Identification Truths

identification is going to be maybe something kind of new to you. And that's why I went to Genesis, because actually the identification truths start there. So I asked a really tough question, the first one, why did God create? Why did He do it? Because He wanted to? Because He had to? Why did He do it though? I mean, do you agree that He didn't have to? Do you agree that creation didn't add anything to him? You alright with that? So why'd he do it? I said he did it to glorify himself. That's exactly right. He does everything for that reason.

Doesn't that sound a little egocentric to you? It did at first. When you think about it, that's pretty... I mean, if we made, if we, as humans, or to take something and create a work of art or something. We do it so we can brag about it. Yeah, yeah. So God... That's right. So God creating to glorify himself is not an egocentric... He is, but it isn't... He doesn't have an ego.

Understand what I mean by that? When we grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus and we become acquainted with the glory of the Lord Jesus, which is the same glory as the Father, we begin to find out that that glory is something other than what we would think of as being self-absorbed. It's other-absorbed, and He wants to bring us into the intimacy of that.

And I don't know how many of you have ever been in Hal's class when he talked about, you know, that God created for, to manifest his glory for himself, for his glory, that he might manifest his glory to all of the creation. So if you know that's the purpose, then you know God's in the middle of it, and he's carrying out his purpose as he goes along.

My next question was, if you read Genesis 1, and you might, if you didn't read it, you might want to turn there, Genesis 121 says that God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind, and God saw that it was good. And then in 24, God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, and cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind, and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the earth after its kind. What does after its kind mean? It means a duplicate of itself. When God created a pigeon, pick something, Is the pigeon you see today just like the one that God created? Absolutely it is.

So, it's interesting that God created creatures that could reproduce. Right? Now, not all of his creatures can reproduce. Angels can't reproduce. But all physical creatures can. Human beings, all animal life, plant life, reproduce. And they always reproduce after their own kind. I know. Yeah, the evolutionists wouldn't like that. So, he gives every creature the ability to reproduce, but he restricts it. that they can only reproduce after, they're only capable of reproducing after their own natural and physical characteristics. Okay? So, when you look around at creation, you don't see any dog cows, do you? Or you don't see any cat snakes, you know?

Now, in mythology you see them, but it shows you how in tune fallen man is to what God is doing. I think in studying identification truths, it's very important, this is a really important principle, because it not only holds true in the physical realm, but it also is going to hold true in the spiritual realm. Do you see that? So, we don't have any reptile horses, and we don't have any Star Wars type creatures. You don't have any of those, you know. Aliens? What's that? Aliens? Don't have any aliens. When God created this principle of a like begets like, or after its own kind, is a principle that's set in place. Now granted, man tries to manipulate that, but actually what men are trying to do now is clone, you know.

And it's interesting that God can create a creature that produces after its own kind, but every one that he produces is just a little bit different, even though it's the same species. So after its own kind is a really important principle. We'll keep that in mind as we go forward. So then we have to ask the next question, when God created, did he create after his own kind? After himself? In other words, he can create animals and birds and, you know, the like. But when he created a man, did he create the man after his own kind? What do you think? Yeah? Okay, so he creates this Adam character, right? Now Adam is an interesting guy in that he has Lots of characteristics about him that...

I want to read this to you. He has a material element. He's formed out of the dust, right? He has what is known as a formative factor, meaning that God breathed into him the breath of lives. And when you read that verse, understand that the word life is plural. It's not singular. It's plural. And the final issue is that man became a living soul.

Now, if you just stop at Genesis, you might think that man becoming a living soul, that he was just a two-part man, but he's not, is he? What are the characteristics that make up a man? Okay, spirits. But you won't find the issue of spirit in the book of Genesis.

You have to go to, like, Zechariah 12.1, where the Lord declares, Thus declares the Lord who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundation of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him. Okay.

So, God creates after his own kind and he creates this human being that we call Adam. And Adam, if God created for his own glory and to manifest his glory, how is Adam going to be part of that? Genesis 126, God says, Let us make man in our own image, according to our own likeness, and let him rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

How did he do it? What about Adam were the same characteristics as God had? How did he create him after his own kind? What do you think? Or did he? Maybe he didn't. What do you think? Did God create after his own kind? After who he was? In person he did?

That's right. In spirit he did. Deity. That's right. And what about Adam that makes him like God? One, he's a person. But angels are persons too, I think, aren't they? So we share that in common. But the thing about man is that he has a spirit. Does my dog have a spirit? What's he got? He's got a soul, right? So, man has a spirit. And why would God give man a spirit? Why'd he do that?

