Mary sat at the feet of the Lord, and like a sponge, she absorbed whatever she could. from his word. And Jesus said, It will not be taken away from her. She has chosen that good thing. And we follow that tradition based on his approval.
It means something to us. and the world can be passing by doing its burning down for all we know. And we're still focused on what God says. Because that's the only thing that's going to last. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston.
Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through a topical series. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Body, Soul, and Spirit is the title of Pastor Rick's message on this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. When God animates us, when God influences us, We have the self-existent holy God now.
that has His hands on us.
So in heaven or hell Forever we retain awareness, the soul. We are not to win spirits, we are to win souls. That's the person.
Now we come to the Spirit. And I'm trying to Give you my answer to the question: the difference between the soul and the spirit. I've also thrown in the body as a bonus. And I expect some sort of credit for that. Am I the only one that's surprised there aren't monuments on the roadside of me?
When I drive down the road. All right. That's my break. I'm back. The spirit, that part of us that interacts with God, the soul interacts with people.
With creation. with the tangible. The spirit with the invisible. With God. We interact Without that, Him bringing the Spirit to life when we receive Him.
That happens instantly.
Now, theologians will argue, they really get very serious about this. At what point Because Regeneration takes place and faith that who happens like God has bullet points. And sometimes they just boil things down to the point where you don't even want to, you just want to tell them to just be quiet, just don't say anything else. I just go read my Bible. I'll get more out of the Psalms than that argument.
Not that to belittle the Psalms, but you just get instant hits with the Psalms. Anyway, Colossians 2. You being dead. in your trespasses. And the uncircumcision of your flesh, He is made alive together with him.
Having forgiven you all trespasses. He makes you alive when you're forgiven. You're forgiven when you repent. You repent when you are invited to receive Christ.
Now, again, Reformed theology disagrees with that process, and I disagree with them. You just you have to make your choice to be wrong or or decide with me.
Now John 4. John 4, verse 24. Jesus speaking. God is spirit. To those who worship him.
Must worship him in spirit. and truth. That is such a powerful part of scripture given to that woman at the well. There's so much theology packed into that. To commune with God, my spirit has to be alive.
I need more than just my soul. Men worship and serve God with their spirit. Romans 1, verse 9: For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son.
So, this is why I believe in the division of the soul and the spirit. And God is able to say, here's you, and here's the animator who's influencing you. And he remember, the word is the star, the word of God. Is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of the soul and the spirit, the joints and the marrow. It's the word of God.
Without that word of God. We could never tell where we are, what side we're on, who we believe, what we believe, how can we believe. And it is incredible how much emphasis The Word of God puts on the Word of God throughout the Word. And there are Christians that don't value that part. of their Christianity.
Scripture's something that, yeah, okay, you know, I'll pick up the bits and pieces I need to answer my questions in life, but other than that, That's why we go through the difficult books like Numbers and Leviticus and coming up on Deuteronomy. Because Mary sat at the feet of the Lord, and like a sponge, she absorbed whatever she could. From his word. And Jesus said, It will not be taken away from her. She has chosen.
That good thing. And we follow that tradition. based on his approval. It means something to us. And the world can be passing by doing its burning down for all we know.
And we're still focused on what God says. Because that's the only thing that's going to last. And while Paul was huddled in his dungeons, Scribing these letters to Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians. The world was doing its thing oblivious to him like he didn't count. And at times in the Christian life, you have this.
As you get older, you begin to question: do I have any value? Am I being, am I fulfilled in life? If you are pursuing the word of God, yes. According to God. You are.
And it is your duty to do that. And it is his pleasure. to present you faultless, This is the system we belong to. Because Satan will always come along. And throw these little traps in front of you.
These little detours You know, he's like the guy in the cowboy movie that changes the lever at the railroad track so the train goes the wrong way and they can rob it. He's always up to something. And he's not harmless. And he's after the soul. The Holy Spirit is for the saved people.
The spirit is the immaterial part of man which is related to true worship. The spirit is the immaterial part of you that is related to true worship in spirit and in truth. and you cannot come to the communion table and love on the Lord. and repent before him. And plan to get up and go at it again unless your spirit has been.
Made alive. Ephesians 2. And you he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins. Those who are still dead in those trespasses and sins don't care about the communion table. and its relationship to Christ.
They may attend the table. For other reasons, to impress others, to check a box in their head, but they don't love the Lord.
So through this portal of the spirit We can touch and be touched by Jesus Christ. By the Trinity, We are enlivened who interact with Him. Verse 5 again of Ephesians 2: But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead. in trespasses made us alive together with Christ. By grace.
