Ron Dunn Podcast - The Truth About Man

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

Ron Dunn continues his sermon series on the truth.

The most important truth that a man can discover is the truth about Jesus Christ. That is the beginning of all truth. And until a man discovers the truth concerning Jesus Christ, he can discover no other truth. The second most important thing that a man needs to know after knowing the truth about Jesus Christ, he needs to know the truth about himself. When David was a shepherd intending his father's sheep, one night he looked up into the heavens with all the stars and made him ask a question. He records it in the eighth Psalm. He says, What

is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him. And that's still a live issue and a good question. What is man? It's a question that everybody asks sooner or later. You may not phrase it exactly like that. You may say, Who am I? Or, What am I?

Why am I here? What's this all about? Where are we headed? What is man? I think it is impossible for a person to live right and related to this world and to life and anything else until first of all he knows what he is

and where he came from and why he came in the first place and what God has in mind for him. And so this morning we're going to discuss the truth about man. And the truth about man is revealed throughout the Word of God, but the basic and foundation of all truth concerning man is found in the first chapters of the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter 1, we are going to begin reading with verse 26. 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 over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them. And God blessed them and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it shall be for me. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat, and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

It says in the 10th verse, God saw what he had made and saw that it was good. In verse 12, God looked at what he had made and saw that it was good. In verse 18, he saw what he had made and saw that it was good. In verse 18 he saw what he had made and saw that it was good. In verse 21 he examined what he had made and saw that it was good. And in verse 25 he looked at what he had made and saw that it was good. But in verse 31, after he has created man in his own image, he looks at it and says, it is very good. Immediately when you read that word, it is very good, concerning man, you immediately know you're reading history

and not current events. I think it would probably not be possible for anybody, much less God, to look at man today and say it is very good. And the amazing thing is that when God created man in his own image and examined that creation he said it is very good but you turn over a few chapters to chapter

six and God once again examines his creation and this time time, his judgment is not, it is very good, but rather his judgment is that he saw that every thought, every imagination of man's heart was evil continually and he was sorry he had ever made him. And I think that verdict

would still hold true today. And what God has been about in human history is to bring man back to a position where once again he can look at man and say, It is very good. And the only other time he has ever been able to say that was when his son came, and after 30 years of living in obscurity, he fulfilled all righteousness and was baptized by John and Jordan, and the heavens split open, and the Spirit of God descended upon him, and God once again pronounced

something good about man, and he said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. He said, It is very good. Originally man was very good. Ultimately in Jesus Christ through his death, burial, and resurrection and through our faith and trust in him, God can once again say, it is very good. When God made man, he intended him to be very good. And that doesn't simply mean good in holiness and good in righteousness, but he meant that every part of man's life should be good. His relationship to other people should be very good. His relationship to the physical universe should be very good.

That there was to be nothing in his life that would be marred and tainted and take away from the goodness of a man existing in the presence of God as God intended him to be. And it seems to me that if you and I could once again discover the truth about ourselves and see what God had in mind for us and rightly relate ourselves to God and to the purpose of God, he could once again say about us, it is very good. He created man and called him Adam. Now, Adam is both a historical person and a prophetic pattern. Now, you need to understand something about the book of Genesis and the first few chapters of it.

It is the foundation of everything. It is the portrait of everything as it was intended to be. The word Adam in Hebrew simply means man or human being. Now Adam was a historical person, a very real person. But also he was the pattern of all mankind. He was representative man. And so you could say this, that every man is Adam, and that Adam is every man. If you want to know the history of your own life, study the history of Adam.

