The mystery of the universe is God, the mystery of God is Christ, and the mystery of Christ is the church. The church is altogether centered on man. It is wrapped up with man; so man becomes very crucial in God’s mystery. God’s mystery is carried out by His economy, and His economy is just to dispense Himself into man. Man is so crucial to God’s mystery.
What is man? I do not ask, “Who is man?” I do not ask, “Who are you?” but “What are you?” We may say that we are a man. Then, what is a man? The Bible tells us that man is a vessel (Rom. 9:21, 23). A vessel is different from an instrument. Man is not an instrument; he is a vessel. A vessel is a container to contain something. As a container this vessel needs the content, and according to the Bible the content of man is the very God. Man is just an empty vessel to contain God as his content. We all must realize that these vessels are living ones. We are living vessels with a mind, with emotions, and with a will. Man today is a living vessel to contain God as the content. For such a living vessel to receive God as the content there is a recipient, a receiver within man. The radio serves as an illustration of this. Radio waves in the air can get into a radio and a voice will come out. It is just a little radio, but music and announcements come out of it because something is in the air. The radio waves in the air need a receiver. We are just like little radios. We have to consider ourselves as little radios, vessels to receive the divine waves that bring in the divine music, the divine announcement, and the divine declaration. Once we tune our receiver within, the heavenly music comes in.
What is this receiver within man? We all have to realize that man as a living vessel is not so simple. Do not consider that we are so simple. This little vessel created by God is very complicated. Several medical doctors have told me that most medical students spend two years studying the physical body. These doctors all told me the same thing: that after they studied this human body for two years, they had to admit that there is an Almighty One in this universe. All of the organization and arrangement of the human body is too marvelous! We have to believe that this body is created by God. Who designed such a beautiful face? Suppose the nose were designed with the holes upward. Then rain would come in, and we would be troubled with the rain water. God created two eyebrows as breakwaters to turn the salty sweat away. God also created the hair within our throat upward but all the rest of our hair throughout our whole body downward. If the inner hair were downward, we might choke on our phlegm. All these prove that our little, marvelous body as the shell of God’s vessel is created by the Almighty God.
Man is not so simple. What I have been talking about is the physical body, but man is not just the physical body. Within this physical body we have all the things denoted by the term, the heart. Do you know how many hearts we have? We must realize that we have two hearts. One is so bad, and the other is so good. Without such a good heart we could not be here. If you ask a medical doctor to check my chest, he may say that I am so strong because I have such a strong heart, a good heart. But I would say that my heart is poor, sinful, and ugly. Actually, we are talking about two hearts. The doctor is talking about the physical heart, and I am talking about my psychological heart. Do you realize that we have a psychological heart? The physical heart does not have the ability to love; it only has the ability to pump the blood. The medical doctors do a lot for the physical heart, but not for the psychological heart.
Then we have a mind to think with and to consider with. We have the emotions, the will, and the conscience. In addition to this, according to the Bible we have the soul, the spirit, and the inner man. A surgeon could only find the brain. He could not find the mind. Where is the emotion? Where is the will? Where is the conscience? Many times human beings say that their conscience testifies that they are so good. But what is the conscience, and where is it? Man is not so simple. We have the heart, the mind, the will, the emotion, the conscience, the soul, and the spirit. There is such a thing within us that is called the soul. It is also called the psyche. Psuche, the Greek word for soul, is the base word for such words as psychology and psychological.
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