CHOICES IN THE SOUL OF THE BELIEVER

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EZRA, THE BELIEVER AS THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Lesson #05

 

• Memory Verse: Phil 2:13
• Review:
  • We have discussed the spirit of man where the Spirit of God comes to live when a person is born again.
  • We have seen where God gives the believer a new Spirit, a new heart filled with God’s love, God’s thoughts, and God’s power.
  • We have seen where God gives the believer a new willpower so that man can make different choices in his life based on faith instead of on his emotions or desires.
    • It is at the entrance to Solomon’s temple, the golden porch, where the believer makes his decisions.
      • God gives the believer knowledge of His will through His Word.
      • God gives the believer the power of the Holy Spirit to make the right choice and fulfill God’s will.
      • That power of the Holy Spirit is manifested to the believer in the form of:
        • Counsel (the pillar of Jachin)
        • Might or Power (the pillar of Boaz)
    • The believer can either choose God’s will by faith or his own will by emotions, logic, desires, or human reasoning.
• As we work our way outward from the blueprint of Solomon’s temple we proceed down the steps to the inner courtyard.
  • The inner courtyard of Solomon’s temple represents the soul of man.
    • What is the definition of man’s soul?
      • The soul is the center of self-consciousness.
      • It is that part of us that lives forever (Mat 10:28).
      • The soul is the ego and the personality. It is what makes each person a unique one of a kind.
      • The soul contains 3 aspects:
        • The mind = intellect, reason, and memory.
        • The will = free choice (Psa 24:4 Eph 6:6).
        • The emotion = love, hate, etc. (Psa 86:4).
      • The soul consists of 3 levels:
        • A conscious awareness (Phi 4:8-9).
        • A sub-conscious level: This is the memory bank of information.
        • The unconscious level: a sum total of every experience.
    • The Greek word for soul is psyche. This is where we get the word psychology and psychiatry.
      • In other words, this branch of the medical profession deals with the soul area of man’s nature.
      • The secular medical perspective of psychology cannot deal with the inner man of the Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit can deal with the area of the inner man of the heart.
      • Psychology and psychiatry deal with man’s soul.
      • Read Heb 4:12
    • The Greek word psyche has a double meaning.
      • =1= It means = it shall have life.
      • =2= It means = it shall become cold.
      • In other words, the soul of man is a neutral area that can go in either direction. It is filled and controlled by the Holy Spirit, or it is filled and controlled by the flesh nature of man.
        • The Soul can go toward life, getting that life from the flow of the Holy Spirit when the Spirit flows out from the inner man of the heart to fill the soul.
        • Or the Soul can become cold if the Holy Spirit is quenched so that the Spirit does not flow out from the inner man of the heart.
      • It is the soul life of man that relates to other people. When we relate to other people, that is what we see, the life that is in his soul. We cannot see the life that is in his heart in the inner man. Only God can see that.
  • Read Eph 3:19
  • Read Eph 5:18
    • What does the Bible means when it tells us to be filled with the Spirit?
      • It means that the life from the inner man of the believer flows into the soul of the believer.
      • In our temple model it is when the Holy Spirit from the Holy Place flows out through the golden porch into the inner courtyard.
    • Being filled with the fullness of God or being filled with the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of God’s life that comes from the new heart of the believer and becomes the believer’s life expressed in his soul. It is where God’s love becomes the believer’s love, where God’s thoughts become the believer’s thoughts, where God’s power becomes the believer’s power. They all flow from the inner man of the heart.
      • Read Gal 5:22-23
      • The fruit of the Spirit is the results or manifestation of a life filled with the Holy Spirit.
  • The believer’s choices:
    • We have seen that the believer makes his life choices at Solomon’s Temple porch.
      • When the believer makes “faith choices” he is filled with the Spirit of God that flows outward so that others can see in him the fruit of the Spirit.
        • Read Gal 2:20
        • Christ is living in him and through him.
      • When the believer makes “flesh choices” based on emotions or desires of the flesh nature, he quenches the Holy Spirit. In other words, he closes the door of his temple and does not let the life of the Spirit flow out into the inner courtyard, his soul.
        • In his soul he is manifesting his own thoughts, his own desires, and his own emotions.
        • The power of sin guides him instead of the power of the Holy Spirit.
        • He does that which seems to him to be the right thing to do. (Pro 14:12 and Pro 16:25)
        • This is walking after the flesh and is what is called the “self life”.

Read Eph 2:3

Read Jam 1:5-8

The personal desires of the flesh are fulfilled.

The believer is living a double-minded life.

• • • Because the believer has a new Spirit, a new heart, and a new willpower and his true nature is the nature of Christ, from where does the flesh nature come?
      • The self life is prompted by the hurts, bitterness, resentments, doubts, and pride that have accumulated in man’s experiences over his lifetime. These are things we have buried in our soul with which we have never fully reconciled.
      • These awful experiences from our past have been stored in the secret chambers of the soul.
        • In our temple model these chambers are the little rooms that surround three sides of the temple building and have doorways into the inner courtyard of man’s soul. We all have them.
        • In Solomon’s temple these were supposed to be storage rooms for all of the utensils, priests clothing, and equipment used by the priests in performing animal sacrifice and the care and keeping of the temple building We are going to see later what surprising things they actually kept there.
        • In Solomon’s temple these little rooms were made of wood which represents humanity.

The Hebrew word for wood means = something to be burned.

It is in these storage chambers of the soul where we keep things that should be burned, but we hang on to these things like the junk we accumulate in a back closet.

• • • • • The tabernacle had no such storage rooms because the tabernacle represented Christ. But Solomon’s temple represents man in his fallen human nature that keeps these bad experiences in our sub-conscious, hidden from view.

HOMEWORK
The Soul and Body of the Believer

• Application of “Choices in the Soul of the Believer”
  • What is it from this lesson that revealed something new to you about yourself?
• Preparation for “The Soul and Body of the Believer”
  • Read Eph 4:22-24
    • What does Paul mean when he tells us to put off the “old man” and to “put on the new man”? (Explain it in light of the temple blue print)
• Memory Verse: Eph 4:23-24