And the very things that you find true about Adam, you will find true about yourself. And that is the significance of the revelation concerning the creation of man. It is not simply God telling a historical incident of how he came to create man. That is part of it. But it is more than that. It is God revealing to all mankind,

this is the truth about man. This is what he really is. This is what I really intended him to be. And if your life is to be very good, then you must understand this is what I intend for you to be. And so every person here this morning is really Adam. And you'll find your history in the history of Adam. And so what I propose to do is just to take us through this creation account and find out the truth about man, the truth about the first man, the truth about Adam. And I want to constantly remind you that when you study this, when you read this, God is telling you the truth

about yourself. And you must come to understand the truth about yourself, what man is, and the infinite purpose that God has for man if you're to live a good life in this earth. Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2 present two viewpoints of creation. They're not conflicting viewpoints of creation. They are differing viewpoints. In chapter 1, man is pictured as the height of God's creation, the crown of God's creation. In chapter 2, he is presented as the heart of God's creation. All of creation revolves around man.

He is intended to be the center and the circumference of all God's creation. All of creation revolves around man. He is intended to be the center and the circumference of all God's creation. The crown, the climax, the culmination, the greatest work that God has ever done was to create man in his own image. Now, I want to say four things about every one of you this morning. And four things about myself. Number one, man has been and is created by God. He is created by God. The Bible says very specifically, very simply, and very clearly that before God created man, he stopped. He had been creating the physical universe,

one right after another, hardly without a pause. But when it came time to create man, there was a counsel, a divine counsel within the Godhead, and they designed man. And God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. And let us create him for a specific purpose and to fulfill a particular function. And so God specially and carefully designed man. David said, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And every part of a person's makeup, even down to his personality

and his idiosyncrasies, have been designed by God. And one of the greatest things a person can ever discover about himself is that God has designed him in every detail. And I'm not talking now simply about the physical makeup,

the chemistry, the biology of a man, but I'm talking about his personality, his temperament, his likes and his dislikes, his abilities and his inabilities. And when a person comes to realize that God has designed him and created him and how he's turned out is no accident or no mere chance of faith, but it is the culmination of God's pre-planning and God's design. That's an important thing for a person to discover because you can never really accept yourself and be what God wants you to be until you're willing to understand this one truth, that God designed you and made you to be exactly like you are and not like anybody else. It was a separate creation. Man is not the highest

order of animals. You hear this all the time, that man is an animal. He's the highest of all the animals, and he is the most sublime of all the animals. That's just absolutely not true. Man's creation was a distinct and separate creation from the animal world. He is not a part of the animal kingdom. Now, he may have similarities and affinities with the animal kingdom, but he's not an animal. He's not simply the highest order of animals. He is a distinct and separate creation. And he is a definite creation. God said, let's do it, and he did it. And he made him, and he formed him, and he didn't evolve. Now, I don't have time to discuss the guess of evolution, and that's what it is. It's a guess. You know, it's an amazing thing. I was talking to a fellow

not, well, some time ago, quite a while ago, and he could not accept the Genesis account of creation because it could not be proven in a laboratory. And I had to admit that that's right. There's no way that you can take a scientific formula and take the creation account in the book of Genesis and prove it scientifically in a laboratory. But the amazing thing is this same fellow would accept the guess of evolution as a fact. And that cannot be proved scientifically

or any other way in a laboratory either. And the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated on the human race is accepting the theory, the guess of evolution as a fact. And for a person to accept the guess of evolution as a fact, he has to jettison all laws of scientific inquiry and conclusion. It cannot be demonstrated and it cannot be proven. It's simply a theory. It's simply a guess.

And you know, there's something ironic about it. It's really very funny because Darwin never took it that seriously and never intended for it to go that far. And the biggest joke of all is the man who made it popular and who is really the father of modern day evolutionism never took it seriously himself. But we accept it as a fact, and it cannot be proven. You know, the interesting thing of it is,

it's another mark of the way Satan operates. Satan's great goal in human history is to duplicate the work of God without God. And so he is constantly passing off on mankind a salvation without Jesus Christ. A salvation by church membership, a salvation by ritual, a salvation by good works. And the religion of the devil is a salvation without Jesus Christ. And the scientific fact of Satan is that he perpetrates his creation without God. And that's what evolution is.

