27 - The Constitution of Man, Part 2

Welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Biblical… no wait, that was the last one.

Sorry. School of Systematic Theology. We've only been in this for who knows how long, but we are welcome that you're back with us.

It's been a little bit of a crazy day, crazy weather -wise. I guess we are getting ready for the

Super Bowl outreach, therefore it is freezing out. For those who know what weather is like in the

Northeast, it is cold. It's getting even colder. Not liking that. So maybe that's affecting the thinking.

I'm a little bit slow today.

Ok. So we are glad that you are with us. We welcome all of our newer students that are out with us today.

Glad to have you. We are looking into finishing up last week's class.

We'll have some special news about next week. We will have something special for next week, but it will not be the

Striving for Eternity Academy. So, well, it will be the Strong Confucian Academy, it will not be a school of systematic theology.

So, you'll have to watch for the end of class to figure out what that's about. But we are looking at this week as we have been going through our book of systematic theology, we're in book number two.

And in book number two we are looking at the doctrine of man.

No, no, no, that's not man like without woman. No, no, see, okay, all right, all right,

I'll tell, I'll tell. So, all right, here's the thing. You know how woman got her name? Someone's asking, they want to know how did

Adam name Eve a woman? It's very, very simple.

God made Adam, he then made Eve, he has Adam name everything. Adam sees

Eve and says, whoa, man! Woman. All right, what?

It was, all right, being told it wasn't as funny as the last time I told it, fine. But we are in the now lesson number two in the constitution of man.

Now, last week, let's just do a little bit of a recap. Last week we had looked at the fact that man was created in the image of God.

Man was created in the image of God. And as such, we saw previously that man being created in the image of God had certain attributes of personality.

And we had looked at that and that's what makes man different than animals. This is important because man is different than animals, man is different than angels.

Man is a unique creation, just like angels are unique to their personhood, their nature, to the way that God has created them.

So is man. Animals are in a category that's different. And this is where, you know, I know you evolutionists, you have a problem because you think like, yeah, everything's an animal.

Except for, oh right, angels that don't have bodies. So therefore you argue that they don't exist because you can't handle the truth.

I understand. You need, you need, was that guy the actor that would say, you can't handle the truth.

That's what you need for the atheists. Because they can't. So, but they'll argue that people are just like animals and they complain when people act like animals.

Yeah, okay. So we were created in the image of God. Last week we also noticed that man was created as a physical being.

Physical being. Now do you remember why I said that was an important thing to look at? That was important because if you remember when we had looked at that, we had mentioned the fact that when we look at different types of views that people had of the nature of people, the

Gnostics and, you know, some of the early philosophers would argue that man is made physical and anything physical is evil.

And so people would argue that, you know, Jesus couldn't have been a man because that would have made him evil.

And that's not what made him evil. It was this in nature. It was something that was immaterial. And we're going to talk about that in a little bit.

But we talked about the fact that God, when he created man in his physical body, he said it was very good.

I guess that was probably before Adam put on the 40 pounds, you know, of middle agehood or something, you know.

Actually, what was middle age for Adam? Like 450? I mean, really? Can you picture being like 450 years and then you like realize, oh,

I got like, how much weight did he have to lose? All right. But it's probably because he didn't have processed food.

So anyway, so here we have the reality is, as we look into lesson number three, and I hope if you have your syllabus, which you can get from going to that site down there, you'll be able to pick up your syllabus and follow along with us.

But if you are in your syllabus, we are in Roman numeral number three this week.

And we are looking at the fact that God created man as a spiritual being.

That he created man as a spiritual being. And so, as a spiritual being, we see that man possesses both the physical and, or you could say physical or material, and immaterial nature.

And that's your blank there, immaterial nature. In other words, there is part of man that is physical or material, made up of matter.

And there is a part of man that is not. Boy, is this a problem for those that try to argue for atheism.

Because by arguing for atheism, what they're trying to do is they're trying to argue that they are only physical things.

There's no immaterial things made of them. I guess things like the conscience, and their ability to reason, and thinking, and knowledge, and truth, and morality.

All that they all argue is, oh, that's just a product of the brain. Really. So, think about this.

If you're going to argue that reasoning is a something that came about only through teaching, you know, like through understanding things, by evolution, by being taught there.

As we look at that, people will argue, oh, we'll see that it's neurons flying, you know, going on in your brain.

