Overview
This Montana Christian Festival teaching considers the witness of the human body as part of the witness of God’s creation. Drawing from his physical-therapy background, Rev. Ed Horney discusses the body’s capacity, coordination, healing, adaptation, and interdependent systems. The speaker connects observable features of the created world with Scripture, emphasizing design, order, provision, interdependence, and the Creator’s care.
Transcript
The Human Body’s God-Given Potential
So this morning we get the witness of God's creation started in a real hot way. First teacher is from Reno, Nevada. He's going to share about the witness of the human body.
Our teacher actually has a doctor of physical therapy. So please welcome Reverend Ed Horney. Take a deep breath with me.
Bring her all in. And now say, I love you. I love you too.
What a great day to be alive. Well, we had an amazing time in the witness of God's creation yesterday. And this is a day that the Lord hath made.
So we're going to do her again, all together again. So how come I get to talk to you about the human body? I don't know. But when I was a teenager in high school, I went to high school.
I was fascinated with the potential of a human body and how it could get better when you do something with it, when you do the right things with it. That was back when Arnold Schwarzenegger walked the earth in one bodybuilding contest and actually did that before he became a movie star, I guess. Back in the 70s.
But that fascinated me, that the body could get bigger, stronger, that it could get better with training. Then I learned about a profession I could go into called physical therapy that helped people reach their maximum potential in their physical bodies. So I latched right on to that baby.
And I was thankful to go into that field right after high school, go to college and do that sort of thing. Later on, I didn't want all the young bucks to know more than me. So I got my doctorate while I was working as a physical therapist, too, because I wanted to learn more.
But you know what really cinched it for me? It wasn't long after that, when I started to pursue the physical therapy curriculum and degree, it wasn't very long after that, I learned a verse in the Bible. I started to get ignited with the Word of God, started recognizing that the Bible meant what it said and said what it means. And I learned about a verse in Psalm 139.
So you can turn there if you will, if you have your Bible. Psalm 139. And I'm so thankful to be able to impart this with you this morning.
See, my goal this morning is that we'll learn some amazing things, some greater depth about the body of Christ, because God utilizes the human body as an amazing, vibrant reality to document and to illustrate the body of Christ. We'll get into some more detail about that. But Psalm 139 verse 14 says, I will praise thee.
Who is it talking about? God. I will praise thee. So why is this psalmist going to praise God? I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Marvelous are thy works. Can you imagine waking up one morning and thinking that, and then being able to pen it, put it in writing so it would be documented forever? Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. But all that's in us, we understand that.
And God says that about the human body. Psalm 139. There it is.
Like a diamond. What about this phrase? We're going to take a little in-depth look at this phrase, some of the phrases in Psalm 139. Fearfully and wonderfully.
One of the ways that God emphasizes things in the Word of God is he has figures of speech. Figures of speech, like it's raining cats and dogs. You ever been hit by a cat when it was raining? No, but that's a figure of speech to make it living and real, make it more vibrant, bring it to our understanding with a greater depth.
So this figure of speech, these two words put together, and if you want to know, you Bible fans, if you want to know what figure it is, it's a metonymy. Metonymy of cause, if you are real particular. And it emphasizes the great awe and wonderfulness.
The emotion we have at what God has done. Fearfully and wonderfully. That's what we have impact our minds as we look at this.
Fearfully and wonderfully. And fearfully can be translated awesomely. Awesome gets used in our culture quite a bit.
Overdone. But when God says awesomely, it's awesome. Awesomely and wonderfully made.
So that depth of emotion, that awe, that wonderfulness of emotion is at what God has done. Marvelous are thy works, we see later in the verse. Marvelous are thy works.
Another way to look at marvelous is they're distinguished. They're extraordinary. Aren't God's works extraordinary? They're out of the ordinary.
God doesn't slack when he's putting things together. When he creates something, when he puts things together for us to recognize how great he is, he doesn't mess around. Marvelous are thy works.
Distinguished, extraordinary. Look at Psalm 105, please. We're going to look at another place where this word marvelous is used.
