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This the fifth study in the early chapters of the book of Genesis. We have spent the last two sessions considering the second creation story that begins in chapter two with the creation of man's body out of the dust and the inbreathing of God into him so that man became a living soul. The story continued with the fall of man and woman through the temptation of the serpent, and the discipline that God then imposed upon our fallen first parents. The story went on, so we found, to the record of Cain and Abel, and of Cain's defiance of God and refusal of the way of salvation. That sorry story was continued on into several generations of Cain's posterity, and comes to its end in chapter four. We move on this evening, therefore, to study the third account of creation in the early chapters of Genesis. Now, it is often, uh, overlooked by many students that there are three stories. So if you have a Bible with you, never mind if you haven't, just open it at chapter five, if you will, of the book of Genesis, and notice there with me how after the story of Cain and his succeeding generations, the writer comes, the writer comes to chapter five verse one and takes us back to the creation once more. Excuse this interruption, I am a bionic man, and I don't work unless I'm switched on, you'll see. Chapter five verse one, therefore, of Genesis, this is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him. Male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam in the day that they were created. So chapter five turns back, so to speak, from the, uh, story of Cain's posterity. Comes- brings us back once more to the beginning of things and the creation of the human race. This is the book of the generations of Adam. The word is perhaps a little difficult to translate into English. It means the, so to speak, the family history of. And true to its name, it proceeds in chapter five to recount the many generations of Adam's descendants. Now, in the second creation story two nights ago, when we were considering chapter two, we found there a description of the material, so to speak, from which man was made. His body, we read, was made, molded by God from the dust of the ground. And into his nostrils, God breathed the breath of life, and man became a living soul. That was what he was made of, if you like. In this story, however, we are going to read not so much of what man's made was made of, the ingredients, the basic materials. We are to read of man's constitution. So let us begin by examining our terms, or rather the terms of scripture, and spend some initial part of our study this evening trying to get the terms clear in our thinking. This is the book of the generations of Adam. Yes, but the Hebrew word Adam, uh, can mean two things. It is, of course, the name of the first male human being, like your name might be George and your sir Thomas or something. Uh, the name of the first male human being, Adam. Uh, but then, of course, it is also the name of the human species, i.e. man. And in this particular, uh, chapter, and particularly in the opening verses, we should do well to notice that, because it is important, if we're going to make sense of what it says, to realize that the word Adam is standing for human being. This is the book of the generations of Adam, the first male human being. In the day that the Lord God created man, same word, i- i- in the likeness of God made he him, male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name. Now notice this, called their name, not Adam and Eve. He called their name man, human being. So we're now being told, uh, about this strange new creature, the like of which had not been before. There are those who would tell us that before Homo sapiens, there were all kinds of hominids, creatures very much like, uh, man, you'll see, that evolved in different stages in different places. And then gradually, by little, uh, changes, accidental changes indeed, in the human genome, our modern version, Homo sapiens, came from one of these other pre, uh, uh, uh, uh, Adam creatures. Scripture give us, gives us no authority for believing any such thing. Certainly, the identification of a human being, Homo sapiens as he's called, is not to be found in the shape of his jaw, nor the angle of his forehead. The distinctive mark of Homo sapiens, according to Genesis, is that he was made in the likeness of God. I do not measure from the shape of his jaw or the inclination of his skull, of course. Uh, the man, so we are now told, when God made man, man was both, that is a human being, both male and female, that they are both included under the general label human, man in the species sense. That we shall find, uh, presently goes through the chapter. For instance, in chapter six we read, not when men began to multiply. It's not a question of one or two men got married and began to multiply, but when man, this strange new creature, began to multiply. And daughters were born unto them. They are called daughters of man, you see, meaning female human beings. Or again, it repented the Lord that he had made, not men, but man, that he had made this new creature. And he said, I will destroy, not some men, I will destroy man, the whole creature, the class, the species. I will destroy man, uh, both man and beast. And so in the crucial verse three, we read God's statement, my spirit shall not abide in man forever because he is flesh. Let me spend a little while on that verse, because this is a verse that has been much preached by very noble preachers and to great effect in evangelization. And very often that verse has been preached in this sense, my spirit, meaning the Holy Spirit, will not always strive with man. And the preachers have expounded it to mean this, that when the word of God is preached, the Holy Spirit who inspires that word, strives with men and women, speaking to their hearts, speaking to their consciences, calling to mind their sins and calling on them to repent and pleading with them to accept the Savior. And oftentimes, when the Holy Spirit thus strives with people, they do not at once yield to his gracious persuasion. Sometimes, alas, they harden their hearts, and for years go on hardening their hearts, and God is patient with them, but will not be patient forever. And that is true. You can say no to God for the last time. And God will take you at your word. And so the preachers have called this verse to, uh, bear witness, and interpreting it this way: My spirit shall not always strive with men. Eventually he may depart. But in my humble opinion, I offer it as no criticism of the great gospel preachers. God bless them still. But when we come to look at what the verse is actually saying, notice the reason God gives, that his spirit will not always strive with man. It is because he is flesh. God is commenting here upon what man is. You notice it does not say, my spirit shall not always strive with man be- uh, because and if he constantly says no to the gospel and rejects salvation. That isn't at this juncture the point of his remark. God is not commenting on man's refusal to obey the gospel. God is commenting on man's constitution. What man is, my s- uh, because he is flesh. Secondly, shall we notice, to get it out of the way before we proceed, you will see the translation here on the screen. My spirit shall not always abide in men. Some translators have translated the Hebrew word that occurs here in the way that our wonderful King James Authorized Version has translated it. My spirit shall not always strive with men. But, uh, the better Hebrew reading, uh, better translation of the Hebrew is to recognize that that Hebrew verb is an ancient form of a verb, meaning not to strive with, but to abide in. My spirit shall not always abide in man. And what that means, you will see when God carried out his warning and brought the flood upon the earth, the results of which are told us in chapter seven, uh, verses twenty one following, and I read them to you. