Biblical Framework: Creation, Fall

Introduction and Framework Texts for Emotional Life

0:02 The following message was delivered at the 1991 Reformed Baptist Singles Conference.

0:12 I do want to say that it is a great privilege for my wife and for me to be with you for this singles retreat. We have followed with interest over the years the development of this ministry and fellowship among the churches and this particular segment of our church life and fellowship. And we are thankful to God for the reports we have heard as we've prayed for these retreats over the years. And I am thankful that in God's good providence, my wife and I are able to be with you.

0:47 There are some compensations for becoming budding geriatrics and middle-aged people. When you go visit the grandkids, you love them and leave them. And then when you want to leave them and come away, you can do so with a good conscience. And after many years...

1:04 There are some compensations for being a bachelor when I went away on such ministries. It's a delight now to be able to have my wife with me on some of those ministries, particularly the ones near at hand. And while I have been asked to come as the speaker, and she's very glad to have me fulfill that role, God has been pleased to teach her some lessons along life's way, if through no other means, living with a difficult man for almost 35 years. And...

1:34 She has a mother's heart and a big sister's heart. And please, any of you women who desire to seek her out and to ask questions of her that might be more appropriate asking a woman, or you'd just like to get life through the eyes of a preacher's wife on some of these things, please feel free to seek her out. My nose will not be bent if I come back to my room and I have to go sit out in the lounge to read or to study while she's speaking privately. And I trust that others of you will take that opportunity with me as it's appropriate as well.

2:10 We do want to have as much personal interaction with you as is possible. I did not join you for any of your athletic events for two simple reasons. The drive for conquest and winning has never been mortified in me, and I only know one way to play, and that's not to play hard, but to play to win. And in so doing, I can jeopardize two things.

2:33 My Christian testimony and my aging body. And I did not want to do either. I wanted to stand before you in reasonably good shape, both physically and spiritually, to minister the word of God. Seriously, as we come now to the subject before us, I could not help but think of how profound were the words of the hymn that we just sang, that all of our knowledge, sense, and sight, lie in deepest darkness, shrouded.

3:07 What vivid imagery. All of our knowledge, our sense of what's right, and our sight of reality is nothing but a deep, deep mist of darkness until God, by the Spirit through the Word, breaks through and gives us His own light. Let us again unite our hearts in prayer and ask Him that He will do that for us in our sessions together.

3:35 Our Father, Father, we thank You for the great privilege of addressing You as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God whose ear is open to the cry of the needy. And, O Lord, in the hymn we have just sung, we've confessed that our knowledge at its best, our sight at its best, all that we think we know and understand are but a mass of misty, inky, black darkness. O Lord, unless You come and cause us to see light, so that in Your light we see light,

4:17 we will leave these sessions more confused than we have ever been with respect to these elusive things called our emotions and our feelings. We pray that the Spirit may come upon us as the Spirit of wisdom and illumination, may He come as the Spirit of light who dispels the darkness, the Spirit of power who overcomes reluctance and prejudice. O may He be present in the ministry of the Word to conform our thinking to Scripture in this vital area of human experience. Guide us, we plead, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

5:01 Amen. Now I believe that each one of you is aware that the announced Sunday, the subject for my four messages, has been Jesus Christ, the pattern for our emotional life. One of the young men sitting at the table with me tonight was very honest and blunt. He said, I don't have a clue of what that title will entail.

5:28 And there may be others who, if you were just as blunt and honest, would say the same thing. Perhaps others have already conjured up in your minds what it might be that will come under, that basic title of Jesus Christ, the pattern for our emotional life. And if I were limited to only three texts of Scripture to constitute the framework for our study of this vast, this very profound and yet very practical and intensely needy subject, the three texts I would choose are these. Hebrews 2, 17a.

6:09 Where? Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren. And in the context, his brethren are all those whom he came to save. And this text says it behooved him.

6:27 It was necessary for him, that is our Lord Jesus, in all things to be made like unto his brethren. Now what kind of creature, are you without your emotions, without your feelings? If I had some magic wand that I could stretch out and touch the shoulder of every one of you, and that wand would totally neuter every single capacity to feel any emotion whatsoever, what would be left in this room? A bunch of lobotomized robots.

7:09 That's all. The only difference between you and a robot, is if you stick a screwdriver in the robot, out will come nuts and bolts. If we stick one in you, out would come blood. But if we took out your emotions, that's what you would be.

7:24 And this text says, concerning our Lord Jesus, it was necessary for him in all things to be made like unto his brethren. So that with reference to everything pertaining to the intricate and vast, complexity of human emotions and feelings, our Lord Jesus has been made like unto us. The second text I would use as part of the overall framework, is 1 Peter 2.21.

7:59 For hereunto were you called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps.

8:14 In the hymn, we sang tonight, we focused on the relationship of the sufferings of Christ, to the redemption from the power and the penalty of sin. And that is the great focus of the New Testament. The doctrine of Christ dying for us, is the very center of the gospel. But the scripture tells us, and in particular 1 Peter 2.21,

8:40 that in the sufferings of Christ, we have not only, a complete and adequate provision for the forgiveness of our sins, but we also have a perfect example for us to follow. For hereunto were you called, it is part of our calling, not only to be brought to the place where, under conviction of sin, we repudiate all confidence in ourselves, for forgiveness and acceptance with God, and rest completely, in the perfect obedience and death of Jesus Christ, as our sole righteousness, but we were also effectually called by the Holy Spirit,

9:25 that the same Christ, upon whom alone we rest for acceptance with God, would be the Christ, in whose footsteps we plant our feet. Hereunto were you called to follow his steps. And as we trace out various dimensions of the life of our Lord, as recorded in the gospel records, we shall see in our subsequent studies, again and again and again, that our Lord was an intensely and unashamedly emotional man. He was not a celestial robot.