Just to show you how amazing God is with what he's done with the human body. Psalm 105, verses 2 and 5, we'll look at. Sing unto him like we did last night.
Sing psalms unto him. We sang Psalm 100. Talk ye of all his wondrous works.
The word wondrous is the same word that's translated marvelous. Talk of all his wondrous works. We're doing that plenty this weekend.
We're not going to stop either until we're done. Wonderful, wondrous are his works. Verse 5, here's another time it comes up.
These Psalms are just rich, aren't they? Remember his, there it is again, his marvelous works. Remember them, that he hath done his wonders and the judgments of his mouth. This is God's word.
These are things that came out of God's mouth. Makes you kind of thankful, doesn't it? I'm so thankful I get to share some of this with you because it blessed me when I looked at it in his word. And now we're enjoying it together.
Thankful for the invitation. Somebody said to me this morning, are you teaching today? I said, I don't know. No, I knew.
That my soul. Well, you can look at yourself sometime. Psalm 107 verses 8, 15, 21, and 31.
Repeat the same exact words over and over and there you can guess which word is, from the same word is marvelous. You can look at it sometime. Psalm 107 verses 8, 15, 21, and 31.
It repeats so that God really gets the message across how amazing his works are, how marvelous his works are. And that my soul knoweth right well. That my soul knoweth right well.
From the depths of everything that I am, what wakes me, me, I get how amazing, how marvelous God's works are. And he's talking about the human body here. So I think he's making a point.
Do you? The depth of who I am, marvelous are thy works. I want you to take that handout now that the, thanks for doing all this. Isn't it amazing how all these things have come together so we can get to the beauty of God's words so we can recognize how much God loves us.
He did all this for us. He could have just had a ball bearing in space with a bunch of amoeba running around on it. But he did this.
He did this so we can enjoy it. So look at your handout. We're going to put some concepts together a little bit.
1 Corinthians 12, 12, and 13 from the J.B. Phillips Bible. You can just read it off your handout here. Verses 12 and 13.
This handout shows you the word body as it comes up in the King James Version as it refers to the body of Christ. The word body is used over 140 times in the Bible in the King James Version, but 31 times it's used in association with the body of Christ. So that we can get that there's a connection between this wonderful, this marvelous, this amazing human body and what God wants to illustrate with it, the body of Christ.
I love this J.B. Phillips translation. Verse 12, as the human body, he comes right out and says it. You don't have to guess.
As the human body, which has many parts, is a unity and those parts, despite their multiplicity, constitute one single body. We're going to see how much multiplicity there is in the human body. Constitute one single body.
So it is with the body of Christ. So God connects those two great realities. So it is with the body of Christ, for we were all baptized by the Spirit into what? One body, whether we were Jews, Gentiles, slaves, or free men.
Covered it all. Male, female, it says in Colossians. And we have all had experience of the same spirit.
We're connected spiritually in the one body. You can enjoy the rest of those 31 times. They're all listed on this page at another time.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
But I wanted you to have that to bless you. See the connection. I'm going to read Psalm 139, 14 from a couple different versions as well.
I praise you. I praise God for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works.
My soul knows it very well. English Standard Version. Then thank you for making me so wonderfully complex.
I love this version. So wonderfully complex. There's a multiplicity of parts that come together.
Your workmanship is marvelous. And how well I know it. Every time we wake up, what happens? We breathe.
We start moving along. Take a lot of things for granted. If your knees are a little stiff, like mine are sometimes, you just start moving.
And then they work again. We wake up. We start moving.
How marvelous is that? How well I know it. New Living Translation. God chose this human body as a witness that He awesomely and wonderfully made to emphatically emphasize His dwelling place.
The one body of Christ. The one body of Christ. So now we're going to start looking at a few details of the human body.
But to get us warmed up, I'm glad Kip brought up the eyes of the horse yesterday. To get us warmed up, I want you to look somebody in the eyes. For some of you married couples, it's not difficult.
If you're not married, find somebody to look right in the eyes. Just take a minute and do that. Those eyes have 107 million cells.
