The Doctrine of Man

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Let me try this again.
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Good morning.
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Sorry about that delay.
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I brought my notes in, forgot the handouts, but now you guys all have them.
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I see a few new faces out there.
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For those of you who don't know me, my name is Keith.
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And I teach a course on theology here at the ministry.
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I do this every week.
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It's a 12 week rotating class, which means if this is your first week, then when you stay, you'll go through the other classes when we start back.
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So we're on class 6, but when we get back to class 1, you'll go through that.
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We'll just start over.
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So you're not going to miss anything.
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You'll just happen to be coming in at maybe a little bit of an odd time.
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But every week is looking at a different aspect of theology.
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And there are several what we would call classifications of theological study.
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Theology overall is the study of God.
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Theos from the Greek meaning God.
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Logos meaning word or study of something.
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And then you put the two together, it becomes theology.
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Then you have the breakdown of theology, theology proper, which is the study of God's nature, character, attributes, those things.
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That was the first thing we did.
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Well, actually, the week 1, we did the doctrine of revelation, which is bibliology.
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We did that one.
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Week 2 was theology proper.
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Week 3 was Christology.
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Week 4 was pneumatology, which is the study of the Holy Spirit.
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Actually, I'm sorry, we did the Trinity as well.
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We did the doctrine of the Trinity.
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So we're at week 6.
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And today on week 6, we're going to look at the doctrine of man, which is called anthropology.
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Now, if you've ever been in a college or even maybe in your high school, you took a study of biology.
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A part of biology, a subset of biology is anthropology because biology is the study of life.
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Obviously, mankind is a form of life on this planet, and therefore, anthropology would be a subset of biology.
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But anthropology is a little bit more specific because it not only deals with the way in which men are made, but it also deals with the way in which men behave.
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So anthropology comes from the Greek word anthropos, which simply means man.
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And so the doctrine of man or the study of man is called anthropology.
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In 1988, the Human Genome Project began with a group of scientists assembled by the National Institute of Health.
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Dr.
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James Winengard in 2003 produced an accurate and complete human genome sequence, which was finished and made available to scientists and researchers two years ahead of their original scheduled date.
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The Human Genome Project was one of the great feats of exploration in history.
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Rather than an outward exploration of the planet or the cosmos, the Human Genome Project was an inward voyage of discovery led by an international team of researchers looking to sequence and map all the genes together known as the genome of members of our species, what is called Homo sapien.
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Completed in April 2003, the Human Genome Project gave us the ability for the first time to read nature's complete genetic blueprint for building a human being.
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Now I read that to you because what that tells us is that the interest and the investment of both time and money in a project like that demonstrates the deep interest that human beings have in knowing their origins and their history.
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Why would we spend time studying the human genome other than wanting to know what we are and where we came from? Today, private enterprises such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe make untold millions of dollars by sending out kits to people's homes that they swab or spit into the tubes.
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They send them back and for what purpose? So that you can find out where you came from.
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That really is it, right? It's as simple as that.
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You want to know am I British, Scottish, African, Asian, right? Where is my background? I did one, my wife did one for us for Christmas.
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Found out 98% British.
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I'm about as white as you can get.
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I was hoping maybe I'd be a little Scottish, maybe a little Irish, maybe a little Irish, yeah.
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No, just white, just plain, just bleached, white.
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And I was like 98% from the British Isles.
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And then 2% was, you know, no, no, maybe, maybe.
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But no, it was like 2% like Scandinavian or something, still just very white.
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But it's just, we all want to know, right? So we pay $100 for these kits.
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We send them off because we want to know where do we come from? And that really is the subject of anthropology.
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It's the subject, it's the study of where do we come from? What is our nature? Why are we here? And really these are the questions that have been in the heart of men from the time of creation.
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And so what we're going to look at in today's course is because everything I do is sort of truncated because of time, and because I limit one class per subject, I have to sort of shove a lot of things in.
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But today we're going to look at two major parts of anthropology.
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We're going to look at the origin of man, and we're going to look at the constitution of man.
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Constitution means simply what man is made of, his parts.
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And I don't mean your 200 and some odd bones or whatever I'm talking about, our body and soul, you know, the parts of us.
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And we're going to look at that from a biblical perspective.
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So I make no apologies.
