GETTING YOUR LIFE TOGETHER

[Romans 8:5-14, 29-30]

Prayer for Illumination - Gracious God, as we look at your word now, we are here to be nourished by your word of truth and by your Spirit. I can’t do that. Only you can nourish our spirits. I am a vessel in your hands. I pray that you would cleanse my own heart, mind, and spirit – that you would fill me with your Spirit, that it might be poured out for your people for all of us, that we might be refreshed, drinking from your Spirit, nourished as our bodies are fed on your Spirit. Illumine your word for us. Truth is fascinating, sometimes challenging, but always fascinating, and Father, that truth is what sets us free. It shapes us to be the people you’ve designed us to be. So I pray that you would speak in the remainder of this worship hour, that we would hear your voice and be moved by it, drawn to reflect more fully the likeness, the image of God as we have seen it in Jesus Christ, for it is in His name that we pray, AMEN.

Message

          It was dark! Unimaginably so! There were no stars – no faint glow to illumine the horizon. Indeed, there was no horizon! For the universe was empty. Tohu and Bohu in the Hebrew account – formless and empty. And an empty universe is no universe at all. Nothing, no colors, no shapes, no sounds penetrating the great void. Only darkness, or perhaps more accurately, only nothingness. A profound silence reigned.

          And then, in a stunning and incomprehensible moment, the voice of the LORD rang out through that void, “Let there be light!” And there was light – photons, the most fundamental light or energy particles, from which ultimately matter and the universe would be constructed. In time, giant galaxies wheeled gracefully through the sidereal universe, and moons and planets formed from the cosmic debris. Mysterious forces pulled them together or pushed them apart, spun them into orbits or hurled them through interstellar space, sometimes trailing dramatic tails of light.

          And on one of those planets, strategically placed by what seemed a one in trillions chance, a mysterious and non-material force we have come to call “life” began to take root! More and more complex life forms began to flourish on that planet, nurtured by a fantastic and precise intelligence and seemingly personal interest which was itself eventually reflected within that creation as the most stunning being of all emerged – magnificent human beings. (Pete Singer, whom Tim Teusink quoted earlier, needs to go back and find out what really happened.)

          While I have used mostly scientific terms to tell this Mother-of-all-stories about the birth of the universe, we have the same story told in equally powerful and profound terms on the very first pages of scripture. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” – ex nihilo, out of nothing, the word bara in the Hebrew suggests. He began with light energy itself, and created matter, suns and stars, planets and moons, and on one particular planet He brought forth life in a billion different forms with which He filled this earth to overflowing.

          But at the climax of that story, this Creator God who is beyond our comprehension as a Singular/Plural God, brought into being the most amazing creature imaginable – a human being who somehow bridged the gap between our spiritual God, our Creator, and His material creation. “Let us,” God said, speaking in the plural, “make man in our image, in our likeness.” Let’s make something like ourselves within this material creation, He says, “and let them have dominion” over the whole of the creation. And so, we are told, the God Yahweh, the Source, the insuperable I AM we looked at last week, “formed the man from the dust of the ground.”

          The word “formed” here is a fascinating word in this context; it is the Hebrew word, yatsar, a technical term for what a potter does with his clay. You know when a potter is going to work with his wheel and his clay, he has an image in his head of what he wants to do. You have watched them work, perhaps at a crafts fair, and out of this pile of clay something emerges in the potter’s hand that takes a particular form for a particular purpose. The word technically means one takes an idea or an image and constructs a reality. So God, by whatever means He deemed fitting, shaped the human body out of the fundamental elements of the earth, the clay, the dust of the earth. Then He did a most amazing thing. He took that being He had formed out of the dust of the earth and He breathed life into this elemental body, and the man, God’s word tells us in the 2^nd chapter of Genesis, became a living being, a nephesh in the Hebrew, a sentient creature, a living soul. That is pretty amazing.

