Basic Bible Concepts: 4 Human Design

Below is the transcript from the video

Welcome back to the basic Bible concepts. This is the fourth concept which is human design. You might ask yourself why is it important for me to learn about how I am made according to the Bible? Well, it’s important obviously because we all want to know who we are. We definitely spend a great deal of our lives trying to figure out who we are and why we do what we do. So that we can figure out how better to function in the environment that we are born into. All creatures have limitations and pressures that keep them within a certain boundary. For example, a fish needs to be in the water in order to function and to experience the fullest life possible for a fish, right? And so we as humans are also created with characteristics and limitations and in particular to function in a particular environment which is the earth, right? But we’re going to learn that it’s not just the here and now, not just this planet that we’re created to function in. And so having said that, let’s jump right in.

First of all, the Bible says in Genesis that we were created in God’s image and we  are also amazingly made. He breathed his breath into our lungs and this is of course in Genesis Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. But what does that mean? What does that look like when we break down the components of each individual. Well, 1st Thessalonians 5:23 says, Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we learn from the Bible that we actually have three parts: body, soul, and spirit and we’re going to talk about each one. 

Obviously we’re most familiar with the body because we walk around in our body every day and we talk to people through our body. And just an overview, understand that the body is actually an accessory to our soul. And our spirit is actually an accessory to our soul as well. So the body functions in the physical world. We communicate with people, we have awareness of our environment through our body, and our body provides us with the ability to sense and perceive what’s around us in the physical realm. Also keep in mind that our body also has needs and this is important and it may be somewhat redundant or rhetorical to talk about our body’s needs, but it’s going to help us understand the very important parallel in the spiritual realm. So our body’s needs, like food, water, shelter, acceptance, rest; those sorts of things are going to have important parallels in the scriptures with regard to the spiritual part of us. So the body, it’s easy to understand. We get that, right? You’re looking at my body and you know I am able to perceive the things around me through my senses that God gave us. 

And so, let’s move on to the soul. What is the soul ? Amazingly, you’re probably a lot more aware of your soul than you even realize. So it is our innermost part and it is part of us. It’s also spiritual. We talked about the physical realm and the spiritual realm earlier in the study. If you haven’t watched that video, it’s probably a good idea to go back and watch it so you understand what I’m talking about. Our soul actually is something that is going to last beyond our body. And you know when we talk about our soul being eternal, well, for example in the book of Genesis when Rachel was giving birth to Benjamin, the Bible says in Genesis 35:18: And it came to pass as her soul was in departing (for she died) that she called his name Benoni. And so clearly her soul was leaving her body behind. Her body was expiring, which indicates her physical death. But her soul was going somewhere else, which is again, into the spiritual realm. We also know that in the New Testament, Paul talks in terms of our eternal existence. This is in Romans  2:7- 9. Paul talks about our experience after death being eternal in the terms of that we will experience either eternal life and eternal joy or tribulation and anguish. He says upon the soul of man that does evil. So we know that our soul is going to experience not only tribulation, anguish, joy and all the range of emotions here, but it’s also going to experience those things on an eternal basis. Which should give us a great cause for alarm to understand. What does that even mean? How does that all shake out for us if this life is not all the arena that we’re going to experience?  Our soul is going to experience this range of emotions and obviously we want to be able to experience good emotions, right? Not the bad ones, especially not for eternity.  Let’s break down some of those ranges of emotions that we can see by way of some examples in the Bible. First of all, in Isaiah 61:10 the author says: I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God. So he is making it very clear it’s his soul that’s feeling joy. We can contrast that with Lamentations Chapter 3 where the author says: Remembering my affliction and my misery, the wormwood in the gall. My soul has him still in remembrance. And so he is obviously remembering the misery that he said that his soul has suffered. 

Job, interestingly enough, points out that our soul has a will so experiencing these emotions is part of the soul’s decision. And in Job Chapter 7, Job is commiserating about the misery obviously that he is. Well, you can’t fault the man, I mean he went through a terrible horrible trouble. All of his children died, he lost everything he owned, he lost his health, everything, and he’s expressing this he says: when I say my bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint,  then you scare me with dreams and terrify me through visions. So my soul chooses strangling and death rather than life. So Job is expressing this deep deep emotion. He’s saying I’m choosing to wallow in my misery basically instead of choosing joy. 