Well, how do you actually know then that your brain is firing on all pistons?

Sorry, couldn't resist. Right, because I mean, they're saying there's this firing of neurons, and that's what's creating everything.

But the reality is that we end up looking at the fact that people's brains don't always work well.

And what happened before people evolved, supposedly, to have a brain like ours?

I mean, were there things that were still true? I mean, was there truth in the universe? Did the laws of logic still apply?

This is a thing I always do with people. I will argue that the laws of logic are just something that came about through evolution in our thinking process.

Really? Okay, we all agree that there was a time before there were human beings. I believe it was six days.

You may believe it was millions of years. So, here's the question. Did the laws of logic apply before there was a human brain?

Before people could discover, is what I would say, they would say, you know, actually create the laws of logic.

See, I would say we discovered it. They were always there. Because if they say, well, guess what?

It was a human brain that did it. Well, there is no immaterial part of man. You got a problem, because the laws of logic still were in effect.

I mean, the universe, and this is a question you can ask, could the universe have existed and not existed in the same way and at the same time before there was a human brain?

That's a law of non -contradiction. Now, some people will actually argue, yes, the universe could exist and not exist at the same time.

Then how do you know you're really here? Well, you don't. You could be in the matrix. And if people really want to argue that they live in the matrix or that they could live in the matrix, yeah, you're not dealing with a person that can reason properly.

Okay? So, the reality is they know they exist and not in the matrix. But they can't explain it because they don't want to sit there and realize, oh, there actually is laws of logic that don't come about into existence by human thinking.

So, man possessed both a physical and immaterial nature.

Okay? There are a number of words that come to describe this aspect of man.

And so, when we have this, we're gonna get into a debate that some do.

I won't debate with you. If you want to debate me about this, I'll hang up on you.

Really, I don't care. But some people seem to think it's like a big deal. But anyway, the issue is that we end up looking at the fact that there's some people that argue for dichotomy and some that argue for trichotomy.

What are those two? I'm gonna explain them just in case you have people that explain those. I'm gonna give you basically where I land on that and you'll see why

I really don't care so much. But people make a big deal sometimes about this. And trichotomy is the argument that man is made up of a soul, a spirit, and a body.

So, the body is that material part. Soul and spirit are the immaterial part. A dichotomist is somebody who is going to believe in two parts, alright?

A body, that material part, and an immaterial part that we can call a soul or a spirit.

So, in other words, the dichotomist isn't splitting hairs on that. I would probably be a dichotomist because I really don't see this distinction that some people make between the two.

So, I don't see the big deal. I'm sorry. I mean, I've heard the arguments. And if you really want to argue for trichotomy, go ahead.

Alright, so what we have is we end up with the reality that we do know for sure.

And that is that we have both a physical and an immaterial part of us.

The physical is what we call a body. And the immaterial is that thing that we would call a soul or spirit and other things.

So, we're going to start by looking at the first one, which is a soul. So, we're going to look at a soul here today.

And, well, yeah, you can't see a soul. I know that's not... I'm not saying we're going to see a soul.

We're going to look at it, but we're not going to see it. Why? Because it's immaterial. You can't see it.

I mean, you can't pour me a cup of immaterial things. But we have a soul. And if you look in the

Old Testament, the meaning of the word soul in the Old Testament is that the basic meaning from the

Hebrew, and if you look in your syllabus there, you'll see there, the Hebrew word for nehesh is...

It's the idea of life. Nehesh is the term in Hebrew for soul, which has the meaning of life.

And that's your blank there, life. Since it is used in a general way, it can refer to living beings.

Let's take a look at some living beings. Here we see in Genesis, a couple of different verses here, that we have

Genesis 1, 21 to 22. And you're going to see where life is used for living creatures or living beings.

And God said, let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures.

Let the birds fly above the earth across the expanse of heaven. So God created great sea creatures and every living creature that moves with which the water swarms according to the kinds of every winged bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was what? Good. So what we see in that verse, if you look at that, we'll come back to those other verses in a moment.

But what you see at that verse is this is a general thing. So this is speaking of animals in that passage that we just read.

So does your dog have a soul? Well, in the general sense of this

Hebrew word, yes, it's a living being. Anything that is a living being in that sense is said to have a soul.

So let's keep going. In Genesis 1, 24, you'll see it refers, God said, let us bring forth living creatures from their kind.