You have been saved. Grace is undeserved. That's what the meaning of grace is. It's undeserved kindness, not just undeserved, because you can be mean, and that's not deserved. It is undeserved goodness.
that God has given to us. The spirit In this context, Because again, it's the Spirit that gives life. A life force that everybody has, and I'll come to the verses for that in a little bit, but we're talking about. The spirit That is now in touch with God. It is the highest part.
Of my composition Through which God can make Himself known to me. It's the influence of the Spirit. And there are levels of that. There's, you know, again, you breathe, receive through the Spirit, now go to Jerusalem and wait. For the outpouring of the Spirit in you to be witnesses to me.
In the Old Testament, the Spirit came upon people. But you know, even Isaiah wrote: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. And he was looking forward to its Messiah. But none of them had what we have, the pouring of the Holy Spirit, to be able. to preach the gospel The Messiah has come.
Was crucified, rose again, connected to the Old Testament, and go forward all the way into eternity at the end of Revelation 22. That comes That is exclusive to New Testament Christianity.
Now I mentioned all have a common Well, I read Romans 8:16, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God. And those who don't have the Spirit, who have not made alive, He's not bearing witness with them, it'd be a false Spirit. And what is the litanus test between the false Spirit and the True Spirit? The Word of God. That is which is our text.
living and powerful. Able to make the determination of what is from God and what is not, what is the soul and what is the spirit. Ecclesiastes 8:8 is one of the verses. I'm not going to read it. But I'll take Job 33.
The Spirit of God has made me. And the breath of the Almighty gives me life. And so, what I'm pointing out. Is there is this common gift from God. Common grace without which humanity could not exist.
It doesn't mean they're in a right relationship with God. It just means He is giving life and His sovereignty. And Well takes a couple of more verses and you can make your own conclusions, but That which gives us human life is not our body, it's not our soul, but it is this element of the Spirit of God. Genesis 2, verse 7. Yahweh, God, formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.
Now Of course man loses that. And hopefully I'll come to that too. God's Spirit of created life in man apparently returns to God when man dies. What happens to that life force? Because the spirit is life.
When a person dies, Ecclesiastes twelve, seven. Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.
Now again, he's talking about the lesser giving of the Spirit. Not that Relationship restoration element of it. Job 34:14 and 15, not going to read it. That's Elihu, actually, who. Really is an insufferable chap.
But he gets that part right. And we know that because of Ecclesiastes 8, Ecclesiastes 12, and other segments of Scripture where he talks about. you know, the spirit's gone it belongs to God. And when we die, that's that.
So the ruin of man spiritually, basic Christianity, Genesis 2:17. after God created man? And he had him and man Adam and Eve in the garden. Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. In the day that you eat of it.
Well, what does that mean? The years, the time we loosely talk. No, both, actually. They died instantly, and that they immediately went into conflict with God immediately. They hid themselves, they recognized their shame.
Everything went upside down. Physically, they didn't die right away, but they died. And Genesis 5 has a catalog of names, and he died, and he died, and it's the Holy Spirit saying, See, told you. They all died.
So, they did not physically die at that moment. They died spiritually, not. Being in Rhythm with God, but conflict, no longer peace with God, hiding from Him. Fearing him? It took time for that to develop in humanity to the level that it is now.
And when they took of the forbidden, They took all of humanity with them. In that instant. Everybody following would be Cursed. Just like them. This became man's natural state.
The natural man is lost, the spiritual man is saved. The carnal man is saved, but he's behaving like the natural man. Subsequently, all of Adam's offspring are born into this fallen race. Romans 5:12. Therefore, just as through one man, Singular.
Sin entered the world. and death through sin. and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned can't get out of it. This is where the Other religions, they take parts of the oral traditions passed down. And they create other religions with it and other ideas like Pandora's Box, for example.
Because you could see that connection between Opening up all of this evil that you can't put back in.
Well, that. Serves as a allegory, I guess, to what happened in Adam and Eve, but Adam and Eve was more deliberate than that. There's more information, there's disobedience connected with that. to a holy God. Spiritual death now separates the soul from God.
But Man retains portals. to heaven and to hell. There's still reason and free will. You can open those doors up. I'm going to play around with The spiritual world, you can find yourself demon-possessed.
God made man to be indwelt by him. to be in fellowship with him. But sin allowed intruders through the self will And that intruder is an enemy of God, it is Satan, and that keeps man in conflict with God. Even if there was no Satan. Man would be in conflict with God, and that's what's going to come out of the millennial reign of Christ.
There will still be those that will side against God. that are not dissatisfied. When Satan Shows them how to Really fulfill their resentment.
So born spiritually dead as a result of the trespass In Eden. Lifeless towards God, but not lifeless towards creation. But that vital contact is gone, severed. The link is broken. And the gospel is the only thing that Reconnects it.