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This is not just anthropology.
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This is a biblical anthropology because this is a theology class.
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And so we're going to look deeper than just our physical makeup.
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So on your sheet, you'll see it says the origin of man.
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And there are several questions that it goes down and lists there.
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And you're welcome to take notes if you'd like.
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You don't have to.
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That is not required.
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I give you the handout simply to make it easier to follow along because I talk fast.
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And sometimes it's easier if you have at least a broad overview of what we're going to look at.
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So that's why I give you the handouts.
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My name is Keith Foskey, F-O-S-K-E-Y.
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So let's look first at the origin of man by asking and answering the first question.
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Is man a special creation or is man a cosmic accident? Well, I agree, and I appreciate your answering.
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I want to though consider for a moment the reason for the question.
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Before we even seek to answer it, why would I ask that question? That's good.
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I mean, the argument is really, there are really only two sides.
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Either you believe man is a created thing, and created requires creation, which would then denote a creator, right? That's, we're inferring a certain thing.
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If you say we look at man as a creature, then you are inferring a creator.
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What does our Constitution say? We hold these truths to be self-evident, meaning they are axiomatic, or that they do not require proof because they are so obvious.
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.
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Inalienable means, it's another way of saying inherent or unable to be separated from us.
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And so we have rights that are ours because we were created by a God who gave us rights.
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And that's why we talk about the inherent dignity of humankind and the inherent dignity of the human being because he was created by God who gave him a certain dignity.
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So we say all men are created.
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Even our Constitution says that.
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But the other side of that would say, no, mankind is not created.
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Mankind is the product of billions of years of undirected and unintelligent forces.
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You see, if you get away from a creator, you have to move away from the idea of intelligence in the universe.
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The universe becomes an unintelligent thing.
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And you get away from the idea of direction because direction requires a director.
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And therefore, you come to what I would say is chaos.
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So you either have creation or you have chaos.
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And now we look to the question of what do we see? We see a human body, strong man.
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What's your name, brother? Mitch.
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Mitch.
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Mitch is going to be our man for today.
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Mitch has a body.
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His body is made of bone and flesh.
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He is made of blood and tissue.
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He has a brain in this lovely skull.
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And in that lovely skull is a brain that has thoughts.
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And he is able to do certain things, such as self-perceive.
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He knows that he exists.
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Descartes, Rene Descartes, I think, therefore I am.
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Do you know why? Do you know what he was saying there? He was saying, I don't know that anything else exists for certain, but I know that I exist because I have thought.
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And for me to be able to think, I would have to exist to think, therefore I think I am.
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And because I think, therefore I am.
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And so the concept of being is wrapped up in the philosophical idea of I think, therefore I am.
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I know that I exist.
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I don't know for certain that you exist, but I know that I exist.
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Now I do know for certain, let me back up.
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What I was saying though is I don't, some people think all of the world is somewhat of a hologram, right? And that they're just a brain in a vat somewhere and they're imagining all this.
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You know, that's the brain in the vat theory.
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You know, they're just somewhere sort of imagining everyone else.
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And that's also known as solipsism or the idea that you are, you're the only one that exists and you're the only one who can know that you exist.
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And now we're getting a little bit into somewhat vain philosophy.
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But the point is, you know that you think because you think about your thoughts.
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And you know that you think because you are personal.
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And I would ask you immediately, does that sound like something that would come from chaos? Your body, which is made up of an entire structure of parts which function together in an amazing way.
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Your brain, which is able to comprehend, reason, think, decide.
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All of that bears witness to Creator rather than chaos.
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And so, if you ask the question, is man a special creation or a cosmic accident? Really the question is, is man created by God? Or is man the product of a chaotic and undirected universe? The Darwinists, and by the way, if you don't know who that is, Darwin was a 19th century scientist.
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And he popularized the idea that because there are changes within a species, that all life came from one single life, one single cell.
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And because of billions of years of change over time, we have all the variation of life on this planet.
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He went to the Galapagos Islands and he studied the finches.
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And he noticed that those finches, those small birds, that their beaks would change depending on certain factors.
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And he said, see, this is their ability to change regarding their environment.
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And this inherent ability to change or adapt or evolve, and by the way, the word evolve simply means to change.
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So he said evolution is the product of billions of years of change.