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both fowl and cattle and beast, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And the Hebrew means literally expired. So God removed his spirit. My spirit shall not always abide in man, because also he is flesh. So, in other words, what we are now going to consider in the third creation story is not so much the ingredients of man, what he's made, the materials he's made from, but man's constitution. What is man? I expect you've met a good many. But what is man? So what do you mean, what is man? Well, I invite you to come with me to that wonderful morning of creation, such as God describes it in the book of Job. When God, in his almighty creatorial power, laid the foundations of heaven and earth. And according to God, in his conversation with Job, at that moment, the morning stars sang together. And the sons of God, that is the angel, shouted for very joy. Oh, I'd love to have been there, wouldn't you? As the angels stood by and witnessed God's creation unfolding in front of their very eyes. The sheer ingenuity of the Creator, the marvelous variety of his work filled them with joy. They clapped. Don't you start clapping, you'll get me in trouble, but the the the angels, you see, and the morning stars, they sang for joy, shouted hallelujahs. Look at that what thing over there. What on earth is that? Oh, well, eventually Adam called it a giraffe. I don't think the angels had seen one before, do you see? Extraordinary. And that over there? Well, that thing's a butterfly, do you see? Wow. And presently, amongst all the things, there was this new creature, the like of which hadn't been before. Of course, there had been angels before, but angels are spirits, spirit beings. They do not normally have bodies, though it is true, according to scripture, that angels, some of them at any rate, are able to appear in the form of human beings, and we have the record of it in various parts of, uh, of the Old Testament and in the New. But angels, as to their constitution, are spirit beings. You see. And this new creature? What was he then? For he wasn't altogether an animal, was he? Though he had parts of him that are very much like animals. Ma'am, I don't insult you, but lions have got a stomach like you have, and a heart like you have, and lungs like you have, you'll see. Uh-hmm. We have a lot in common with animals, haven't we? But we're not just animals. We're not angels. Scarce need to be told that. Well then, what, what are we? What is this, uh, this creature called man? And the answer these chapters will give us, that man is flesh and spirit. Now, of course, the theologians will tell us that man is a tripartite being, his body, soul, and spirit. And other theologians will tell us, no, soul and spirit are the same thing, so man is bipartite. I do not propose to enter the lists of that, uh, discussion here this evening. You will see. I do notice that in the way- in the normal talk of scripture, it will sometimes talk about soul doing things, and then the s- man's spirit is said to do the same things. That doesn't necessarily imply that soul and spirit are the same entity. But when speaking about the soul, scripture tends to contrast it with man's body, body and soul. When speaking of man's spirit, the contrast is made not so much with man's body, but with man as flesh, flesh and spirit, spirit and flesh. And it is that particular bipartite thing that we are to think about in this third creation story. What is man? He is flesh, but not merely flesh. He is spirit. He is spirit, but not merely spirit. He is flesh. Now, I know that many scientists deride the Christian Bible and Christians themselves for believing that there is this non-material part to the human constitution. You'll see. Indeed, I was listening just the other morning, eh, uh, or evening it was, I think, to The Moral Maze, as I do sometimes, on BBC Radio Four. And there was Stephen Rose, uh, talking to the panel of experts. And when one good lady and who who uh enjoys the name of Janet was making the point that human beings are not just their genes, they're more than their genes. And I clap my hands for joy to hear somebody saying it so positively, you see. We're not just our genes, are we? Indeed, the recent announcement has come as a shock to many scientists, that the Genome Project, the Genome Project has now discovered that as far as genes go, human beings have rather fewer than they thought they would have. And in fact, we don't have many more genes than fruit flies and things, which is a bit disturbing because you are more than a fruit fly, considerably more, are you not, sir, madam? The fact is that genes do not control and compose everything that a human being is. Indeed, it's not the genes that specify whether you are a human or not. That is probably controlled more by the cell. One specialist told me, condescending to my ignorance, of course, he said the genes are, uh, and the DNA, they're much more like a builder's supply chap, you see. Now, if you want to build a house, the builder's supply man will come in and provide all the timber, and he'll measure out the steel, if you are going to have steel framework and things, he'll measure it out for you so that then the whole thing can be taken to the site and put together. That's what the genes do. And if this cell is the cell of a fruit fly, the genes will work out all the, um, material that's needed and the right proportions and this, that, and t other, you see. They carry information on the chemicals to do that. It's the cell that decides. So it is with the human, if the humans, it's a human that's going to be built. The genes are programmed with information to produce, manufacture, so to speak, the necessary bits and pieces to make a human. But that's all they do. They're not the ones that control what the cell should be. And that is an exceedingly important thing. It is a vastly important thing for the question of our behavior as human beings. It has long since been observed that, uh, genes by themselves don't, uh, finally control what kind of a person we are. Because, well, the genes lay down the material for our brains, of course they do. But then comes life's experience. So, as is often said, you can get twins, identical twins born, genes the same. And yet, as they grow up in life, and one goes here and one goes there, they're