10:12 He was an intensely unashamedly emotional man. The perfect man who has gone before us and left his footprints in Holy Scripture that we should follow his steps, even in the expression of our complex, intricate, and oft-times elusive emotional constitution. Then the third text that I would use as the framework of our study is 1 John 2.6.

10:47 1 John 2.6, 1 John 2.6, or as our English friends would say, 1 John 2.6.

10:53 And I've never found out why we do it differently.

10:56 He that saith he abideth in him, that is, he who says he has saving union with Christ, that's what the term abiding in Christ means. It's not a description of some higher life, some extra dimension of the Christian life. It is the very essence of the Christian life. He that saith he abideth in him, he who professes to be saved, savingly united to Christ, ought himself also to walk, even as he walked.

11:30 If we name the name of Christ and profess saving union with Christ, the word ought is pivotal here. The word ought is a word of duty, a word of solemn obligation. And whoever says that he abides in him ought is under solemn obligation himself also to walk, even as he walked. Well, how do we know how we walked?

11:57 Well, we know it from his walk as recorded in the scriptures. And again, that was not the walk of an automaton. It was not the walk of someone who was so utterly taken up with the realm of the heavenly that he was out of touch with the things that cause shock and grief and sorrow and disappointment and amazement and anguish. Anger and compassion and all of the full range of human emotions.

12:28 He walked among us, having been made in all things like us, conscious that his walk was not only a walk culminating in the death of the cross that would provide the sole ground of our acceptance with God, but it was a walk that provides a valid for the way in which you and I are to walk. And I say if there were three texts to which I were limited in setting the framework of our study, it is those three texts, and I hope that they've done nothing else, they've at least provided a hook in your conscience

The Necessity of a Biblical and Theological Canvas

13:10 that this subject is a valid subject, a vital subject, and one to which you have obligation to give serious attention. Now the great temptation for us would be to take these texts and to plunge right into the obvious implications and application of them as they relate to the announced subject, namely Jesus Christ, the pattern for our emotional life. However, such an approach would be both superficial and irresponsible. These texts say what they say and mean what they mean precisely because they are couched in a way that is not

13:53 vast array of massive biblical and theological realities. Biblical and theological realities without which the statements and directives of these texts simply could not exist or could not be properly understood. Now let me illustrate what I mean. Suppose I had behind me a large canvas with a beautiful painting on it. And on this particular painting I had blocked out

14:26 everything but two deer who were bent over feeding. And you could all see if you knew the difference between a deer and a cow and a cow and a horse. Not everything with four legs and two ears was a horse to you or a cow. You knew the distinctive qualities of a deer. And you even know that the

14:48 doe has no horns and the boar has no legs. And I had blocked out everything but two deer who has a rack and here's a doe and a buck and I've blocked out everything on this canvas but the doe and the buck feeding. Now there's no question we'd be 100% agreed if we took the vote what are the objects we see a doe and a buck what are they doing they are feeding. But now if I were to ask you what is the significance of their feeding in the way in which they are portrayed in this work of art you would not know simply having the doe and the buck isolated you don't know whether they are deer in captivity and surrounded by a

15:33 metal electric charged fence and have been thrown some food by the proprietor they may be there in a little kiddie park you don't know. Seeing them in isolation you cannot really understand the significance of what the artist is seeking to portray. Is he seeking to portray something about the fact that deer are an object that children like to watch in a little kiddie park or it could be that the surrounding is a surrounding of a museum and if we pull off the covering from the rest of it we see that they are nothing but stuffed deer. They've been to the taxidermist for on one side of them is

16:17 a great big grizzly bear and on the other side there's a big polar bear on an imitation mound of ice and lo and behold you say ha this is a museum with stuffed animals on the other hand if I pull off all of the covering and you see that here is a beautiful wooded natural setting so real you can smell the moss and you can almost hear the rippling of the brook that goes by and you say aha I see what the artist is doing he's seeking to present the beauty of the deer in its native untouched setting. If he showed over in one corner a red cap

17:01 and the end of a piece of metal aimed at one of the deer you'd say he was seeking to portray the hunter after his prey now you see we could go on here for a long time with this but you see what I'm doing I'm saying that understanding the isolated object does not really give you a full understanding of what the artist is seeking to portray in the whole of his canvas and these three texts that we've looked at have some specific individual identity I was able to speak upon them briefly without any detailed exegesis but what I'm saying is that those three statements that it behooved

17:46 Christ to be made in all things like unto his brethren for we are called to follow his steps if we say we abide in him we ought to walk as he walked they do not come to us in isolation with the spotlight on those texts as though there were no supportive backdrop on the canvas and I want us tonight in our initial study not so much to concentrate on the deer but on the setting in which they are laid before us so that when we turn our attention more specifically to the emotional life of our Lord Jesus and what constituted

18:30 his emotional life the expressions of it and how we make the bridge from our perfect savior and his emotional life to us in our imperfect sinful state in our emotional life everything will be conditioned by the whole canvas and that's what we're going to do tonight God helping us and I have three major paints with which I'm going to work those of you who know me know that I can't talk in a stream of consciousness I was probably born crying in yelps of free my mother never told me that but I would not doubt it so the subject we're going to take up

19:15 under three headings tonight is the biblical and theological framework or if you want to use the illustration the biblical and theological canvas of our study of Christ as the pattern for our emotional life and as with so many aspects of Christian privilege and duty it's essential to view this subject within the framework of those great realities of scripture creation fall and redemption and that's what we're going to do in the time that remains we're going to consider first of all the constitution of man

The Constitution of Man in Original Creation: An Emotional Being

19:57 in the original creation you will never understand your emotions and what to do with them what not to do with them unless you have some fundamental grasp on what the scripture says about your constitution as part of the human race in the original creation and so we're going to be working around in genesis one and two for a few minutes minutes together the constitution of man and I'm using the word man in the sense of mankind in the way it is used in genesis chapter one and verse twenty six I'm not using it as exclusive of the male