          Now the word nephesh could refer to any animal with a mind and some sort of rudimentary feelings. But this particular creature, we are told, had been made in some profound and mysterious way, to reflect something of the very being of the God who had formed him. Indeed, we see an immediate difference between this man adam, (which comes from the word adamah, meaning soil), and the rest of creation with which he shares this fantastic gift of life that God had breathed into His creation. God immediately enters into a conversation with this creature. He offers instruction and counsel, and begins to nourish a relationship with the man and his female counterpart, one which they might enjoy in conversation and communion in the beauty of the garden in the cool of the day.

          This is what God has been doing from the dawn of time. Who are these human creatures, and how are they like and unlike the rest of creation? We need to know. We need to know who we are. The implications of these answers must be profound for our living. Having ignored God’s revelation of who we are, we have become intolerably ignorant about ourselves. That it why an otherwise intelligent man like Pete Singer can say such foolish things as that there is no difference between a human and a mosquito. We are the undisputed capstone of God’s creation, not through anything we have done but through what God has done, what He set out to do from the very beginning, what He organized the whole of creation to accomplish.

          Dr. Francis Schaeffer was one of the first persons to awaken my mind to the profound adventure of serious thought. I hate to admit that I’d never really had a lot of serious thoughts rattling around in my head, growing up as I did on the prairie, riding my horse and playing basketball and doing whatever came my way, but Francis Schaeffer, my freshman year of college, began to introduce me to thinking, and it was a very exciting introduction.

          I remember hearing him speak. I hardly knew what he was talking about; I didn’t know enough to recognize a philosophical thought if it hit me over the head, but I remember hearing him speak, and he wrote two lists on the board, nearly identical lists, of everything which exists. Each list contained God, Man, Animals, Plants, and Minerals in that order. But there was, on each list, a great gap. On the first list there was God, at the top, then a gap, then Man, Animals, Plants, and Minerals at the bottom of the list. You can visualize the list. The second list, however, included the same words but the gap came in a different place. On this list we saw God, once again at the top, then Man, then the gap, then Animals, Plants, and Minerals – a nearly identical list but different at a critical juncture.

          Then Dr. Schaeffer said to us, “Do you understand the profound uniqueness of mankind? On the one hand we are a created being like everything else in the universe. God alone is uncreated, God alone stands apart from the whole of His creation by that fundamental aspect of His being. On the other hand, we have been made in the image and likeness of God, unlike anything else in creation. On this second list we stand with God himself apart from the rest of creation, over which we have been given dominion.” The distinction is absolutely essential to understanding who we are and what we ought to expect of ourselves once we begin to understand what God expects of us.

          Let us look at these lists and determine first of all what it is that we share with the rest of creation. Most obviously we share a physical body, a remarkably complex structure, elegantly connecting the fundamental elements of the universe in such a way as to bring to reality certain fascinating characteristics. This will be true of all bodies. The inner structure of any particular mineral is complex and beautiful. We may see a portion of it in the crystalline structures with which we are familiar. Our wonder and admiration for this creation grows as we examine the organic body of a plant, able to take nourishment from the environment around it and to grow and to reproduce life in a million exotic forms. And of course the body of every animal we know is a thing of exquisite and breathtaking wonder, the various parts integrating in astonishing ways to sustain and to advance life. Who could have thought of a body that would interact with the environment as ours does – all of our senses – and the ways in which everything works together to sustain life.

          Now you and I are not bodies, but we have bodies. All of us have a distinct sense of inhabiting a body which becomes one with us but is in some way separate from our self. You have that sense. I know you do. And while our particular body is unique and unlike any other, we may manage that body as we will. If we are present at the death of another, once again we are profoundly moved by the sense that the person who once inhabited that body is gone, although the body remains, but now there is no driver in the driver’s seat.

          Further, we humans share with the higher animals what we might call sentience, a consciousness, an aware-ness, a sensibility which enables us to consciously interact with life around us. This is generally associated with the mind. It may involve thinking; it may involve feeling or emotions; it may involve willing; it may involve reacting; it may involve establishing patterns of responsive behavior. But while other bodily organs and glands may be involved, this quality of sentience requires a mind, however rudimentary.