quite different persons. Because life's experience helps to frame us as to what we are. It's more than that, isn't it? Uh, Richard Dawkins of K- uh, of Oxford wants to tell us that man is nothing more than his genes. Well, if that is so, then you can't blame me for what I do wrong, nor give me credit for what I do right, because I'm controlled simply by these chemicals of my gene. So Richard Dawkins then says, uh, can see that that would lead to a very unfortunate situation. And therefore he says we have to learn to rebel against our genes. That's very nice. But if I'm nothing but genes, how can I rebel against them, so to speak? What bit is left? If I'm nothing but genes, what bit of me is there that could rebel against my genes? See, the thing is nonsense. We are far more than our genes. We are bodies, and we should never forget it. We shall in fact have bodies for all eternity. But we're more than just bodies. We're more than just flesh, as the Bible would put it. We are spirit. Now again, the scientists will mock Christians for believing that. In that very program to which I referred, the dear lady was insisting that there's more to us than our genes. And Stephen Rose, uh, replied, oh, but my dear, you must give up that idea that of yours, that there's a sort of a little person inside your head, a little ghost. You are really nothing but your genes. You'll say, uh, many scientists find it difficult to believe in the existence of spirit. And they say, how could spirit, a non-material substance, act on matter? If you have a spirit, as they they will say to you, how does your spirit, being non-material, how can it impinge on the matter of your brain? And so, forty or fifty years ago, you'll see, uh, one of the scientists invented the term, the ghost in the machine, he called it, and was anxious to prove that in the light of modern science and evolution in general, we are to give up the idea that inside us, inside the machine of our body and brain, there is a kind of a ghost in the machine, you see. More recently, scientist Paul Davis and his friend Mr. Gribben wrote a book called The Matter Myth, the idea that there is nothing but matter. And at the end of their he- uh book, they said, of course, Gilbert Ryle was wrong, or rather perhaps not wrong, but he in a sense was right by saying there's no ghost in the machine, not because there is no ghost, but because there is no machine. Machine. You'll see the notion that spirit cannot impinge on matter, for any Christian, is silly. God is spirit. Who can doubt his marvelous power to create matter and to control it. But even for scientists, should they not, uh, as many of them do, humbly admit that we don't know what energy is. Nobody has ever seen energy. It is invisible. It can turn itself into matter, like Einstein told us. Energy, E, equals mass times the speed of light squared. E equals MC squared. You who don't like science, you have five minutes to nap now and wake up all refreshed when I shall be on to more interesting things to see. So Einstein, dear old Einstein, taught us that energy can be, so to speak, changed into matter. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. And of course, matter can be undone and turned back into energy. Don't we know it, and don't the Japanese know it too? With the atomic and hydrogen bonds. When matter is, the atoms in matter are split with the release of colossal energy. So what is energy? Scientists can tell you what it does. They can tell you how they can measure its effects. They can tell you that it is always conserved, but what it is, they don't know. Richard Feynman, the Nobel laureate, now deceased, brilliant among the scientists, states it in one of his books. We do not know what energy is. And yet who would be so silly as to say this energy that you cannot see is invisible, and we don't know what it is, can impinge on matter. So let's leave those difficulties now, the time to wake up, eh, you'll see, and think therefore what is man unashamedly we believe it, that man is flesh, but not merely flesh. He is spirit, though not merely spirit. You will find religions in the world go to one extreme or the other. Some people tell you that matter, flesh, is very unworthy, and your scheme ought to be to try and get away from matter and the body as far as you can get, and return to the universal soul. That's false. It's God who made us with flesh and bodies. Our blessed Lord became flesh, assumed a human body, and will have a body eternally. Others go to the other extreme and want to say man is mi- merely matter. That's likewise false. We are flesh plus spirit. And what God is now saying i- i- i- in response to man's sin and his corruption, my spirit shall not always abide in man, because he is flesh, and rebellious and sinful flesh at that. You say, why does God here then say my spirit? Doesn't that mean the Holy Spirit, if God says my spirit? And were these dreadful sinners, uh, indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Surely they weren't, do they? Yes, but now I must vex you a little while longer. When we think of spirit and spirit of God, we are thinking of, uh, shades of differences of meaning in the term. Why does God here call it my spirit? Well, let me read you a verse from Psalm one hundred and four, and it's verse thirty. It is talking of the animal creation, and says in verse twenty nine, Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled. Thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, and they are created, and thou renewest the face of the ground. Called thy spirit because God creates the spirit and imparts it. And so with man, God is, so the scripture says, the father of spirits. We, of course, are used to thinking of the third person of the Trinity as the Holy Spirit, and we recognize him as a person, equally a person as the Father and the Son. But when we think of the activity of the Holy Spirit, then we, uh, are talked to in these terms. In the beginning, for instance, God created the heaven and earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters, like some great wind, energy. You say, how can, wait a moment, you mean the Holy Spirit himself, or what? Well, let me use a humble analogy. We think of the sun up in the sky, the source of our light and heat, and then we think of the sunbeam that alights on our hands, maybe. Now tell me, is the beam the sun? Well, well, no, you wouldn't call it the sun. The sun isn't on your hand. There's a sunbeam. Oh, I see. Where does the beam come from? Well, it comes from the sun. Oh, I see. Yes. We distinguish the sun from the sunbeam, yes? But the sunbeam comes from the sun. So sometimes God will use the term spirit. He's the author of it, but use it in that sense of energy. Let me quote you a famous verse. The power that raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, described in Ephesians one in three terms, what is the energy of the might of his strength? Three terms put together to describe the vast input of energy that God, uh, made when he raised his son from the dead, declared by the spirit of holiness to be the son of God by the resurrection of the dead. The input of divine energy. We are strengthened as