Clough Proverbs Lesson 5

Entrance and Exit of the Human Spirit

This will be continued on the realm of the human spirit; we have a way to go still with the human spirit, although I did say last time we would move into the soul this morning. The soul is even more complex to understand than the spirit so therefore we want to make sure we understand the Scriptural position as to the work and the existence and the functioning of the human spirit. Just to refresh your minds, we are again reminding you that in this series I’m trying to show you that these terms in the Bible are not terms that are labeled for an abstraction; these are not abstractions, psychological abstractions. This is not some sort of personality theory that the Bible is presenting.

When the Bible reveals facts about man’s being the Bible reveals these facts in terms of something that can be observed and watched, and the word “soul” and the word “spirit” and later on various words for the organs of the body as they correspond to psychological states, are all terms that the ancient man living in Israel, as well as the modern man living here, can experience himself. I can’t promise this but I hope that by next Sunday or the Sunday after I will be able to give you some situations that you can run through your mind and put yourself into that will give you a clue as to what is your soul and what is your spirit, and you can kind of, as it were, feel the difference between the soul and the spirit. This I can’t promise, we’re working on this, kind of a little congregational experiment. But whether we come up with this or not in the form that I want, still the issue will be what do these terms mean and when we discover what these terms mean then we are prepared to understand the book of Proverbs, but not until.

So we begin again with the concept of spirit, just the general idea of spirit, and the general idea of spirit means that which is unseen. Remember in John 3 the classic illustration of what spirit is, given by Jesus Christ, in which He said it’s like the wind, you can observe the results but you can’t see it. And this is the same that is true of the spirit. The spirit can be sensed, it can be felt, it can be observed in its effects but it cannot be observed directly, and therefore it would be associated in God’s Word with that which causes personality changes and that which causes life to exist.

Then the Bible breaks creation into categories and the biblical breakdown of creation is something that has to be observed very carefully by the believer today because of the modern work on generating life in the laboratory and the questions that surround the issue, can man ever make life in the laboratory. Before you discuss those questions you’re not qualified to render any opinions until you define terms. And when we come to Scripture we are surprised to see how the Bible defines terms. We find, for example, that the Bible divides creation into what it calls reproducing and non-reproducing, whereas we are accustomed to divide, our modern 20^th century American English divides it into living and nonliving, that is not the label of the Bible. The Bible does not use the word “living” in this sense. It’s foreign to Scripture to use it this way. The Bible uses reproducing and non-reproducing; translated into a more technical vocabulary we would say this is cellular and non-cellular. That’s the nearest thing we can come to as far as a specific term that’s available today. And thus the Bible divides creation into these two parts.

It’s also interesting in the light of modern discussion about the creation of life that the word “create” is not used when God brings the initial stages of reproducing creation into existence. Here’s reproducing creation and we would say it includes plants, animals, and men. And when the first stage of reproducing creation is brought into existence, the word create, barah, is not used in the Hebrew; the only time that the word “create” is used in the Bible is when God originally brings forth matter/energy, Genesis 1:1. The second time barah is used is Genesis 1:21, when He brings animals into existence, and the third time barah is used is when He brings man into existence. The fact that the Hebrew text does not report a creative act for the introduction of cellular life as we would refer to it in 20^th century terms, suggests to me that there is not a clear cut demarcation and therefore it is possible that in our generation men will make a living cell but this living cell is not a creative act because the word barah is not used for it in the creation narratives. The boundary line between inorganic and organic is not that clear in Scripture.

The real difference is between plants and animals and we have a problem here because it is difficult in modern biological categories of classification to divide the plant and animal kingdom. Modern biologists have injected an intermediate category called the Protista kingdom, the one cell beings that have some attributes of plants and then on the other hand they have locomotion, some attributes of animal life. In this case we’re at a loss right now to figure out what category in the modern world corresponds to our biblical categories. This is a job for the biblically oriented Christian biologist. This is a whole project for research available open for his work.

But the plants and animals and men can be compared, as we have tried to compare them in this series so far, in that the plants can be subject to stimuli; these stimuli cause a response in the plant. Again using the illustration you can train a plant to grow in certain areas but you have to constantly apply stimuli to have this pattern of response. With the animals we have a stimulus, such as say a bell ringing in Pavlov’s dog experiments, and we have a response, the salivating of the dog but in between there we have some sort of thought which we have labeled in this series as perceptual thought; that is thought that is rooted and almost inseparable from direct perception. That is, the dog doesn’t categorize and analyze what is the meaning of bell. All he does is think about the perception that he has but he doesn’t go abstract beyond the perception level. And this perceptive thought that is available in animals we take to mean the evidence empirically of the existence of the animal’s spirit. Animals have spirit as proved in Genesis 6, 7 and 8, the “breath of lives” is shared with animals and men. Animals are said to be living in the Scriptural sense of the word. And so we point this to you to show you that the presence of spirit apparently is the causation behind thought. Plants don’t think in this sense; animals do think in this sense.

