good and for evil. This is the reason why when the Lord says to the humans, don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So the question is, why would he tempt man, and I've heard people ask this question, why was man tempted with that knowledge of the good and evil? It's really, if you sit and think about what is happening, whenever you have free will, there is a choice to be made. So whenever there is a choice, that means there are consequences that follow what you have chosen. If there is no consequence for man for choosing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then there is no exercise of free will. Then man would not be a free will agent. He would not be able to imagine and execute what is in his mind. So the Lord wanted humans always to seek his counsel, his instructions for his creation. How that we can always reflect his image and how we can always cause things that we affect to be considered before we make that decision. And that the only thing that keeps us from doing those things is the fact there has to be a consequence when we make a decision outside of the instructions that God had for his creation. So that is the clear reason why there is this choice. So we do this naturally as humans and we question God, but humans do these things. We put limits on what our children do. We put limits on everything in life because if you exceed the limits, destruction comes. For example, if a person exceeds the weight capacity of a chair, that chair will break. And that is a consequence of exceeding the limitations placed on that chair. The question is, can that chair be repaired? It all depends on how much damage is the chair, that the chair receives. But with humans, thank God, that regardless of the damage, God can restore it. He can repair it if we come to him. Now sometimes that is the biggest problem. When something has been damaged, we don't know where to go to get it fixed. So that's where he comes in and that's why he sends his messengers into the earth. Into the earth to sow the seed to allow humans to know that when I have been damaged, I can go to the one who can restore me, who can repair me into the image and the likeness that he desired from the beginning. So one of the things that I have done and how I'm learning still is I do not read scripture now as a Christian. I read scripture as a believer, one seeking to know his creator. And that frees me up from reading into scripture things I've been taught over the years. I'm learning to ask the creator to give me the wisdom and the counsel of why the purpose for this word that you have, I'm grateful, preserved through writings of men so that we can know it through our man's history and his existence. So this is one of the things that's important about studying to know your creator, not reading into scripture things that you've been taught in your culture because it easily distorts it and you won't get a great or we won't get a great full picture of what he's saying to us. Now, I'm going to go ahead and read Genesis 2, 15 through 17. And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to dress it and keep it. And God, the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden, thou mayest eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die. Now, as we read this, it is clearly to us what it means to die. Because we have experienced death many times as human beings, a loved one, a friend. We hear about death every day. But in this moment, in this world, that Adam is now communicating with his creator, his heavenly father, Adam does not know what death is. And when I say Adam, I'm meaning human being because that's what the translation Adam really means. Adam means that he came from the ground. God made this body from the ground and breathed in it his breath of life by his spirit. So this human being now is put into a body, the spirit has been put into a body. Now this spirit must learn to cooperate or this body must learn to cooperate with the spirit. So there's some tension there. There's some adjustment that has to be made because this is the first time this has happened. This is a unity that must take place between the spirit and the body. So the thing that I'm seeing here now, the question becomes, or the conflict that arises, is the identity of this human now. How would this human identify itself now? Would it identify itself as spirit or would it identify itself as body? This is the struggle. Because we see ourselves now, most of the time we say that I am this by referring to the physical man or the physical body that we see. That is how we identify ourselves. We don't really know ourselves as being a spirit being also. Which actually the spirit man is what gives life to this body. It is what keeps it going. It is what energizes it to live and function. How God miraculously fused this body, this mind, and the spirit, and all of this together is just amazing. I can't even comprehend all of it, but just in a fashion to be able to have a brain that the mind and imagination can function together and can accomplish something in your spiritual eye. In other words, you see it before it even exists. That's the reason why engineers and scientists, they draw out plans and things like that. This is a concept of what's in their mind. This is the same way of the concept and the image and what was in God's mind when he was making his creation. Now we see this command that he gives to the human in the garden where he says to him, if you eat of this, then you should surely die. He has no concept of what death is. As I mentioned earlier, when we read it, we understand the concept of death, of the spirit leaving the body. At that time, Adam knew, had no imagination of what it would be. We look at the first thing that he does here, and God gives, I would say, the first thing he gives to the human is responsibility. Of course, you've heard it in some sermons we've heard where it says that God gave man a job. I can't dispute that because scripture says he put man there to dress it and keep it. That's the first thing he gives him, is a responsibility. But the second thing here when we read in verse 216, he says that thou mayest eat free. He gives man the ability of free will, and without free will, man or human cannot exercise the power of his imagination without it. And so, these things are very vital. They are very vital to understand what he is requiring of us. And what I mean by that is, his spirit gives us, or gives humans, the basic operating instruction from him. In other words, I'm going to explain it this way. I'm going to attempt to use a computer. A computer, when you turn it on, it has a basic operating system. In other words, it has the ability to run, but it also has the ability to have things, instructions added to it to enhance its operation. And this is the human mind that God has given humans. So, we have the basic operating system. What is that? The basic operating system is what I mentioned earlier, and that is love. The basic operating system gives you a natural affection for the things that God created in the earth, where we, as a mature love, realize the effect of things whenever we exercise our free will. When our free will starts to injure or damage his creation, then we have committed a trespass. So, in the next session, when we continue to cover this topic, this topic now begins to shift where we begin to see how man struggles with his identity now that he is in, or let me rephrase that, now that the spirit is in a body of flesh. This is where the struggle for the human to realize or identify with his spirit or with his body. Until then, the next time that we have another session, I hope, and I pray really, that God will continue to help us to understand our purpose in the earth and how we are continually trying to be formed or transformed into the image and likeness of God. Until then, this is Boston Humanity, and we will see you on the next session.