believers with all power by his spirit in the inner man. The energies of God, you see. So, as I say, in Zechariah, talking of all mankind, not just believers, but Zechariah twelve and verse uh one, we read as follows: Thus saith the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens and layeth the foundation of the earth and formeth the spirit of man within him. Man has a spirit, and it is God who formed it. We're not talking here about the Holy Spirit that we receive when we're born again. We're talking about what is the normal constitution of a human being, flesh plus spirit, and God forms the spirit within man. Or that phrase is used again in the book of Numbers in two places. I'll read you just one, the book of Numbers, chapter, uh, sixteen. Numbers sixteen and verse twenty two. And they fell upon their faces and said, O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and let there be wrath with all the congregation. So does scripture speak. It is God who formed the spirit of man and woman within them. Even as yet unregenerate men and women. For this is man's basic constitution, flesh and spirit. The epistle to the Hebrews, talking to Christians, of course, says, shall we not rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? Called the Father of spirits because he forms, formed the human spirit. He's the Father of spirits. And we, especially as believers, are meant to be subject to the Holy Spirit. And I think I hear a, a, the whirrings of somebody's mind here this evening, and you're saying, ah, now at long last we're going to find out this man's theology. What is the difference between soul and spirit, and how would you describe it? I'm sorry to disappoint you. I'm not going to tell you. I'd love you to tell me afterwards. You'll see, as far as I can see, scripture doesn't define soul or spirit, but it does describe them. And I beg leave just to mention some of the descriptions of the spirit in man. One Corinthians chapter two and verse eleven, um where Paul observes as follows: Who knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is in him? Even so, no man knoweth the things of God, save the spirit of God. It's not just a matter of logic and intellect. It is something more basic. What goes on in a man, what are typically human things, only the man's spirit knows. You see, you share a lot with your dog, if you've got one, your bonzo. You see, if he sees you seated at the table eating a beef steak, he wags his tail if you allow him into the dining room. Some people don't, but if you allow him in, he'll come and wag his tail, you'll see, and and nudge you to make sure you know he's there because he's seeing you eat a beef steak, and he knows exactly what you're feeling like because he has a stomach like you have a stomach. And as he sees that beef steak, uh, uh, uh, descending down your gullet, you'll see, and all the wonderful tickling sensations and the beautiful taste and everything else, uh, your bonzo understands that bit because he shares that bit with you. But things that are typically human, the dog doesn't understand and never will. You take him into your lounge and say, look at that picture there. It's a Rembrandt, you know, Bonzo. Isn't that beautiful? Bonzo won't know what you mean, but you're pointing to it, so he has to go to find out, and he goes and licks it. Doesn't give much response to it, doesn't get much out of that. Oh, so he smells it. Be careful he doesn't do something else. A- and I do see he tries all the faculties he has to try and see, and he decides it's a nothing. And you go into raptures about it. Why's that? Well, it is something to do with the human spirit. And we're told in Holy Scripture that for those that have been born again, the Spirit of God witnesseth with our spirits that we are children of God. All of you who are believers will know exactly what that means. How you know the witness of the Holy Spirit to your spirit, above all the flood and ebb of emotion and such like things, above all the tides of feelings in the deep central part of your being, your spirit. You know what it is for the Holy Spirit to witness to you that you are a child of God. And if you don't know that, oh, please, please start talking to some of your Christian friends and let them tell you what that means. Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are the children of God. But to come back to man in his raw state, fresh spirit, we are now to think of, uh, what happened to man as a race, mankind. We are to think of the development of the human race from Adam. Man's constitution we have already thought of, spirit plus flesh. Now we have to think of man's perversion. What happened to man? We are then to think of the nature and effect of man's destruction by water under God's judgment. Then we shall think of the means of man's salvation through the ark that God instructed Noah to build. And we shall check upon our explanation by referring to a passage in the New Testament, one Peter three seventeen to four six, that refers to Noah and his ark. And when we look at it, we shall find that that passage of scripture referring to Noah and the ark uses as its principal terms the question of flesh and spirit. And when we thought of that, we ought to try and think for a moment or two about the new beginning of the human race in Noah. So now man's perversion. We're told i- in Genesis six by God himself, that all flesh, verse twelve: and God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. The Lord saw, verse five, that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Man in spiritual rebellion against God, and in particular in the thoughts and imaginations of his heart. The New Testament talks similarly about the ruin of the human race and what we all were like before we were converted, if we have been, and what was wrong with us. I refer to Ephesians chapter two where Paul says, you did he make alive, quicken, when you were dead through your trespasses and sins, wherein afore time you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. Sorry state. Affecting the mind, and then affecting the desires of the flesh. How did it come about? Under the influence, says Paul, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience, the prince of the power of the air. Referring to the story that we studied in these last two nights of the temptation of man and woman by that archfiend, that sinister s- that is Satan. A spirit being created by God and originally of exalted position. And what was his transgression? Well, it was a spiritual sin, wasn't it? Not a sin of the flesh, because he has none. The spirit of Satan that said, I will ascend to the Most High. I will make myself equal with God. The spiritual sin of pride and self-glory that would usurp the creator's place. Fallen spirit himself, he tried the same tactic on human beings. Take it. Take that forbidden fruit. Disregard God's word. For in the day you eat thereof, you shall be as God. Appealing to that evil spiritual motive. To be as God. To be independent of God. Which leads, says Paul, to effect in our mental makeup. Alienated from God and from the life of Of God. God. Through our trespasses and sins. Alienated. In