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There was another man by the name of Charles Lyell who had popularized a theory called uniformitarianism which argued that the world is billions of years old because of the types of change that happen in the world, the uniform changes that happen because of erosion and wind and rain and water damage and things like that.
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And he said the world is billions of years old.
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And so they sort of fit together.
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Charles Lyell's uniformitarian doctrine and Charles Darwin's evolutionary doctrine sort of married together and became the two foundational stones for much of modern science because if you don't have billions of years, you can't have evolution.
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And if you don't have Charles Lyell, you can't really have Charles Darwin.
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And so it's really important to understand how those two fit together.
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Biblical anthropology though would argue that we don't need billions of years to get to where we are because we were created in the same state that we are in now.
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That man was created as a man.
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Man was not created as a cell.
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You understand the difference? Man was created fully formed as a man rather than man was created as a cell or even a baby.
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And that is the difference between what we might call secular anthropology which requires billions of years and I would say requires magic.
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And you might wonder what I mean by that.
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Darwinian theory requires not only for life to spring from non-life which has never been observed in the scientific world.
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Life has never come from non-life.
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Life comes from life.
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So that's number one.
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So that's magic.
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So it requires magic.
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And two, it requires the complex to come from the simple.
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That is also a form of magic because in the world we do not see the complex arising out of the simple.
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There is something called irreducible complexity.
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Have you ever heard of that? You got another guy who comes here to teach science, right? So you may have heard of irreducible complexity.
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Irreducible complexity basically says that within a system, if you have systems that have parts that are interdependent upon one another, that rely upon one another, and if you take away one of those parts, the system breaks down.
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Therefore, the system cannot come together in parts.
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The system would have to come together as a whole.
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Now if that sounds complicated, let me make it simple.
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A giraffe has a neck that's about 12 feet long.
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At the end of that giraffe's neck is a brain.
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And when that giraffe is standing up, it has about a 26 pound heart that pumps blood through its body because it has to force blood up a very tall neck into the brain of that giraffe.
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And so that 26 pound heart works much harder than your heart because your heart only has to move your blood about 18 inches versus 27 feet or 12 feet or whatever.
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When the giraffe bends its head down to take a drink of water, it should have a stroke because of all the blood that is now falling with the weight of gravity toward its brain.
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It should have a stroke and die.
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However, in the back of the brain of the giraffe, there is a...
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well, for lack of a better term, there is a sponge made of biotissue that works to absorb the blood that is now rushing toward the brain and it absorbs it and keeps the animal alive.
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And you can look it up, look up brain sponge of giraffe next time you are on Google.
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I am not making this up.
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When the giraffe reaches down and gets a drink of water, the brain sponge catches the blood.
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When the giraffe lifts its head back up, that blood which is now absorbed in that tissue begins to come and the weight of gravity pulls it back down and returns it back to its normal processes.
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Now I ask you this, which came first? The 12 foot neck or the sponge? Because if the sponge came first, it evolved with no purpose.
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And if the neck came first, the animal should not have survived one generation.
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That is a simple example of irreducible complexity.
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You have two parts that are necessary for the other to exist as a whole.
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Make sense? Now I could do that same thing with the human body.
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Which came first? Your circulatory system or the ability for the blood to clot? Because if your blood did not clot, you would bleed the first time you ever punctured your skin.
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And you would bleed to death.
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But if the circulatory system existed before blood clotting, the human body would not be able to exist.
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And if blood clotting pre-existed the circulatory system, it existed without a purpose.
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Yes, exactly.
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This is what we call irreducible complexity.
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And it gives us the reason why we believe...
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Well, it doesn't give us the reason we believe because the Bible says so and I stand on that.
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But it gives us a scientific basis to say that Darwin is magic.
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Because Darwin is saying so many things that supposedly happened that simply do not happen.
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And so, is man a special creation or a cosmic accident? It is my opinion, and it certainly is the position of the Scripture, that man is a special creation.
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This debate has been going on for a long time.
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Back in 1925, the Tennessee State Legislature banned the teaching of evolution.
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Did you know that? In 1925, they banned the teaching of evolution and that produced what was known as the Scopes Trial.
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Sometimes called the Scopes Monkey Trial because it was about whether or not man came from an ape.
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So, almost a hundred years ago, five years from now it will be a hundred year anniversary of the Scopes Trial.