          And what you may or may not have noticed is that the mind must carry out its will through the body. The mind is acting on another level now, is it not? The mind deals with thoughts that are perceptible but they’re not tangible. So the mind carries out its will through the body. It may direct the body through sub-conscious, instinctive or autonomic responses which keep the heart beating and the digestive system working, or it may direct the body through conscious means which direct the body to stand or walk or run, or pick up an object, or even attempt to communicate.

          Some of these activities overlap, which is one of the fascinating things about our bodies and our minds. Breathing happens quite spontaneously, but we may override our breathing up to a point. It is impossible to commit suicide by holding your breath; your body takes control away from you once again, from your conscious mind. Other functions are contributing to all this activity. We hardly begin to understand our feelings or our emotions. They seem to come to us unbidden. But we soon learn that we may have some measure of control over those emotions as well.

          We could say more, but we have come to understand about ourselves that within the order of creation, we each have a body, and we each have a mind which inhabits that body but nevertheless seems to stand apart from it, even directing it’s activity. Scientists who examine the brain will tell you that while the brain is a particular organ of the body, what we call the “mind” is a function of the brain which stands in some mysterious relationship to it; but where are all those thoughts coming from and why do they make sense? The mind somehow supercedes the body and interacts with that body at will.

          We share body and mind with much of creation, but now we come to the thing which distinguishes us from all other life in the universe. Something within the human person stands apart from both body and mind, and I believe you can recognize it especially once we have called your attention to it. Something which seems almost alien to life as we know it, something which can observe and evaluate and even redirect both the body and the mind. Something within us is controlling our minds even as our minds control our bodies. Throughout the whole of human history, beings like ourselves have recognized this, and called it spirit. Remarkably, this unique aspect of who we are has, throughout the whole of human history, consistently looked beyond itself to seek out spirit in a larger context, in fact to seek out what we have come to call God. No other creature gives any evidence of awareness of a spiritual being beyond itself, which it may fear or worship, avoid or pursue.

          This spirit seems to be the least tangible of all these aspects of the human creature, but if we are pressed to identify the core of who we are as persons, we will have to identify this spirit, as the core of the person we are coming to know as ourselves. This spirit, we are quite certain, directs the mind and inhabits the body. We use our minds and our bodies. We are, in some sense, our spirits. This may seem a surprising observation because it is quite evident that everything we can see and identify about ourselves is material. Nevertheless, we have always understood ourselves to be fundamentally spiritual.

          Furthermore, universally in human history, while we see ourselves as spirit, we also see spirit as extending well beyond ourselves – in fact we see ourselves as participating in some way in the spirit which exists. It may not be at all clear, but, with the revelation we have received from God, it begins to seem undeniable that what we are observing here is what the Bible has called the “image of God” which we were created to share and to reflect, the thing that makes us unique within creation. The image or likeness of God is not our body. In fact, Jesus, the Bible tells us, was made in the likeness of man and given a body. Nor is the image of God our mind, which we share with much of the animal kingdom. It comes, of course, from God, but it is not His image. What is unique about us as human beings is this awareness of and this ability to connect with God. So when we are talking about being made in God’s image, we’re talking about being fundamentally spiritual beings.

          Let me take just a moment here to summarize what we have said. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey, but let’s get to the heart of it. We are saying that fundamentally, every human person consists of body, mind, and spirit. Some may ask why I have not used the term “soul,” and the reason is that the term “soul” has too broad or vague a definition. The Jew made no distinction between body and soul. They stressed that a human being was a single, undivided entity. If a being died it died; if it rose the whole being rose. The Greeks, on the other hand, made a profound distinction between body and soul; they separated them out. In fact, they felt the body was hopelessly corrupt, and the soul, which was the real person, was trapped inside the body. They weren’t all that disappointed with death – getting rid of the body – and they spoke expectantly of the immortality of the soul, not the resurrection of the body as the Jews did. Christians come along and they are affected by the thinking of both the Jews and the Greeks, but they are the first to clearly distinguish between body and soul, and at the same time to emphasize the unity of body and soul, and consider the possibility of the redemption of both body and soul.