And so that is speaking of livestock and creeping things and beasts of the air.

So you see, this is a general, general living creatures.

You can look at chapter two, verse seven there at the bottom. Then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

And he became a living creature. So what you see there is that it speaks not only of animals, but also of man.

But you see here, it's a general sense just referring to living things, to living creatures.

So the other thing that it refers to, someone is asking whether we need to take the, do

I have to take the train to get a soul, soul train. That's a really dated joke, whoever put that in there.

I mean, you must be, I mean, to remember soul train, just saying, you know. But anyway, so not only is it referred to living beings, but if you look in your syllabus, that which departs from the body is called a soul.

And this we see in Genesis 35, verse 18. And as her soul was departing, for she was dying, she called on his name,

Ben -Oni, but his father called him Benjamin. So what you have here is this is speaking of something that departs from us when we die.

This is a part of us. Now, here becomes this question. So if animals are called a soul and the soul is that part of us that departs when we die, do animals go to heaven?

Well, don't know of any place that says that any animals will be in heaven. I'm sorry.

I know you want your pet dog, Fufu. Oh no, that's your cat, that's Fufu, in heaven.

Neither one of them will probably be there. We know they'll be in the millennial kingdom. We'll talk about that in many, many lessons ahead.

So it's a term that's used in general for living things, for that which departs from the body at death.

And also we see in Leviticus, it refers to the body itself in Leviticus 13. When a person, this is to give you a context, this is dealing with a person who has leprosy.

When a person has on his skin of his body a swelling or an eruption or a spot that turns into a case of leprous disease or the skin of his body, then he shall be brought to Aaron or to the priest or to one of his sons, the priest, and the priest shall examine the disease area of the skin of the body.

And if the hair is diseased and turns white, the disease appears to be deeper than the skin of the body, it is a case of a leprous disease.

When the priest is examined, he shall pronounce it unclean. Then in number six, it says, all of the days he separates himself to the

Lord, for he shall no longer go near a dead body. Now what you're seeing in those verses is those verses are using the same word that we're looking at here.

And so the soul, which this is one of those ones that makes it hard for those people that want to make a clear division between a body and a soul, because this is one where the same term used for that soul that departs the body, it can also sometimes be used for the body itself.

But the idea of the soul in the Old Testament is the idea of the center of emotional experience.

It's the center of emotional experience. And so we end up seeing that this is something that you see,

I'm not going to go to all the verses there. I'll give you the verses so you can look them up so we can move ahead because there's way too many verses.

We have like 50 some verses in tonight's lesson and we're never going to get through all those. So I'll just give these to you. But the idea of soul in the

Old Testament referred to in Job 30 verse 25, the idea of sympathy.

We see the soul used with despair in Psalm 43 verses 5.

We see it being used in reference to bitterness in 2 Kings 4 verse 27.

The idea of hate in 2 Samuel 5 8. The idea of love in Song of Solomon 1 verse 7.

And then grief in Jeremiah verse 13 to 17. So we see in all of those is that the idea of the soul in the

Old Testament is this idea of the center of emotional experiences.

Those are the emotions that we have and it could speak of someone's soul referring to their emotions.

That's different in the New Testament. So in the New Testament, the meaning, if you see there, the psyche, which if you maybe take a class in school,

I remember my first pastor had to take some classes for his degree and he took a class in psychology.

And so he was, they were asked, one of the first things they were asked was, what is psychology?

And he having a background in Greek raised his hand and said, it is the study of the soul.

And the teacher in this secular school did not like that one bit. Why? Because they didn't want to talk about a soul.

But that's what it is. Psyche is soul. Psychology is the study of the psyche, the soul.

Now psyche can refer to a couple of things. One thing it can refer to if you have your syllabus in the first blank is it could refer to the whole person, the whole person.

Let's just take a look at Acts chapter 2 verse 41. We see, so those who received his word were baptized and they were added into the church about 3 ,000 souls.

This is referring to a whole person. They're not dividing a person up into, you know, just his physical body or spirit.

This is the whole being, 3 ,000 people referring to the whole person.

So that's one way that we see psyche used. A second way that we see this used, and this is the second thing in your syllabus there, is the word can refer, the word soul can refer to the immaterial part of man, the immaterial part of man.

Matthew 10 and verse 28 says, and do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

So you see here that this is a case where you see that the soul is very specific to the immaterial part of the person.