Then we come to man and he receives the situation or a stimulus and he has a response but man differs from the animals in that his thought has various additional features which we now call conceptual thought, that is, man thinks in terms of concepts rather than just mere perceptions. Put another way we can say plants can be trained in some sense but only animals have what we call learned behavior patterns; most animals, practically all animals, most of their behavior is instinctual behavior patterns, IBP, that is they don’t learn it, they are just given it and they work on this and so on, develop it, but it’s instinct. However, some animals have a degree of a learned behavior pattern, where they actually must learn to respond in some way and that frees them from sort of a mechanistic universe. They do have a pattern of adjustment, a personal adjustment to their environment. And this freedom that they have from their environment is due to the presence of spirit in them

When we come to man, however, we find a most interesting thing, that instinctual behavior patterns form a very, very tiny part of his life. It is interesting that very, very, little of human behavior is instinctive. Man doesn’t even have instincts on what to eat and what not to eat; he doesn’t know how to drink water, and as we have said, certain physiologists have pointed out that man is the only animal that never adjusts his drinking, for example, that is water, to his real bodily needs and so therefore when he’s dehydrated man is the only animal that will never drink enough water, and yet man is the only animal too who will drink when he is not thirsty. So man, you see, has learned behavior patterns including the very dietary functions and the very eating functions that he has.

Now this gives us a clue; if all of man’s life has a lot of learned behavior patterns plus the fact that he thinks in terms of concepts, it means that man alone has what we would call understanding. So he has two things, he has learned behavior patterns and understanding; animals have learned behavior patterns and plants have nothing. And this is how we would divide these categories given the fact that at the boundary line some of these categories give us some trouble. But we have the learned behavior pattern and understanding with man. This is important to notice because later on when we deal with the parts of the soul, the conscience and so on, understanding is going to become very, very critical. So we have developed this concept that man alone has this mysterious factor, understanding.

What is this mysterious factor, understanding, that separates him from the animals. This factor, called understanding, means that man must live his life before God. That is, there is a God-consciousness. Put in another word, man seeks total meaning, a meaning of what everything is, a total meaning, he thinks of a grand concept, a concept that will include all little concepts, it’s a pyramid, a hierarchy, and he goes up to the top and he always seeks a concept that will lock together all the concepts. This is God-consciousness and all men have God consciousness after a certain age, which we will deal with next week, the age of accountability. But when God-consciousness occurs in the human soul then man’s life has to be lived in the light of this understanding and the reason why God has, if this represents all possible behavior patterns and this represents the instinctive behavior patterns of man and all of this represents the learned behavior patterns of man, you see why man, then, has a tremendous area in which issue or loyalty or treason to God is made the key factor.

In other words, there are many activities, he eats, he drinks, he does everything contrary to an animal, non-instinctive. Man has to learn to eat as unto the Lord or learn to eat in rebellion against God. Everything from [can’t understand word] factors like eating and so on, all the details of life are learned against this backdrop of understanding. This is why man and man alone lives with God-consciousness. This is the factor, of course, that is eliminated by much psychology and psychiatry today and this is why we have insisted in this series that the modern psychologist and psychiatrist operating in an anti-Christian framework cuts himself off from the understanding that he seeks. You can’t understand man, not if the Bible is correct. The Bible’s assertion is that man is made in God’s image; how then can you understand what is made in God’s image if you don’t understand God; how can you understand God if you don’t receive revelation from Him. So it seems to me to follow very logically that only in the pages of God’s Word can you truly find the very key factors of man’s being.

We’ve dealt with this and we’ve dealt with man’s learned behavior patterns, we’ll come back to this in Proverbs because you’re going to see that the book of Proverbs is written to develop the learned behavior patterns in the light of divine viewpoint understanding. That is the thrust of the book of Proverbs; that is why it was taught to the children of Israel. This is true education; all of you people who are education majors are going to find surprises for you in the book of Proverbs because in Proverbs you will find what real education is like and there you will find how the nation Israel educated their youth, and why, had the book of Proverbs been followed the nation of Israel would have had the most fantastic society on the face of this earth. Now they did anyway, in spite of this fact that they rebelled but nevertheless, if we as believers today wish to have strong homes, if we wish to have strong spirits, if we wish to have a strong education the book of Proverbs is for us because there and only there do you find what real education is like.

Today we are going to deal with another factor about the human spirit, so again let’s start with Genesis 2:7. We go back to this key passage showing how we were all made. And we’re going to deal first with the entrance of the human spirit, and secondly, the exit of the human spirit. That is, birth and death. So today our two themes will be the birth and death of man. When do you receive your spirit and when does it leave?