To get in a relationship. That's exactly right. Bless you. Don't you find it interesting that even from the very beginning that what God is up to is to create a creature in such a way that that creature could have fellowship with him. Now, so he creates, you know, Adam is created and he looks, he can name all the animals. God gives him the ability to do that, right? And he determines in creating animals that aren't any like him. And God determined that it wasn't good for man to be alone, so he creates a woman out of Adam. But I can see why God did what he did in manifesting his glory. If you were God and you were going to create so that you could manifest your glory and just do it for your glory, well, you'd need somebody who could appreciate it. Right?

I mean, what does a donkey care? You know, about the glory of God. He doesn't care about that. What does a dog care about the glory of God? He doesn't care. But a human being, created with body, soul and spirit, to some degree could appreciate the glory of God.

Right? Some other characteristics. he would be able to reflect. He would be able to compare things. But most of all, he would be able to be loved by God and love him back. Because God's essential character right at the core of God is what attribute? It's love, right? So, if you're God and you're going to manifest your glory, having a creature who could receive your love, appreciate what that love is, and respond in kind, it would seem to me to be really important in terms of the characteristics.

So, he creates Adam in such a way that Adam can love God, walk with Him in the cool of the evening, respond to Him, and love Him back. Right? And Adam is a distinct, separate person. That's critical. That he's a distinct, separate person from God, although he gets his life from God, but he's his own entity, and he can receive, understand, appreciate, and love God back. And he can do it willfully. Adam is the only creature Take that back. Adam is the only human being, Adam and Eve, that God created with free will.

You buy that? You mean you don't have free will? Well, until they exercise it against God's will, yeah. So, Adam has this thing called free will, which means that he can choose God, without any impediments, without any tendencies away from God. Do you see that? He could always choose God. But because of that free will, God put him to the test. Because if he creates him that way, and gives him that kind of freedom, he wants the man to love him out of his own volition and his own heart. Do you see that? So he gives him a test.

God is essentially a spirit, therefore man is a spirit who is similar to God. And man, bless you, possesses a spirit that won't die. It will live forever. Man is in lots of respects, but he is not equal to God. Man's likeness to God is what truly distinguishes him from the rest of the creatures. Man is a personal being with the power to think, feel, and decide. He has the ability to make moral choices and the capacity for spiritual growth or decline. And in the beginning, man loved God and was a holy creature.

Was Adam's likeness to God physical in any way? I don't think he was. I mean, what about his physicalness would have been like God? At this point in the timeline, the three persons of the Godhead are just spirit. Christ hasn't been incarnate yet. Yeah, but as you were talking today, I mean, you look at Scripture and God looks over there.

I mean, all the attributes that man has. That brings up the question, then, who's the prototype? You know what I mean by prototype? Who? Is Adam the prototype man? Christ. Yeah, Christ would be the prototype man. Because Christ is, you know, from eternity past existed as a man. So he's the prototype. So you could say in that sense that Adam is created in God's image. But, you know, the real identity that man has with God is spiritual. That's the real identity.

How did you describe the principle of reproduction? I cheated. I looked it up in the dictionary. You want my definition? It's a sexual or asexual process by which organisms generate new individuals of the same kind. Or a synonym would be procreation. It is referred to as a fixed law of progeny. That's what reproduction is.

Now, maybe this is kind of boring to go through this now, but I think in the weeks ahead, when we begin to discuss our identity with Christ, this principle still holds. And no matter how you view yourself, you are in Christ and reproduced by the principle of reproduction and that progeny holds as we go forward. It's interesting that God puts principles in existence when he creates and they stay as principles through all of the created history through this whole time. We've already answered five. Who was God's blueprint in creating man? And the verses, I gave you three verses to look up, but I also got some of my own.

In Hebrews 1.3, it says, And he, the Lord Jesus, is the radiance of his glory, God's glory, and the exact representation of his nature.

That's who the Lord Jesus is. In Colossians 1, it says that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. And then it describes the Lord Jesus as a man, for by him all things were created, both in heaven and in the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created by him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He's the head of the body of the church. So, when God comes to the earth in the person of Christ, all of these principles still hold true.

Do they not? Now who is the Lord Jesus Christ in terms of like begets like? Well, the Word of God says that Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father. Like begets like. So He's exactly the offspring of the Father. You could say it that way. He's exactly what God is, only now He's in the flesh. See that? So that is a contrast between him and Adam. What's the difference? What's the difference? He's a new Adam. So let's talk about this word Adam. When you say new Adam, what do you mean by that? Which is really question six.