So here you see this body, soul, two separate things where before we saw they could be referred to the same thing.

So in a technical sense, the soul is the immaterial part of man where the body is the material part of man, okay?

But the word can be used and is often used interchangeably.

In other words, it can refer to both the body and the soul, or it can refer to just, or sorry, the material and immaterial, let me be more precise, or it could refer to just the immaterial.

But one thing we also see in the book of Revelation is that it also designates those who are in the eternal state.

Let's look at that in Revelation 6 and verse 9. When I opened the fifth seal and I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and had been

His witness they had borne. So this is saying that there is a part of the soul that is going to be in the eternal state.

Part of it, that part of us, that immaterial part of us that will last beyond this physical body.

Now, if you're looking ahead, you're going, now wait a minute Andrew, you said you only believe in material and immaterial and you started talking about the soul.

Now look at letter B, it's the spirit. Ah, you are a trichotomist, I just knew it. No, that's just another word to refer to the spiritual makeup of man.

Man was created as a spiritual being and as a spiritual being this is an aspect of how the word of God refers to that spiritual being of Andrew.

So, the spirit says, it says here,

I have it in the notes there, this word strictly refers to the immaterial part of man.

Now that's where it's different. So, where soul is this word that can be used as immaterial or material, it could be used interchangeably, the word spirit cannot.

This word spirit is used only for the immaterial part of man. Man is a soul, that's your blank there, man is a soul, but he has or rather is a spirit.

That's from Charles Ryrie, a good little way of thinking of it. So, in other words, man, man is a soul, but he has a spirit or rather he is a spirit.

It's a good way of thinking of it. So, I'm going to say it again so you kind of think through that and wrap it around. So, man is a soul.

In other words, man doesn't possess a soul, he is a soul, referring to his whole personhood.

So, it's kind of can refer to both the physical and immaterial, so material and immaterial part, but he has or is a spirit.

So, although he is a soul, he has a spirit.

So, the spirit is beyond the physical nature, something that animals wouldn't have.

Okay, for the sake of time, I won't get through all those. So, let's just look at, because the spirit of man relates to his immaterial facet, this concept is expressed in many ways in Scripture and for the sake of time, we're not going to read all those verses, but let's look at them and we'll just give you the passages so you can look them up later, which is a very good thing to do, you know, to look that up, to look these verses up on your own later because it's good to check the way, you want to make sure that I'm not lying to you.

I wouldn't do it purposely, of course, but, you know, everyone can be wrong, even me, believe it or not, but look, you can look these verses up later, but one is, so the spirit of man relates to the immaterial part of man that is expressed in different ways in the

Scriptures. One is by grief. We see that in Genesis 26. Genesis 26 in verse 35, you see grief, and again, knowing that this is something speaking only of an immaterial part of man, what you have there is a case where because of that, this is something that it cannot be a product of our thinking, as some argue, okay?

But grief, jealousy in Numbers 5 verse 14, contriteness in Psalm 34 verse 18, you have remembering.

That's something that's immaterial, okay? You can't pour a cup of memory. I know, for those of you who watch

Harry Potter or read that book, they supposedly had like some way of, you know, of taking memories and pouring them into a dish or something.

Yeah, that's not real, okay? That's called fantasyland. If that's going to be your argument to try to argue that because people can remember things, that's physical, no, it isn't.

That's part of the immaterial part of man. Haughtiness in Proverbs, oh, I didn't give the verse, okay. Remembering is

Psalm 77 verse 6. Haughtiness is Proverbs 16 in verse 18.

Thinking, let's bring that one up, the Isaiah. So, this is Isaiah with 29 verse 24.

Do we have that one? Because that, you know, people think that thinking, you know, to those who go astray in spirit will come back, will come to understanding and those who murmur will accept instruction.

So, you see here, he's saying and leave it up to, you're seeing that he's saying very specifically this is a spirit and the spirit is going to be something that can come to understanding.

So, the immaterial part of us can come to understanding. Then we have humility.

Matthew 5 and verse 3. Vexation in John 13 and verse 21.

So, since the spirit can yield undesirable traits, attention must be given to the spiritual life.

I mean, a lot of people kind of take for granted their spiritual life. They don't give much, they don't do enough discipline as we do our physical bodies.

I mean, if we're going to stay in good physical shape, then we are going to have to give good attention to our physical condition.

