The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 4 – 4
I live an unorthodox lifestyle. I’m not saying it’s as bad as Jesus’ (Luke 9:58), but some days it seems that way. Over the years I’ve gotten used to it, because it’s impossible to have the freedom to be spontaneous and the emotional security of a stable lifestyle at the same time.
And as I’ve trained students in the Bible, invariably they ask me “what are we going to do tomorrow? What time do we have to leave? What time do we get up??” These seem like fair questions, and in some contexts they would be. But in my life, most of the time they make no sense. You want to know what I’ll do tomorrow? Join the club, because I don’t know either! The question is… do you need to know? Matthew 6:34.
I’m a soul. Therefore, I judge what to do when I need to make that decision. I know I have to go to town sometime this week; but it doesn’t have to be tomorrow. I know I have to get this, this, this, and that done this week; but which order they’re done in makes little difference. So why should I decide before the time? Until I have all the facts, I can’t make a proper decision. Will it rain tomorrow? Will someone not show up to work? Will a vital tool break? I don’t know. I can’t know, so why commit until I have to? So when the time comes to start work tomorrow, I’ll decide what to work on.
Sure, my soul has some ideas; and I have dozens of plans in motion at any given moment. I’m not saying you shouldn’t think ahead about the possibilities. But my beast, and my employees, don’t need to know what they are! Half of my plans never happen, half of the ones that do change before they’re implemented. Why should I confuse the employees with these half-formed plans? Why should you trouble your beast preparing for something that may never happen?
And so I tell the students “I’ll decide that when I need to decide it”. And this bothers them. A lot. They’ll ask again and again, every night the same questions. They’re trying to overprepare for something that need not be prepared for at all. Why? Why this need to know what’s coming when it’s impossible to know anyway?
In a word, faith. Nothing is as terrifying as the unknown (Proverbs 28:1, Psalms 53:5). The beast who asks such a question is afraid of tomorrow. How can it know whether to look forward to it or dread it, if it doesn’t know what’s coming? How can it know whether to drag its feet, sleep in, or worry about it all night?
But why does it need to know those things? Isn’t that God’s job to provide for the beast? Psalms 147:7-9. And by analogy, our soul’s job to provide for our own beast? Matthew 6:25-34. Jesus told the people who were following Him, “Why are you worrying about tomorrow? These are things the Gentiles worry about; if you follow God, all these things will be taken care of!”
These are not things that are the beast’s responsibility. The beast is a servant, and its job is to show up and do what it’s told willingly, from the heart (Ephesians 6:6). And if your soul lets the beast worry about these things that aren’t its job, you will act faithless because the person running your body IS faithless!
By nature, the beast doesn’t trust the soul to provide for it. And if it can’t trust its own soul, why should it trust mine? To paraphrase 1 John 4:20, if your beast can’t trust your own soul, which it has seen… how can it trust God’s, which it cannot see?
So the beast is, by nature, faithless. Even though it is foolish and ignorant (Psalms 73:22), and thus is not qualified to take care of itself, it still thinks it can do better than anyone else, and it is terrified of trusting someone else to take care of it. It’s your soul’s job to change that.
FEAR OF DEATH
You’ve seen that the beast must be ruled; you’ve seen that it is by nature selfish and hates to be told what to do. But what is the absolute most important thing to the beast? Job 2:4. What does it fear the most? Hebrews 2:15. Remember, God designed the body to be operated by the beast. It’s responsible for all of the functions that keep us alive while our souls are trapped in this body, so God instilled a strong instinct for self-preservation in it. And this is a good thing!
But the proud, selfish beast believes that makes it the most important thing in the universe and of course, our soul knows better. The beast humors this belief of the soul as long as it’s not in immediate danger… but no matter what the soul says, when the beast identifies a threat, it takes control and reacts on its own.
At least, that’s what it does when your soul doesn’t have a tight grip on the reins. The more someone is afraid for their life, the more the basic nature takes over with fight-or-flight reactions, and the more difficult it is for the soul to control the beast as it panics. An excellent example of this is how Lot’s beast was talking in Genesis 19:17-20.
Surely, had his beast stopped to let his soul think, his soul would have realized that God had just sent an angel to personally lead him out of a city to save his life… and would have known there was no way God would just let him die in the mountains after that! A better man realized the silliness of such an idea in Judges 15:18. How could you believe that you matter enough to God to save you from 900 Philistines or from Sodom being destroyed by meteorites, and yet not have faith that God would save you from whatever comes next??