It is creation without God. It could duplicate the work of God without God himself. And really, if you honestly read that stuff, it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in the Genesis account of creation. The story of evolution is more unbelievable and far-fetched than anything I ever read in the Word of God. Man did not evolve.

God created him. God created him. God created him. You say, well, what about all of these scientific discoveries that shows a man, the skull of a man, that he's not like we are now. He has a bigger head, etc., etc., etc. Well, that just shows that people don't know what a man is. Simply because a fellow has a skeleton similar to mine,

not like mine, but similar to mine, and has an oversized head and looks like he walks upright, that doesn't make him a man. God could make a thousand animals that walked upright and had thumbs. Which nothing else has, by the way. I mean, God could do that.

That doesn't mean he's a man. A man is not something, some creature that has a skeleton similar to mine, walks upright, has thumbs, and speaks with her grunt. But a man is a creation of God that has in it the breath of God and is made in the image of God and has the ability to know God and to worship God and respond to God. That's what a man is. And you don't evolve that. It is a definite, specific creation. Now, man was created physically. Really, the fullest account of how God did it is found in the seventh verse of chapter 2. He says,

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Now, that verse says, first of all, that man is a physical being. The word formed is the word that is used of a potter as he takes a lump of clay and he fashions it. There's a design he has in mind. And he works and fashions and forms and molds and God took the dust of the earth and that

doesn't mean dusty dry particles of earth the Hebrew word simply means a mass of dirt or a lump of dirt God took a lump of clay a lump of dirt and he fashioned out of that a creature, a man. Now, man is a physical being, and he is made of the dust of the earth. And God reveals that lest man should become unduly exalted and proud because he is made in the image of God. And the Bible says in the Psalms that God reminds us that we are but dust. And God reveals that we are made simply of dust in order to keep us humble and to realize our dependence upon him. But more than this, man is a spiritual being. God took that creation and he breathed into him his own life, and he became a living soul. And it says in Genesis 1, 26 and 27, that God made man in the image of God.

In the image of God. Man is a spiritual being. Now, this is extremely important. Man is a physical being, and we all understand that. He must have physical life. He must have physical food. He must have physical food. He must have physical experiences. It would be impossible for a man to live a full life, a complete life, without relating to a physical world. He must have physical experiences. He must

feel physically and live physically. But what we have not understood is that man is a spiritual being and he must relate to the spiritual world and he must have spiritual experiences and he must have contact with the spiritual beings such as God Himself. Man is a spiritual being and it is just impossible for a man to live a full and complete life

without relating to the spiritual life as it is for him to live a full and complete life without relating to the spiritual life as it is for him to live a full and complete life without relating to the physical life. As a matter of fact, his spiritual being overpowers his physical being. His spiritual life is much more important than his physical life because God says in the second chapter, if you disobey me, if you drop the ball spiritually, you're going to die physically. In other words, the spiritual life of a man dictates his physical life. It's not the other way around.

A physical life of a man is not the most important life. It's the spiritual life of a man. And what you are spiritually determines what you are physically. And the only reason men die today is because, first of all, they died spiritually. And this is something we haven't understood. We haven't understood that man is a spiritual being and he must have contact with the spiritual world. And the reason we're having so much Satan worship today and involvement in the occult, it's because men must, they must, they must have contact with the spiritual world. And they must have spiritual experiences.

If they can't have an experience with the Holy Spirit, they'll have one with the unholy spirit. If they can't fellowship with God, they'll fellowship with the devil. But man is a spiritual being and he is a religious being. He's always going to worship. I mean, you just might as well take away his physical life

and try to get him not to worship. And if he doesn't worship the revealed God, the true God of heaven and earth, he'll look around and find another one. And if he doesn't find one that suits him, he will create a God in his own image. And so he'll worship himself. But man's going to worship because he is a spiritual being. And that spiritual life of man dictates his physical life.