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1925 in Tennessee.
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They debated.
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The creationists won, but they didn't really win in the court of public opinion because after the Scopes Trial, evolution began to be popularized all around.
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And this is why many of you who went to public high school have heard about things such as comparative anatomy, vestigial organs, embryology, biochemistry, paleontology, and genetics, all trying to prove Darwin's theories.
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But this leads us to letter B on your sheet, which is Darwin's view of origins is in direct conflict with the Bible.
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Now, I know you've already added some notes there because I've already really talked about it, but we have to understand that the Bible does not give room for Darwin's theory.
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The Bible does not give room for Darwin's position on the origin of human beings.
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In fact, Dr.
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Albert Muller said this.
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He said, At the end of the day, the theological modifications required for the acceptance of evolution are vast and utterly disastrous for biblical Christianity.
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What Dr.
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Muller is saying is this.
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He's saying if you try to squeeze evolution into the Bible, you end up compromising what the Bible is saying.
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You can't have it both ways.
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It's either special creation or it's evolution, but it's not both.
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Not from a biblical perspective.
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Everybody open your Bibles and turn to Genesis 1.
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Now, I have been in Genesis preaching for about a year, and I'm in Genesis 3 because I go a little slow.
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But, I did spend several weeks in Genesis 1, 26, and 27.
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I don't have time to exegete it like I did with our people at church, but I do want us to read it.
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Genesis 1, 26, this is on the sixth day of creation.
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If you follow the creation days, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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On day one, He created light, separated light from darkness.
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On day two, He created the skies above and the waters below, separated water from water, essentially making an atmosphere and a watery earth.
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And then on day three, He created the land.
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On day four, He created the sun, moon, and stars.
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On day five, He created the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.
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And day six, He created the beasts of the field.
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And then on day six, He created man.
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And this is what He says about man.
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Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
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So God created man in His own image.
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In the image of God, He created him.
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Male and female, He created them.
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So, this text gives us the foundation for what is typically referred to as The Latin is Imago Dei, or the English is the image of God.
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This text tells us man was created in God's image.
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Now some people think, when they see the term image of God, they think that we must look like God.
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God must look like us.
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And that is what is referred to as crass literalism.
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And that is not a right understanding of the text, because John 4.24 says that God is spirit.
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And we know the Bible says God does not have a body like man.
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So the idea that God created us to look like Him, that is not biblical.
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What's up JP? The idea that man looks like God, that's called anthropomorphites.
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And there's really no reason to believe that.
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There are some, particularly in the Mormon faith and other faiths that have somewhat of a doctrine of that.
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But what do we mean when we say man is made in God's image? What does that phrase mean? Okay.
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What did you say brother? I can't hear you.
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Well that's when He gave us life or soul.
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That's right.
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But when we say we are in the image of God, the first thing I like to point out is we're the only thing made in the image of God.
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If you follow back through creation all six days, God creates the earth.
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It's not in the image of God.
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He creates the sun, moon, and stars.
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Not in the image of God.
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He creates the birds of the heavens.
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Not in the image of God.
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He creates the beasts of the field.
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Not in the image of God.
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He creates all the trees and bushes and all of the pretty flowers.
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Not in the image of God.
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He creates man.
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He says here's my image bearer.
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This is the one.
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So what separates us from the rest of creation? I'm hearing a lot of answers and it's all good.
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I'm not disagreeing with anything.
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Okay, now I can't hear.
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Go ahead brother.
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Ponder your own existence.
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Okay, forethought.
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One more time brother.
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Have a soul.
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That's what the brother there was talking about breathing into him.
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What was he saying brother? That's right.
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Alright, I'm going to give...
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Okay, please.
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That's right.
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And that's what I'm saying.
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We're the only ones so there's something unique about us.
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Right? I would say this.
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When I'm explaining this to children I try to make it as simple as I can.
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I say what does it mean to be made in the image of God? Think about the fact that when you look at all the animals and all the fishes and all the birds we are the only ones that have the ability to have a relationship with God.
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You don't see cows in the field going moo.
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They're not worshiping.
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Right? Cows don't worship.
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Pigs don't worship.
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Fish don't worship.
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But we have a relationship.
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That relationship is severed because of sin, but we are made to have an interaction with God.