We have to eat right, we have to exercise, we have to take care of physical disciplines.

The same is true for our spiritual body. Because we are a spiritual being, we have to take care of that spiritual nature of man as well.

And because of that, we have to be aware of the fact that this is something that takes discipline.

Alright? We can't take for granted our spiritual nature. So, let's move on from the spirit to letter

C there and that is the conscience. The conscience. And so, the conscience is that part of man which convinces, that's your blank there, convinces him to do what is right and to not do what he thinks is wrong.

That is the conscience. The conscience, I like what my first pastor said, is that the conscience is kind of like a guardrail on a road.

It is something to keep you from going off the rails, to go off the road and into danger.

But the problem is, is that you can keep banging your car into those guardrails and they keep knocking and knocking over just a little bit each time.

But by repetitively banging up against that guardrail, eventually the guardrail gives way and no longer acts in that protective sense.

And then what happens when you hit that guardrail one too many times, you go over the cliff. That's the problem.

Our conscience is something that can be seared. It can be banged up against enough times where we try to convince ourselves that wrong is right to where it no longer convinces us that wrong is wrong.

So, we have to be careful of that because you don't want to go off the cliff.

For the unsaved, the conscience is not completely reliable though. I mean, for an unsaved person, they are bound by or enslaved really to sin.

So, they're not going to be able to reliably count on their conscience. You can look at Titus 1 .15.

Let's just grab that one. We could look at others. But to the pure, all things are pure. But to the undefiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.

But both their minds and their consciences are defiled.

You see, so what you have here in that verse is that both their mind and their consciences can become defiled.

Now, for the saved, the conscience prods him to do what's right.

Why? Because he has the Holy Spirit. But what are the things that it concerns us with? Well, the conscience is going to pride us to be obedient to government.

Yeah, you heard me right. You don't believe me? Okay, Romans 13. Romans 13 .5

says, therefore, one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of the conscience.

Actually, we should have put more of that. The context of Romans 13 is obeying your government. Now, in case you think, well, hey, you know,

Paul didn't understand our form of government. Well, his form of government was a dictatorship. He didn't vote.

Okay. So what you see there is a case where you have a conscience is, for the believer, is to prod him to obey a government, even an unjust, unrighteous government, okay, to submit to unjust employees.

Now, you say, well, where do you see employees and employers in the Bible? Well, 1 Peter chapter 2, let's look at that one, and you'll see.

This is a gracious thing when mindful of God, one endures the suffering while suffering unjustly.

This is in the context of slaves. Yeah, slaves were kind of like our modern day, slaves in that day, what the

Bible talks about is modern day employees. So even when you have an unjust employer, you should submit to them, just like you should to an unjust government.

With respect to the conscience of a weaker brother or sister in Christ, let's bring this one up because this is 1

Corinthians chapter 8, verses 7, 10, and 12.

However, not all possess this knowledge, but some through former association with idols eat food that is really offered to an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled.

For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in the idol's temple, will he not be encouraged if his conscience is weak to eat food offered to idols?

Thus, sinning against your brother's would and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.

So what you have here is the case that you have, and this is hard for some believers to understand, but if you look at that passage, you have a case where you have some people, they basically got meat really cheap, it was food, meat that was offered to an idol, and idol isn't anything, so what they do is they offer the food to the idol, the idol doesn't eat it, they go out the back, sell it at the market, and that was like a thing you shouldn't do, you can't eat meat offered to an idol if you're like in these pagan religions.

So the meat was not as valuable, so you had people that didn't care that it was offered to an idol buying it, that's what you had.

Now, that being said, you could have someone that was a weaker brother, came out of paganism, and they really struggled with this whole issue of meat offered to idols, and so what you have is you have a case where the question is you have to, you know, what do you do in a situation, you're in an unbeliever's home, and they offer you a dinner, and the dinner was meat offered to an idol, and you've got this young believer here who's kind of struggling in his conscience.

Paul says, because a lot of people think that the one you choose to offend is the believer because he can get over it, and don't offend the unbeliever because you want to share the gospel with them, that's not what

Paul says. Paul says that our conscience should pride us to be more concerned with our brother or sister's conscience, even if they're immature, yes, the food is nothing, but your brother and sister's conscience is more valuable, and for the sake of their conscience, you don't eat the meat.

In other words, for some people, they have to understand what that's basically saying is your weaker brother's conscience is more important than the gospel.