Ruling the beast, hanging on for dear life to the control your soul has over it, can prevent this from happening. But there’s another way. A far better way, to rule your beast. We know that the beast is proud, and we know that the opposite of pride is humility – a willingness to quickly obey orders. But the Bible also has another opposite of pride, another way to achieve humility: Proverbs 28:25. Where does faithlessness come from? Hebrews 3:10-12. Where do you have to have faith? Romans 10:6-10. Humility can arise from a fear to disobey someone; but humility can also come from a trust that someone wouldn’t give bad commands.
A beast disobeys you, or resists you, because it thinks it knows better than you do. It knows that darkness hides monsters that eat beasts, and even if your soul knows for a fact there are no monsters in these woods, the beast won’t believe it (Proverbs 28:1). Because it thinks it’s more qualified to protect itself than you are.
In Luke 12:16-21, Jesus tells a story about a man who said something to himself. Now that you understand the three parts of the mind, you can identify who said what, because the man said “to my soul, Soul, thou hast…”. So clearly this isn’t his soul speaking! And the rest of that verse identifies the speaker: “take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry”.
Who could possibly saying that? What part of your mind would say “oh, let’s just take a break, we’ve done enough for now, let’s just rest and drink and have some fun, we’ve earned it!” The beast! Proverbs 6:4-11. Notice again that it specifically calls such people beasts in verse 5! All of these references to animals appear random until you have a framework to fit them in, then you see that over and over again sluggish, lazy, selfish, faithless people are compared to four-footed beasts! Because all mammals have the same carnal heart whether you’re a human or a cow or a rabbit!
And the Bible calls him “slothful”, this man who was ruled by his beast. Compare that to Proverbs 21:25 (laziness) and Proverbs 22:13 (irrational fear), which are both paraphrased again in Proverbs 26:13-16. But what’s interesting is that this same sluggard – and clearly, we’re talking about the beast, or anyone who is ruled by their beast – is “wise in his own conceit”. Because even though the beast is quite stupid, it still thinks it knows more than anyone else does! Even though it can’t “render a reason” for its irrational fear, it still feels justified in having it!
FAITH
The beast is a shallow creature. Yesterday is a dim memory and tomorrow never comes. All it knows is that right now, right here, it’s in danger and it has to do something! Yet it is possible to teach the beast to do better: Psalms 112:7. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the trust of the Lord is the end of it (Psalms 27:1-2). Note that they came to “eat up my flesh” (kill my beast!), and the Lord made them stumble and fall. Basically, David was reminding his beast that they had been in a situation like this together before and it worked out just fine!
The other version of the “consider the lilies” speech in Luke 12 is actually more clearly about the beast’s lack of faith. He literally calls them beasts in Luke 12:32, for what are sheep, if not beasts? And He specifically tells them not to fear – to have faith! After rebuking the soul for listening to its beast (Luke 12:20), and not “pressing on for the mark of the high calling” (Philippians 3:14), Jesus told the disciples to look at how God took care of other animals, and even plants (Luke 12:22-28). Notice the thing He is correcting here is their LACK OF FAITH!
Luke 12:29-30 (GWV) Don’t concern yourself about what you will eat or drink, and quit worrying about these things. Everyone in the world is concerned about these things, but your Father knows you need them. You see how Jesus is showing us how to reason with our beasts? He’s telling us how to remind it that we know it needs food and drink and clothes and we have a plan, it just needs to trust us and OBEY its soul! (Luke 12:31, 36-37). Just as our soul in turn trusts God to provide for what our soul cannot handle!
Now read Psalms 11:1. This is a very important verse, because it also shows this internal dialogue; the speaker says “how do YOU say to my soul…”; once again, the “you” here is clearly the beast, for it’s exactly what the beast always says to the soul when it’s afraid, “let’s flee like a bird to the mountain!” And the soul is responding to the beast saying “I trust the Lord, so we don’t need to do that!” The soul continues explaining to the beast that the people after them are wicked (Psalms 11:2), and that there is no place they can run that would be safe from them (Psalms 11:3). And besides, they don’t need to run because God is IN His Holy Temple; God dwells IN THEM!
And His throne is in heaven, watching what goes on through His angels (His eyes) (Psalms 11:4). And that while God may test them both, God hates the wicked and will punish them far more than the beast ever could (Psalms 11:5-6). But that as long as the beast is good, God will love them both and protect them! (Psalms 11:7). Which is exactly what Jesus said in Luke 12:31!