          To whatever extent a distinction was made, the basic idea was that the body was material and the soul was non-material. But upon closer examination, we realize that we will have to be more precise than this – there is more going on. We share that immaterial sentient life with most of the animal kingdom, and yet see as well that we are distinct from them, not only in the degree of intelligence or rationality, but in this basic perception of the reality of the spirit world. The word soul, then is a bit too vague. We can use it. It can mean the immaterial, it can mean the spiritual, it can mean the rational, it can mean the emotional, or it can simply mean the “person” – we are a unique soul. Body, mind, and spirit, however, will serve us better to identify the distinct attributes of our humanity made in the image of God.

          Now the Bible isn’t preoccupied with particular terms. Our discussion here is just us trying to define what we have seen. What the Bible does is present us with a mystery almost as grand as the Trinity we have been exploring together these recent weeks. Although we are made in the image of God, we are not precisely a trinity. That description applies to God alone, so there is no direct analogy. But we are, perhaps, not surprised to discover this new and intriguing mystery of our identity made in the image of this complex, personal God. We are not just body, along with stars and planets, rocks, trees, and other animals. Nor are we simply body and mind, like the more advanced creatures who share our habitation. Rather, somehow, we are designed to connect with and even to share the spirit of the great I AM, the source of all being, God himself!

          Therefore we may begin to see our own human trinity of body, mind, and spirit. The apostle Paul recognized these distinctions in his first letter to the Thessalonians, quoted in your bulletin this morning, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.” To sanctify is to bring that ultimate and complete healing. “May your whole spirit, soul [used here to refer to mind and emotions] and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In other words, Paul is praying for the renewal of the whole person we are talking about – body, mind, and spirit.

          And that prayer for renewal, or sanctification of the whole person, takes us to the heart of everything we have to say this morning, why this is all so important for you and me to understand. I have spent a good deal of time trying to help us understand God’s basic design for the human creatures made in His own image, unlike anything else in creation. Now I want you to see why that is so important.

          The way this wonderfully profound human creature is designed to work is this: We, unlike any other creature, have been enabled to know God – the God who is Spirit. We have been given a corresponding spirit, which makes us unique and responsible creatures. We are created in the image of this spiritual God. God’s original intent, quite clearly revealed in the Garden of Eden and beyond, was that we might enjoy this profound delight of life if our spirit – the core of who we are – was willing to submit and come under the direction and counsel of His life-giving Spirit. Now if that happened, in turn, our spirit was given the responsibility of governing our mind. And, one step further along, our mind was intended to govern our body. And it works that way for better or for worse, depending on step one – the submission of our spirit to God’s Spirit.

          There you have it – a profound and mind-boggling revelation which will make all the difference in the world if you understand it and if you begin to live your life in the light of this truth. God’s design is that His Spirit will govern our spirit. Our spirit will govern our mind. And our mind will govern our body, translating God’s perfect truths into action.

          That formula worked perfectly with Jesus; it would have worked with Adam and Eve. But almost immediately, as you know, everything fell apart. Why did that happen? Because Satan challenged that willing submission to the Spirit of God in step one. He said, You don’t really have to follow Him. You can be your own God. You can go your own way, follow your own spirit whether it is following God or not. And Adam and Eve succumbed to that temptation and decided to let their own insights, their own observations, their own desires, their own preferences govern their lives. Oh, we claim that as our freedom as human beings, right? We get to do whatever we want. Yes, and whatever we want, the Bible tells us, is going to lead to death. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” [Proverbs 16:25] Adam and Eve succumbed, and the rest, as they say, is history – the history of the human race.