The first part is the entrance of the human spirit. The human spirit in Genesis 2:7 is given by God directly after the body is formed. “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.” This teaches, then, that the body is finished and made ready for the reception of breath and when the first physical breath is taken, at that point the body also receives the spirit. Please remember, over and over again I will repeat this, that the terms of the Bible that are psychological were never intended to be abstract; they are always hooked onto something that can be observed, and so when you talk about the human spirit in the Bible you’re not talking about just a psychological abstraction. When you’re talking about the human spirit in the Bible you’re talking that is linked to something you can observe. What is it you can observe? Human breath. So the Bible links the presence of the human spirit with the presence or absence of breath. This is why in Genesis 2:7 you have this factor. It is linked to breath.

If you turn to Psalm 139:15 you’ll see the same image carried over to subsequent births of men. In Genesis 2:7 you have the birth of Adam; Adam was born when he was mature, but in Psalm 139:15 you have the birth of all of us and how we were born. You can take all the sex education courses you want to an you’ll never get this view. David speaks of his origin and he’s speaking here of the formation of his body and when he speaks of the formation of his body in the womb of his mother he uses a word for his mother that is identical in function to Genesis 2:7.

We want to link, therefore, Psalm 139:15 with Genesis 2:7. “My substance,” David refers to his body, “was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and embroidered,” the word that is translated “curiously wrought” [“intricately wrought”] in the King James version means embroidered, and down through the centuries Jewish exegetes have thought of this embroidery work as the, careful as you watch the embryo grow as the parts, the arms, the features and the ears and the head come into visibility, and they distinguish; that process is called embroidery, and that is the process mentioned here, “when I was curiously wrought,” as the embryo begins to develop in the womb. “…when I was made in secret, and embroidered in the lowest parts of the earth,” now was David embroidered in the lowest parts of the earth? He was embroidered in his mother’s womb, therefore the last phase, “the lowest parts of the earth” is a label for the womb of David’s mother. Why is there a connection between David’s mother’s womb and the earth? Because in Genesis 2:7 from whence was Adam’s body made? Adam was made out of the dust of the earth by God and so the analogy between Genesis 2:7 and Psalm 139:15 is that the mother’s womb performs the function that God performed in manufacturing the body of Adam.

This is one of the features of… and I’m going to get into an application of this, it’s going to involve a proposition that I want balanced by this proposition so look carefully again at Psalm 139:15 and that is that this shows the importance of the mother’s body and shows the importance of why a woman who is bearing a child must take very good care of herself. It’s taught back in Scripture before medical science ever dealt with the problems of pregnancy. But if people had followed Psalm 139 down through the centuries they would have known, regardless of modern medical findings, why it is so important that a pregnant woman protect her health, because during that time the mother’s body is actually performing the function that God Himself performed in the Garden of Eden. And that should elevate the function of woman; man does not perform, the male never performs this function, no place. It is always the woman that does the function of God, whether it’s bringing Jesus Christ as virgin born Savior into the world, it is always the woman that does it; the male never does. The male initiates the process but it’s the female always that does the work of God through her body, and so this process sets the woman into a tremendous position. And why, even today in Jewish customs and Jewish feasts and festivals and Passover it is the woman that generally light the candle to start the festival, it is the woman that lights the candle to start Passover. Why is the woman the one that does this? Because nothing can happen until the woman prepares the way. It is always the female that prepares the way.

Therefore, Psalm 139:15 seems clearly to tie Genesis 2:7 and the work that God did in finishing the body with the work that the mother does in preparing the body of her baby. Now, when this work is finished there’s one thing that the mother can’t do, and that is the mother cannot contribute a human spirit to that fetus; the embryo cannot be supplied by a human spirit from the mother. That human spirit to the mother’s baby must be provided by God Himself. And so there are two parts to the work in Psalm 139:15 as there are two parts to the work in Genesis 2:7. The first part is the finishing up of the body of the child; and when that body is finished and ready and prepared, then God breathed into its nostrils the breathe of life, and this occurs when the baby takes the first breath.

When a child is born and takes its first breath, that first breath is unique in its life. Never again, as long as you live, will you ever take a breath like your first one for the reason that in the time that you take your first breath you fill your lungs; never again during your lifetime do you ever take a breath, no matter how hard you try, no matter how tired you may be, no how matter how exhausted and oxygen deprived your body may be, never again will you ever, ever, ever take a breath like the first one that you took. That first breath that is taken by a child fills the lungs with what they call residual volume and the rest of the time that the child lives his lungs are filled with residual volume of air, not obviously the same set of air molecules but volume wise, proportionately speaking, the lungs always have a residual volume that no matter how hard, you can sit and try to exhaust all the breath out of your lungs, try it, and you will never exhaust the residual volume, it is still going to be in your lungs. And this has led in modern terminology to a very interesting police procedure. Police are able to tell whether a baby was still born or whether it was born and then murdered, or born and then died from natural causes. And the test is very simple; they remove the lungs from the baby’s body and test them by floating them in a dish of water and if the lungs float it reveals the presence of residual volume and that proves the baby lives. If the lungs sink in the water it proves the baby was stillborn and never did live. And so the criminal procedure is built on this area of residual volume. Now at the acquisition of residual volume that is tied in the Bible with the introduction of the human spirit in the body. It’s that point the spirit is there.

