The Defense against False Teachers, No. 2 - Jude 17

JD12-02

As we said in the previous session, it is very deceptive to give Christians the idea that all they have to do is start reading their Bible, and they're going to come to God's viewpoint. It is very deceptive to give Christians the idea that all they have to do is buy a little study book and start filling in the blank spaces and answers, and they will come to an understanding of the Word of God. By and large that is not true. We found from Colossians 1:9-10 that every Christian has a very grave spiritual deficiency in his soul which needs to be filled. This is to be filled with the full knowledge that God has, and that knowledge is expressed once again in Bible doctrine.

This filling of this spiritual deficiency is done by means of the grace system of learning spiritual things that God has provided. The key to that is the ministry of the pastor-teacher. The goal of all of this is to orient the Christian so that he will know the will of God for him. This gives the Christian the capacity for living a life that is befitting his place as a child in the family of God. Out of such spiritual maturity flows increasing divine good production.

So it all stems from remembering Bible doctrine. But you can't remember what you haven't learned. Once you learn it, you have something to remember. So we're going to look now at the soul, just to review. The soul is what is affected. When we are negative to what God has to say, it does something to us on the inside. It does something to our souls. It does it in a very gradual way until suddenly we have very slowly drifted off to where we will be 180 degrees off course. Once where we were flying right on the beam toward the will of God, we have gradually swung around and we're flying directly away from that will. How can that happen? It happens in a subtle way within our soul. So we have to know something about the soul.

The Soul

The Mind

This indicates to us that a person's awareness of himself physically has to do with his soul. There comes a time when the soul departs from the body. That's what death is. Death is when the soul departs from the body. Then the person is no longer aware of himself in his physical structure. A person moves around in a physical body. He can recognize himself. He knows where he lives. You will know when you go out today who you are, and where you should go home. You will know what you're supposed to do tomorrow, and so on. You know where you belong. That is because your soul is aware of itself. You may also add to that 1 Kings 17:21 and Acts 20:10. It is the departure of the soul that removes self-awareness in the body.

The information which is taken into our minds is called "gnosis." "Gnosis" has to do simply with knowledge. The perceptive mind is the place where we take in information. Then the other part of our minds (another function) is the directive mind. The directive mind is the side for decisions. This is often referred to in Scripture by the term "heart," which in the Greek is "kardia." Or, sometimes it's "understanding," which is the Greek word "noema." This understanding refers to the "kardia." This part of our mind is referred to, for example, in Proverbs 23:7 where we read, "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he." This part of our mind is where decisions are made. The directive side of the mind is where actions stem from. As you think in this part of your mind, the Word of God says, "So you will act." Well, what is there in this part of the mind that governs these actions?

For one thing, you have your conscience here. Here we find the values or the standards upon which we function as individuals. Everybody has a conscience. The conscience was originally empty. There was nothing in it when you were born. You gradually feed into it certain concepts so you establish certain values and certain standards that guide your life. This guidance comes from what you either absorb from society or what you absorb from the Word of God. In Acts 24:16 we read, "And in this do I exercise myself to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man." We exercise a sense of values or a sense of standards. You may also add to that Romans 2:15.

Also in the directive mine is the frame of reference. The frame of reference is the place where information is stored. This is where you put all that information that you learn at school and all of those facts that you study. You store them here in that frame of reference. You also store spiritual things. This is where doctrinal information is ultimately stored. This is what gives you your divine viewpoint. If the information there comes entirely from Satan's frame of reference, it is human viewpoint.

Also you have in the directive mind a storage of memory. It is in this part of your being that you remember things about people and about things. These form attitudes. So as a result, out of your directive mind come actions on the basis of what you think about certain people and what you think about certain situations or certain conditions. All of this together forms your viewpoint. That viewpoint is either man's viewpoint or it is God's viewpoint. Everything together in this segment of the directive mind determines your tastes. So that's point number one. Your soul has a mentality. It has a perceptive mind (a perceptive side to the mind) through which you learn things. It has in there self-awareness. You learn who you are as you grow up, and you become able to identify yourself to yourself. The information that you learn here is knowledge. It is called "gnosis." The directive mind is the heart or the "kardia." Here you have your conscience and your frame of reference. Here you store memory. All of that forms your viewpoint and guides your actions.