So our soul is where these choices are made to experience these ranges of emotions and in our inner self. And speaking of inner self you know Jesus actually would tell stories sometimes or tell parables to teach us things. It’s interesting how he used the soul to kind of help us express how we talk to our inner man. An example of that would be in Luke Chapter 12 where he’s talking about the rich man who had accumulated so much wealth that he needed to build bigger barns and the way it is expressed by Jesus. He said, and he’s of course quoting this rich man, he says and I will say to my soul, soul you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, and be merry.  And so it’s kind of humorous but this is what we do. We talk to ourselves when we’re talking through things. We are talking to our inner man or our soul and so to be aware that there is as part of us that is not only our deepest seat of emotions but it’s also an eternal part of us. It’s very important because it means it’s going to be with us for a while and whereas our body we know is going to die and go into the ground.  Another very important aspect of a soul is that God actually focuses on our soul. This is actually very well expressed when the prophet, Samuel, was going to choose a king for Israel. He went to the house of Jesse and the sons of Jesse were lined up and all these big dudes were the brothers, were you know parading before him, and the Lord’s like, not him, nope not him, not him. And God finally said you know don’t look at his appearance or his physical stature because I refused him. And he says that’s because I the Lord, I don’t see man as man sees man. For man looks at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart. So the Lord was saying, I look at the heart. And by the way, in the Bible, the word soul and heart are used very often interchangeably. I think to say your heart is actually a very accurate expression because we understand the heart being associated with a great range of emotion like pain, to love, and everything in between. So when we talk about what God looks at, he looks at the heart in the man. He was looking for a king that had a heart that was pure and had a good character, right? So when we look at that, it’s interesting because if we think it’s important to know what God thinks then we definitely need to understand that our soul, and giving our soul what it needs is important. 

Jesus also expressed this because in Mark 8:36-37 Jesus said: what shall it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? So when we’re talking about the soul you know we’re talking about our soul is more important than anything in the entire world. And to hear people joke about, oh I sold my soul to the devil so he would make me a famous musician. Well that’s not a joking matter because our soul isn’t going to just be gone when we die. It’s something that when we die it goes to the next level, the next place which we’re going to talk about. And you know it’s interesting, even ancient scholars and playwrights like Cicero, Leonardo DaVinci, William Shakespeare, understood that we have a soul. You know they all had some iteration of the quote, the eyes are the window of the soul. And so when we talk about, backing up just a minute, you know our soul is actually the most important part of who we are. It’s really, when you think about it,  it’s what we give away every day. I mean when I am at work and I am talking to people and trying to help make their lives better I am giving away a piece of my soul. And it is  because we express emotion and we express care. We express these things that we are trying to help people with, and that’s pretty profound when you think about it. We can actually give away that part of us to make somebody else’s life better. Of course, for again, going back to the accessory, we’re using our body to do that. But you know when you look into somebody’s eyes and you see something like care, it’s magnified that much more by using our tools, meaning the body, to express those things obviously. Just by way of thinking about the soul, in the words of Ephesians 1:18, the Bible speaks of having the heart, the eyes of our hearts, enlightened. I think that’s another way of expressing our soul as being the control center of the entire self. It’s like the repository for a person’s core commitments, their deepest loves, their most foundational hopes, and controlling our feelings, thinking and behavior. So it’s important to identify,  ok this is my soul speaking and knowing that it exists. 

Now let’s move on to the spirit, because, again, the spirit is an accessory to the soul. First of all you remember we learned, we talked that God is a spirit. And in John 4:24 the Bible says: God is a spirit: and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit. So our spirit is the accessory that actually has the ability to communicate with God. The spirit, just like our body communicates with other people by using our vocal cords, or our tongue and our hands like I do; the spirit is the other half of that, it communicates with God. And when we talk about that, we talk about, okay, what does that look like?  Well, first of all we need to understand it gives us a spiritual awareness and function in the spiritual realm. So for example, in the book of Isaiah 26, the author says: with my soul I have desired you in the night, yes by my spirit within me, I will seek you early. So, Isaiah was saying, my soul has a desire for God, but my spirit is what seeks God. So our spirit is a part of us for communication with God. And it’s interesting too that Proverbs 20: 27 says: the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts.That just draws a beautiful picture of God’s spirit communicating with our spirit and lighting us up. So, our soul is revealed, in other words, the deepest part of who we are. We can explore our soul better because we have the light of God’s Spirit shining through our spirit into our soul.

Now another interesting part about our spirit is it also has very similar needs to our body. The Scriptures lay those out, and this again goes back to one of our first lessons about the physical realm and the spiritual realm. The physical realm teaches us things about the spiritual realm. So, for example, when Jesus said I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger, whoever believes in me shall not thirst, in John 6:35, he wasn’t talking about giving you a piece of bread and a drink of water in a cup to your body. He was talking about your spirit being fed and the thirst being quenched by him. The Psalmist in Psalm 34:8 says: O taste and see that the Lord is good. You know he was saying, oh yeah, God’s flavorful, he’s good, he satisfies us. He also said: blessed is the man who takes refuge in him, he is our shelter, he is our refuge, our rock. There are so many great verses about this. In Psalms 18 the Psalmist said: I love you , O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my rock, and  in him I take refuge, my shield, and the Horn of my salvation, my stronghold. God is our security and he’s our rest. You know, Jesus said: come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest for your soul. So you know the food and the rest of everything that we can analogize physically we can also analogize spiritually. 

So just to wrap up, because I’ve tried to talk really fast, the soul is our most important part but the other parts of us, the spirit and the body, are the accessories to feed the soul. And so next time we’re going to talk about how this design affects our experiences. I hope you’ll join me next time.

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