That is one line of evidence. Further I will substantiate this with some other lines of evidence in Scripture and to define the issue more sharply for you, this is the issue: here is the point of conception, here is the point of physical birth. Here is the question? Does the spirit enter here or does the spirit enter here, or does the spirit enter some time during the nine months of pregnancy. Which of these three answers is the correct one? Obviously one has to be because they’re exhaustive. One of these three answers is right and two are absolutely wrong. There can’t be any middle, in-between ground; these are the only three logical options possible, if you are a believer that everybody has a human spirit. So the human spirit to start at the point of conception; it has to start sometime between conception and pregnancy, or it has to start at pregnancy. There can’t be any other answer, I don’t care who you are, how long you think, there are no other answers; you have to pick between these three.

Now on the basis of the Word of God which of these three answers is the correct one. The first answer, the fact that it’s at conception, I claim is denied by both Genesis 2:7 and Psalm 139:15; my claim to you is that it is only the third answer, that the human spirit is given at physical birth and not before… not before! That is, that if a baby is born stillborn he never was a living thing, never, in any sense of the word according to the Word of God.

Now I will substantiate this with three lines of evidence. My first line of evidence in the Word of God is Genesis 2:7, Psalm 139:15 and furthermore, in this same line, first line of evidence, Ezekiel 37:8. This is Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones but the imagery of Ezekiel’s vision is again very logically consistent with Psalm 139 and Genesis 2:7, it’s the same theme repeated over and over and over again. And this theme, I claim, proves that the human spirit is given at the point of physical birth.

Ezekiel 37:8, “And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came upon them,” that is the bones, “and the skin covered them above, but there was no ruach” or “spirit within them. [9] Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the ruach” or “the wind, prophesy, son o man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. [10] So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceedingly great army.”

Now granted, this is only a vision; granted that. But a vision has to communicate in the thought forms that the people are used to and therefore this vision substantiates the position that the body in their thinking had to be completely finished and ready before the human spirit indwelt. It was only after the dry bones had the flesh and the muscles and the structure that they were ready for the first breath, and only after the first breath did they truly live. That’s the first line of evidence.

A second live of evidence is the way Jesus Christ came into the world. Turn to Hebrews 10:5, the second line of evidence that the human spirit comes at the point of physical birth, not at the point of human conception. In Hebrews 10:5 we have the prophetic words of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was God-Man, Jesus Christ entered the world in a way similar to all of us in that He had a real mother who performed the work of God in providing His body. The Holy Spirit negated the effects of her flesh that was corrupt and so on, of her body and produced the body of Jesus Christ.

Notice what Christ says in Hebrews 10:5, “Wherefore, when He comes into the world, He says,” and look at the quote that Christ says, “Sacrifice and offering You would not, but a body Thou hast prepared for Me.” Now doesn’t that teach that Christ’s body was prepared first and then we have the acquisition of the human spirit? Then Christ becomes a living being, only after the virgin birth. Before the virgin birth Jesus was not a living entity in the womb of Mary; only after the virgin birth was He truly living and had the incarnation actually occur. The incarnation occurred not at the time that Mary conceived of the Holy Spirit. The incarnation occurred at the time of the virgin birth; that was the time of the incarnation. So that is a second line of evidence if you examine how Jesus Christ Himself came into the world, His body was prepared first, then after the He became a living thing.

A third line of evidence is from criminal law of the Old Testament. Turn back to Exodus 21:22, this is a citation from the Old Testament criminal law regarding women who were assaulted while they were pregnant. Exodus 21:22; now the background to appreciate this passage is this: throughout the ancient near east we have law codes that correspond in content partially to the Mosaic Law. Obviously other countries had law codes; I refer to Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Text, you can look up in that book, if you look under law codes of the nations and you can read these law codes for yourself. Don’t take my word for it, look them up yourself. These law codes existed and they were discussing criminal procedures.

Now when we look at the law codes of the ancient east we discover a very startling fact, many startling facts. The first one is that generally speaking the Mosaic Law is a lot stricter in moral ethics than these other laws, not in the sense of cruelty but in the sense of articulation of moral values. This is why, by the way, the Mosaic Law is totally for capital punishment. The Mosaic Law, interestingly enough, is different from the other ancient near eastern law codes in this respect: that the ancient near eastern law codes all had clauses prohibiting abortion. The question arises, why did not the Mosaic Law Code have prohibition against abortion. We know abortion was occurring in the ancient east because we have descriptions of how it was done. Now since abortion was a procedure known in all societies, you can’t argue, as one did with me one time, one cannot argue that this is a mere argument from silence. This is not an argument from silence; we know historically that if there was any corrupt procedure the Jews would have picked it up from the culture. They were specialists in their apostasy at picking up anything and everything, and the Law, the Mosaic Law, was designed to stop this kind of thing. The question is raised, why didn’t Moses’ Law deal with abortion when it was a contemporary problem? The fact that the Mosaic Law does not deal with abortion indicates that to the Israelite, we must say this, logically ground, that abortion was not an issue in Israel; it went on and it was not stopped by the Mosaic Law.