What does the term representative man or federal man mean? Same principle. That's the idea of us glorifying Him as when He gave us free will, what's to choose Him, so the new Adam is a continuation of that. By making Adam, the first Adam, what we would call a representative man or a federal head of a race, what does that mean that he is? Or maybe a better question would be, if he's the representative man, all the men that are born after that are going to be what? just like him. He's the head. That also means that if he acts in a certain way, his actions accrue to all those that come from him.

You with me? In other words, when Adam falls, the whole race falls, even though they're not born yet. Right? Why? Because he's a representative man. But why did the race fall? I mean, why can't I legitimately go to God and say, how come I'm in this mess? How come I have a sin nature? And how come I'm living here?

I didn't do anything. I wasn't around when the Garden of Eden was there. You know? Stop picking on me. Why can't I legitimately say that? Something in Adam's nature changed? When Adam reproduces, he reproduces just like himself. Right? But I can say to God, no, wait a minute. I know that, you know, I came from Adam. But I got stuck with all this sin and this death and all this. I didn't do anything. How come I got saddled with all that? It's my nature.

And Romans 5.12 says, that when Adam sinned, I sinned. Now that's another principle. When the representative man does something, so do all those that are in him and will be born from him down through the ages. So I can legitimately before God say, well, I sinned in Adam. He didn't sin on my behalf. I actually was doing the sin in him. Now, the reason I think that's important is the fact that we can understand that those that come from Adam are responsible because they have will.

But I would always do what my representative head does. Do you understand what I mean? I mean in the physical realm it would be like this. Dogs always bark, don't they? Because it's the nature of dogs to bark. Human beings are all born sinners because it's their nature to be sinners.

And if I were Adam, living in the garden, I'd have done the same thing Adam did. Because I'm just like him. Given the same set of circumstances, I would have done exactly the same thing. think that you're a little bit better than Adam and you'd have missed, you know, you'd have said, nah, I don't want any of that tree. But you would have, because you're just like him.

Now again, I'm spending a lot of time on this because when we get later on to talk about the characteristics of the Lord Jesus, the same principles are going to hold true. The principles don't change. And I know as we study the person of Christ, we have a tendency to look at him through Adam's eyes and not believe what we see, because we're looking that we know ourselves in Adam, what our nature is, and we couldn't possibly be what God says we are in Christ, because it just doesn't fit the old nature. You see that? But the principle holds true. See that?

If we could have made a better choice in Adam, Or, if we couldn't have, then how is that free will that we're able to choose? How free is your will? To choose God. Yeah. I mean, if that was destined in life, that we couldn't overcome that. Do you know what I mean? I don't think it was foreordained that Adam would sin, but God knew he would. And God's foreknowledge isn't causative. You understand what I mean? If he knows what you're going to do, it doesn't mean he causes it. He just knows it.

He made a way that Adam would have been unable to choose otherwise? That's a good question. I mean, if God knew that Adam was going to Why did he give him the test in the first place? Why didn't he say, oh gee, boy if I give him the test he's going to fail it and look at what's going to happen. What's that? Think about the test for a minute.

Here you are, here you are Adam, right? You're created innocent and you're perfect. And you're given the responsibility of dominion over the earth and to tend the garden. And God gives you Eve, who's just like you. She's bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh. And you have no competing forces in your life. None. Right? You have all of the trees and all the fruit-bearing plants for food. All of them. I mean, how many of them are there?

You don't have to eat strawberries every day, you know. I mean, you've got melons, and you've got, I mean, and not only that, he gives you that when you do eat, it's wonderful, it tastes good, you know. And then he has this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that bears fruit, and he says, just don't eat of that tree. And if you do, you're going to die, right? It isn't that Adam only had the choice of one or the other. He didn't have a choice of a burger or a cheeseburger. You know, he had this entire supermarket and then this one tree. Right. So he he chooses the one tree. So how how easy does the test have to be? Huh? Pretty stupid. It's a real easy test. All he's got to do is say, ah, I got all these, I don't need that. That's all he's got to do. But he doesn't.

So, when Adam falls, does his free will fall with him? Or, I mean, his intellect falls, doesn't it? His body falls. He gets this thing called the sin nature. He becomes flesh. He now has a propensity to sin. His mind is darkened. He's going to die, physically. He dies spiritually. In other words, the spiritual connection between him and God is severed immediately. He still has a spirit, but it's not alive to God anymore. And does he maintain unblemished free will? No. No, he doesn't. No, he doesn't.