20:41 gender but of mankind and God said let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over the cattle and over all the earth and over creeping every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth and God created man you see the sense in which it is used in his own image in the image of God created he Him male and female created he them mankind is the image of God and in the specifics

21:24 of creating mankind in his image, God made a man, that is, someone of the male gender, and a woman, someone of the female gender. Now, when we come to this question of what does it mean that man is made the image of God or made in the image of God, certainly much could be said that I am neither qualified nor prepared to say tonight. But what I want to do is to concentrate

22:04 on the basic idea bound up in the terminology of let us make man in our image and after our likeness. And to illustrate this, I almost brought my wife's little cosmetic mirror that she carries in her overnight case. If I were to hold an object in my hand right now, hidden from your view, but then take a mirror and hold it up here at an angle where it would reflect what was in my hand, you

22:41 could see the image of the object in my hand and know what it was. Now, God says, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. In other words, what does it mean to be a man in our image and after our likeness? In other words, what does it mean to be a man in our image and after our likeness? When we look at man as he comes from the hand of God,

23:02 we are warranted to deduce something about what God is like. For man was made the image of the invisible God. And in the mysterious constitution of man as male and female, in a body, soul, a corporeal and a spiritual interpenetrating existence. there is something mirrored of the invisible God Himself.

23:37 And while we could focus on many aspects of what it means for man to be an image-bearer of God, our subject is the whole subject of Jesus Christ, the pattern for our emotional life. So let's seek to discover if there is anything in the account of creation that indicates when God made man, He made him an emotional being, so that our emotions are part of our con-created reality in the image of God. That is, our emotions do not have their origin in sin.

24:21 They were not something injected. They were not injected into the human race by the devil. But they are something in man that mirrors blessed, glorious, captivatingly beautiful realities in the being of God Himself.

24:41 Well, let's look at the account and see if we have any explicit or implied suggestions with respect to how God made man with reference to this matter of His emotions. Now, after God creates the man and the woman, what's the first thing He does according to chapter 1 and verse 28? He no sooner makes them, but what we read, And God blessed them. He pronounced over them His good will and His favor.

25:18 To bless someone is to pronounce good will upon them. It's the opposite of curse. Jesus said, He said, bless and curse not. To curse someone is to pronounce judgment upon them.

25:32 To express ill will towards them. To bless them is to pronounce or to pronounce and actually confer good will and blessing and favor upon them. So God blessed them. Now, put yourself in Adam and Eve's place.

25:52 You've come to consciousness. This from the creative hand of God. And the first words you hear from the mouth of God are opening up His heart, pronouncing His good will and His favor upon you. Do you think you could take that in an emotionless, passionless way?

26:16 Or do you think there was something in the heart of Adam and Eve that linked within them with the purest that the God who made them, Jesus said, is indicating that everything in His heart towards them expresses good will. First thing He does is to bless them. God blesses them. Then He goes on and He commands them.

26:44 And He says, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves above it. upon the earth. Now do you think Adam and Eve could have heard such a mandate without any emotions of wonder? They look out into their world. They see the vast creatures of

27:10 the sea. They see the earth in its pristine beauty without the curse. And the God who pronounces goodwill upon them now says, you are my vice-regent. You are my representative to be fruitful and multiply, replenish this earth, subdue it, have dominion over every other creature that I've made. Now how in the world could Adam and Eve hear such words

27:36 without feeling something of the emotion of excitement, of awe, delight, of eager anticipation to begin the vast task that God has laid upon them. And then God goes on to say, behold, I've given you every herb yielding seed. I know it's popular now to start pronouncing the H, but when I was brought out, herb was herb and not herb. Herb was a guy that lived down the street. So you may have your herbs, but

28:16 I will have my herbs. I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed to you. It shall be for food. Now here they are made with physical appetite. And now God says,

28:36 pay attention to all the herbs, the edible herbs and all of the fruit of the trees. Do you think they could look at that without emotion? Emotions of desire. Emotions again of joy and delight that God should have provided such a variety that even upon anticipation, would make, as it were, their taste buds wake up and their gastric juices begin to flow with the gastrointestinal excitement that they were going to be able to discover all these goodies that God had placed in the garden.

29:15 And then we read verse 31, And God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good, and there was evening and morning the sixth day, and the heavens and the earth were finished. And on the seventh day God finished the work which He had made and rested on the seventh day from all His work, and God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. Adam and Eve's first day on earth was on Lord's Day Sabbath,

29:52 in which they could with God-like delight and complacency drink Him the one, the winner of all that God had made, in open-faced, unbroken, unashamed, uninhibited communion with the God who had made them, so that the noblest heights of delight and joy in God and complacency and appreciation of God and of His works are the very note on which the creation account of Genesis 1 ends. But then when we move, when we move on to the expanded account of creation in Genesis 2,

30:35 we see more strong indications of other emotions which were part of man's experience as made in the image of God. For example, in chapter 2 and verse 15, we read that Jehovah God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Before He created the woman, the man was made for the task of dressing the garden and keeping it. In other words, there was such a profusion of life in Eden that though there were no thorns and thistles, the ground was so uncursed and blessed

31:17 that it would bring forth so profusely that it needed to be dressed and kept or that it would choke itself with life, if I may use the terminology. And so Adam is...

31:29 He's placed there and given a task. Now, would that be done without any response of emotion from Adam? Of a sense again of wonder that his God was giving to him the responsibility to be the steward of his world and of the things that he had made? A sense of being humbled that God would entrust to him the care of the work of His own hands?

31:57 It's unthinkable, you see, that an unformed... that an unborn man made in the image of God could be given such a noble task and not respond with the emotions of noble, dignified joy mingled with humility without any kind of Uriah heathism.