rebellion and insubjection. To the Father of spirits. Leading to corruption of the thoughts. And then with the spirit no longer subject to the father of spirits, the spirit in man goes perverse, and instead of controlling his flesh, leads to indulgence of the flesh. And pray do remember that when the Bible talks of flesh, it isn't just talking of sexual sins. The brain is a much as much flesh as any other part of our body. Get rid of the notion of the Father of spirits, rebel against him, strike out an independence of him. It will affect your flesh in the sense of your brain and your thoughts and your mental outlook. That in turn will countenance and allow indulgence of the flesh, like God forbids. So it was with mankind eventually, after the years, centuries maybe, man had become corrupt. And not only by his own volition, but also there was an attempt to pervert the race, was there not? When the sons of God, that is angels, saw the daughters of man, that is human females, and came into them. Some people have doubted that that could be angels. They have said, according to our Lord Jesus, angels don't marry. That is true. Angels in their proper estate don't marry. Isn't said they can't, but they don't. But the New Testament also indicates that among the various revolts amidst the spirit world, there were angels that left their first estate. And the word Paul uses, oiketerion, is the same word as he will use in one Cor- two Corinthians five for our heavenly body. Angels left their proper estate and went after strange flesh. An attempt, therefore, by evil spirits to pervert the human race. It wasn't a question of the sin of this man or that, of this woman or the other. The race, left to itself, would have been destroyed, and the gene pool wrecked. And God decided to intervene, grieved in his heart that he'd made this new strange creature man. He said, my spirit, here comes the term, the spirit that God had formed in man, will not always abide in him forever. The life-giving spirit. Therefore, God devised the judgment. After one hundred and twenty years of his grace and mercy and waiting and pleading with them through Noah, his servant, God brought the flood upon them and destroyed them. It is interesting to notice the form of God's judgment on corrupt mankind. When sodom proved irremediably evil, God burned them up. But not this time. He drowned the world. Which was not only a judgment in itself, but served as an object lesson. You'll see, if you burn a body, you get ashes. If you drown a body, you don't need to do it very long, you can put it underwater for five minutes. What happens now? Well, you're left with a body. Flesh. But to start with, the breath has gone out of it. And the body without the breath goes rotten. The flesh goes rotten. Object lesson of the more serious state, when God summons the human spirit out of its body. The body goes rotten. Unpleasant thought, isn't it? And that also has its lesson parable to teach, doesn't it? When man rebels against God, as man is in rebellion against God at the spiritual level, he loses control of his flesh, and his flesh, brain and body go morally bad. That, of course, is why salvation, as we read of it in the New Testament, has to start at what is the very key to the problem. God doesn't start saving us by remedying the ills of our bodies. He starts by dealing with our spirits. God points out that, uh, shallow id- uh, Christ points out that shallow ideas of salvation are useless. What is born of the spirit is spirit. Our trouble lies not so much in the flesh, as at the level of the spirit. And if our spirits are alien from God, to use God's language, they're dead. Like... the father of the prodigal son said about his son while he was in the far country, my son was dead. I was alive again. Or you say, I phoned up my friend the other day, and the line went dead. So between the Father of spirits and the human spirit outside of Christ, the line has gone dead, hasn't it, what? You can then deal with the flesh, you can apply religion to the flesh to try with all its might and main to improve yourself, brain, mind, morals, and all the rest of it. That will not suffice. What is born of the flesh is flesh. There needs a rebirth, a regeneration at the spiritual level, by being born of water and of the spirit. Paul the Apostle in his unconverted days found it so, mightily, mightily zealous to make himself exceedingly religious by pursuing religious disciplines of all kinds and shades, and in the end completely frustrated, trusting in the flesh, that is, in his own independent effort to make himself right with God. And our own independent effort to make ourselves right with God is bound to be disappointing. Nothing can do it, except the regeneration of God's Holy Spirit and the gift of new and eternal life. But don't let me put it as though it were a awful difficult thing. It's a glorious thing. It's not we have to put ourselves right, we can't do it. But God has a marvelous way of salvation, in which he does the saving and the regeneration, and we are begotten again of God's Holy Spirit. And here in the ancient testament is an example of salvation, the ark which God had Noah prepare. And he and his family were called at last to enter in, and the door was shut. So Noah and his family were saved from the judgment of God. But notice, if you care, he was not saved from the flood. He was saved through the flood. You say, what is, what's, what, what, what's, why is that important anyway? Well, it's a marvelous illustration. Not saved from the judgment of God, saved through it. Had he gone just as he was through the flood, he would have been drowned. God provided an ark inside of which Noah could be, and the ark could go through the flood and come out the other. I can't stop you Christians present thinking at once, when you think about that, of the great reality of which this was an early prototype. How are we saved? Well, in a sense, we're not saved from the judgment due to our sins. You see, when we trust Christ, God puts us in Christ. And then we learn this tremendous thing, that when Christ died, he suffered the wrath of God. Now we're in him. We died, says Scripture, with Christ. He bore the judgment, our judgment, and we in him, joined to him. It is counted that his death is our death. The judgment of our sins was on him, and in him we have come through the judgment, out to the other side, buried with him. Well, that's what our baptism symbolizes, isn't it? When we're baptized as believers, it's not the water does anything to us except make us cold, maybe. I- it has no magic in it. It is but a symbol. It's a symbolic burial. We are saying, when we get baptized, I was so bad. That all my efforts to improve myself were inadequate. And Christ didn't come alongside to give me a helping hand to try and do better and thus escape the judgment of God. No. What did Christ do? He died on Calvary for me. Took my place, bore my judgment, and God has put me in him, so to speak. I admit I deserve to die. It wasn't a question that I realized I told a few lies, and I repented of a, a lie or two, and one of the other unfortunate things, but on the whole I was good. No, I accepted