Seven million of those cells are cones. And in this kind of daylight here, those cones can distinguish colors. A thousand different shades of color.
I dare any camera to try to do that. A thousand different shades of color. Just in the green spectrum, for instance.
That's amazing. So look that person in the eye again, or pick another one. We've all got eyes.
Don't say a word with your mouth. But tell that person I love you with your eyes. For some, that makes you laugh.
Eyes can talk. Can't they? You ever look somebody in the eye and you know, that's one of the things Kip brought up. Don't look a horse in the eye when you're angry at them.
But we make connections with our eyes. God used 107 million cells on it. We ought to.
So we're taking some time now to share some of the awesomeness of God's creation of the human body. And here's some amazing, marvelous reality. He designed this human body to contain the great gift of Holy Spirit.
When somebody gets born again, like we heard yesterday, confesses with their mouth the Lord Jesus, and believes in their heart that God raised him from the dead, they become a dwelling place for the gift of Holy Spirit. Amoeba aren't dwelling places for God. Horses aren't dwelling places for God, as much as we can utilize horses to benefit us.
Kangaroos aren't dwelling places for God. Human bodies are dwelling places for God. And then overall, the body of Christ is God's great dwelling place.
God lives in us because of what Jesus Christ accomplished. He lives in us. Think five seconds in a row about that.
We are God's dwelling place. So these bodies housed God in Christ in us. They got to be ready to do that.
That's marvelous. I'm going to refer to at times a couple of quotes from a book I recently read. It's called Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.
So it was right up the alley of this reality and this collection of truths. It's by Dr. Philip Brand and Philip Yancey. He was an orthopedic hand surgeon that spent 40 years working with lepers in India and other places.
He had some amazing insights about the human body. So here's a question for me. How many cells are in the human body? Any educated guesses? How many cells? You won't look silly.
What's that? 10 billion. 10 billion's a good higher though. More.
Trillion's good. Higher. A hundred trillion cells in every human body.
A hundred trillion cells. God doesn't mess around. See how marvelous that is? And how he put them together.
When I decide to move my hands like this, they do. A hundred trillion cells in this human body for God to work with and put things together so we can do some amazing things. The most amazing being that we can be a dwelling place for God in Christ in us.
A cell can live for itself like an amoeba or it can help sustain the larger organism in the body. He can help sustain the rest of the body. A muscle cell can help sustain the rest of the muscle cells and the rest of the body.
An infant's a brand new individual. All right, I'm going to borrow one. Hey, Luke.
This is our grandson, Luke. That's my son, David. Thanks, David.
This wonderful young man is still developing. A hundred trillion cells are in there, but they haven't all differentiated to the exactness that they're going to be at full maturity. But the first thing this little guy did was make skin contact with his mommy.
I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. Thanks, Luke. Thanks, David.
Thanks, Becca. He's a great young man, isn't he? God designed it so that we could recognize the development and the growth. Little human babies are dependent.
They need us, and that's something for us to understand. We need God. We always need God.
No matter how mature we get, we're God's kids. It's great. I'm going to read to you a quote now about an infant.
Within that clay-colored wrinkled package of cells lies the miracle of the ecstasy of community. Those cells were already working together. Two of them happened to get to know one another intimately, and then they began to multiply.
His life will include the joy of seeing his mother's approval at his first clumsy words. I think he says, da-da. A couple other things.
Vocabulary is limited right now. The discovery of his own unique talents and gifts, the fulfillment of sharing with other humans. He is many cells, but he is one organism.
All his hundred trillion cells know that. Chemically, our cells are almost all alike. I'm going to list a few cells and then get to a greater depth with them.
Red blood cells, for instance. They're all chemically about the same like Gene pointed out, hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. They're all chemically similar, but they differentiate into different cells as humans develop.
Red blood cells, for instance. They look like little lifesavers. Maybe they're cherry.
I don't know. They look like little lifesavers, and they carry oxygen because of that iron molecule that's present. They bond to oxygen, and then they deliver oxygen all over the body.