          But this is not simply a farsighted look back into pre-history and the dawn of time. It is a powerful insight into precisely what happens today, in our world, in your life and in mine, when things go wrong. We read it in our text from Romans 8:5,6. Let’s look at this because this brings it home for us. “Those who live according to the sinful nature [the corrupted spirit now] have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit [the Holy Spirit of God] have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”

          It is pretty straightforward, is it not? Do you see it? He is contrasting those whose spirit, submitted to God’s spirit, directs their mind to all that is good and beautiful and excellent, with those whose spirit ignores God’s spirit, and therefore let their mind slip into corruption and sin. You know that beautiful passage from Philippians 4 where Paul says, keep your minds set on all the good and perfect and beautiful things; who God is and what He has done. He is challenging your spirit to control your mind, so that your body will go the right way. Here’s the evidence. When that is distorted, things begin to fall apart. Our sinful nature is our spirit separated from God. When that spirit allows the mind to focus on its corrupted desires, the result is that the body acts in a destructive way which ultimately leads to death. But the spirit which takes its direction from the Spirit of God in turn directs the mind to demand of the body actions which lead to life and peace. That is the process every one of us is engaged in every day of our lives.

          He goes on to say in verses 7 and 8 that the mind of the person whose spirit is disconnected from God will in turn be hostile to God. And in the end, that person will simply be unable to do the right thing. That person’s spirit will not require the mind to think appropriately. In turn, the mind will not require the body to do what is good. And the end of that path is disaster and death. That’s what went wrong in the Garden of Eden. That’s what goes wrong in your life and in mine.

          By contrast, getting things right should be obvious here. It will require that our spirit yield to God’s Spirit, to His authority, direction, and counsel. “You, however,” he says in verse 9, if you have yielded your spirit, you “are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the [Holy] Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.” In other words, if you have allowed God’s Spirit to take up residence within you, which Jesus said the Spirit was coming to do, then this whole process of destruction may be reversed. As he says in verse 10, your body is already dead because of sin. You have already indulged in habits of destruction. But it can be reversed. This is not the end of the story. To the extent that your spirit now begins to take its direction from God, your spirit can begin once again to direct your mind – to say, “Don’t walk down that path; walk down this one.” You need to redirect your mind, you understand. And that renewed mind will begin to exercise its remarkable power over your body, directing and demanding that it do the right thing, the thing that leads to what is good and excellent and perfect and delightful. Remember that Romans 12:2 says the key to transformation is the renewing of our minds. This is something our spirit needs to do. It starts with the mind, because how we think ultimately becomes what we do.

          “If you live according to the sinful nature,” he concludes in verse 13, “you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” It is as simple as that.

          My friends, I cannot tell you how profoundly important this is. I hope you will think about its implications, that as you walk through your day, today and tomorrow, you will be thinking, “Now how can I begin to make that work in my life?” For that matter, it is one of the most practical as well as one of the most profound truths you will ever learn! Getting your life together, which all of us want to do, (the title of this message), will be accomplished this way or it will not be accomplished at all. Every attempt will end in failure. There is simply no other way to get there. This is the way it works:

          Step 1: Every one of us faces the decision to consciously yield our spirit to God’s Spirit. If we don’t do that we are in trouble from the start; it’s never going to work. Understand we do not have the strength or stamina to sustain that submission; God simply says, Are you willing to surrender? I’ll take over from here, but I am not going to force myself on you. You’ve got to come to me and say I can’t do it, will you do it in me? That is the yielding of our spirit to God’s Spirit.

          Step 2, is something we can do: Begin to cultivate that relationship with God for which you were uniquely designed and created. Spend time with Him. If you’re not spending time with Him, you’re going nowhere. Talk to Him, listen to Him, pray, read your Bible, meditate, reflect day and night, when you rise up and when you lie down, as Deuteronomy 6 says, wherever you go during the day. Consciously nourish your relationship to the God who made you, alone of all creation, able to relate to Him.

          Step 3: Will be to let that spirit, who you fundamentally are, who’s now aligning itself with God’s Spirit, begin to override your errant mind, and to direct it to follow the pathways which God has revealed. You know every temptation begins in the mind. You can go there or not, but if you indulge it, you are going to go there eventually, because your mind dictates to your body what happens next. So if your spirit is yielded to God, you are nourishing your relationship with Him, your spirit needs to redirect your mind. And then the final step . . .