A further evidence is this particular law right here, Exodus 21:22, “If men strive, and hurt a pregnant woman, so that her fruit depart,” that is destroyed, “and yet no mischief follows; he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. [23] If mischief follows, then they shall give life for life, [24] Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” Now there are two interpretations of this passage that have been suggested. My opponent from several years ago in the pages of the University Daily argued for the first interpretation; I will give you his first and then I will give you mine. My claim is that only mine is right and his is wrong; obviously.

Exodus 21:22 speaks of mischief; this is the key word, what is the mischief. My opponent argued in the debate that mischief meant that the woman’s baby had died, so mischief he defined as the death of the ejected fetus. That he defined as mischief; the death of the ejected fetus. So he would read verses 22-23 as this: “If men strive, and they hurt a pregnant woman, so that her fetus is ejected, then and yet the fetus still lives, then he will just be fined, but if mischief follow,” that is, the ejected fetus dies, “then you will give life for life, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

Now there’s something you must understand to decide for yourself whether I am right or whether I am wrong in this interpretation, and that is the concept of justice of verse 24, retributive justice. There is no such thing as redemptive justice; this is a modern fiction, all justice by definition is retributive. Now, this retributive justice of verse 24 is a kind of justice that demands a life for a life. This is a universal principle in all God’s Word; it is not changed by the Sermon in the Mount, turn the other cheek and all the rest of it; that was not addressed to a divine institution. If you want the New Testament on capital punishment it’s given to you in Romans 13 and it is not negative by Romans 12, “Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord,” the precise reason the commandment “Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord” is given to the Bible-believing Christian is because he can turn the other cheek and know the government will punish the murdered; that’s why that command is given. It’s completely stupid to argue that New Testament ethics undermine capital punishment. New Testament ethics, if you study Romans 12 and 13 are given precisely because there’s an environment of justice in the government. They wouldn’t have been given if there wasn’t first a just framework in which you could exit.

Now, capital punishment is the concept of a life for a life. Why is this? In the Old Testament if one murdered someone and it was what we would call first degree, not manslaughter, manslaughter was something else again. Let’s take two terms here, maybe I can stop here and define two words for you to clarify your thinking. Manslaughter and murder; we won’t use all the legal terminology but the Bible distinguish between the two. In manslaughter you do something and after it happens someone dies. In murder you plan on it and kill someone; that’s the difference: murder--manslaughter. Now here’s the interesting thing about Old Testament justice. In the Old Testament there was nothing to punish manslaughter. Nothing, no fine was ever, ever made for manslaughter. Why? The reason for it is that in the Old Testament since it has retributive and redemptive justice, and it gives life for life, since this is the rule, the presupposition of the word justice, since this is the case, then no life can be priced; no life can ever be priced.

Say for example the American comes along and he fines somebody for killing somebody, or he imprisons him for 30 years for killing somebody. To the Old Testament mind this is a shock because in the Old Testament mind they had such a lofty view of the man who lost his life that you couldn’t price it; it couldn’t be priced by a fine, it couldn’t be priced by a prison sentence; there was no price available to price a human life. It was of infinite value. And since there was nothing available in the monetary system and there was no set of human works that could possibly equally the value of a human life, under the Old Testament very logically consistent system of justice, the only way of paying for a life is with another life. The cost of life was infinite and must be paid for by another life and so this is retributive justice in the Old Testament. The value of a life was so high; it’s not the other way around, the modern critic looks at the Bible and says how gory, how primitive. It’s precisely the other way; if we had Isaiah, if we had Jeremiah here this morning they would say you Americans, how stupid, how primitive is your justice, how much you negate the value of life; you people don’t value life. And that would be the shock you would hear. But it would be precisely Jeremiah’s argument, precisely Moses’ argument, that you Americans do not value life and it’s because you don’t value life that you have abolished capital punishment. And it would sound strange to your ears unless you understood the framework of the Bible, but the Bible says that life is so valuable we must have capital punishment in order to compensate for the victim, justice being retributive and redemptive.