We need oxygen. I often tell my patients, breathe. Every cell in your body needs oxygen.
Interdependent Systems
When somebody tries to do an exercise and they hold their breath, breathe. Feel free to breathe. It's free so far.
We need oxygen. Muscle cells, that's another differentiation that comes from two cells. Remember, when Jesus Christ, when this thing happened with him, the sperm side of life was perfect.
So those red blood cells that he had were uncontaminated with sin. But they still work after thousands upon thousands of generations. See how marvelous that is? See how awesome that is? Thousands and thousands of generations, and the red blood cells still work and nourish the rest of the body, even though they've got sin nature in them.
And then we get born again, and that problem's solved. Muscle cells, they absorb most of the nourishment in the body. They're coiled energy so we can move.
If the muscles didn't do what they were supposed to do, I couldn't get up from here, and I wouldn't be able to teach the rest of the teaching. But they're coiled energy so that when they contract, we can move. Cartilage, cartilage cells look like black-eyed peas under a microscope, and they form a very smooth surface so that our joints can articulate smoothly so that we can move around.
Bone resembles tree rings. Maybe God liked that idea when he did the trees. But they resemble bone cells, resemble tree rings.
They're impliable and sturdy. They're the only solid cell in the human body, meaning tough, sturdy, unpliable. Skin cells are soft.
They give shape and beauty to the body. What if we were walking around with just skeletons and organs? Be like a Halloween nightmare. But the skin gives the body beauty, shape.
It's pliable. We're going to talk some more about skin in a few minutes. Nerve cells.
Nerve cells are the only cells in the body that don't get replaced over time. Over time, every other cell in the body is replaced about every seven years. They're at different rates and different perspectives.
But about seven years, we have new cells. Nerve cells don't. Why not? Memory.
Nerve cells form our memory. We wouldn't remember the word. We wouldn't remember other things that we need to remember.
We wouldn't remember to put our shoes on the right feet, things like that. Can you imagine every seven years having to relearn everything that you learned in the previous seven years? That wouldn't be very much fun, would it? That'd be like, what's that called? Deja vu. Groundhog day over and over.
Oops. I don't know anything anymore. I got to start over.
What does that mean? I don't know. I forgot. They don't get replaced.
But they carry messages from the brain. They're up to a yard in length. But they dazzle any computer network.
I've never had to reboot my brain. I've had to put the word in it and renew it. But I've never had to reboot, turn the whole thing off.
How many times have you ever turned the whole thing off on a computer? More than once a day. We don't have to do that with our nervous system. But they do regenerate one millimeter per day if there's some nerve damage.
One millimeter per day, they regenerate. God designed the body to heal itself. How marvelous is that? Otherwise, the first time we got a cold, we'd die.
But we don't do that because God designed the body to heal itself. There's macrophages and other types of cells that help it happen. Then the body's always moving towards an improvement.
It's always moving towards regeneration. It's always moving to be the best it can, that highest potential it can be. The basis for our unity up now, I'm going to compare the human body with the body of Christ.
The basis for our unity within Christ's body begins not with our similarity but with our diversity. There's people doing all kinds of things around here. I couldn't have sang those songs that Kip sang because I don't know them.
But Kip knows them and they blessed you, right? And it blessed me to listen to Kip sing this morning and to hear Connie talk and to hear Kurt talk. I've seen people walking around with gloves on. You know what they were doing? They weren't doing surgery.
They were cleaning those porta-potties and other places and I got my hands in a salad. Not after doing that though. Yesterday, I helped put a salad together.
We got our hands in a lot of different things around here so that we can all function together and enjoy life to the fullest and recognize the greatness of God's creation. Isn't that superb? But we're all doing different things like cells in a human body all have to do their part for us to have this functioning human body the way it needs to be. Read to you another quote.
The body of Christ like our own bodies is composed of individuals unlike cells that are knit together to form one body and the joy of the body increases as individual cells realize they can be diverse without becoming isolated outposts. Isn't that wonderful? Tell you some more about cells. Every cell in its nucleus contains the secret to its membership in the body.