32:19 And then look at the prohibition of verse 16. And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

32:40 Do you think Adam felt anything of a holy fear at the prohibition of God? Think of it. The word death would be a faith word had man never sinned. In the day that you eat, you'll die.

32:59 The very tone in which God must have spoken it to Adam must have struck chords of holy dread. In his very being. Don't eat of that tree, Adam. In the day that you eat, literally dying, you shall die.

33:17 So that the emotion of dread and fear were present in Adam's unfallen state. And then in the whole account of the formation of the woman, obviously Adam had some of the emotions of loneliness and incompleteness without any sinful petulance or grumbling against God. For we read in verse 18, and God said, it's not good that the man should be alone. The first thing in all his creation over which God did not say, very good was man alone.

33:58 It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make an helper answering to him. Amen. Amen.

34:07 Amen. Amen. Amen. Make his counterpart indicating that God himself beheld man in his state of incompleteness and loneliness without petulance.

34:23 And then with mingled emotions God brings before Adam or Adam responding to God's activity, God brings all of the creatures and gives to Adam the privilege of naming them. And naming them, you see, was not just a matter of putting an arbitrary group of verbal symbols together and saying, that's cat, that's cow, that's horse. Naming in the whole Hebrew concept has the idea of discovering its nature and its function and assigning by means of verbal symbols something that would indicate that. Tremendous challenge to his cognitive, observing, intellectual faculties.

35:06 And that could not be done without a sense again of the emotion of how noble and how marvelous it is to be a creature in the image of God with a capacity to think and to categorize the observations and this animal's function is this as opposed to and in contrast with and supplementing this of another animal. Here was a whole process of what we would call scientific classification.

35:36 And what emotions are there when you bend your mind to a task and then you bring it to a completion. Tremendous emotion of a sense of well-being and accomplishment. The very thing God had when he finished creating. He beheld all that he made and it was good.

35:54 And God soaked in with delight the fruit of his own creative handiwork. Adam must have known something of that emotion of God when he named the animals and God was pleased with his designation of them. But in all of that, you see, as he observed, he observed there wasn't a one of them that was his counterpart. They grunted to one another and the dolphins squealed one to another.

36:23 But there was no creature that could talk with him as God did. No creature who was his counterpart that was not found a helper answering to his need. And so God, as someone has said, was the first anesthesiologist and God anesthetized Adam for his need. And so God anesthetized Adam for his need.

36:42 And so God put him into a deep sleep. God is no sadist. He didn't say, here's a stick, bite on it while I do the operation.

36:50 And God put him to sleep. But the passage says, verse 22, after verse 21, Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept.

37:03 And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh, sutured him up. I like to picture God in an anthropomorphic way of just coming and taking his two fingers and where he had split him open, and just seaming him up without even a scar being left. The man, the God who created the world out of nothing, surely could do that. Closed up the flesh and the rib which Jehovah God had taken from the man made he a woman and brought her to the man.

37:32 Now look at verse 23. You talk about emotion. And the man said, now how do you think he said it? He had been classifying how long we don't know, been observing all of the various, animals and seeking to sort out their peculiar properties and capacities and sizes and functions and assigning them names that would identify them in those classifications and functions but in all of them no counterpart to himself.

38:03 None that answered to him. None that was his mirror image yet different from him to compliment him and yet enough like him to commune with him. And he wakes up from his anesthesiology and what does he see?

38:19 He sees what God had made for him. Now how do you think Adam said these words? Oh, this is now bone of my bones. Flesh of my flesh.

38:30 Oh yeah, she'll be called woman. She was taken out of man.

38:35 Now I've met some men that I think that's the way they would have responded.

38:41 Sin has so warped and twisted them that they're neutered emotionally.

38:47 No. I feel it's impossible to reproduce how Adam must have said, His eyes would have enlarged as he saw this beautiful creature of God standing before him.

39:05 I have two eyes. She has two eyes. I have nose. She has nose.

39:12 I have mouth. She answers to me. She is like me. Yet my shoulders are broad.

39:18 Hers are more narrow. She has soft breasts. I have a firm muscular chest. She differs from me.

39:26 Yet she's like me. And as he does with her what he did with all the other animals, he then exclaims, This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. He should be called Isha, the Hebrew of Ish.

39:46 She is Isha. She is my counterpart. She is an extension of me, but separate from me. She answers to me, yet she's not my replica.

39:56 She is my complement. And you take all, all of the emotions of excitement and of amazement, of gratitude. And may I say the first and probably the only purely holy infatuation that ever was experienced on the face of the earth. All at once, all the emotions flooded the soul of Adam.

40:25 And the account of creation ends with these wonderful words. Whether Adam spoke them, or Moses by inspiration spoke them, careful and responsible expositors differ. It makes no difference. It's the word of God, and Jesus puts his imprimatur upon it in Matthew 19.

40:45 Therefore, because of what the woman is in relationship to the man, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. In total physical nakedness, in the presence of God, with nothing in the deepest chambers of the soul which would cause an emotion of shame, the account of creation closes in this intensely emotional scene

41:27 of the man receiving the woman and together standing before, for God, in shameless joy and delight, in total nakedness. Now that's where the account of creation ends. And anyone who says that the Bible is the cause of all prudishness, and the Bible is anti-sex and anti-reality with regard to our human sexuality is just plain ignorant, or if not ignorant, perverse. God unashamedly says, as the crowning statement of creation, they were both naked, the man and the wife,

42:11 and were not ashamed.

42:15 Now, do you feel something of the emotional climate of creation? I've tried to take you into it and let the text, as it were, speak out its own message to you. And I hope what you've seen from this brief survey is that in the original creation, man was made not only a rational being, one who could reason and think, he has a noose, a noggin, a thinker, gray matter, but he not only has a rational faculty and a volitional faculty, one who can choose and decide, I choose to call this animal a cow and this one a horse,

42:58 and whatever else he may have designated them as to their identity and function, man not only was made a rational being, with a mind, a volitional being, with a will, but he was made an emotional being, one who could feel in his soul such sensations as joy, wonder, excitement, anticipation, love, fear, loneliness, exhilaration, fulfillment, complacency.