This being the case, and it is always observed in the Bible, if the ejected fetus, go back to the ejected fetus, if the ejected fetus is a life than it has to be paid for, if the ejected fetus is life. And so in the first interpretation we would read verses 22-24 as assaying that men strive, they injure this woman, the fetus is ejected because of maybe abdominal injuries to the woman, she’s been hit, or the shock of being assaulted has cause her to eject this fetus; the fetus is ejected and this interpretation would say that if the fetus lived, that is no mischief follow, verse 22, no mischief follow meaning the ejected fetus lived, then nothing happens except a fine and presumably this fine would be justifiable in the sense that this would compensate for the woman’s injuries. But in verse 23 if mischief follow that would be the ejected fetus doesn’t life, it dies. Now I find this interpretation a big absurd; can you imagine a pregnant woman being assaulted to the point where she loses the fetus, can you imagine that fetus being ejected ever living? In what percent of the cases would a fetus that was forcibly ejected from a woman who had been assaulted, injured so badly that the fetus would be ejected, in what percent of cases would that fetus ever, ever live? How could it live? In what percent of those cases?

I find further this interpretation is absurd when I compare it with Assyrian law codes, where this same kind of thing occurs in an almost parallel passage and it’s beyond doubt what the Assyrians were talking about, they weren’t talking about the fetus living here; the mischief isn’t the death of the ejected fetus. In my interpretation and the interpretation of other Bible-believing Christians and I must say at this point I’m the minority, most evangelicals hold the other interpretation here because they’re so sensitive about abortion, but I have to face the Scripture and I must draw the logical conclusion, and I have to say that on the basis of God’s word abortion is not an issue to the biblical Christian at this point on the basis of the fact that in verses 22-23 the mischief is not the death of the fetus; the mischief is the death and injury of the woman assaulted. That’s the mischief; the fetus is presumed dead.

Now “if men strive and hurt a woman and her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follows, he shall be surely punished, as the woman’s husband lays upon him.” Now in this case, when the husband, the fetus is ejected, and the fetus dies so to speak, if the fetus is a real soul why do you have the last part of verse 22? Given the fact that in every other point in Hebrew criminal law when a life is lost there must automatically be capital punishment, why is not the assaulter of this woman killed at the end of verse 22? The only logical conclusion you can come to, that according to Moses the fetus never was a living soul. So therefore we argue on the basis of the third line of evidence that the human spirit enters not at the point of conception, nor during the period of pregnancy but only at the point of physical birth and this is why in the Old Testament, and I claim also in the New Testament, that abortion is not murder. Now abortion may be wrong on other grounds, we’re not debating that; all I say is that the Roman Catholic position and the evangelical position to a large degree, at this point is absolutely unscriptural, namely that abortion is not murder because the fetus never lived to begin with.

I know that there are some objections. There are two basic categories of objections to this view. One is scriptural and the other is experimental. First the scriptural objection to what I have said. Luke 1:15, the only way you can substantiate the proposition that abortion is murder is first to prove that the unborn baby is a living soul. My claim to you is that that cannot be shown on the basis of Scripture. You may argue against abortion on other grounds, yet, I’m not closing the door there, but not on the basis that it’s murder. The emotional slogan is thrown around: abortion is murder. It’s just an emotional slogan as far as I am concerned.

Luke 1:15, this speaks of John the Baptist; this verse is a very important one and we come back to this next week. “For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and he shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even out of his mother’s womb.” And the Greek preposition, ek, is used here, out of, instead of apo, from. People would argue doesn’t this show that if John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit out of his mother’s womb, out of his mother’s womb, then doesn’t this argue that he must have been a responsible being in the womb to be filled with the Spirit from out of the womb? The answer to this is that ek, when used this way refers to origin or cause and it simply saying in verse 15 that because of the work that God had for John the Baptist, planned before his conception even, because of this plan we have ek, that’s all. In other words, it is illegitimate to argue on the basis of ek and not apo that John the Baptist was a person in the mother’s womb.

Further, in the very same chapter, and remember Luke is a doctor and therefore if you read the Gospel of Luke you’ll always find a preoccupation with these little details. For example, it’s only in Luke that you read how both Mary and Elizabeth felt when they were bearing the child; none of the other Gospels record that. Why do you suppose that’s the case? Because Luke was a doctor; Luke was interested in the medical features of this. Why do you suppose all the detailed passages we have on demon possession are found in the Gospel of Luke. Because Luke was a doctor, he was interested in these things.

In Luke 1:35 it speaks of the body of Christ as it is being worked on in Mary’s womb, and in Luke 1:35 it says, the angel answered her, and said unto her, he announces this, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born out of thee shall be called the Son of God.” “…that holy thing which shall be born out of thee,” I find it most interesting that in the Greek we have masculine, feminine and neuter genders. When people are mentioned you use the masculine or the feminine, not the neuter. Why, then, is the unborn body of Jesus Christ in verse 35 referred to by the neuter adjective, “holy,” “that holy thing,” neuter case, not masculine, not feminine. If Jesus was a living person in Mary’s womb you would expect “the holy one,” “the holy man,” masculine, but not the neuter. The very fact that the neuter gender is used here suggests again that that which is in Mary is not a living thing.