A strand of DNA. You're probably going to talk about that a little bit. A strand of DNA.
It's amazing. There are 100,000 genes in the human body. Not these kind of genes but you know what I'm talking about from high school biology.
If the instructions in a DNA molecule, if the instructions in a strand of DNA, if those instructions were written out, we estimate they'd fill 1,000 books, 600 pages each. That's a lot of information. God wasn't messing around with DNA was he? That's how those individual DNA realities can identify an individual though.
Luke's got his DNA. David and Becca have their DNA. We all have our own DNA.
That information is stored and every cell has all of that information in it. So how does one cell know how to become a muscle cell in another cell or a blood cell or a neuron, a nerve cell? God designed it. Isn't that marvelous? So they use part of the DNA package, that 1,000 books of 600 page each.
They use that package to become what they need to become. That's just one human body. How about millions of them, billions of them? God's smart isn't he? Wow.
Yep, told you that. We could produce the whole human body from a single cell but that's where cloning comes from and some of the stem cell research and things like that. That's how all that works because of that DNA molecule that God put together, that DNA strand.
The creator of DNA went to opportune the human race to a higher purpose also though, membership in the body of Christ. Our spiritual DNA contains the whole package of God in Christ. Whole package, the whole package of God in Christ.
Like every cell contains the DNA information, every individual in the body of Christ contains the information of the gift of Holy Spirit created just for them. David, just for you. You get your package that individually differentiates you in the body of Christ but enables you to function in the body of Christ like we need to, to see this great dwelling place of God Almighty function the way it needs to.
Brings tears to my eyes. Oh my God, yeah. We specialize like cells in our physical body.
The human body is healthy and each cell contributes according to the needs of the whole body and the same thing happens and needs to happen in the body of Christ. We got to do what we need to do. Tom needed to deal with the stars last night and he did, didn't he? The folks on the camera, the folks on the mics, the people playing some music, all of us interacting with each other.
It's amazing and this is just a small portion of the body of Christ. What about the whole thing? God keeps track of all that and we do our part as individual cells in the body of Christ. So to speak.
Let's talk a little bit more now about the bones. How many bones are there? Anybody know? 206. I wish I had candy.
I'd throw you a piece. 206 bones in the human body. They're the only hard material like I mentioned in the body but it possesses incredible strength and they're hollow.
There's just enough outer shell of that bone to support every other cell. That makes them lighter. If the bones were not hollow, if they were solid bone material, we'd barely be able to walk around.
It'd be so heavy. God figured that baby out. But inside the bones where the marrow is, that came up yesterday too, that red marrow of the bones produces 100 trillion red blood cells per day.
Apparently they're important. Look what God did so that that could happen. Well, there's some space in between that hard stuff.
Let's put the red blood cells in there where the production there where it's well protected but so I can still keep the bones light so that they can do their job. Bones are the solid internal framework without which we have no structure. We can't stand without them.
If I didn't have any bones, I'd just go to the floor. I'm not going to do that. I'm too old for that now.
Growth, Training, and Adaptation
But they're the solid structure that enables us to stand upright and move and do what we need to do on our feet. They're like the doctrinal truth to the body of Christ if you want to think of it that way. They're like that doctrinal truth.
That doctrinal truth provides a structure, a framework, but it's not to be overbearing. It's to be light. It's to provide the framework but not to be onerous.
The Old Testament law is like the fetal development of bone. Yeah, the fetal development, they're smaller. They're more flexible.
They weren't fully developed yet. They weren't hardened. The law of love is the fully developed, firm, liberating skeleton with joints allowing for movement in the right places.
When presented with love, the word liberates yet provides structure like our skeleton. Like Luke and other young guys and gals around here, when they're that young, 100% of our bone is replaced every year. We don't need 100% of the bone replaced every year as we become fully mature.
And this bone responds to stresses. It gets stronger. If I lift things, if I do weight-bearing exercises, the bone gets tougher and stronger.