Defining Emotions: Temperature of Thought and Felt Sensibilities

43:34 Man was made with a very prominent emotional circuitry, a very prominent emotional circuitry, woven through the texture of his whole being when he came from the hand of God. Now those feelings, those emotions, we shall call, for lack of any better definitions, and this is very interesting, some of you know a little bit about philosophy and psychology and even the theology of trying to describe man and his emotions, it's almost impossible to come up with a definition of emotions. Let me just share with you a couple that I find very interesting. I find very helpful and workable.

44:15 Dabney called the emotions the temperature of thought.

44:19 The temperature of thought. Now let me show you why that's a good working definition. I want you all to think right now. I'm going to say two words.

44:31 Saddam Hussein.

44:35 I'm just saying two words. I'm going to try to say them like a computer would say them. Saddam Hussein,

44:48 I have put no emotional overtones to the way in which I have sought to pronounce the syllables, the vocables, which identify a man in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein.

45:02 And now you think. Think. Saddam Hussein.

45:08 And as you think, what happens? There's a temperature of your thought,

45:14 which are your emotions. Emotions of disgust, of anger, of righteous hatred. Do not I hate them that hate thee, O God. I hate them with perfect love.

45:29 Perfect hatred, as we read tonight. Pity for the poor dupes that he has led. Pity upon the countless thousands he has murdered in cold blood. You see, when you think, your thoughts have...

45:45 Dabney says that is what our emotions are. The temperature of thought. For some of you, I can say the name Mary, and you feel nothing. For others, your hearts already increase from 75 to 85 beats.

46:01 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

46:04 Why? Because Mary was not just a vocable, a woman's name. It is a special woman's name to you. And therefore, your thought has temperature of a differing degree at the word Mary than does my thought.

46:25 If you said Marilyn, I don't think of that dumb blonde that died on her overdose.

46:33 I think of my former brunette and the beauty of her graying years. And my thought has a lot of temperature. You see? So I like that as a working definition.

46:45 That the emotions are the temperature of thought. Now, a certain preacher who's trying to teach preaching to a group of people in an academy, in trying to teach them something about the emotions in relationship to preaching, he came up with this definition, that the emotions are the felt sensibilities of the soul. That's what our emotions are. The felt sensibilities of the soul.

47:13 Our emotions are to our inner life what the feeling of hot and cold are to the nerve endings of our fingers. If I place my finger in this ice water, I have a sensibility of cold. My brain registers that the temperature of this water is considerably below the natural temperature of my body. And the moment I touch the ice water, there is something that registers.

47:39 There is a felt sensibility of the nerve endings of my finger. If I put my finger on a hot stove, there would be an immediate reaction, a felt sensibility of the nerve endings. If someone were to shout, and the waves set up by his larynx and mouth and the rest would strike my eardrum and the auditory nerve, then there would be a felt sensibility of a shout. And if it were loud enough, it would border on pain.

48:10 And when I eat something, the taste buds register. It's salty. It's sweet. It's sour.

48:20 It's neither, nor. I'm not sure what it is. Well, what the nerve endings and the fingers are to us physically, and our taste buds, and our eardrums, so the emotions are to the soul. The felt sensibilities of the soul.

48:39 Webster defines emotions as the state or capability of having the feelings aroused to the point of awareness. When your feelings are aroused to the point you're aware of them, he says that when your emotions, your feelings, that's an emotion. Well, he's really saying in a more complicated way what I've tried to say, the felt sensibilities of the soul. But crucial to grasp the subject matter we're wrestling with is not to have a formal technical definition, but to grasp the fact that this faculty is part of the original creations.

49:18 That emotions are not inherently sinful. Therefore, there will be nothing in God's work of redemption aimed at suppressing, neutering, or castrating our emotions. Whatever sin is done to them, God isn't going to come in remedial grace and remove them. That would be to un-man us and to un-woman us.

49:49 It would be to destroy his own image while saying he was restoring the image. And that is crucial. You will never get to first base in sorting out this matter of your emotions until you see something of the biblical and theological truth here that we've concentrated upon with respect to our emotions in the original creation of man. It is clear that man was made an emotional being when made in the image of God, but it's equally clear that man's emotions were not to be the governing element in his relationship

50:33 to God. Communion with God was to be carried on in a context of obedience to God. And only then would men feel what they ought to feel and feel it for the reasons God wanted them to feel it. That's why the whole integrity of man was made to hinge on whether he would keep his feet in the path of obedience.

The Ruination of Man in the Fall: Perversion and Displacement of Emotions

50:59 Of every tree you may freely eat, but of that tree you may not eat, in the day you eat you'll die. Step out of the orbit of obedience to me in the realm of your will, complying with my will, and death will enter. Well, having looked at the emotions in the original constitution of man, let's hasten to look at the ruination of man in the initial departure from God. We've looked at the constitution of man in the original creation. Now let's look

51:32 more briefly at the ruination of man in the initial departure from God. The ruination of man in the initial departure from God. Genesis 1 and 2, with all their glory and brightness, lead abruptly to the dark foreboding and I wrestled with whether I should use this word and I said yes, it's the right word. The dark foreboding and putrid realities of Genesis 3.

52:03 Look at the contrast. They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Now the serpent. Now the serpent.

52:19 And we are introduced to this one who speaks through the mouth of the serpent. This one who himself is eventually called that old serpent, the devil who deceiveth the whole earth. And we move from all of the glory and the pristine beauty of Genesis 1 and 2 into the horrible dark foreboding putrid realities of the serpent and sin and jealousy and defection from God. And in the account of the entrance of sin we see the devil using man's appetites and emotions

53:03 as the way of attacking his will. Remember now God says Adam, as long as the will remains upright and chooses the way of my commandment all will be blessed. And the devil knows if he's going to bring sin and death he's got to get Adam and Eve to step over the boundary of the will of God. And he does not make a frontal attack upon their wills.