SPIRITUALLY DISCERNED
This stuff seems simple to us right now, in the comfort of our own homes. Our souls understand it, and it’s perfectly logical. So why is it so hard to remember it in a moment of crisis? Because the beast doesn’t understand these things! (1 Corinthians 2:14). It cannot, because only the spiritual soul can grasp these things! (1 Corinthians 2:15).
Can you explain to your hungry cow that it will get twice as much food tomorrow if it just stops complaining? Is it likely to stop mooing for its hay? (Job 6:5). The beast cannot trust what it cannot see and hear. And the beast cannot hear God, so it can’t really grasp these ideas. But it can hear you. And when you explain these things to it, like Jesus and David did, it might not understand you, but it can grasp the idea that it has a soul that knows what it’s doing! How would you calm down a frightened horse? How would you make a hurt child feel better? How would you comfort someone for the death of a loved one? Do the words you use really matter in these cases?
We say certain word patterns (“there there, it will be alright”, “I’m so sorry”, “let me kiss it and make it better”, etc.), but the beast doesn’t understand these except in the most superficial sense. All it knows is that there is someone there to keep it safe, comfort it, and take care of it. In short, all of these expressions are calming because, and only if, they create a sense of faith in the speaker. If someone you don’t like says “I’m so sorry for your loss”, it means nothing to you because the words never did! But the same words coming from a friend cause the beast to relax and trust this other person and believe that life really will look better tomorrow!
So when David reasoned with his beast in Psalms 11, the beast didn’t really grasp what he was saying. But the words themselves were far less important than the fact that he said them! Because the beast, which cannot hear God, can hear its own soul! After all, they’re right there in the same mind! So the job of the soul is to train the beast to trust it as it, in turn, trusts God. First the beast has to learn to obey you because you said so; but then, it will gradually realize that by listening to you, it has (almost) never been hurt, and (almost) always received good things. So it will develop the habit of obeying you, at least while things are good.
For a long time, you can expect the beast to roll its eyes in fear, prancing and bucking to avoid whatever devil it thinks it spies in the bushes. But as your soul learns to keep a tight grip on the reins even in those times, and the beast realizes that you helped it get out of tight situations in ways that it never could have done alone, it will start to realize that maybe, maybe, you know things it doesn’t.
TRUST FROM YOUR BEAST
To be clear, this takes time. Not decades, but it does take years to master. Ruling the beast can start tonight; but earning trust will require the beast to forget all the dumb things you’ve done to it in the past, even if you rule perfectly from now on, and it will take time for those scars to fade into memory. So just like training a horse, a horse that was never ridden before yesterday is going to need a firm hand, and can’t be expected to have that level of understanding and trust with its rider – its soul. That bond takes time to form, and it starts with obedience, not trust.
The horse has to care enough to listen to you. This is the initial hurdle – why should the horse obey you? So you have to give it a reason to care. How do you do that? James 3:3. The bit hurts if you don’t listen to it; the mouth is tender, so tossing its head and ignoring your orders hurts. This teaches the horse that obeying you is better than disobeying you.
But the rider also has to care enough about his horse to treat it as he would want to be treated. If he’s normally a good horse, and suddenly acts jumpy and uncomfortable, listen to him and see if he has a burr under his saddle! (Colossians 4:1). Should you hear him out before you judge him? Proverbs 18:13. Maybe he woke up on the wrong side of the stall this morning… Or maybe it’s because he sees an angel, ready to kill you (Numbers 22:23-29). Odds are, that won’t be it… but the point is, if your beast is normally obedient, give it the benefit of the doubt and listen to it like you would want your master to do for you! (Numbers 22:30-34).
But once you’ve heard him and made sure there is no legitimate reason for him to act like a selfish beast, make sure he obeys you no matter what. And as soon as he has obeyed you, stop pulling on the bit and hurting his mouth! God put the soul in charge, and the soul can have absolute power in your body… if it’s willing to take it. But if you use your power like a despot, then your beast will cry to God for help (Job 35:8-9). So care for your beast; treat him like you’d want to be treated; and if you ask him to trust you make certain you’re worthy of that trust. Don’t ask him to swim across a river that’s flowing too fast; him nearly drowning will make him not trust you. Wouldn’t it make you not trust someone else?
When you have a bit in the horse’s mouth, he has little choice but to “trust” you, for pain-right-now is usually worse than dark-scary-thing-in-the-shadows. That doesn’t mean your beast won’t act terrified; but he will usually obey you, sort of. And if obeying your orders works out well for him, that obedience will come easier, as he learns to trust that your orders are in his best interest. And the more often you’re worthy of that trust, the sooner he’ll give it, and the more your order can be phrased as a request.