Well, when we work the word and put it in the depths of our soul, that framework gets stronger so that we can bear more weight and do more things and function better in the body of Christ. Now, let's talk a little bit about skin. I'm going to read to you a quote about skin.
What then? This seamless body stocking, some two yards square, his own casing, our facade that flushes, pales, perspires. If we didn't perspire, we couldn't regulate temperature. Glistens, glows, furrows.
Ever heard about a furrowed brow? Tingles, crawls. You ever heard the phrase, my skin crawls? Itches, and we get to scratch it. Pleasures, pains, and all our days at once keeper of the organs within, a sensitive probe, adventurer into the outside world.
Of all the senses, touch is the most trustworthy. A baby first relates to the world through touch, like I illustrated with Luke. They come, their skin comes in contact.
It's amazing when you think about it. Remember, Jesus Christ reached out and touched the blind man's eyes. He built that inner relationship, that trust relationship.
What about when he embraced the leper? You know, the problem with leprosy is their nervous system doesn't register touch anymore. It doesn't register with the neurons functioning. That's why their feet get messed up.
That's why sometimes they go blind. They don't feel the sensation that we feel to blink, so their eyes dry out. When Jesus Christ embraced that man, that was totally against everything he knew.
He embraced the leper, and I'm rather certain that for the first time in that man's life since he had leprosy on set, he could feel again. You think he was happy? You know what Jesus Christ did when the woman who wanted to touch the hem of his garment after she touched the hem of his garment? What did he say? Who heard me? Who smelled me? Who tasted me? What did he say? Who touched me? All this stuff can interact, register things. Who touched me? That's why we lay hands on people to heal when we get that guidance.
I'm going to read to you a little more about skin. You with me? Touch yourself. Isn't that cool? You can feel that.
I don't know about touching anybody else right now. It's up to them. But our family, we're huggy.
We like to make contact and hug one another. Don't have to say a word when we do that. We know what it means.
A lot of us are that way. Probably all of us. So I'm going to read to you an analogy of skin.
It's soft, warm, and touchable. It conveys a message of God who is eager to relate and love to his creations. Christ was saying to us, let the world first see the beauty and feel the softness and warmth of the Christian community.
The out like the skin. And then let it realize the underlying internal framework of the bones, how they give the structure. We first touch people.
We gain their trust. We love them. We communicate to them how much we love them.
And then they can have that trust to recognize some doctrinal realities and truths. Nice analogy, huh? Lastly, I'm going to talk about, well, next to lastly. I'm going to talk about mobility, how that happens.
Well, how many muscles are there? 600. I'll just give you the answer. 600 muscles.
And you know when a hand functions? Move your hand. That's kind of cool that can do all that. Sometimes when I test people before pre-employment physical, I have them do that.
Isn't that cool? You can do that. You can even do that. When a hand is fully mobile, it takes 70, 7-0 different muscles to move it.
God could have just made everybody an amoeba, but that wasn't as much fun. He had fun putting this together. So without muscles, bones would collapse in a heap.
See where we're getting? Every cell needs every other cell to function. There are three types of muscles. Smooth muscle.
Those muscles that produce autonomic processes like digestion. What if you had to mentally produce digestion? Swallow. Okay, go down the esophagus.
Let's go. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Stomach.
All right, you're there. Go to the small intestine now. Come on, go, go, go.
I won't go all the way to the other end. But those autonomic processes, or you could call them automatic processes. Aren't you thankful we don't have to will ourself to breathe? All right, time to breathe.
About 14 to 20 a minute. Oh, I forgot to tell my heart to beat. I got to do that every second.
God built that in so we could think about more important things than that. But aren't they important? Smooth muscle. Then there's striated muscle.
The ones that make us move. Biceps, triceps, quadriceps, all those steps. Smooth muscle is different than striated muscle.
Striated muscle contracts. And we need to exercise striated muscle. And then there's finally, there's cardiac muscle, like we heard about, where a cell is beating on its own and then it gets in conjunction with another cell, a bunch of other cells, and the heart beats as it's programmed to beat.
Thankful for that. You know, we cannot voluntarily stop our heart, meaning as we're moving along in life. We can't voluntarily make our heart stop.