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Adam and Eve walked with the Lord in the cool of the day.
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Right? Adam and Eve had an unbroken relationship with God.
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Now, now it's broken because of sin.
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But, that's first and foremost.
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Only we have been created to commune with God.
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Only we have been created to worship God.
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Only we have been created to and be careful with this term because you go nuts with it, but to reign with Him because Adam was created to be what? God's image bearer to reign on the earth, to be the one who reflected God's authority.
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He said, take dominion, right? Go into the earth and take dominion over the fish of the sea and over the land and everything.
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You're going to be my image bearer.
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You're going to be the representative of God in the world.
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Does that make sense? You're not like the others.
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You are created.
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You're the high-water mark of creation.
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You're the one that's going to bear my image.
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This is why sin is so awful because what we were created to be is tainted and blackened and darkened and broken.
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This is not what we were created to be.
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We were created to be so much more and so much better.
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In fact, infinitely better.
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And sin arrives and that's going to be next week because week 7 is the doctrine of sin.
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But right away, the image of God refers to our ability to interact with God, to relate to God, to have that purpose.
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And we see that played out in everything you guys said.
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Our personality, our intellect, emotion, will, all that is part of that, right? Animals have a certain amount of intellect, but they don't have intellect like us.
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Think about it like this.
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People will see a group of apes and an ape will pick up a stick and use it to knock down a banana right out of a tree.
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And they'll say, oh my goodness, look, that animal's using tools.
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That's evolution.
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I say, slow down.
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Just because an animal realized he could lengthen the span of his arm by picking up a wooden stick, compare that to the fact that we literally went to the moon.
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It's not even to be compared.
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I mean, there's no comparison there.
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Think about the fact that you hear these animals making noise and grunts and they say, oh look, the animals are singing.
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We got John Williams, y'all.
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We got orchestras.
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If you don't know who John Williams was, he wrote the soundtrack to most of your lives.
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Because he wrote the soundtrack to all those movies you used to watch back in the 80s.
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If you're my age, maybe some of you aren't my age.
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But John Williams was one of the greatest composers of the last century.
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And if you heard his songs, you'd know that's the difference.
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It's not only a difference of scale, it's a difference of quality.
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Man is a different being than the rest of the world.
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He has the ability to think.
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He has the ability to feel.
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He has the ability to love.
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He has the ability to emote.
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He has the ability to think outside of himself.
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Somebody said that.
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Forethought? Who said that? Was that you? Has the ability to have complex reason.
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All of those things are part and parcel of the image of God.
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We are creative.
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We are able to create.
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And not just on a small scale.
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It's not just about making mud pies on Fernandina Beach.
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We can create towers that reach the heavens.
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We can create vessels that fly through the sky.
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And go into the water and take us to the deepest parts of the abyss.
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This is all part of the image of God in man.
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It really does take a very classical education.
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A very bad liberal education for someone to come along and look at man and say you're not much different than an ape.
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You know, they'll tell you this, if you go to college, they'll say your DNA is only 2% different than that of the ape.
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And I say, but look at what we've done with 2%.
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Man, it must be a lot.
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So I get excited, obviously, when I talk about the image of man.
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Because you know why we kill babies in the womb? Because we don't believe in the image of God.
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You know why we take the weakest among us? We put them away where we can't see them and don't have to care about them? Because we don't believe in the image of God.
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You know why we lie and steal and cheat and do those things? Because we don't believe in the image of God.
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Genesis 9, when Noah came off the ark, we have the institution of capital punishment.
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This was the first institution of what we would call retributive justice.
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Retributive, retributional justice.
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Noah is told by God, if a man takes another man's life, so too shall his life be taken.
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For in the image of God, I created man.
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What's God saying? He's saying when you attack another human being, you're attacking an image bearer of God.
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And therefore, if you take the life of another image bearer of God, you've forfeited your life.
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That's why I believe in the death penalty to this day.
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Because if you murder, then the right punishment is that you forfeit your life.
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Now, I will say there's a difference between murder and self-defense and all that, so don't come to me after and ask all kinds of questions about do I think that it's ever righteous to have to kill.
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I believe in just war and things like that.
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And I do believe that there are times where having to take a life is necessary.
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But the point I'm making is why is murder bad? Because you're attacking an image bearer of God.