53:31 He makes an attack upon their God-given appetites and emotions. That's very significant. Look at the passage. The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he

53:47 said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. How did she learn that? Adam told her. As his

54:04 as her spiritual head he passed on the terms on which their blessedness would continue. But of the tree which is in the midst of the garden God hath said you shall not eat of it neither shall ye touch it lest ye die. And some say there was Eve's problem. She added to the word of God. Not necessarily.

54:26 God may have said that in the fuller account of his warning to Adam and Adam may have passed it on just like it is. And we can't settle that till we get to heaven. But in any case, Eve says no, this is what God said. God has said we shall not eat of it, neither shall we touch it lest we die.

54:47 In other words, God did say what you're questioning, Satan. Serpent. God did say it. And I have every reason to mean that God meant what he said for the reasons that he said it. His reasons

55:04 were don't do it. It is not in your best interest. You will die. You will experience death.

55:10 Now notice how the serpent comes. And the serpent said unto the woman, You shall not surely die for God doth know in the day that you eat thereof than your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as God knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes. May I say that's probably the first explicit emotional word found in the Genesis record.

55:51 Delight. The emotion of delight. Delight to the eyes and to be desired and emotion. There was a positive affinity with this thought desirable to make one wise. She

56:07 took of the fruit and did eat and gave to her husband with her and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened. You see what the serpent did. He brought an injection of doubt and uncertainty with respect to the word of God verses 4 and 5.

56:27 And in Eve there was an excitement of desire for something she did not yet possess. You shall be as God. There is a level of created attainment which God has not given to you. The whole assumption is that the creator creature distinction could be overcome.

56:53 And that blessedness did not consist in keeping that distinction letting God be all that God is and man being all that he is. No. The reason God told you not to take of that tree is he's cramping your style. God's mean and God's narrow hearted.

57:14 He told you he was large hearted but he really was holding back the truth. I have the truth. The truth is if you eat you'll come to a totally new level of knowledge and experience of existence. You shall be as God knowing good and evil.

57:38 And so he excited in her a desire for something she did not possess. Then a yearning to enjoy something that was forbidden. Verse 6 when the woman saw the tree was good for food. God did not allow that tree of the knowledge of good and evil to be adorned with something that was dark and marbled and stank like a rotten piece of fruit that had been lying around for months.

58:11 He made it in such a way that had all the appearance of something that would taste delicious. So there was excited in her a desire a yearning to enjoy something forbidden. She saw that it was good for food and a delight to the eyes. It brought excitement to her aesthetic faculties.

58:39 We could have been made like the animals whom we're told some of which anyway see everything in gray. How they know that I don't know. That's always puzzling. I'd like to find that out. The experts tell

58:51 us that. But God gave us our aesthetic capacity to appreciate color and the harmony of color and the compliments of color and everything about that fruit. When she saw she saw that it was good for food and a delight to the eyes. And the tree was to be desired or desirable. Here is

59:16 an emotion awakened within her to attain a level of wisdom she'd never had before. What happened? She disobeyed. Gave to her husband and he disobeyed with her and plunged the human race into sin.

59:34 But you see how the enemy got to them? Not by a frontal attack upon the will but by the back door of the emotions. And so he got to them. Excited emotions given by God.

59:48 Already awakened in God creating them and giving them a task and giving them a world in which to live and to subdue it. Giving them a sense of initiative and accomplishment and all the rest. And God didn't throw down a complete blueprint of how the garden should be kept. I can I love to think of Adam saying Honey come over here. Look at this. Where do you think

60:10 these flowers should go and where would this look? How would God get more glory if we did this? And the excitement as they gave vent to all of the capacities God had given them with the attendant emotions. And the enemy comes and attacks through those very emotions in order to lodge the will away from God.

60:30 And when they did, now you talk about emotions they had never felt before. They felt them. Verse 7 The eyes of them both were opened and they knew there were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. You see the creation account ends with shameless nakedness before one another and God. The first

60:53 the first outward response after Adam and Eve's sin indicates that the sense of moral innocence was gone. Because they were made in the image of God they could no longer look upon one another without shame. Because they were ashamed before the God in whose image they had been made. And now the image was defaced and they instinctively knew it and they wanted to hide the broken mirror. When they

61:27 perfectly mirrored God there was mirror to mirror without shame. When the mirror is broken they both instinctively want to hide it. The emotion of shame comes as a result of sin. Then there is the emotion of aversion to God.

61:47 And communion with God verse 8. And they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Apparently God would come in a theophany in a physical visible manifestation of his presence at a certain time in the day and where their hearts would leap within him and they'd run to meet their God. Now there's an aversion. The

62:11 man and the wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah God amongst the trees of the garden. You see the shame they feel as image bearers they now feel when the God in whose image they are made draws near and they draw back from him. There is the emotion of aversion from God. And then there's cringing fear verse 9. And Jehovah

62:35 God called unto the man and said unto him. And though I can't prove it, the fact that this whole section is filled with grace in the midst of judgment. I don't believe God said where are you Adam? If God's heart is grieved and it is grieved when men sin. Genesis 6

63:00 it says he grieved him at his heart. What grief must have come through the voice of God when he said where art thou Adam? And the pathetic grieving voice of God gets this response and he said I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid. Here's cringing fear and emotion of shame and guilt drawing back from God. And as

63:33 the story unfolds it's impossible to read the account without seeing in it the issues of the grief that would come in the face of pain when he says to the woman I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception so that her whole function of motherhood will now be attended with these negative emotions. The sense apparently even of resentment when Adam says the woman thou gavest me you didn't do me fair God where once he stood back overwhelmed with the goodness of God now he raises a question mark over God's goodness