And I remember in the early days of computers, to get my first computer, I just enjoyed deleting things. And I found out you couldn't just delete anything you wanted to. Because then you turn your computer on, it says, you know, dynamic link missing. And you had to get somebody who knew what they were doing to fix that.
Well There's a dynamic link broken between Man and God, and you got to get somebody to fix that, and it's called a witness. of Jesus Christ. Oh, it it can certainly come through the word.
So the restoration of man, Jesus, Mark 10, verse 45. The Son of Man did not come to be served. but to serve and to give his life ransom for many, Okay.
Well, if you wanted to really be like Christ to the extreme, you couldn't go to a restaurant. Because you didn't come to be served. All right. Thought I'd throw that in there for you, but Keeping it in its proper context, how powerful is that? God Almighty did not come to serve, to be served as the.
idolatrous gods do. Building all these steps, you got to climb up to him, and then you sacrifice somebody, and you know, a human being. The more precious the sacrifice to you, the better the bribe to the fake God, which is a demon. But God comes along the Son of Man, he did not come to be served, But to serve and give his life It's payment. For many.
Why not everyone? Because from his perspective, not everyone's going to receive this. And that wording would put the Pharisees on alert. And if you read Hebrews, especially the first, well, chapters three, four, and Three, four, and six. The writer's not messing around.
He's gonna say, he said, if you come short. You won't make it in. Just like the Jews who didn't make it into the promised land. They got all the way there, but they didn't make it in. Because of their unbelief.
not being because they heard the word Not being mixed with faith. They heard what God said. But they didn't trust it. And as a result, They did not find rest. And then he uses that, and he says, You be careful, that doesn't happen to you.
And you drift away from the faith, and of course, the reformed theologists would go out of their way trying to tell you it doesn't mean what it's telling you. You need to hear what we are telling you.
Well, uh we're coming back to the restoration of man. Which is achieved by whoever receives the Lord as Savior. And thus they receive the Spirit. They are made alive. They are now a trichotomy, no longer a dichotomy.
There are three parts to you. And restoration calls for us to tell the difference between good and evil, and the only way we're going to do that is through the scripture. to learn God's will. And the lost I think this is very important. The lost have accepted false ideas about good and evil.
And that's why they're doing so much evil without shame. Because they've lined up With the wrong influence. They're animated now and they're dangerous physically, spiritually. 1 Corinthians 2, the natural man, remember the natural man is a lost man. The spiritual man is a saved man.
The carnal man is the saved man that's behaving like the lost man. When you are in your car, and you resent me passing you You're carnal. And I am spiritual.
So The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them. Because they're spiritually discerned, but he's dead in trespasses and sin. And until he's made alive in Christ at the receiving of the gospel. He can know it. That's where we come in.
Why do you think you're left to slep through life like you do? Because you're an outpost of the Holy Spirit. Or hopefully there'll be Enough Preparedness in you When the Holy Spirit needs to send someone your way who can hear the gospel. Without all of the frills and stuff that doesn't belong with it, that men have. often attached to it.
And people do get saved because of Christians all over the world. Anyway. The lost soul has a body. A soul The spirit's dead. John chapter 4, adding to what he had already said about worshiping God in spirit and truth, and we're almost done.
But the hour is coming And now is. When true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. He's looking for them. When you got saved, it was because God was looking for you.
Not because you were looking for him. You might have thought you were. But he's the one that initiates that. What you do with it is up to you. And there are many that have been told that very thing and still have opted out.
You tell them it's not by mistake that God has brought you to hear the gospel for the first time in your life. without for example Orthodox religions Dead orthodoxy, you're hearing the truth now because God in His love has brought you here. And now what do you do with that? By the word of God, the difference between the new creation and the natural man is made. Jeremiah.
Seventeen is saying what Hebrews 4.12 is saying. The heart is deceitful above all things. Oh, don't leave that part out. above all things. That's a skyscraper problem.
And desperately wicked. And if you stick around Christianity long enough, You find out. How just how deep this goes. Who can know it? I, Yahweh, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.
The prophet wrote that. He includes himself in that. We come along as New Testament believers, and God says to us. The Word of God sharper than any two edge sorts. And it will penetrate.
It will make a puncture wound. On you, your soul, so you can think about this and act. First John, we'll close with this verse, chapter four. By this we know that we abide in Him. And he in us, because.
He has given us His spirit.
So I think that answers the question for me. Let's pray. Our father It is r really a lot of work. to go through the scriptures But the The real achievement is when the scriptures go through us. Make their mark, a visible mark.
And we become the light of the world, the salt of the earth. Whether or not these Theological Secondary points are grasped or not. The key point of who you are who we are in relation to you. and how we can be with you forever. It's something every Christian knows.
Um We pray that you give us a chance more and more. We share the gospel. with souls that you brought our way because you're seeking those who could be saved. In Jesus' name, amen. Yeah.
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