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Why is racism bad? Because you're attacking an image bearer of God.
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Because every person bears the image of God.
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I'm preaching on this Sunday.
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Genesis 3.20 Eve was called the mother of all living.
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Which means every man in this room has the same ancestors.
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Adam and Eve.
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What I talked about earlier, 23andMe.
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I'm British.
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I'm mostly white.
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It really doesn't matter.
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Because at the end of the day, I am an Adamite.
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I am of Adam.
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And so are you.
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It doesn't matter how black you are.
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It doesn't matter how white I am.
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It doesn't matter if a person is Asian, Native American.
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We're all of Adam.
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Yes, sir? Where would the fossil evidence of Cro-Magnon...
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Typically, when you actually examine those particular things, they either fall into the category of non-man or man.
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The idea of there being...
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There is no actual evidence of what would be known as a transitional form between ape and man.
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And the Cro-Magnon and those different ones that you're referring to, they are not proven.
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And the fossil evidence is sometimes a tooth or a small piece of bone here or a piece of bone there.
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They've never found skeletons and things like that, which is what I'm assuming you're about to say.
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But go ahead.
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They found skulls of Cro-Magnon.
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Yes, but you're saying that you believe that that's what they are.
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You're saying they couldn't be apes? Yes, so you're accepting what they're saying.
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You see, we all have the same evidence, but evidence has to be interpreted, correct? So if I said I think that those skulls, most of which belong to ape, not to some type of transitional form, what would be your argument against that? Why couldn't they? Because I don't believe that they are.
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I don't believe that that fits within the biblical record of anthropology.
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But also, the answer is, if we have these skulls that you're talking about, these exist within what time period? Okay, and so we are talking about going from a simple organism to a much more complex organism.
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Have we ever seen that happen scientifically? Have we ever seen scientific evidence of a simple organism moving to a more complex organism? We don't.
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We don't see that.
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You see, we extrapolate that based upon certain theories, like the theory of evolution of Darwin, but it is not something that is recognized in the laboratory.
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In fact, Dr.
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Richard Dawkins, one of the foremost biologists in the world, he will tell you, we have never seen evolution happening.
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Actually, what he says is, we've seen it happening, just not while it's happening.
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So what does that mean? That means they're looking at the evidence that they pull out of the ground, and they're making certain deductions based upon the evidence, but the deductions that they're making are based on an a priori understanding of what they think happened.
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So they have what's called a presupposition.
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They presuppose what that is, and they base their interpretation based on their presupposition.
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So that would be my argument.
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I think that if you look at, and there are a lot of creation scientists who would be able to explain this better than I am, but most of the skulls and the skeletons and the things that you're talking about can either be proven to be fully human or fully animal, but the transitional forms are not there.
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In fact, if you ask an evolutionary biologist what's the biggest problem with evolution, is there's really no physical evidence, and the evidences that are claimed are spurious at best.
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In fact, I'll go even further.
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There have been times where they have found pieces of certain things, and they've said, oh, we found this missing link, and later DNA evidence proved that it was actually not human at all.
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One, it was even the tooth of a pig that they had argued was the tooth of a man, or a tooth of a transitional form.
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Huh? Yeah, so this is hardly settled science.
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This is hardly something that is proven, and that's why I say I just don't accept that it's a transitional form.
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Now, could there have been an animal that was different than our modern apes sometime in history? I think that's possible, and that may be what we're digging up, but I don't believe that's humankind.
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That would just be another form of animal.
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Does that make sense? Okay.
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All right.
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So getting back to the image of God, when we look at the Scripture, it tells us we were created in the image of God, and we were created in the image of God for the purpose of reflecting God in the world.
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And we see that in our creativity.
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We see that in our relatability, our ability to relate to one another.
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We see that in our rationality, our ability to think and reason.
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But most of all, we see that in our spirituality.
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My brother had already mentioned God breathing into us the breath of life.
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And this moves us to part two, which is the constitution of man.
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I want to read to you a quote from Dr.
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Lawrence Krauss.
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He is an atheist.
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He wrote a book called A Universe from Nothing.
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And this is what he says.
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Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded, and the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than the atoms in your right hand.
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It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics.
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You are all stardust.
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That was actually said by the late Carl Sagan.