So my claim further is that the Scriptural objection falls to the ground and there is no warrant to say that the baby carried in the mother’s womb is a living thing. But I have to face objections from another quarter; objections raised by medical authorities who claim that… and obviously mothers raise this question. Never to I teach this but at least one woman doesn’t come very anguished to me and say but when I was carrying my child it moved and I felt life there. What is it that you feel? You feel movement there, true, but the question again, is that life? And we have to deny that that is life. For example, we could say this is technically called prenatal movement; prenatal movements do not show the person is a person; all it shows is that there is prenatal movement. You can cut a frog’s leg off and cause it to move too, but does that prove that the leg is alive. No. All that proves is that you’ve got an active nerve system operating on a muscle structure. That’s the only thing it proves. It does not prove the existence of an indwelling human spirit.

So my claim therefore is that the human spirit enters the body at the point of first breath. But someone will raise the question, where is the human spirit before it comes in? Are we to believe as the Mormons do and others in the doctrine of preexistence? Are we to believe that the human spirit always preexisted and existed somewhere in the universe and God says oh, time for a body, grabbed it and stuck it in the body. That is the doctrine of preexistence. But to me that is negated in Scripture by the following reference. Zechariah 12:1, there’s a little note at the end of Zechariah 12:1 and it teaches the creation of the human spirit. It’s not an eternally preexisting thing. “The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, who stretched forth the heavens, laid the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him,” clearly placing human spirit as something created, not something that eternally preexisted, not part of God, not some sort of pantheism. The Bible protects us against it; we’re not going over to pantheism here. The Bible is saying that the human spirit is created at a point in time. How soon before we don’t know, just that it’s created.

Let’s pass to the second part this morning; this will take a lot less time than the first part. We said there were going to be two points; when does the human spirit enter and when does the human spirit exit. So we go from birth to death. Now we must study when does the human spirit leave the body. Turn to Job 27:3, here the parallelism is very clear, here’s what I said over and over to you and I say over and over to you again, these are not abstractions; these are connected with empirically observable things. Notice the poetic parallelism in Job 27:3, “All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils.” See the connection with breath. Job is talking about anticipating the time when he dies, so we come to the conclusion that the human spirit leaves at the last breath.

But immediately we have a problem, which breath is the last, and this is not facetious. If you are around somebody who is in a dying state how do you know when they stop breathing that they won’t start again? How do you know when the last breath is the last breath? If the doctors could know they’d be rejoicing; this is a tremendous problem with doctors, a tremendous moral issue and many, many of them face this. You just have to read the literature to know this is a hard, hard issue for anyone in the medical profession. And if you’ve had this situation in your own family with loved ones you know what I’m talking about, a very hard issue to know how long you keep life going. And what about this problem of death. Do you try to revive when it appears the person has died? How much effort do you give to trying to revive someone who appears to have died and has taken the last breath?

We don’t pretend to have all the answers her except we do say that the Bible has a very interesting statement. And it’s the basis of a story in one of the gospel. If you turn to John 11:1 we’ll see a very interesting feature about death in the Jewish community. Death in the Jewish community as well as in other parts of the ancient east appeared to take 72 hours; there appeared to be a lingering tradition, and we can check this, if you have Edersheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Volume 2, page 631 or you can send to Dr. Custance in his Doorway Paper Number 52 available from Box 291, Brockville Ontario, Canada, and he has a source reference there for this work in ancient near eastern cultures. There is apparently a uniform tradition among these societies that they will stop and not bury the person for three days. That they do not consider to totally have occurred until 72 hours have elapsed from the time of the last observed breath. This is only a custom. We’re not saying this is explicitly taught in Scripture but Jesus seems to take account of the custom in the happenings of Lazarus in John 11. Here’s what happened.

John 11:1, “A certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. [2] (It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick). [3] Therefore, his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, him whom You love is sick. [4] When Jesus heard that, He said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God [that the Son of God might be glorified by it]. [5] Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister,” and for those of you who read this modern garbage about Jesus, this doesn’t mean he made love to her, that’s ridiculous. This is the modern American idea that every time you have l-o-v-e you have to have sex. That’s ridiculous and it’s a blasphemy to speak of this and I have seen this verse used as evidence that Jesus had sexual relations with all sorts of people in the Gospels, simply because the modern man can’t conceive of love on a non-sexual plain, that’s all, and it just simply indicts the critics themselves. They can’t conceive of love in a non-sexual way it’s to their poverty. Verse 5, “Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.” And that doesn’t mean He was a homosexual either, incidentally. [6] “And when He had heard, therefore, that he was sick, He abode two days still in the place where He was. [7] Then after that, He says to His disciples, Let’s go into Judea.”