Volition

You do not operate like an animal does, on instinct. Suppose that you're a bird. A bird doesn't sit down and say, "Now it is time for me to raise a family, and that means I have to build a nest." Now that bird doesn't sit on that limb and think to himself, "What kind of a nest shall we build? Last year we had one of those ranch-style nests that spread all around. I think it'd be kind of nice this year to maybe have a two-story operation." So they talk it over and then they make it a two-story operation. No, they don't do anything like that. The very first year this bird says, "It's time to have a family. I've got to build a bird's nest." He instinctively builds his nest. Nobody teaches him. Nobody explains it to him. He doesn't sit and decide what he's going to make it out of. He just proceeds to do it. The next year, he builds the nest the same way. Twenty years later, he's still building that crazy nest the same way. It has no improvements and no advancements. He works by instinct. He does not think. He does not make decisions according to a mind that is guiding those decisions. You have the capacity to make decisions.

Your decisions are determined by either your mentality or by emotions. That's the third factor in your soul. It's emotion. Emotion can tell your volition what to do, or the mentality can tell your volition what to do. Now God's order is for your mind to tell your will what to do. It is a violation of the Word of God for your emotions to be able to tell your will what to do. Your mind is to govern your emotions; not the other way around. When the emotions do govern the mind, you have the status of apostasy. In the Old Testament, in the Song of Solomon, we find that the soul has emotions. Song of Solomon 1:7: "Tell me, O you, whom my soul loves, where do you feed? Where do you make your flock to rest at noon?" Love is an expression of an emotion. The soul is capable of that. John 12:27: "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father save me from this hour?' But for this cause I came unto this hour." The soul has emotions--happy emotions and unhappy emotions. You can also add to that 2 Peter 2:8. Emotions are our feelings, and they are controlled our mentality, rather than dominating the soul.

The Old Sin Nature

Now where did this soul come from? This is its structure. It has mentality. It has volition. It has emotions. It has all of these segments, and everybody born into the human race has this feature within him. Where did this soul originate? In Genesis 1:26, we have the official record as to where all of this came from--the nature of our soul. In Genesis 1:26, the Word of God says, "And God said, 'Let us make man in Our image after Our likeness." "Let us" is referring to the Trinity--the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. "Let us make" is the word translated here, and the Hebrew word is "asah." "Asah" means to make something out of something. Here, God is going to make a soul, and He is going to make it from the image of God. The soul that man is to receive is to be made from the image of God. Now what is the image of God?

The image is the word "tselem." "Tselem" means "shadow," or a shadow image cast. It is in contrast to the idea of an exact image like a photograph, or like the image that you see on a coin. You do not look physically like God. Yet, you have been made in the image of God. But it is a shadow image of God which is being reflected in our beings. It is not that we look like God. Man is not physically in the appearance of God. The soul of man is what is in view here. The soul of man reflects the essence of God's personality. That's the image of God in which we are made. God has a mind. God has a volition, and God has emotions. We were made in that personality image of God. As God is infinite in these qualities, we are a shadow picture. We reflect as a shadow what God is. So, "Let us make man in Our image" is making out of something that existed as a format or as a pattern, and that is the image of God.

It is to be made also, it says, "In Our image and after Our likeness." This is another feature of the nature of man, and that is the "damuth." "Damuth" means a pattern or a model. We have been made patterned after God in some way. Now how is that? Well, our souls have been made in His image. This is the image of God's personality--thinking, feeling, and choosing. We have also been made after His likeness, and the Hebrew words "damuth" stands for the idea of a pattern. The pattern here is the Trinity. There are three persons in the Trinity. They are all equally God. All three persons have the same essence. Yet they are distinct individuals. So God, in making man, created all of us with the same kind of soul. All of our souls, men and women, it says that He created both of them. Our souls are all alike. They have all the same essence, but we are individuals bearing the same soul, as God in the Trinity is three persons yet bearing the same essence. It is in that feature of God's likeness that we were made.

So man's soul was made by God out of the pattern of God's immaterial nature. God is a spirit being. John 4:24 tells us, "They that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Consequently, our soul is immaterial. You cannot see your soul. The only way that we can identify the soul is by its characteristics. If you haven't been to a funeral lately, you may not have a deep appreciation of what the soul means to the body. Whenever you're at a funeral, and you look at that dead corpse, you become very much aware of the fact that there isn't anything different about the body, and yet it is strangely and weirdly changed. I don't care know how many times you say, "Oh, it's beautiful the way they fixed him up. It looks like he's sleeping." I don't care how many times you want to kind of kid yourself, because when you look at that person, he doesn't look like he's sleeping. You distinctively notice that the physical structure is just the same as you once knew this person. But there's something missing. All of a sudden, it's just a clodded plot of dirt.