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Carl Sagan did a television program back in the 70s called Cosmos.
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And he made the statement, you are all stardust.
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So I want to ask you a question, and I want you to really think about this.
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If it is true that you are all stardust, if it is true that you are nothing more than a cosmic eruption or a cosmic accident, upon what basis do you have to claim morality or absolute right from wrong? In fact, I would say you don't have a basis for just about anything.
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I had a young man come to me one time.
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I was at a table.
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I may have told you all this story.
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I hope not to be too repetitive.
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But I was sitting down eating in a restaurant with my wife and my friend and his wife.
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And we were having a lively discussion about God and about the Bible.
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And he was asking me questions.
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And we were going back and forth.
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And this young man came over to our table and he said, I can hear what you all are talking about, and I want to ask you, why do you believe in God? Yay! It ain't often the fish jump in the boat.
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Have a seat.
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Normally, I've got to throw out a line.
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So sit down.
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And he sat down.
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And he was a respectful young man, but I could tell he was antagonistic against belief in God.
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And so I talked to him about some of the things I mentioned to you today about the fact that we see in the creation of man complexity, intelligence, emotion, and all of these different aspects of our nature.
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And I asked him a simple question.
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I said, do you think that you are simply the product of the universe by undirected energy and unintelligent matter bringing you together into the form that you are in, and that ultimately all of your thoughts are simply the product of the synapses firing in your brain, and you're really nothing more than just stardust? And he said, well, yeah, I think maybe we are.
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I said, well, your girlfriend's over there.
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I see she's sitting there.
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She's rather embarrassed.
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She was kind of, you know, can't believe he came over.
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And I was glad he came.
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I said, I can see your girlfriend.
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She's ready to go.
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I said, you love her.
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And he said, oh, yes.
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I said, you'd die for her? Yes, absolutely.
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I said, why? She's just stardust.
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She's just stardust.
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You're just stardust.
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Where do you get human dignity from stardust? Where do you get morality and love from stardust? See, there's more to this than just the question of could we have evolved? The real question is did we? And I don't think that our hearts will really allow us to come to that conclusion.
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You know you are more than stardust.
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You know you are more than just the synapses firing in your brain.
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And C.S.
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Lewis said this.
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He said, I could never use reason to disprove God.
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He said, because if I tried to use reason, I would have to use my brain.
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And by using my brain, I would have to believe that my brain was created to think.
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And if I believe my brain was created to think, I have to believe that someone created it to think.
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Because if my brain wasn't created to think, I have no reason to trust my own thoughts.
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And therefore, I can't use my own thoughts to disprove my Creator.
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My thoughts are the product of the fact that I am created and not simply evolved.
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See, the first sip somebody takes in the cup of science often engages them toward atheism.
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But at the bottom of the glass, God is still there.
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Evolution will never answer the question of how life came to be because evolution doesn't seek to answer that question.
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Evolution answers the question of how life changes.
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And we believe life does change over time.
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But it doesn't have an answer to the question of how life came to be.
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And more importantly, it does not have an answer to the question of why life matters.
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You want to argue if black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter? How about this? Why does life matter at all? It doesn't if you're just stardust.
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So, now let's look at the Constitution of Man.
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Turn to chapter 2, verse 7, and we'll finish.
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We've only got about 5 minutes left, 7 minutes left.
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We'll finish rather quickly on the Constitution of Man.
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Chapter 2, Genesis.
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Just turn one page over.
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And we're going to read verse 7.
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It says this, Then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
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And man became a living nephesh.
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Now, some of your Bibles say being.
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Some of your Bibles say soul.
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The Hebrew word is nephesh.
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And I think it's best translated as soul.
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But if your Bible says being, it's not wrong.
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It's simply more of a, I would say more naturalistic.
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Man is a living being, yes.
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But man is more than just a living being.
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Man is a constitutional being.
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And not constitutional in the U.S.
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Constitution.
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Constitution in that he is made up of parts.
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And what is man made of? Man is made of material and immaterial.
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Or we could say man is made of body and soul.
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That's the parts.
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Now, some people could argue that there's also body, soul, and spirit.
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And that comes to the argument of what's known as the dichotomy of man or the trichotomy of man.
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But for the sake of this lesson, not to get too far into the weeds, let us just simply say that the word soul and the word spirit are often used interchangeably.