Now Jesus deliberately, and you can feel the play and the tension in the text here, John is saying He loved him, He loves him, He was a close friend, but in spite of the fact that He loved him, He stopped. He could have gone there immediately, He didn’t. He said I’m going to wait here; I’m going to wait here. And then finally we read in verse 14, “Then Jesus said unto them plainly,” because they wonder why, why does Jesus hold back, why doesn’t He go heal the person. Verse 14, “Then Jesus said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. [15] And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that now you may believe; nevertheless, let us to unto him. [16] Then said Thomas, who is called Didymus,” and here’s the doubting Thomas, “unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.” A real optimist! Verse 17, “Then when Jesus came, He found that he had lain in the grave four days already,” beyond the 72 hour period of trial. And then He raises him from the dead.

Now I suggest to you the reason Jesus waited so long is simply because Jesus wanted to show that He could raise from the dead by a supernatural miracle and if He had come to Lazarus too soon, then the force of this miracle would never have been felt because the people could have said well, it’s just chance, He isn’t from the dead anyway, we’ve had this happen before. So Jesus, You really haven’t pulled anything off that’s really great. But to wait four days after the 72 hour period Jesus thereby proves His miracle. This also, by the way, proves why Jesus was in the grave three days and three nights according to 1 Corinthians, to show the world that Jesus died… DIED! He just didn’t go in there and swoon and walk out a man who had been nailed to a cross and then walk out and move a stone that took 3 or 4 Roman soldiers to move, an absurd theory. But nevertheless one that has been offered in history. Jesus Christ stayed in the grave three days and three nights in order to show that He was truly really beyond reviving.

Now if this is the case, and since we know ancient near eastern customs are generally pragmatically based I suggest this view about death, that the human spirit may linger about the body up to these three days, and this explains why some people, you’ll read about in the newspaper appear to die, and suddenly come alive again, is that the spirit does linger. We have evidence that the spirit can go back into the body after it’s come out of the body in 2 Corinthians. Turn there for Paul’s experience. In 2 Corinthians 12:2 Paul speaks of a time when apparently… this could have happened when he was stoned. And he may have been stoned to death… he may have been stoned to death here. Paul says, “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell; God knows--) such an one caught up to the third heaven,” where he saw visions and speaking. Now this may have occurred, and scholars suggest this, that during one of the times when Paul was so terribly beaten that he literally died and when he died his spirit left the body, went to be with the Lord and returned again to the body.

So the termination of when does death occur at the last breath, yes, but when is the last breath? It is a period of transition and vagueness. We are in a position, in other words, according to the Scriptures where we can’t give too much help to the modern quandary of when does a person die.

Some further notes on death and then we’ll finish for today. Another great thing about death beyond the idea that it leaves with the last breath is the fact that apart from one man all men have no control over the leaving of their human spirit, they have no control, barring obviously the problem of suicide. But apart from the question of suicide no man can choose the hour of his death. We won’t turn here but those of you who are taking notes, it’s taught in Ecclesiastes 2:7 and 8:8. But it’s also taught in the New Testament in John 19:30 that Jesus Christ was unique because when Christ died on the cross He personally chose to die. Jesus Christ was unique in that the Roman cross did not kill Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ hung on the cross, He knew His work was done and then He chose to hand His spirit to the Father and you have the record of His choice in John 19:30. So Jesus’, unique to all men, chose the moment of his death. No other man had this because all men are fallen.

A further note and that is that the spirit goes to be with God at the point of death, but this spirit is not separated from the soul. Proof of this, we haven’t got time to go into the details, compare Acts 7:59-60 where Stephen says “Father, accept my spirit” as he dies, and he breathes out his last breath, and you compare that verse with Hebrews 12:23 you will see that when people are face to face with the Lord they’re said to be spirits. So we don’t separate the human spirit from the human soul at the point of death, they depart together. Going to be with God does not necessarily mean they go to be with Him in a saved state; going to be with God merely means that now they are outside of the body and in the pure spirit realm. The exact location gets involved in the problems of paradise, heaven and hell, which we will not discuss in this series. But we have, then, the exit of the human spirit at the point of the last breath.

Now there is one final thought to this and that is that as you’ve looked at this, the entrance and the exit of the spirit, think of your own and realize that if you really believe that this is the truth and if this really is the Word of God to you, then what about your human spirit. God made it, you’re a unique person, He created your human spirit. He made and helped your mother form your body in her womb, for a purpose. Christ died that your spirit might be saved; that it might be forgiven its sin and there’s no way a dirty spirit can be clean except by the blood of Jesus Christ. That’s the only cleansing agent possible. And so therefore, since the Bible does say, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment; the question that should hand over each one of us is what do we do when that hour comes. If we believed in Christ and received the cleansing of the blood in order that our sins would be remitted, cleaned and removed, or are our spirits dirty, do they still sit there in there in their sins, and therefore when we die and the spirit goes to the judgment, and goes before God, then what happens.