The question I have is, does it back up to what were the natures of those two trees? One was life and one was the knowledge of good and evil. So it doesn't strike me that it was just a a whim to have two trees, but there was this knowledge of good and evil tree, so there was a reason that God said, don't eat of that tree, not just to remove it from you, but there must have been a reason. Yeah, well, he terms the tree, the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So you have to ask yourself, before the fall, Does Adam know what evil is? Does he know what good is? What do you think? No. He knows neither, because there's no contrast in his life, right? He's innocent, but he's perfect.

And the tree of life, don't you find it interesting that God did not restrict him from the tree of life, did he? No. And the tree was there, and Adam knew the tree was there, but he didn't restrict him. He didn't say, you got two trees you can't eat of, but this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you cannot eat of that tree. Okay? He had life, though.

If he didn't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then everything would be fine. Okay, let's talk about the tree of life. What is the Tree of Life? Is that taking away the ability to send? Oh, interesting. I don't think so. Who claimed to be the Tree of Life? Jesus. Who did? Christ. Yeah, Christ claimed to be the Tree of Life.

Well, Adam's alive. But Corinthians says that Adam became a living soul. Christ is a spirit from heaven. So would you think that the life was different than Adam had? Yeah, because we talked about that before. God walked with him in the garden. It wasn't the same. He said he was still elderly. Yeah. And one of the reasons that...

Why do you think God put an angel, kicked Adam out of the garden? and put an angel at the gate so that they couldn't get to the Tree of Life. Why do you think he did that? If Adam in his fallen state had gotten to the Tree of Life and eaten of it, what would have been the result? Well, what would he have done? What would he have done to the Tree of Life? He would have corrupted it.

And guess what? The Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil all live under this reproduction principle. You see that? And so the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has reproduced its own fruit right down to today. Right? It also says in Genesis 3.22 that if he would not have blocked the tree of good and evil, Adam would have had the ability to eat And he would have been stuck in his state. Do you understand what I mean by that? The name of this class is Identification Truths.

And one of the things, probably the most important principle we're going to learn is that when everybody in this room was born again, if you want to use the analogy of the trees, what God did was He took you out of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and He placed you in the tree of life. You see that?

You didn't, I mean most Christians think what happened is when they got saved is that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, on this side of the tree are all the evil branches and on this side of the tree are all the good ones. So when you get saved you do this little squirrel trip across to the good branches. No, no, no. He took you out of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil positionally, moved you down the garden, up into the tree of life. So now, If the principle of like begets like is still in place, now what happens?

If you're from the tree of life? Let's say that Adam somehow got his hands on the tree of life. What would have happened? He would have polluted the life. Because he's sinful now. See? And that's why God protected it, I think. Unless somebody's got...

One of the most difficult things for growing believers to get straight in their minds is that they do not live anymore under the principle of good and evil. So you can stop rewarding yourself for being good and kicking yourself in the butt for being bad. You can stop doing that because you don't live that way. Your position in the tree of life doesn't have that contrast.

Do you see that? The tree of life, there aren't any evil branches or good branches. The tree of life is life. And life, you hear me say this all the time, life functions by its own principle. You're holy because you're in the tree of life that is holy. You act holy, you live righteously because the tree or the source of life you come from is holy and is righteous. Do you see that?

But in our minds, because we have both of these natures in us, we are fooled, I think, into thinking that if I'm doing good, God really likes me, and if I'm doing evil, he doesn't. We don't realize that our whole existence has changed, that our whole frame of reference has left good and evil and gone to life. I wrote down, I asked the question, in what respect was Adam's likeness to God?

And I wrote down a bunch of things that I got from out of a book by T. Austin Sparks, and I'll read something to you here. A spirit that is kept in living union with God is never for one moment with God, is never for one moment infringing the laws of its divine union and cross over to take counsel with or be influenced by his own soul or self-conscious life.

The reason to reason will or desire any independent thing. Let me explain what he means. When a believer is in divine union with the Lord Jesus Christ, as he grows, he will stop going back to soulish things to make decisions. and to rest upon and to find out his desires. Do you understand what I mean by that? Man is made up of body, soul, and spirit. He's essentially a spirit that has a soul that lives in a body. Okay? Now, when man sinned, or when Adam sinned, what happened to his spirit? It died in the sense that it was separated from God. So what in the man rushed to fill the gap?