64:17 the woman thou gavest me. There is grief, resentment disappointment he says the earth is cursed for your sake and though it will yield it will yield reluctantly thorns and thistles and in the sweat of the eyebrow it will bring forth the feelings of regret. Now that's what sin did. You see what it did to man's emotional constitution and from that very hour in the light of such passages as Romans 5 which teach that the whole human race fell in Adam from that moment on all of man's faculties were affected by sin and the

65:01 emotions are not excluded and we have emphasized and rightly so that because of sin inherent sin original sin the sin that is a part of us from our very conception. Psalm 51 6 in sin did my mother conceive me most of us are quite clear with respect to what sin is done to our understanding the Bible says the mind is darkened alienated from the life of God Ephesians 4 18. 2 Corinthians 4 4 the God of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not and most of us are quite clear on the fact that sin has perverted

65:46 our wills and enslaved it Romans 8 7 the carnal mind is enmity against God it is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can it be the will is perversely set against God and is in bondage to that state of rebellion but we have given far little attention to the fact of what sin has done to the emotions it has done two tragic things to the emotions and if you don't get hold of this my dear friends younger men and women hear me carefully it has done two fundamental and tragic things to our emotions and if you don't get hold of this I don't think you'll make much progress in the sanctification of your emotional life sin

66:30 has done two things to the emotions fundamentally the emotions are perverted as to their actual actings so that we now hate the objects we should love God and holiness and Christ we hate what we should love and we love what we should hate we drink iniquity like water we love ourselves supremely the bible says we've turned every one of us to his own way each of us is made a God of himself a God that we cuddle and fondle and stroke and feed and nourish

67:14 as the little ewe lamb was nourished in the parable of Nathan before David you see sin has perverted our emotions the things that ought to cause us shame in those we boast and the things we ought to boast about God and his glory we're ashamed of sin has perverted our emotions turned them on their head what a tragedy but there's a second thing sin has done and here is perhaps the most crucial thing you're going to hear all weekend so gird up the lines of your mind and get it sit there and pray oh God did Pastor Martins write on this thing Lord write it on my heart this is crucial

The Displaced Role of Emotions in Fallen Humanity

67:57 sin has not only perverted our emotions so we love what we ought to hate and hate what we ought to love we have an affinity for the things we ought to turn from and we have an aversion to the things we ought to turn to but sin has displaced the proper place of the emotions in relationship to the mind and to the will sin has replaced or altered the proper place of the emotions in relationship to the mind and to the will when God made man what was the arrangement of understanding and will and

68:42 emotions here was the relationship man's understanding was to receive with delight the revelation of the will of God man was to choose to do the will of God and as the horse of his understanding joined to the cart of his emotions by the will moved in the direction of God's revealed will man would have all the holy emotions he could contain delight joy excitement anticipation a sense of fulfillment awe and wonder

69:25 but man's emotions were the cart to the horse of his will his understanding and his will moving in the direction of the will of God and the curse of sin is it's caused us to take the cart and put it out in front of us so that now we go where we feel we want to go and where we think we'll get the best feelings we're not prepared to say that my feelings are not ultimate it's God's ultimate because only in

70:09 knowing and doing the will of God can I glorify God even if it brings a host of so called negative emotions for a time in a disordered world though he slay me yet will I trust him oh my father if it be possible let this come back so to the cross known to the darkened heavens known to the anger of your pure wrath poured upon me nevertheless not my will but thine be done my mind's understanding

70:53 of your will my will's commitment to your will will lead of my emotions of love and of mine my word not of of a of of people that I singing if of brother

71:36 of of and the will. In Eden, Adam saw with clear light and he loved with pure love and he chose with no aversion and he had all the holy feelings a man could contain. But now we say if something's perceived as feeling good or giving a sense of good or making us happy, then we're going to choose it, regardless of the law and will of God. That's why 1 John 2.15 and 16 says,

72:13 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, for if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him, for all that is in the world. What makes the world turn? He tells us, the lust of the flesh, that is, the desires of the flesh that promise good feelings. The lust of the eyes, the senses, what I can see and set my affections upon that I think will bring me delight.

72:40 That's what makes the world turn. The lust of the flesh, the things that will give me good feelings through my senses, the lust of the eyes, the things that will give me good feelings of happiness, fulfillment, attainment, that I can have, things, possessions, commodities, and the pride of the feeling of being somebody. That's what makes the world turn. He says all that is in the world is subsumed under those three things.

73:06 The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life. But the world passes, away, but he that what? Doeth the will of God. You see the contrast?

73:21 He who's got the heart,

73:24 abides forever. He who does the will of God, in spite of craving for, in spite in spite of being good and noble,

73:43 does the will of God, abides forever. He who's got the horse, and the yoke, and the cart, in the right relationship,

73:56 that's the one. that abides forever. So it shouldn't surprise us when you turn to the list of sins listed in the Bible, where Jesus or the apostles are categorizing the full spectrum of human sin by naming a specimen list how many of those sins come to light in our emotional life. Read the list in Mark 7, 21-23.

Emotional Connotations of Sin in Scripture

74:19 Just a couple of specimens, quickly. Mark 7, 21-23.

74:27 What do we find? For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed. Fornications. I'm going to have sexual feelings.

74:40 I don't care if they violate God's will. That is, full, holy, mutual abandonment within the sanctity of a lifetime commitment in the bonds of marriage. Which pornea is any sexual grace or gratification outside the bonds of marriage? Masturbation, fantasizing,

75:08 petting, necking,

75:14 feelings of appetites. And I feel frustrated unless I have some feelings at my nerve endings. And if I must violate the will of God, I will fornicate. Pornea is not just illicit sexual activity.