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And therefore, we can say the material is the body.
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The immaterial is the soul and the spirit.
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And however we define those, that's the immaterial.
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So you say, why does this matter? Well, it matters because if we think that all we are is material, if we think that all we are are mechanical bio-machines, then we don't understand the fullness of what we are, having been created by God.
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You are more than just your body.
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Because one day your body is going to die.
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One day your body is going to be put into the ground.
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I've worked at a funeral home for years.
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When I was a kid, I was 16 years old.
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I got my first real job at a funeral home.
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I had to go buy a suit because I would stand at the door and hand out flyers, you know, the little cards when people come into the funeral.
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I did that for several years.
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I would stand there.
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How are you doing? How are you doing? You know, that was my job.
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But they would sometimes let me go back and work in the preparatory room.
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And that was always very eerie because you walk back into the preparatory room and you see sometimes three or four bodies laid out on the different tables, all in various stages of preparation.
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Some of them had not yet been embalmed.
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Some of them had been embalmed and washed but were laying naked or under a sheet.
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Some of them had been cleaned, washed, prepped, and clothed.
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And they looked like they were just laying there alive because they had clothes on.
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Some of them were in the caskets already.
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But I'll tell you this, not one of them had a conversation with me.
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I mean, none of them shook my hand.
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And you probably heard stories about cadavers moving from some type of muscle twitch or something.
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I never saw that either.
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In all the years that I worked there, I never saw anything move for any reason because they were dead.
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Physically, materially dead.
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But the Bible says that there is a part of us that is immaterial and that part does not die.
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That is the part that leaves the body.
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The Apostle Paul says, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
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On the day that Jesus was on the cross, He had a man dying right beside Him.
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And the man said, Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.
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And what did Jesus say to him? Today, thou shalt be with me in paradise.
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Today, not 2,000 years from now.
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Today, thou shalt be with me in paradise.
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The soul and the body are separated at death.
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And when we get to our last class in this 12 week period, we are going to look at eschatology.
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Eschatology is the study of last things.
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And you know every one of you has an eschatology because every one of you has a last day coming.
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There is going to be one day that you live on this earth that will be your last day here.
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It may be 30 years from now.
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It may be 40 years from now.
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It may be an hour from now.
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You don't know.
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But one day this life will end.
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But your soul will continue to go on.
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And according to the 16th chapter of Luke, it will either go on in a place of comfort or it will go on in a place of torment.
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But it will go on until the day of judgment when your body is raised and reconstituted with your soul.
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And on that day, you will receive your final reward, whether it be with the Lord forever or whether it be under His contempt and punishment forever.
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But it is important to realize you are more than just this physical body.
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If you walk out there today, you get hit by a car, they have to cut your legs off.
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You're still you.
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They have to cut your arms off.
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You're still you.
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I know a man who has nothing from here down.
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He stepped on an IED when he was in Iraq.
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Blew the bottom half of his body off.
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Now he lives in a wheelchair and he lives using his arms almost like legs.
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He can move around with his hands, but he has nothing from the navel down.
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But he's still there.
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Because to the real him, the soul of him is still there.
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You're more than just physical.
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That's biblical anthropology.
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Your body and soul.
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And you are made in the image of God.
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Therefore, you matter.
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Therefore, you have dignity.
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Therefore, the man next to you matters and has dignity.
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And this is why we are called to love our neighbor as ourself.
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Because our neighbor is made in the image of God.
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You see, anthropology goes much further than just where we came from.
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It goes into how we should behave and how we should treat others and what we have to look forward to.
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Brothers, I hope that you trust in Christ.
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Because Jesus said, if you trust in Me, you'll never be put to shame.
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And one day when your life ends in this world, you can be with the Lord.
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I'll end with John 14.
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Jesus said, let not your hearts be troubled.
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Believe in God.
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Believe also in Me.
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For in My Father's house are many rooms.
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If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to Myself.
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That where I am, you may be also.
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And you know the way to where I'm going.
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Thomas said, Lord, we don't know where You're going.
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How can we know the way? And Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life.
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And no one comes to the Father except through Me.
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Man, you're more than just stardust.
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And don't forget it.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank You for this time to be in Your Word.
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I pray that it has been fruitful for Your people.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.