God's judgment that I had sinned and deserved God's wrath and the penalty of my sin. I admitted it, absolutely hopeless in face of the judgments of God against my sin. And when I was prepared to repent like that and acknowledge it, that I have no other hope, then God pointed me to the Savior. And I came to the Savior. And I entered in. God put me in Christ. Now God counts it this, that when Christ died, I died. The judgment was born, the judgment of my sin born. Thus do I symbolize in my baptism the significance of the death of Christ for me. But baptism is not merely a, a, a symbolic burial, is it? Oh, thank God. When folks get baptized, they're not left under the water. I think you've noticed that. You'll say, it is also a symbolic resurrection, do you see? Because that's the other side of the story. Christ, in Christ, he bore the judgment for me. The judgment's now passed, and he's come out the other side. He's risen, never to die again. And I, because I'm joined with him, are risen with Christ to walk in newness of life. Marvelous, isn't it? A little bit surprised you can't, you can't manage to say hallelujah, but you say it in your hearts, of course. Yeah, do you see? Glorious salvation, isn't it? The ark, picture of Christ, of course. Him through whom we're delivered from the judgment of God, because in a sense we've come through it, and that is now past, and we're risen in newness of life. So there came a new beginning. The flood waters began to recede, and Noah, who only had a window in the top of the ark and not the sides, and couldn't stretch his neck apparently to look out, needed some guidance as to when it would be safe to, um, get out of the ark. Would it be safe to get out and tread upon the, uh, the earth? So he decided to, to test it by sending out some birds, and he sent out a raven. You'll say, well, it didn't come back again, because ravens like carrying meat, and there was plenty about, I suppose. So he sent forth then a dove, and it came back eventually with an olive leaf in its mouth. Guidance for Noah. Now that's a very interesting story because in the ancient world, mariners who went out on the seas often used to take birds with them. This is literal history. Because if you are far from the shore and you can't see land, and you had an old ship and you didn't have a compass and you didn't know where you were, and the sky was, uh, dark with clouds and you couldn't see the stars at night, well, how would you know where the nearest land was? So they used to keep birds, and when they were in that difficult quandary, they'd let the bird go, and the bird would circle around, and birds have an instinct for where the nearest land is, and the bird would fly off, and the mariners would follow the bird. That is true to history. Noah was guided by birds and by the dove in particular. Oh, but then I can't stop you, particularly on a Friday night. I can't stop you Christians as you hear about that. Now coming out of the waters of judgment, being guided by the birds. And I think of the story of our blessed Lord, all sinless he, but coming to be our savior, and therefore in symbol at the beginning of his ministry, going down into the waters of Jordan, where were around him sinners galore, confessing their sins. He had no sins to confess, but of his magnificent grace, coming to identify himself with a fallen human race, the one come to be their savior. Baptized of John in Jordan, and when he came out of the water, God could not forbear any longer unless we should, uh, uh, mistake the significance of his baptism. The heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit, as a dove, alighted upon him. It says the evangelist, uh, forthwith, then he was led by the Spirit, driven by the Spirit indeed, into the wilderness to be tempted. Then led by the Spirit, he came back again, and anointed by the Spirit, he began his ministry. And then we think of ourselves in Christ, who bore our judgment, now risen with him. How shall we live aright? It's not a question, is it, now our sins are forgiven and we do the best we can. Uh, we must do the best we can, but that isn't the secret. The secret of the gospel is nothing less than this, that risen with Christ, we are now led to be led by the Holy Spirit. What a marvelous gospel this, isn't it? Not leaving it to our own independent effort to live as best Christian lives as we can, which, if we're not careful, will turn us into Pharisees. But led by the Holy Spirit of God. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. That's how our character is developed. Marvelous. And then, as Noah came out, there were these four things. I must deal with them very briefly. For if I keep you any later than I've done other nights, you'll never come and hear me again. Huh. When Noah came out, the very first thing he did was to build an altar and offer a sacrifice, a burnt offering to God. And God's, in the humble words of the Hebrew, smelled a sweet, a offering of a sweet smell to God, a savor of rest, as the Hebrew has it, and promised Noah absolute security now there would not be a flood again. Security as he began the new life in a cleansed world. Security always and forever on the basis of the sacrifice. It was a burnt offering, yes. It points forward to our blessed Lord Jesus, who gave himself to do the will of God, did the will of God perfectly, by the which will we have been sanctified by the offering of body of Christ once for all. For by one offering is perfected forever them who are sanctified. Marvelous. Never forget it, my dear brother and sister. We never leave the cross of Christ behind, you know, and go on to something more advanced. It is always and ever the basis of our progress. Basis of my progress today is, first of all, that I am accepted for the sake of Christ, and I have the Holy Spirit to lead me. And secondly, the new mandate. Noah was the refounder of the human race, so that whereas before we all came from Adam, now we all come through Noah. He's the second man. Mm-hmm. There was to be another second man in a far greater sense, of course. And therefore he had responsibility and is told by God, uh, of his responsibilities, and in particular, uh, you'll see he is to guard the sanctity of human life, so that if any man shed the blood of his fellow man, by man shall his blood be shed. Noah is to judge. That obviously means, in the context, the institution of legal justice by Noah. But this evening, as our talk comes to an end, we follow its spiritual, uh, i- indications. If we have been delivered from the judgment of God through Christ, buried with him, raised with him, if we are led of the Holy Spirit, then we are asked to judge ourselves, aren't we? And as we come to the Lord's Supper, remembering his body given and his blood poured out, we are to judge ourselves, to discern ourselves, not morbidly, but knowing, of course, as we all know, that things are not a hundred percent right with us as they should be, are they? We've got ideas, we've got attitudes that are not what they should be. Our friends see it if we don't. We are asked to judge ourselves and confess our sins. And if we don't judge ourselves, we shall be disciplined of God. And then