By the way, I'm going to tell you how you can have a cheap funeral. You're very fortunate to hear this, and you may want to give a little extra offering as a result of the money that you will save. This would be the time to do it--while you're living. You may have never had the experience that I'm about to share. When I go with families, one of the first things that the mortician does is that he takes you into his display room, and he gives you a monetary figure, and that figure is one-call-does-all. It's for the whole complete job. So he takes you into his display room, and he'll show you this casket, and he'll say, "Now this one here is one of our better caskets. It's 24-gauge metal. It's pure copper overlaid with silver. It is satin inside here with ruffled edgings." And boy, I'll tell you. It's weird as you stand there listening to this as they describe these layout boxes. They tell you they will leave you alone to try to figure out how much you're going to let them get out of you.

Eventually, they get around to the corner back there, and there they have one of the simplest looking boxes. It maybe costs a few hundred dollars, and that's not a bad price. (The old pine boxes are illegal. You people who've been going around talking about getting a pine box, it's illegal.) But, back in the corner, eventually he'll get you to this little box. It's the simplest cheapest looking thing. And I mean it's cheap looking. You know what they can do with plastics--tremendous things. Just think what they would do to the morticians if somebody came out with a nice plastic casket for maybe $39.50 or something. But they're not going to do that. They're going to hit you up. This casket is really just as good a box as anything else for that clod of dirt you're going to put in there. But it's really cheap looking. Do you know what they're getting at?

It finally occurred to me how they get you. They get you because you run a funeral service where the casket is on public display. Usually, most people have the good taste to close the lid so you don't even see the departed. So all during the service, you're sitting up there looking at this box. That's what the mortician counts on. He doesn't want you to sit there and look at this little cheap box--cardboard covered. Your loved ones are looking at it. There are no design marks to doll it up a little bit. That's going to make you feel just terrible. Here's your loved one. Don't you think more of him than that?

Well, the way to run a funeral is to have a private burial. Buy the cheapest box you can. Have a private burial. Have a simple grave site with the family. Then run a memorial service where you don't have a casket at all. You ought to spread this idea around among your friends. The mortician will hate you, but the believers will love you for it. If you just get over not having the casket in church, you'll have a condition for a dignified service without the pressures of the economics involved in the box that you're going to bury.

Alright, that was just extra information. Now back to the matter of the soul. When it is gone, that body radically changes. Whatever else has happened to it, it is distinctively different because this thing that God created has been removed.

Alright, He has created our souls. In Genesis 1:27, we have an amplification of verse 26. Genesis 1:27 says, "So God created man in his own image." Here you have another word. This is the word "created," and this is "bara." "Bara" means "out of nothing." God just speaks, and He brings into existence. The soul of man was the result of divine creation. Verse 26 says that God is going to "asah" man in His own image. That was God's plan. That was God's pattern. In the pattern of God (out of what God's personality is), He's going to make man. So then verse 27 tells us how God did that. God simply created, by His spoken word, the shadow personality of man in the image personality of God. This was given to men and women. Verse 27 says "as male and female." So men and women both have souls. They're the immaterial part of our being, but the soul is the real person. When the soul moves out, you are gone, and there's nothing left. That is the real you.

The Body

With this body formed, with God having created the pattern of the soul within man after His own image, then the Word of God says, "God breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of God." That is the soul life of God, and the minute God breathed His soul life into the body of man (which already had a pattern of soul prepared), the body came to life, and Adam opened his eyes, and he became a living soul. He had a living soul with these parts that we've indicated, and a living human spirit, and a living body. The soul gave man capacity for fellowship with other people. The human spirit gave him capacity for fellowship with God. That's why the Bible says that God breathed the "lives" (plural) into man--a soul life and a spirit life.

So Genesis 2:7 tells us that a man became a distinctive being different from all the animals, because he had within him a soul activated by the breath life of God. So the human soul has capacity that reflects the capacities of God. One of the capacities that your soul has is described for us in Psalm 42:1 where it says, "As the heart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after you, O, God." So breathes my soul after you. Your soul is capable of breathing. Of breathing what? Of breathing in the Word of God and breathing out the Word of God.

Now with that as the background of how God constructed you, and how we function, let's look at Ephesians 4:17. In this passage, we have explained to us what happens within our soul when we go negative toward the Word of God. All of this is part of Jude's explanation. Meet apostasy by remembering what the apostles have taught, and being positive (receptive) to God's truth. Ephesians 4:17-18 tell us about a condition in the soul which builds callouses on the soul. It builds them where? It builds callouses on your mentality. It builds them on your volition. It builds them on your emotions.