And this is why it is important for you to know the truth about yourself. Your spiritual character will determine your physical character. And what you are spiritually, you will become physically. What you are on the inside, you will ultimately become on the outside. God said in the day that you sin against me, dying you shall die. In other words, he says you're going to die immediately. There's going to be spiritual death. You're going to be cut off and separated from God. And as a result of this, you are going to die physically. Simply what God was saying was that your spiritual life is going

to determine your physical life. The reason that men are fighting in the world today is because there's a war on the inside between them and God. The reason you get bitter on the outside is because you're bitter on the inside. And I tell you this morning, if there is sin hidden around on the inside of your life, it's going to express itself on the outside. And if there is resentment and unforgiveness and bitterness and concealed and unforgiven sin harbored down on the inside of your life, it's going to eventually express itself in the physical. It always will. A person wears their spiritual life on their face.

And you can look into the eyes of a man and you can look into the face of a person on their countenance. You can see what they are spiritually. And you know, you don't have to have a public confession to discover those in our fellowship who have backslidden and gotten away from God. Now you can tell it by their attitude. You can tell it by the frown on their face. You can tell it by the look in their eyes.

You can tell it by their quickness to anger. You can tell it by the frown on their face. You can tell it by the look in their eyes. You can tell it by their quickness to anger. You can tell it by their critical spirit. You can tell it by their perpetual fault finding. You can tell it by their inability to find anything good about anything. Because they have become poison on the inside spiritually, it poisons everything on the outside. And a man who is bitter against God is going to be bitter, period, against anything. Man is a physical being, that's true, but he is a spiritual being.

He is a spiritual being. What is the image of God? The image of God is man's ability to know God and to represent God. The word image is always used of a manifestation or a representation. And God intended for man to represent God on the earth. And man is to live a life that will reveal and manifest the character of God. That's why when he saw the man he created, he said, It is very good. It is very good.

The image of God is man's ability to know God and to worship God. You never saw a dog pray. You never saw a cow building a church. Only man of all God's creation is seeking and searching for something to worship. And you have the ability today to know God. And God has built into your physical makeup and your spiritual makeup a transmitter that both receives and transmits to God. He's a spiritual being more than anything else. He's created by God, number two.

Much briefer, he is dependent upon God. He is dependent upon God. Man cannot live without God. You know, we sometimes speak of the immortal soul of a man, and that is not scriptural. Man is not immortal in and of himself. He exists only as long as God allows him to exist. And man is absolutely dependent upon God. He is dependent upon God for the life that he has himself. God breathed into him the breath of life. Life is a possession of

God only, and God takes it and God gives it away. And a man must understand that he is absolutely dependent upon God. He is not an independent preacher. The book of Genesis does not open, in the beginning man did such and so. It opens, in the beginning God created. And you'll have come a long way in your Christian life when you come to understand that you are absolutely dependent upon God for your breath, for your life, for the provision of your life. Number three, man is accountable to God. Now, to see how far you and I have strayed from what God intended us to be, all you have to do is to look around you and realize that people don't want to be accountable to anybody. And this great widespread campaign that is sweeping the world today,

which is a campaign to rebel against all authority, is simply an evidence of man's original sin, whereby he did not want to be accountable and responsible and answerable to anybody. And you can always tell when a person has believed the lie of the devil and they have become spiritually dead on the inside they no longer on the outside physically want to be answerable and accountable and responsible to anybody

but the truth of the matter is that you only go around once in life and after this, the judgment. That man is responsible to God and he is accountable to God. And he's accountable to God for two reasons. Number one, because God gave man the power of choice. God gave man the power of choice. God gave man the power of choice. You know, the interesting thing about this is that God did not program man so that man had to act the way God wanted him to act,

even if man didn't want to act that way. God gave him a choice and God gave him a command. He said, you shall not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now, there were two trees in the midst of that garden. One was the tree of life. That tree of life was God's provision for man should he make the right choice. And if man had made the right choice, he could have eaten of the tree of life and he could have lived forever in paradise. But when he made the wrong choice, God got rid of him, and cast him out of the garden and put an angel to guard the tree of life,