there was the covenant and its token, the rainbow. Now God covenanted with Noah that seed time and harvest should not fail, that he would never again destroy the world by water. One day it will eventually be destroyed by fire, but never a universal flood as it suffered in Noah's day. And said to Noah, behold, I put my bow in the cloud so that when the storm clouds ro- roll up, you will see the bow. It shall be a token to you of my covenant with you. The bow in the cloud. I think if I were Noah, was outside the ark now in this new world, and I saw the rain clouds beginning to run up, I should be weak at the knees. You know, what after all, if God is going to judge again? You know, there are some believers like that. I, I met them, to say. Well, they're saved. Godly folks. But they live with a certain trepidation in their heart. But what? Might I be lost at last? Oh, if you feel like that, my dear brother, and you're a genuine believer, my dear sister, see the rainbow against the dark cloud. For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to the attaining of salvation by our blessed Lord, who died for us, that whether we are asleep or awake, physically dead or still alive, we should live together with him. Then the last sorry story of Noah's indiscretion. He got drunk. And lost control. Sad, wasn't it? You'll see, it is still true. The spirit strives against the flesh. The flesh against the spirit. So that you should not do the things that otherwise you would. We were wise then, says Paul, to sow to the spirit. For of the spirit we shall reap all the good benefits and potentialities of eternal life. So to the flesh, and of the flesh, you shall reap corruption. Oh, but finally, now the second man. I have a better story to remind you of before I finish. Adam begat sons and daughters in his own image, and all of us are born the image of the earthly. As to our bodies, oh, but there's a second man. He's the Lord from heaven. Where Adam was a living soul, the blessed Lord is a life-giving spirit. Praise God. One day, not only are spirits redeemed and sanctified, but our very bodies shall be saved and transformed. For as we have borne the image of the earthly, so we shall bear the image of the heavenly. There is a soulish body, there is a spiritual body, and I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, and our very bodies made like unto the body of his glory, fit habitation and expression for our redeemed spirits for all eternity. So may God fill our hearts with joy through reading his word. Our fo- first question is one that came yesterday, and I did not get time to, uh, answer it then. So it comes first now and reads: In chapter five of Genesis, the genealogy of Adam is recorded. The amazing part of the account is their ages. Adam, um nine hundred and thirty years, Seth, nine hundred and twelve years, Enosh, nine hundred and five years. Is there an explanation for this longevity as compared with today's lifespan of threescore and ten years. Well, that is a question that is interested and still interests, uh, many biblical scholars, and as usual, they they don't particularly necessarily agree. That's why we have biblical scholars, to see and pay them. I say, what else would they do? Eh, but seriously speaking, uh, there are, to my knowledge, various explanations given. The one is, and quite possibly true, that, uh, Adam as originally created did not have inherent physical immortality. God only has immortality. And therefore, it was necessary that he should eat of the tree of life, if he were to be maintained in life forever. He did not have inherent physical immortality. He was driven out of the garden when he sinned, so that he should not put forth his hand and eat of the tree of life and live forever in that fallen state. And therefore he d- he was turned out until he returned to the dust. He didn't immediately die, as people have observed, kept on living physically. And perhaps it was, uh, that in those days, comparatively recently come from the hand of the Creator, the human race gradually declined, and therefore originally they lived long years. Then after the flood, the ages are noticeably reduced, and later on reduced still further. You will observe, of course, that in our modern world, with modern biological techniques, the average, uh, length of life is much increased, even though, uh, from what it was in my day as a boy, you'll see, by good nutrition and healthcare and so forth. Because good physical conditions tend to help longer life. But of course, nowadays, uh, to somebody to reach a hundred or a hundred and uh ten is most unusual. Yet if life expectancy goes on improving with medicine and thus and thus and thus, it may begin to get up over the hundreds, much more normal than it is now. And that, in my mind, would suggest that the long ages were due to the fact that originally they were not far, so to speak, from creation itself and only gradually declined. There are, however, uh, complications. If you look at some of the records, uh, ancient records, uh, uh, of the other ancient nations, they also will record longevity, but they will have kings lasting for thirty thousand years and things of that order, you see, which doesn't, it seems to surpass credulity, uh, a little bit, you see. And that has given rise to all kinds of questions, eh, eh, about these dates. Is this a way of saying that people lived a long time, or could it be that some of these names are not the names of individuals, but of nations? I find that explanation difficult because in the list of, of, of, of Genesis five you have the time of a man before he, uh, produced children and the time after he produced children. It seems to me that that cannot possibly be, therefore, talking of nations, you see. Though it is the truth that some men's personal name also became the name of the nation that they led, but I think that cannot be applied to Genesis five. So there are two of the, uh, ideas. I have to confess that when it comes to adding up these numbers, I find it very difficult. I was never very good at sums, and I read the experts, and I, you know, hear what they say, and by the afternoon I've forgotten it, you see. I don't have that kind of memory. But, uh, to get a full answer, I, uh, simply, uh, would suggest that you get hold of serious believing commentators to hear what they have to say upon the topic. It is the fact that in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, so-called the Septuagint, the dates are somewhat different, you'll see. And what the reason for that is, i- i- is again a matter of interest, but for the ordinary believer, uh, not anything to worry his head about. Now to come to another question, and here the questioner very graciously has signed the question. It comes from Mr. George Orr. And let me say publicly how much I admire the grace of a senior man and missionary and a great experience to come night by night and encourage a junior like me, to see. It's very kind of him. And it says, would you kindly help us concerning Isaiah forty five eighteen B, which, uh, says about the creation, Isaiah uh forty five eighteen B. It reads as follows: He is God that formed the earth and made