Did you hear that? I know some people struggle with that. Oh, but I got to eat the meat because I got to evangelize.

I got to be able to share the gospel with this person. No, we are to be more concerned with our brother or sister and not to cause them to stumble than we are with making sure we're evangelizing, okay?

Lastly, in your conscience, it prods us to testify towards spiritual activity, spiritual activity.

So, let's move on to letter D there, the mind, the mind, and throughout

Scripture, there is a clear distinction between the unsaved mind and the saved mind, okay?

There's a difference there. The mind is the concept behind the Old Testament idea of the heart.

An unsaved mind is described as being retrobate in Romans 1 .28,

blinded in 2 Corinthians 4 .4, vain in Ephesians 4 .17,

darkened in Ephesians 4 .18, and defiled as we read in Titus 1 .15.

But the saved mind is different. By the way, did I give that blank there? So, the blank that was there in B is heart.

It's the idea of the heart. The saved mind, however, the believer's mind is the central center place of spiritual development.

That's your blank there. In the New Testament, for a saved mind is the idea of the place of spiritual development.

In the New Testament, we see that the mind is, the saved mind is described, the mind is to be understood, to understand truth in Luke 24 and verse 45.

The mind is renewed in the dedicated Christian in Romans 12 verses 1 and 2.

We see that the mind discerns doubtful things in Romans 14 verse 5.

We see that the mind pursues holiness in 1 Peter 1 .13. And then lastly, the mind understands the

Lord's will in Ephesians 5 .17. If you feel that I gave you those too quickly, you can feel free to back up, watch it on YouTube, back it up, and re -listen and write all those verses down.

Okay, the second to last one that we have left in tonight's class is the flesh.

The flesh. And while this phrase often refers to the physical body, it also describes the sin nature that is the immaterial aspect within man that opposes

God. That's your blank there, opposes God. In other words, and there's many, many, many verses on this, the fact that we have a sin nature, something within us, let's just look at Romans 7.

How about that? Actually, that's a, yeah, we can look at that. Romans 7, for I know that nothing good dwells within me that is my flesh.

For I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out.

This is speaking now, I believe, this is Paul speaking of his previous life before he got saved.

But you can argue about that. But either way, there's other verses that you can look to. 2

Peter 2 .10, do we have that one? 2 Peter 2 .10, let's look at that. Especially those who indulge in the lust of the defiling passion and despise authority, behold, willful, they do not tremble for, actually, was this one a verse, actually,

I think it's verse 11. Maybe we got the wrong one. Okay, I'll look that up. Maybe verse 11, it says we war against the soul.

Our flesh wars against the soul. But what you see there is the idea of the flesh is more than just our physical body.

And this is something to remember when we do hermeneutics, which is the last school that we had talked about.

You need to understand what words mean in the time that they were written. And the idea of flesh didn't mean a technical word of the skin, this part of us that's our outer body that we medically call a flesh.

But it also had the idea of that sin nature, that sinfulness of us. The flesh is also referred to that immaterial part of us, that aspect that is opposed to God.

All right? And then one last way to talk about our spiritual being is the heart.

The heart. The heart in both the Old and New Testaments expresses an individual's seat of life.

That's your blank there, seat of life. It is the idea of where life is from, the center of his life, his intellectual life in Psalm 119 verse 11.

His emotional life, Deuteronomy 6 .5. His volitional life, the will,

Hebrews 4 .7. And then the spiritual life, and you can look at 1

Peter 3 .15. What we see here though is that man is a spiritual being.

He was not only created in the image of God, he was not only created with a physical being, but he was also created as a spiritual being.

Now, if you have your syllabus at the end of this lesson, you will look and see that you have some thought questions.

And those are some thought questions we will be posting onto the Facebook page. And we will see on the

Facebook page, you will see people answer. What we are going to encourage you to do is go to the

Striving for Eternity Facebook page and even if someone else gives the same answer, answer it anyway.

You get credit. What do you mean you get credit? That's right. Sometimes, at random, what we end up doing is we end up sending out gifts to those who are the best participating students in the

Facebook page that answer these questions. So, you never know what you might get and you never know when it might come because we just like to give around here.

So, if you have any questions, you can email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org.

Academy at striving for eternity dot org. Feel free to email us any questions that you have.