75:36 That is illicit intercourse out of marriage. Pornea covers every form of sexual uncleanness.

75:46 I see things. I think they'll make me happy. I want them. I'll have them.

75:51 Even though God in his providence has not given them to me or given me the ability to legitimately obtain them by labor or by purchase or by exchange or by barter. But I'll have them. The emotions, you see, of desire. Murders.

76:07 What is murder? The ultimate expression of hate. He who hates is a murderer. No man ever plunged the knife outwardly who did not experience the disposition of a man.

76:19 Of hate in his heart. Adulteries. Again, we could go with the same thing with fornication. This is the violation of the marriage bond.

76:27 A man who says, yes, God says, drink waters out of thine own cistern and out of your own well. Let the wife or your youth satisfy you. Let her breath satisfy you at all times. Be ravished with her love.

76:40 For why should you, my son, be ravished with the love of a stranger? And the man says, ah, but I think there are tastes, and delights in the water in another well, and I'll leave my legitimate well. You see, it's an emotion. An anticipated feeling of fulfillment, of temporary delight.

77:04 Go through the whole list. Covetings, wickedness, deceit, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness. You see how many of these sins have emotional connotations? Same thing in Galatians 5, 19-20, where Paul says, the works of the flesh, your manifest, which are these.

77:22 He starts with the sexual sins, but then he speaks of envy, and strife, and parties. And there he doesn't mean partying in the 20th century sense. He means divisions of one person between another, feelings of ill will and alienation. How many of those things terminate upon man's emotional constitution?

77:44 Now what do we say in summary? As surely as man's emotional faculties were part of his constitution in the image of God, and all served the purpose of God, so when sin entered, the whole image was defaced. Not utterly destroyed, but defaced. The mind, the will, the emotions.

78:04 And so the natural emotions are no more to be trusted than the natural motions of your mind and will are to be trusted.

Call to Conversion and Sanctification of Emotions

78:17 You must have as much a holy suspicion of the natural impulse of your emotions as you have of the natural emotions of the natural impulses of your darkened mind and your perverted will. Well, this is the first time I've given this material. I've prepared it just for this conference and I see I've already gone well over an hour and I think I'm going to stop. And what we'll do tomorrow morning is we'll take up point number three, God willing, and that's going to be the renovation of man in redemptive or recreated grace.

78:51 I think we've covered enough. I don't want to overload you. But tonight, just these first two fundamental things, as we look at the whole canvas, we don't want to try to understand what the deer are doing. We don't know whether they're shut up in a pen or whether they've been placed there by the taxidermist or whether the artist has captured them in their native setting or whether the artist is about to show what will happen if the hunter has his wish and gets his eight-point buck.

79:19 We want to look at the whole canvas so we can understand the deer. And what we've seen on the canvas thus far is the constitution of man, man in the original creation. He was made, among other things, an emotional being. And we've looked at the ruination of man in the fall.

79:37 And I want to say in conclusion for those of you who are here who have never been savingly joined to Christ, you're not converted. I would be a fool to think every man or woman in this place was a Christian. I'd be irresponsible. And what some of you desperately need is nothing less than to have the image of God recreated in you by grace.

79:59 The mirror's been shattered. And you are covered with shame when you try to think of God and his holiness and how much you're unlike him. And that shame and guilt is real based upon the reality of your alienation from God. And what you need is to come to that God against whom you've sinned, who calls you now in the gospel as he called Adam in the garden.

80:24 Adam, where are you? He says to you, John, Mary, Henry, Patricia, where are you? Where are you? And you need to say, oh God, here I am, a slave of my darkened mind, in bondage to my rebel will, the lackey of all of my perverted emotions, being led around by the nose of my impulses and desires.

80:52 And I've been breaking your law and defying your claims. And I love the things you hate. And I hate the things you love, oh God. It'd be right that hell would open up and swallow me.

81:03 If that's what you're saying, my friend, there's hope for you. And that hope isn't in yourself. It's in the perfect man, Christ Jesus. And this is to me one of the wonders as we'll see, God willing, tomorrow more fully, that in the perfection of Jesus, it means he never felt one unholy feeling.

81:25 Think of it, think of it. Was his breast disturbed with an unholy feeling as well as never once did his hand touch a forbidden object? Did his words speak an untrue, unkind, ungracious, unnecessary word? That perfectly sinless one died to just for the unjust that he might do what?

81:48 Bring you to God. Bring you back out from behind the bushes where you're hiding. And get you out in the light, covered with your shame and your guilt. And you cry, Lord Jesus, have mercy.

82:02 And he'll wash you in his precious blood and clothe you in the robe of his perfect righteousness. And then you can stand and look a holy God in the eye without shame. Then you can start sorting out your emotions. Not until then.

82:17 You need to get saved some of you. And I beg of you, seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he's near. And for the majority of you whom I have reason to believe are Christians, have you come to the place sitting here tonight where God's given you perhaps a little insight that you never had about how you put together and who put you together that way and what the devil's done and what sin has done?

82:43 If so, have some dealings with God and say, God, if you didn't guide the committee to choose this subject for anyone else, Lord, it was for me. It was for me, Lord. When we sang, blessed Jesus, we are gathered all to hear thee. Lord Jesus, I heard your voice tonight.

83:02 Lord Jesus, have dealings with me. Teach me how to get over the tyranny of my feelings. I feel like I'm tyrannized by my mood swings. What a wicked way to live.

83:14 Your assurance can be measured by the time of the month with some of you dear young women. You guys, your assurance and your peace and joy can be measured by whether or not Ms. Wright is looking the right way at you. What a miserable bondage.

83:32 God wants to bring you to a level of emotional stability that will make you like his son, the Lord Jesus. Will you pray that God will lead us as we carry on our study? It's a first run for me, as I've said, and I want to say whatever God knows we need. Let's pray that he'll lead us in the hours to come.