it. He established it, he created it, not a waste. He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is none else. And s- similarly, Genesis one verse two: the earth was without form and void, and Jeremiah four twenty three: I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void. Now, bearing those, uh, three quotations in mind, Mr. Orr asks, can the verb was in Genesis, you'll see, uh, one two, the earth was without form and void, can it actually be made to mean became waste and void? Well, I say at once that, uh, uh, many scholars, better scholars than I, and experts in the Semitic tongue, you see, have suggested that, yes, it could be thus translated, and the earth became waste and void. And what Mr. Orr deduces from that, he has not told me, but what many people have deduced, therefore, from that is as follows, that in the beginning God created the heaven and earth, and he didn't create it waste and void. Isaiah says that. So, probably the verb means, and the earth became waste and void. And that would imply that there had been an original creation that fell under the judgment of God for some unexplained reason, and therefore the earth became waste and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, you'll see. And that then, day one, God said, let there be light, is the beginning of this new creation, you'll see. That has been said by unfriendly critics to be the gap theory, meaning a gap between verse one and verse three. As I say, that is the view that has been held by excellent scholars and able expositors greater than I. I think, uh, one should perhaps, uh, uh, also entertain the view that waste and void, Tohu wa-bohu in Hebrew, was not necessarily an absolute disaster. Do you see? Can be used as disaster, uh, as you see from the quote in Jeremiah four twenty three, I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void. God had dealt in judgment upon it. But in the Isaiah passage, he created it not waste and void, he created it to be inhabited. Isaiah seems to be saying that the, uh, purpose for the earth was to be inhabited, not to be waste and void. There are two forms of chaos, aren't there? I use the illustration, not that I know anything about it much, but I use the illustration of cookery. Here's a dear lady, and she's making a cake, uh, you see, for the coming of age of her daughter. And she starts with nice, neatly packaged sugar, flour, orange peel, currants, all in their nice packages, you see. Very orderly. She opens the packets, pours it all out into a mixing bowl, stirs it up, and now it's chaos. Do you see? That's very good chaos. This is a necessary process towards making a bit of a cake, you see. He hasn't made it chaos to leave it there, of course not. It's a necessary step in the process of making a jolly good cake. That's one form of chaos, then, on its way to become something marvelous. There could be another form of chaos. She's made the cake and iced it beautifully, and in comes her clumsy husband and accidentally knocks it all off onto the floor, and it smashes into a thousand pieces. That's another form of chaos, and that's a very bad form of chaos, you'll see. So I think you would have to judge in this particular case whether the apparent chaos of Genesis two, the earth was without form and void, and darkness upon the face of the earth, was, in those terms, a bad chaos, the results of God's judgment on a former, uh, creation, or whether it was a good chaos on the way to something good. I myself hold that those verses may well cover who knows how many years. We are there talking about cosmology, and in order to get an earth, all kinds of things have gone on in the heavens, which, by the kind of time that you would use for cosmology, might well have taken millions of years, though relative to our Earth, where our Earth time, what on our Earth would seem a day or so, would out there in space be vast ages of time, what is called in science the relativity of time and other such things like the, uh, the gravity elation of time, that time can be stretched by gravity, but they are big matters. I wouldn't appear to be dogmatic. Thank you, sir, for raising the question and all the interesting implications of it. Uh, there is a third question here. And this is very civilized. To David, it says, uh, that's my name. Do you believe that the Son of God, the sons of God, as spirit beings, inhabited the bodies of men, that is, demon possession, and used the bodies of these men for their evil purposes to infiltrate the human race by the devil's direction. Well, I think it very possible, my good sir, that it was done that way. Once more, I wouldn't be dogmatic because the Bible doesn't explain how. These verses also have been a matter of controversy, of sustained controversy that lasts. Wherever I go, whatever I'm talking on, in many different countries, one of the questions that is sure to come up is the sons of God in Genesis six. That is so much so I vowed on times to make a record of it so I could play it back. Uh, that is not to, uh, belittle the question. It is an exceedingly important question, and as you saw in the talk I gave, I hold that the sons of God he mentioned are angelic beings. The sons of God in Job are a- angelic beings. You see the sons of God, uh, at the beginning and the sons of God at the end are angelic beings. It's a normal phrase for angels or spirit beings. Uh, some people have said, Campbell Morgan, the great expositor of of days gone by, said the one thing it couldn't possibly be was angels. Why not? Because our Lord said that, uh, in the resurrection we shall neither marry nor give in in marriage, for we shall be like the angels, and they don't marry. Well, that's perfectly true. Yeah, our Lord said it. They don't do things. Angels that keep their proper estate don't marry. But that is not to say they can't. And in the epistles, we have, uh, strong phrases used, do we not? Jude verse six, and angels which kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation. He hath kept in everlasting bonds unto darkness, unto the judgment of the great day, even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, having in like manner with these given themselves over to fornication, gone after strange flesh. So those two verses coming together seem to me to suggest there is a, a, a similarity between what the angels did, they kept not their former estate, and what the people of Sodom did, perversion in sexual relationships. Secondly, these angels are said they didn't keep their own principality, but left their proper habitation. Ikitherion in Greek. It is the word that Paul uses in two Corinthians five for the house, the eternal habitation, the body, in other words, that we shall have when the Lord comes and gives us the body like to his glorious body. What that spirit body shall be like, we don't really know, do we? Will be like the body the Lord Jesus had. But it interests me that Jude used the same term of the angels, their proper principality, their proper ikiterion. They left that. And there was their sin. They went after strange flesh. They went after union with humans. Now, how they did it? Our questioner suggests they, first of all, uh, uh...