          Step 4: Your mind begins to tell your body what to do, and you need to practice this. You need to discipline your body to take orders from your mind. It is true of anything. It is true of learning how to play the piano or to play soccer. You have to discipline your body to follow your mind’s orders. It has to become a daily routine. It may be practiced in the classical spiritual disciplines which teach the body to do what the mind says regardless of how it’s feeling. It is what fasting is all about – (“But I’m hungry!” “I know you’re hungry but you don’t have to eat right now.” It is a discipline. It’s teaching the body to respond to the mind’s direction. All of that is what God says we need to do if we are going to become the people He designed and created us, uniquely, to be.

          There is so much here which is so profoundly important. The closer we look, the more we recognize the truth of it all. For example, we speak of psychosomatic disorders or psychosomatic powers. Psycho is the Greek word for mind and soma is the word for body. We are well aware that the mind can direct the body to amazing things. It can suggest sickness; it can suggest health; it can suggest you do something you didn’t think you were capable of doing and you end up doing it. We are well aware that the mind can suggest these things and that the body follows suit. The body is simply wired to take its orders from the mind. But for the mind to be giving healthy orders, it must be receiving its direction from a healthy spirit.

          The apostle Peter summarizes how this all works. I’m going to send you off with some very practical advice from 2 Peter 1, beginning with verse 3. It is worth writing this down and going back and reviewing it. Listen to it right now; it is profound. Here is how it works in practice. Peter writes about God: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us [everything we need to get our lives together] . . . he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may [listen to this; this is amazing! Through them you may] participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption of the world caused by evil desires.”

          Don’t you see, he says, it’s all there. It is all built into creation. It is all built into who you are, made in the image of God. He has given you everything you need so that you can actually participate in the divine nature, and escape that corruption which otherwise keeps working its way into your life.

          “For this very reason,” here is what you need to do, he goes on, “make every effort [there’s the work; there’s the discipline] to add to your faith goodness; . . .” Your faith is that trust that God is who He says, that He has your best interests in mind. Then your job is to add to that trust goodness, a willingness to follow Him, “and to goodness, knowledge [a willingness to get to know Him]; and to knowledge, self-control [a willingness to learn to do what He says]; and to self-control, perseverance [to stay with it]; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” There is an agenda for us in learning the trade of being human. “For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive . . . [and he concludes] you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

          Do you understand that our salvation is really a process? It begins at the moment of our yielding, but it is a day-by-day process from there in which we learn to yield to that Spirit; we make that effort, and in increasing measure we move toward becoming the people God created us to be. That’s the whole story! There is no mystery in getting your life together. There is, however an intentional decision that begins it, followed by some hard work and discipline. No one, especially God, expects you to get it right every time. But as Peter says, if you have made the decision and you are willing to make the effort to begin walking in the right direction, that path will lead you to the ultimate fulfillment and delight for which God created you. That is how we may get it together. But learn to recognize the Spirit within you that may tell your mind what to do and in turn direct your body to become all that God created you to be.

Closing prayer - Father, I thank you for this really powerful picture of who we are -- body, mind, and spirit – because there is great hope for us in this. To the extent that our spirit connects with you, this human creature cannot be stopped. I pray that you would help us to take whatever measures will be required for each of us to get our lives together. I know it begins by cultivating that relationship with you and then practicing the spiritual disciplines. I pray we might experience enough of success as we begin that path, or as we return to that path today, that we might be motivated to continue to grow and to become the people you have created us to be. It is the same with anything we learn, but in one sense it’s different, and this is exciting. A lot of the skills we learn through a similar process become more and more difficult to maintain as we age and our bodies break down, but here is one which you intend to just get better and better until that day when, as your word says, you glorify us, you establish us as the person you created us to be. So we come with expectancy, knowing it is going to take some hard work and discipline, but knowing as well that it is the purpose for which we were created. May we enter into it with enthusiasm and expectation, receiving the power from your Spirit, the example from your Son Jesus Christ, that we might become all you have created us to be. We pray it in your name, AMEN.