I'm glad about that. Oh, crud, I forgot to tell my heart to beat. That'd be bad.
So muscles, the striated muscles normally contract and relax smoothly as groups. That's good. Otherwise, we'd be walking around with a permanent seizure.
We wouldn't be able to walk if they weren't harmonizing with one another. My triceps don't work at the same time as my biceps typically. We have muscle tone.
I can, I'm standing here because of pre-programmed muscle tone. Some muscles are contracting more than others. Others are relaxing more than they're contracting.
And if I take a step, it's changing constantly. That's all built in. I'm thinking about walking now, but I'm not thinking about muscle tone so that I can stand.
Isn't that nice? Thank you, God. He figured all this out. So muscles work smoothly as groups.
Otherwise, there'd be a seizure. They work cooperatively. It reminds me of Philippians 2, 3. Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory.
What if all the muscles wanted to contract at once? We wouldn't get anything done. We work together. We harmonize.
And we submit to the head for the sake of the whole body. There are voluntary things that we submit to the head for in the human body and the body of Christ. Some of those are like eating and exercising.
Healing and Restoration
We decide when we're going to eat. It doesn't automatically happen. Food doesn't come to us.
We have to go to it. So we make that decision. Neurons.
Let's talk about nerve cells a little bit more. They enable movement. The control centers in the head.
How many neurons are there? I'll just tell you. There's 12 billion neurons. So every other cell is replaced every few years, like I mentioned earlier.
Sometimes more frequently. Except neurons because of the memory that they produce. And you know, with nerve roots, they perceive heat.
They perceive cold. That's why we put on layers today. They perceive touch.
Like I've talked about more extensively earlier. They perceive pressure. But there's no special neuron that perceives pleasure.
So how does that work? Because we all have pleasure at times. How does that work? They all have to work together. With other hormones and functions as well.
With what we're perceiving in our environment. With how we're interacting with someone else. Then we can get to the point of pleasure.
The cooperation has to take place for that to happen. There's no specific nerve root that produces pleasure. I think God must have known that when he put this thing together.
Well, think about the body of Christ in that context. We are God's good pleasure when we function together as the body. Isn't that beautiful? God's good pleasure.
When we cooperate and function together. The brain doesn't directly order everything or no room for complex decision making. The brain is not a micromanager.
The brain functions with free will. But it combines freedom with cooperation. If I wanted to move in a certain direction and my brain just turned everything on at once.
Again, I just seize and fall. But everything cooperates appropriately. So that I can move the way I want to move.
Now, in the physical body as well as the spiritual. We need to exercise to stay healthy and grow stronger. We exercise our thought processes.
We renew our minds to the word of God. We put things on. As we do that, that exercise produces a benefit.
It produces a higher potential that we attain to. Same's true with the physical body. It stays.
We need exercise to stay healthy and grow stronger. Turn to 1 Timothy 4, please. 1 Timothy 4. You know, we steward everything else.
We steward our car. We steward our clothing. We steward our belongings.
We steward our finances. We steward everything else. How about something that's awesomely and wonderfully made.
That's marvelous like this human body. Need to steward that too. Makes sense, doesn't it? So God put a little something in here for us.
In 1 Timothy 4.8, I'm just going to read to you from the New International Version. You can read from the King James if you want. For physical training or exercise is of some value, but godliness has value for all things.
Holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. That's the New International Version. So it has some value because of the life that now is.
Do we have this awesomely and wonderfully made, this marvelous human body that God designed and our soul gets it? Yeah, we do. So we steward it. So while we have this body, it's going to be beneficial to do some things to steward it like exercise.
Let's look at 1 Corinthians 9.27. So how much? Well, I'm not going to lecture on that today. I'm not going to teach about all that today. Find somebody you trust in that category if exercise is a new concept to you because it's in the Bible.
If that's something new to you or something unusual, then find somebody you trust and work with them and do it gradually. Don't start all at once. Don't go out and run a marathon this afternoon.