Let's review this again. You have a soul structure. You have mentality, volition, and emotions. This soul, and these various elements, can express themselves toward God, and your soul also expresses itself toward man. It, in effect, breathes out. However, if something should happen to the breathing structure of the soul, it will not be able to breathe out. It will not be able to express itself toward God, and it will not be able to express itself toward man. That's the condition you have in Ephesians 4:17: The apostle Paul says "This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord." Something here stifles personal spiritual growth. That's what he's talking about. So he says, "This I say." The word "say" here is the word "lego." "Lego" means "explain." This he's going to explain to us because of a problem that he faced in the context; that is, of Christians growing to spiritual maturity.

In verse 14, he says, "That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." The apostle Paul says that some of you Ephesian Christians have not moved from spiritual immaturity on. You are at an immature state, and you're carried about by everybody's opinion that comes along. Some of you Christians have not come to the point where some character under the guise of some authority cannot come up to you and say, "You know, what you heard in church--that was wrong. And I'm going to show you a few ideas." And you won't be all broken up over that. You will probably take a look at this character and say, "I'm not so sure what I heard was wrong. As far as I can see, it was right. And I'd like you to get lost."

But some of the Ephesians were saying, "Oh is that right? Tell me about it." And some character came along with his particular viewpoint, maybe by deliberate deception or just because he was immature and hadn't gotten with it, and they were swayed and carried away. Now Paul says, "That's bad. You should not be dangling yo-yos when it comes to your spiritual life." So he says, "I'm going to say something and explain to you something. I testify in the Lord." This indicates a solemn treatment of what he's going to say. "That you" introduces a purpose. And what is that purpose? "That you do not walk as other gentiles walk." That is, that they are not to walk as do the unbelievers. The unbeliever walks under the direction of his old sin nature. He said that too many Ephesians are walking under the direction of the old sin nature, and I'm going to show you why they're walking that way; how they came to that condition; and, what the hazardous is.

"This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord (a true declaration), that you henceforth walk not as other gentiles." And how do they walk? "In the vanity of their mind." And the word "vanity" is the Greek word "mataiotes." "Mataiotes" means emptiness. This is the crucial keyword for describing the downward course of a believer from spiritual understanding to spiritual darkness. The unsaved man has nothing but emptiness in his mind. He has no divine truth. There is no orientation to God.

A Christian can come to that same state of emptiness in his soul. He does this by being negative to true Bible doctrine instruction. Your soul will not find an emptiness created within it if you are negative to false instruction. But if you are negative to true instruction, a condition of emptiness will be set up in your soul. I don't care who you are; I don't care how often you have come to church; or, how many years you've been around church. If you are the character who is sitting out there, for one reason or another, maybe very sincere and very seemingly correct to you, and you are listening to the Word of God and you find yourself saying, "No I don't like that and I resist that," you are creating a condition of "mataiotes" in your soul. That is an emptiness or a low pressure condition.

Here's what this does. The effect of this emptiness is that it creates a spiritual vacuum within your soul. It says, "And walk in the vanity of their minds." This is the emptiness of their minds. That is the "nous" that we talked about in your perceptive mind, where you learn things. You have this condition of emptiness. When this vacuum condition develops, what happens is that you begin sucking in human viewpoints; false doctrine; religion; mental attitude sins; guilt complexes; a spirit of being negative; and, a slavery to the details of life. Every wrong thing you can imagine just comes drifting in like a big whale that's opened his mouth, and all the floats, debris, and trash just go rushing in. You create a low pressure condition in your mind, and this starts sucking everything in that is described in Scripture as doctrine of demons.

The result is that this lays down the first layer of callous on your soul relative to these areas of expression--your mind, your volition, and your emotions. Now the callous does not come in just like that. That's what's so subtle about it. That's what's so natural about it. It starts with just a little bit of hardening. It's just a little building up. Gradually, another layer and another layer. If you say, "No" once too often, you will come to the point where every expression and every opening for you to breathe out toward man or toward God becomes so completely clogged up and completely closed in, that then you have established for yourself the condition which the Scriptures call the sin unto death. This is when a Christian is taken to heaven.

This is why some young person, perhaps, for no reason at all, is suddenly taken out of this world and taken to heaven. This is why somebody who seems very promising is taken out and gone. It's not always the reason. However, very frequently, if we knew the facts, we would discover that within the soul of that person, made in the image of God, there had come a complete clogging of the opening by which that soul was to breathe in and breathe out toward God and toward man. When that happens, you've had it, and I can guarantee you that you will experience the sin unto death. If you're still alive, kicking and breathing right now, no matter how negative you've been, the openings are not completely closed, or you'd be gone. When this happens, there is no return.