Ever seen my little bell jar? You know what a bell jar is? You guys have been in physics class, you know what a bell jar is. with this piece of glass and inside here is air and they turn the pump on and it sucks all the air out of there. And if you put like a marshmallow in there, the marshmallow will fill up the whole space. You put a mouse in there, it will do the same thing.

So if you take the bell jar and you look at it as a human being whose body, soul and spirit when he dies spiritually to God, and the spirit was the primary life function, when he dies to God, his soul, now infected with the sin nature, fills the gap.

So man in the flesh operates primarily from a soulish point of view, infected with the sin nature. Okay? Does that make sense? a man becomes a believer. His spirit becomes alive again. What God does in spiritual growth is he turns the pump on, and he begins to suck this soul down to its own size again, and the spirit begins to fill the gap, and so the man starts to become a spiritual man. And he begins to be ruled spiritually now, rather than soulishly. Does that make sense? Anybody have any questions about that? That's just an analogy I came up with a couple of years ago. Well, the problem with growing believers is that they still try to function soulishly and not spiritually. And the reason is that they don't know much about what spiritual life is and how it functions.

But if the spirit is the essential identity as to who man's likeness to God is, then that's why we talk about A mature believer is a spiritual man. He's functioning based out of his spirit, not his soul anymore. So the things that are really important to a soul, like self-preservation, and taste, and intellect, and all those kinds of things, and fears start to go away, because the spirit, now that you're in Christ, and you have a spiritual connection with God, you begin to find out from a spiritual standpoint who you are, what you have and where you are. And you begin to function from your spirit again. Like Adam did. Adam functioned from his spirit. The tree of life is really the tree of spiritual life.

So when T. Austin Sparks talks about that you're in divine union with God spiritually, why would you go back to the soul for comfort? or for safety, or for self-consciousness. You know, when a believer is abiding in Christ, there's very little self-consciousness, because his focus is on the Lord Jesus. What was God's opinion after man fell of Him? Did I give you the verse Genesis 6-5?

This is a very interesting verse. It says, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. If you start on that premise, you've got a good jump on it. If you think you're better than that, then you've got some things to learn. The heart of the old man is only evil continually. It is nothing other than that.

Why can't you make a judgment about your own condition? Why can't you do that? What's that? Yeah, and why aren't we objective? Yeah, that's right. So God doesn't leave the judgment of man. Say that again. I said it's objective for one reason, and the reason we can't do it is because we have the ulcer in nature. It's really like a circle. We have the ulcer in nature, and we don't have the objective to leave it on him. So as much as we'd like to think we have the ability to judge ourselves, we don't. It takes God to do it. Because he's going to do it objectively and from the viewpoint of truth.

So if you look up in the scripture, Genesis 6.5, there's the objective opinion about what a terrific person you are. Having said that though, if you begin to read in Paul's epistles about God's objective opinion about who you are in Christ, it's just as emphatic the other way. Let's see. How much of the original blueprint was left after Adam fell? How much? Still had a body. Still had a soul. Still had a spirit, although it's dead to God. How much? Fifty percent? 2005, yeah. You still have the ability to think. I mean, you can... After the fall, here's what you can still do that God does. You can compare.

You're conscious that you can know things. You have the power of taste. You have the power to admire things. You can feel the pleasure of knowledge. You can do all that. You can impart knowledge to others. Can't you? You have power to plan the future, power to learn from events, the power to discover efficiency and the final cause of things. You can enjoy the pleasure of discovery. You still have an imagination.

That's right. You can seek the distinction of right and wrong. God does that too. You're conscious of integrity. You're conscious of well-ordered and perfectly balanced universe. You still do all that. Problem is that the faculty, which is your soul, that does all that is infected by sin nature. So you do retain some qualities. The problem is that the qualities that you retain are hampered by the infection of sin. You retain no spiritual likeness to God at all. None. Adam. Did he ring the bell?

Alright, one last question. The last question is number 12. What term would you use to explain all of this likeness we talked about this morning? One word. No, one word. This likeness we have to God, the likeness that we have to Adam, the likeness that all creatures can procreate and reproduce themselves. What word would you use? The word is identification. The word is identification. All of this discussion in Genesis about likeness is identification. Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your word and how we thank you for the fact that we can grow in the knowledge and grace of your Son. begin to understand our identity with him. And we thank you, we pray in his precious name. Amen.