So don’t set an absurd goal you can’t possibly achieve, then ask the beast to live up to it – like fasting for 40 days and nights – because one mistake like that can set your relationship back months (Ecclesiastes 10:1). And if you do set a high goal, you’d better make sure it works out. If you make your beast exercise to exhaustion every day, it had better show noticeable results you can use to prove to your beast that it was worth the sacrifice. Because if it wasn’t, the beast will never let you exercise again without reminding you of how badly you treated it. At least, not until you’ve proven a hundred times over that you learned from that mistake and wouldn’t do that to it again. But if you can’t gain the trust of your own beast, who knows you better than anyone else possibly could… how can you be worthy of the trust of others?
THE BEST YOU CAN DO
While it may feel like your horse loves you, and certainly it is fond of you, the beast is only obeying you out of selfishness. Sooner or later, it will obey whoever has the sugar cubes. If you were to abandon your beast, while your training would last for a while, eventually it would revert back to its old selfish ways.
You will never, ever, be able to trust your heart to be righteous when left to itself. No matter how well or how long it’s trained, it is still the same heart from Jeremiah 17:9. You can trust it to obey you while you’re watching, and for short periods when it knows you’re coming back (Luke 12:45-46), but that’s all. Note exactly who said “my Lord delays his coming, I don’t have to obey him”! It was said in his heart! His heart convinced his soul he didn’t have to obey his master, because he wasn’t coming back! Exactly like the Israelites said in Exodus 32:1.
So can you save the beast? When you’re resurrected, will your perfected heart be resurrected with you? 1 Corinthians 15:50. Your heart is your beast is your flesh is your body. And flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God! It cannot be saved because it is inherently selfish, and by nature opposed to the way of God!
However well you might teach it to suppress that nature and yield to yours instead, the nature remains the same! That’s why David did not ask God to change his heart; he asked God to create a clean one (Psalms 51:10); because your beast is selfish and that will not ever change (Romans 8:7). It can learn. It can learn to humble itself under your rule, to have faith in your judgments. But it is incapable of change. It will have learned, thanks to your training, to act in every way like a creature that loves others. But it’s doing it because you made it worthwhile (Job 1:10). It cannot learn to love others more than it loves itself.
That is why the heart must die and be replaced by a new heart, one that God gives you (1 John 3:9) – so that you cannot be tempted to sin anymore (James 1:13). Our heart is supposed to be REPLACED with the divine nature of God; the same incorruptible spiritual heart that Jesus gave up when He adopted the nature of Abraham! But if, like most people, you die in this life without being worthy of that heart, then God will replace your heart that has been hardened by a lifetime of rebellion with a heart of flesh again so you can do better in the second resurrection (Ezekiel 36:26). Because when you get a new body, you will automatically get a new heart!
THE COVENANT OF FLESH
The old covenant was a covenant of the flesh. Genesis 17:11-14. The covenant was in the FLESH, with the flesh! (Genesis 9:15-16). Paul brought the new covenant, but Israel kept going back to the covenant of the flesh (Galatians 3:3). I said in the very first lessons that the old covenant was an external covenant; it was obeyed by the body, in the body, because OC Israel were not in charge of their beast! Their beasts bolted at the sight of God, and their souls couldn’t contain their fear because their beast didn’t trust them! Because beasts CANNOT approach that mountain! (Hebrews 12:19-20).
You’ve read these verses before, but now you can begin to understand what they really mean! Their souls were not in charge of their mind, their flesh was! (Romans 8:4-8). Covenants must be made with the highest authority to be binding (Numbers 30:5). Therefore the old covenant was made with the beast! That’s why it was a covenant of the flesh!
And what is the only end of the OC? 2 Corinthians 3:6-7. Why were beasts made? 2 Peter 2:12. The OC ends in death; that’s the only end the beast can expect, because it was a “natural brute beast, made to be taken and destroyed!”, because this body will have no value in the Kingdom of God (John 6:63), because corruption cannot inherit incorruption!
God couldn’t make a covenant with the souls in Israel because He couldn’t find them! Their souls were hiding in a dark corner of their mind while their tyrannical beast ruled their minds! So He made a covenant with their beasts, which had to be far simpler because it had to be spelled out clearly enough for a dumb animal to obey!