Now, we also want to say that next week, we are not having the

Systematic Theology class. When we do pick up our Systematic Theology, we will start a brand new doctrine.

We're going to be looking into the doctrine of sin. That is going to be really important for us to understand when we get into the nature of salvation to have a proper understanding of sin because that is what's going to help us to understand some things that people argue over when it comes to salvation.

So, we're going to pick up there in two weeks. What are we doing next week, you may ask? Very good question.

I'm glad you asked. We are going to be looking at meeting with some special people who are going to be part of the

Super Bowl outreach. Oh, is it going to be some of the really well -known people? No, they are going to be people that are going to be part of my team.

They do not know that they are going to be on the show yet, which means they are students of the

Academy. We're going to see if they were watching before the Super Bowl.

If they're not watching, they're going to be surprised when they're on camera. We're going to have fun. But that will be what we're going to do next week.

We're going to give you an update of the Super Bowl outreach and that's what we're going to do. But now is the time that I know some of you look forward to, which is where we pick different people at random, well somewhat random, that we want to encourage.

And we're going to ask you to encourage someone that you may not know. Now, you may know this person's spouse if you are active in the

Striving for Eternity Facebook group or especially if you watch live. And the spouse right now can't be watching because she's driving to the

Super Bowl. I know she's really slow. But we want to encourage you to encourage

Todd Peplink. That's the wife, the husband of Jennifer Peplink, the wife.

Wow, that's bad. Now, if there's no other reason to encourage Todd other than the fact that he's stuck married to Jennifer.

I mean, can you picture that? Picture someone that's giggling like that all day long and you're married to her. I mean, life has got to be not only entertaining but quite interesting being married to Jennifer, I'm sure.

But Todd is. But Todd's also someone who is very active in his in the music, playing in the music ministry in his church.

He leads in that, active there, active in Bible study. A guy who is, you know, just one of these type of guys, if you don't know him, you're going to want to get to hang out with him if you ever get.

We keep trying to drag him. I was tempted to sign him up for the Super Bowl just to get him out. But, you know, oh well.

But, you know, he's not one of the, he's not the evangelist. He's not the one that's going to go out and hand out gospel tracks.

That's Jennifer. He's the one that's going to play guitar and he'll have no problem doing that. But he's also the kind of guy that sits back and, you know, easy going, really enjoyable to sit back and talk with.

And just, you know, a funny guy. Well, you've got to be a funny guy if you're going to marry Jennifer. So, but really a refreshing guy to just sit down and talk with.

Great perspectives on life and just really a guy who you can sit there and get to be around and say, wow, this guy's just, he's fun.

He's enjoyable. You know, I love being around him. And he actually has driven like, I think like an hour or two just because I was kind of coming past his town.

And he drove like his whole family like an hour or two just to hang out with my daughter and I. So, it tells you the guy must be nuts to want to drive that far just to see me.

That's weird. But, okay, he probably wants to see my daughter. That makes sense. But we want to encourage you to encourage him because, you know, he probably needs encouragement.

All of us do. And so, try to get to know him. Contact him.

Email him. You know, Facebook him. Say, hey, how you doing? Tell me about yourself. Get to know him. And then just try to encourage him this week.

Whenever you're watching this, even if you're watching this three weeks from the live show, maybe he needs encouragement that week.

I'm always encouraged to hear how so many of the people that we ask you to encourage will contact me and tell me how people publicly and privately were an encouragement to them that week and how they kind of needed it.

We didn't know it. We just put their name out there and we didn't know that they really just needed encouragement that week.

They needed, you know, they were down in the dumps. They were sad about something. I mean, you could pray for Todd this week.

I mean, he's home with his boys as his wife is out driving to do ministry in New York City, you know.

So, you know, she's going to be at the Super Bowl outreach with us and she's got some other things with the ministry she's part of before that.

So, you know, hey, look, some guys have a hard time being with the kids all day.

They're not, you know, they think it's, you know, some guys it's tough because they work all day and then they got to rush home and cook and take care of the kids.

And so it makes it harder. But he is the kind of guy that he's letting his wife go off and do the ministry.

She wouldn't be able to do the ministry she does if he wasn't taking care of things while she went out and she takes care of things while he's at work.

So, he allows her to go and do those things. So, he could use your encouragement this week. So, I'm sure.

So, next week we won't have the regular class. We'll pick up our class in two weeks on the doctrine of sin.

And until then, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.