There is one in Missoula, but don't go do that. So it's awesome the way God designed the appropriate dosage of things too. So now let's turn to 1 Corinthians 9.27. I'm going to read that verse from the English Standard Version and make a point with you.
But I discipline my body. So we do have free will control of the things that we're responsible for. I discipline my body and keep it under control lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified from the spiritual competition.
English Standard Version with a couple inserts from me. But you recognize it. You see there's a hierarchy with the physical body.
The physical body is subject to the mind, the thought processes. And as we keep that mind healthy with the Word of God, that mind is also subject to the Spirit of God which the body is designed to house. So there's a hierarchy that enables us to harmonize not only with the physical body but with the body of Christ.
That hierarchy keeps it under control so we aren't disqualified from the competition. Isn't that great? The adversary can't take over when we have that hierarchy the way it needs to be the priorities of life, body, soul, and spirit. So we keep under our body and bring it into subjection.
Sometimes our body wants to do stuff that ain't right. So our mind has to function the way it needs to. And then every once in a while we check with our daddy.
The one we're the dwelling place for. Maybe more frequently depending on the day. And then we can keep things under control the way it needs to be so we can function the best with one another.
Isn't that beautiful? So we're awesomely and wonderfully made. We're marvelous. And that our soul knows right well.
We get it all the way through and through. We get it. And then we learn to have things cooperate the way they need to so we can be most beneficial in this life to us and to others.
And we recognize the need to steward this thing. And then we can function most effectively in this body of Christ. You know that body of Christ is so important.
Think about the human body for a minute. Who would just take their ear and throw it on the ground and say, I don't need you anymore. That would be utter ridiculousness.
Or who would try to have their ear be the last thing to push off the ground. You know what the last thing to leave the ground when we're walking is? Our big toe. If somebody loses their big toe, there's work to do to help them keep in balance.
Try pushing off with your ear. It doesn't work very well. So we function in the body of Christ where we're most beneficial and everybody's just as important as everybody else.
We need each other. So we don't have malfunctions and seizures. And let's finally, let's close out in Ephesians chapter 4. It really brings it home.
Ephesians chapter 4 verses 15 and 16 talks about the body, the physical body as an illustration of the greater spiritual body, the body of Christ. See then, oops, that's Ephesians 5. That's a great verse too. Ephesians 4 verses 15 and 16.
But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. Christ is the head of the body. He doesn't micromanage either though.
There are certain things we carry out as an individual cell and then we at times need the head of the body to be involved with us. From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth. I'm believing that this is really coming together now after we've seen some of the systems of the body and how they work together, the different cells.
Compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. Say I love you again. I love you.
I love you too. God bless. It's great to be part of the body with you.
The Body as a Witness of Its Creator
Bless your hearts.
Key Takeaways
- The the witness of the human body presents observable patterns that point to order, purpose, and design.
- Creation can be studied as a classroom that deepens respect for God when it is considered alongside Scripture.
- Natural systems display provision, boundaries, interdependence, and remarkable specialized abilities.
- Romans 1 supplies a biblical foundation for perceiving invisible qualities of God through what He made.
- The proper response is gratitude and worship of the Creator rather than worship of the created world.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the witness of the human body reveal about God?
The teaching presents the witness of the human body as evidence of purposeful design, ordered systems, provision, and care that direct attention to the Creator.
How does the teaching connect nature and Scripture?
The speaker compares observable features of creation with biblical passages, using the natural world as a classroom that illustrates spiritual truths.
What response does the teaching encourage?
It encourages attentive observation, gratitude, humility, stewardship, and worship of God rather than worship of the created world.
Scripture References
Romans 1:19–20; Psalm 19:1–4; Genesis 1; Psalm 139; Psalm 105; Psalm 100; Psalm 107; 1 Corinthians 12; Philippians 2; 1 Timothy 4; 1 Corinthians 9; Ephesians 5; Ephesians 4
Verification Note
The recovered source is labeled AUDIO QUALITY MEDIUM. Verify anatomical terms, proper names, quotations, and verse wording against the original recording before publication.