lest he should eat and live. God made provision in case he made the right choice. But there was another tree there, the tree of knowing good and evil. The tree of knowing good and evil. And the significance of that was this. God wanted man to trust him, just to trust him. You see, man's mind was originally meant to be a receiver not a calculator it was meant to be a receiver to receive the word from God God said thou shall not do this all right I trust you I don't need any explanation I don't need to know it for myself Lord I trust you you made me I'm dependent upon you you love me I'm in your image I'm going to obey you and I'll just have faith I'll trust you I'll obey I'll do what you tell me to do. And that was the original way God intended

man to live. And God said, there's the tree of knowing good and evil. And the issue is whether or not a man will simply accept the Word of God on faith without question and obey it or whether or not he wants to calculate and evaluate and decide for himself. And so man made the wrong choice and he ate of the tree of knowing good and evil. And now ever since then, man has never accepted the word of God by faith and trust. He's always, first of all, accepted it on the basis of his understanding of it. And so when I stand up here this morning and preach to you the Word of God, many of you do not just immediately say, I believe it.

I trust God. I'll just take him at his word. But what you do is you parade the word of God before the jury of your mind, and you figure out on the basis of your knowledge of good and evil, you decide whether it's good or whether it's evil to obey God. That happens every time I preach on tithing, which isn't too often. But you know, if you start, if you preach on something like that, there's somebody out there that's going to say, Okay, now I have the Word,

and I've heard what the Bible has to say about it, and so now I will evaluate it. And I will decide, I will examine it, and I'll weigh all the issues, etc., etc., and I will decide whether or not it's good or evil to tithe. And we accept or reject the Word from God on the basis of our knowledge, of our ability to distinguish between good and evil. But here's what we don't reckon with, that man is a fallen creature

and his mental perception has been incapacitated and marred and perverted and he cannot ever come up with an accurate conclusion. And so God demands from every man an accounting and responsibility. And you may run away from responsibility

and accountability in this life, but you can never run away from it. And man is supposed to live his life daily with the knowledge he's accountable to God. He's accountable to God. And the Bible says that a man shall even give an account of every idle word that he speaks. And the very thoughts that are going through your mind right now, and the desires that are flowing through your hearts right now, you will someday stand before God and answer for them

and give an account to God for them. Man is accountable to God. And then the last thing, man stands guilty before God. He's guilty. He's guilty. And he needs redemption. And the most beautiful part of the whole creation account

and the whole picture of the beginning of man is not when God made man. It's not when God determined to make man. It's not when God placed him in a garden. The most beautiful part of the whole story is when God comes down in the cool of the day seeking man and saying, Where art thou? And discovering that man, the height and heart of his creation, has sinned and has shown his guilt by trying to cover his sin with the work of his own hands. And God takes an animal and slays it and covers the sin of man with his own work. To me, that's the most thrilling and beautiful thing about the whole story,

is that the God of heaven and earth who sat in his heavens and with a word created man descends, comes down, walks, and with his own effort, personally, clothes and covers man's sin. And that's what he has done to this very day. He has been leaving the throne of heaven and coming to the scene of man's rebellion and saying, where art thou? The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which

was lost. And the same God who slew an unidentified animal in the garden and clothed man to cover his sin, is the same God who gave his Son, the Lamb of God, the identified Lamb of God, and nailed him to a cross and spilt his blood so that he might cover your sin and cover my sin. Man is guilty before God

and he is in need of what only God can provide, a covering. A covering. Where art thou? Where are you this morning? That's the question God wants. That's the question God asks as he comes to seek and to save. If you would like to listen to additional Ron Dunn messages, visit sherwoodbaptist.net slash bookstore and search Ron Dunn. For more Ron Dunn materials, including sermon outlines, devotions, and scanned pages from a study Bible, please visit rondunn.com.