Can you set two dishes side by side, and explain to your dog “this one is yours, never touch that one” and expect him to understand and obey you? Of course not. Yet that’s what God did in the Garden (Genesis 2:16-17). Because at that time, He expected their souls to obey Him under the NC! But when they let their beast take over, they showed that their lust was in charge (Genesis 3:6), so God had to build a FENCE around the trees! Likewise, the OC is a fence around the NC; they were bound to keep the letter of every law, because they couldn’t be trusted to keep the spirit of it! Because if that fence was broken down… the beast would devour the entire garden, not just the two trees!
THE SOUL OF THE OC
Everything written in the OC is something you can train an animal not to do; if we imagine the laws as fences, anyone who stays within those fences will be a perfectly righteous person. Everything was broken down to a law that any animal can learn, and nothing requires the judgment of a soul. Yet, there were invariably disagreements between these beasts about interpretations of events and facts, laws and judgments. So God had to place a ruler over the covenant; someone who did have faith in Him because he was ruled by his soul! Hebrews 3:2, 5.
Thus, God placed a soul over the body of Israel! Over the beast of Israel! Because they had to go to Moses to be judged just as the beast must go to the soul! Because the soul is the mediator of the law for those who can only grasp the letter, those who only understand things that are carnally discerned because they don’t have the spirit of God! This is why it was so important that “…He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” (2 Samuel 23:3). Because if the soul who rules the body is evil, the whole body will be evil (Matthew 6:22-24).
So the soul’s job is to teach the beast to obey the letter of the law habitually, even as the soul is learning to understand the spirit of that same law! The Sabbath is a great example of this. The law was “thou shalt rest”. God dared not let the Israelites under the OC interpret that for themselves, as is evidenced by the man gathering sticks in Numbers 15:32. He had clearly decided that what he was doing qualified as “resting” on the Sabbath!
But because they are ruled by their soul, the NC Christian is qualified to interpret the Sabbath in its original intent, and not in the letter. The beast couldn’t understand that “thou shalt rest on the Sabbath” permitted healing someone; “Let them come to be healed on the other six days”, said the Pharisaic beasts (Luke 13:14) who had learned, the hard way, to respect the fences! (Ezra 9:7).
But Jesus’ soul judged and concluded that this was what the law had really meant – because resting on the Sabbath was meant to heal the beast! Therefore, using the power of God to heal a beast on the Sabbath was the point of the law which the beasts had never understood because it was SPIRITUALLY discerned!
That’s why the new covenant must be made with the soul! Something made of SPIRIT! The soul can understand the spirit of the law because it’s made of spirit, and these things can ONLY be understood by things which are! Which is why it’s so important that the beast trusts the soul to interpret the law for it because it will never be able to!
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Humbling your beast under your rule and teaching it faith in you does not come naturally to animals, as you can see from trying to tame a wild rabbit or deer; they have to be taught slowly, the hard way, using a carrot in one hand and a stick in the other. The first of the goals of salvation is to break the beast under your rule, and force it to obey you. Then you must humble that voice under your rule, to teach it to obey you without argument. Finally, you must teach it to trust your judgment even when it disagrees. In short, to teach your beast faith.
But even when you do that, you won’t have really changed your heart, only trained it. And that is the point – you have to learn how to rule the most purely selfish creature in the world, and teach it to do the exact opposite of its nature! This is a challenge that requires a soul completely committed to winning. One who absolutely will go to the wall for righteousness’s sake, because I promise you the beast will go to the wall for selfishness.
Jesus did all these things. And now you are prepared to grasp far better what it meant when it said that Jesus was made in the flesh. It means Jesus had a beast just like you and I! His beast was afraid, His beast was proud, His beast was selfish! His beast tempted Him to do evil, His beast wanted what it didn’t deserve. His beast was jealous of the wicked, and it was in every way like all of the other children of Abraham! But He taught His beast to be obedient; not only obedient in good times, but obedient “to the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8).
He taught His beast not only to obey Him, but to trust Him. And not just in good times, when He was being blessed, like Job had done; but in bad times, when He was suffering, like Job had not done. You are put here to learn to be like God, and to take a position of authority in God’s Kingdom ruling cities and kingdoms.
Your job in that position will be the same as it is now; to take people ruled by their beasts, and force, humble, and reason them into righteousness. Your job will be to teach them how to rule, humble, and inspire faith in their beasts, just as you have done in yours and Jesus did in His. The verse that sums up this lesson is…
Hebrews 10:22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. There is no greater challenge than taking a heart committed to self-preservation above all else, and teaching it to trust you with its life. To teach a beast that will give everything for its life to be willing to die for no other reason than because your soul said so is the highest achievement of mankind. Jesus did it for us (John 10:18), and we do it for Him every time we kill the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:24).