Now the soul, as it begins building up these callouses, enters a very troubled and unhappy state. Verse 18 says, "Having the understanding darkened." This is what happens now. You're bringing in all this human viewpoint trash. You have created a low pressure condition, an emptiness in your mind because of your negative volition, and so in comes a darkness. The Greek word is "skotizo." "Skotizo" means a blackout of the mind, and that's how you can translate it, a blackout to divine viewpoint from all the stuff that has been drawn in. It all begins at that little point of being negative to truth. A Christian who is in this state begins to lose his grace orientation. He becomes completely disoriented to the mind of God because a darkness begins to settle upon a part of his being. Where does that darkness settle?

It says, "Having the understanding darkened." The understanding is "dianoia" and it is made up of two words. The first part "dia" means "through." The second part comes from "noeo," and "noeo" means "to think." So the word translated here as "understanding" means that the part of your soul that thinks through to decisions is blacked out. That is this perceptive mind where you're thinking things through. You're learning and you're thinking through. You're making the decisions, "This is true. This is false. I accept this. I reject this." This is completely blocked out and a darkness settles upon it. That darkness is the result of callouses being built upon that thinking portion of your being. So you can't think through. The Christian is spiritually blacked out. He's insensitive. Gradually, the Christian becomes more and more insensitive to divine truth, and strangely enough, receptive to Satan's falsehood.

This has very serious effects which we can't go into extensively here. It has, for example, the effect that it will destroy your capacity to love. Anybody who is in the condition where his "dianoia" is blanketed out in a condition of blackout because of negative volition that has built callouses upon the soul is a person that cannot love God. You cannot love God with your whole body as per Matthew 22:36-37. You cannot love the right one of the opposite sex. This is the person who makes the wrong choice in marriage.

The unbeliever is in this condition. He is in the condition where, by and large, these expressions (these openings) are all blocked toward God. He doesn't take in divine viewpoint except for what morality he functions under that keeps some of the openings going, and keeps his expression toward mankind correct. By and large, the unbeliever cannot have a basis for finding the right man or the right woman. His particular mate is never truly located. This is the reason people will make mistakes in marriage, and will go through a series of divorces trying to correct it. They don't realize that if you've ever had a divorce, the first thing you want to do is not to get married again until you have gone through an extensive spiritual enlightenment as the result of taking in doctrine. It's crucial that you should be positive toward the Word of God if you're thinking about getting married.

The signals that God will give you will not come through to your soul. It will not come through to your mentality. Why? Because of darkness that has settled upon your mentality. Why? Because God is giving you good advice. He may be giving it to you through your parents; through your pastor; through your teachers; or, through your friends. It may be right-on-the-beam advice concerning this person, but you neutralize it. Why? Because up in your mind is all of this trash of human viewpoint, and it contradicts the divine viewpoint that you're getting, and you don't have the sense to realize that the divine viewpoint is right and that the human viewpoint is wrong. Therefore, you cancel out what God thinks, and move along in the darkness. You are in the dark, but you think you're in the light.

Consequently, you make choices, and sometimes these concern your friends. This also is a problem--to love your friends. Some people can have a relationship to other people, but others are constantly rotating friends. Some people have a huge discard pile of friends. The farther along they get, the bigger the discard pile becomes of friends that they've thrown over. They've pitched them out. If you're pitching your friends out all the time, one of the reasons is because you're not capable of having an affectionate relationship with them because there's a defect in your soul--a darkness that does not permit that expression. This results in unhappiness, and it causes you to create a pseudo love or a pseudo spirituality.

These are the people who sit in church and they sing the loudest, "Oh how I love Jesus." Their minds are so dark they can hardly read the words on the page, let alone to express how they love Jesus. You don't love Jesus. Anytime somebody runs around and has a lot to say to you about how our dear and sweet and good the Lord is in that kind of an emotional outburst, you can almost begin to suspect that there's a darkness upon his soul. I don't mean that you should not say that. You can say that in a perfectly legitimate way, but just take care that it is not some emotional cover-up for the fact that you have been negative to the Word. So you're going to get up with your cocker spaniel tail wagging and give a real good glowing beautiful testimony. What are you covering up? The fact that your mentality has been darkened.

The callouses that build up on the soul will destroy your mastery of the details of life. You'll be miserable with your possessions. You'll be miserable with the routines. You'll have no capacity to appreciate anything. All of this stems from failure to breathe in the Word of God.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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