A couple weeks ago we began looking at the nature of man to gain some insight into what it is to be human.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made.  A big part of the Christian life is growing in understanding what is to be human.  Theres nothing like us in all of creation.  We’re the meeting place of heaven and earth.  We’re the place where heaven and earth collide, and are made one.  There’s a union between heaven and earth that occurs in our nature.  We’re earthen vessels, temples, made to be the resting place of the Living God.

Genesis 2 says we were made a living soul.  We were made with a body and a soul.  Our bodies and our souls are united in the one human person.  They’re distinct yet inseparable, just like the union between God and man in Christ.  Our souls, with our spirits as the highest part of our souls, are made in the image of God.  They’re fashioned by the breath of God in the image of the Logos.  Gods breath created within us a mind with the ability to reason and think so we can participate in the divine life through communion with the Only Begotten Son.  

Our bodies were meant for deification; our bodies were meant to see God manifest in our flesh.  God formed our bodies from the dust of the ground.  He made our bodies sensuous.  He gave us senses, touch and handle and taste and see, so we can have the capacity to experience things.  The things we experience have communicative properties.  Our senses are like data centers; gathering information from our experiences for the purpose of communicating to our souls and our spirits.  They speak to us, and the meaning of what is being communicated is meant to be discerned through Christ.  That through our experiences being discerned by the Son, our experiences lead us to the knowing of God.  God gave us senses so we can feel after him.  He gave them to us as faculties that can be as bread crumbs leading us to Him.  

We develop understanding through our experiences.  There’s no way to get around it.  It’s part of our nature.  It’s just that we arent meant to develop our understanding by only our experiences and whether our senses experience pleasure or affliction.  We’re meant for our understanding to be developed through our experiences being discerned by Christ.  Christ discerns our humanity for us.  

Gen 3:6  And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
Gen 3:7  And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

The neediness of these mortal bodies was foreign to Adam and Eve before the fall.  Their eyes werent set on the things that are earthy because they had no need.  Their senses were touched by the things in creation, but their eyes weren’t set on creation as the source of goodness.  They’d never seen themselves or creation from the place of need or want.  They were naked but didn’t see their nakedness. They were 100% kept by God, and God alone.  They didn’t live by anything other than God.  Their eye was single, only seeing God, finding their sustenance in God alone.  

Genesis says when Adam & Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil their eyes were opened.  Their eyes were opened to the lower world.  Their eyes were opened to the things that are earthy … their eyes were opened through the neediness of these mortal bodies.  They went from not needing anything from the earthly realm for their humanity to be kept, to the neediness of these mortal bodies.  Its amazing what you see when you’re beset with weakness, and on the lookout for what you need.  You’ll see things you never saw before.  I can have moles or skin tags I may never have noticed until someone tells me they might be cancer, and then I see them everywhere.  The neediness of these mortal bodies opened our eyes to the lower world.  We began to see the earthy things as the source of the goodness we need.  

Php 3:19  Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) 

There desire for pleasure is there God, whose mind looks on earthly things as the source of goodness.  Paul calls it being lovers of pleasure instead of lovers of God in 2nd Timothy 3:4.  

The love of pleasure became our God.  We lost the experiential beauty of our humanity, and our nature twisted against us into something that was unnatural.  The faculties of our nature were still present and functioning but now they were twisted and disorientated …. We no longer lived by reason.  We know longer lived by considering Christ.  We lived by passions … the passions which were enflamed in us by the neediness of these mortal bodies.  The love of pleasure became our God.  The communication powers which the body offers to us became consumed and destroyed by the love of pleasure.  

You ever see when they take lab rats and use cocaine on them?  You ever see what the lab rat does after they give it the cocaine?  How about sugar?  The rat becomes captive to wanting the sugar nonstop and keeps going back to it until it is destroyed.  You see the rat doesnt possess the ability to reason or discern what is the source of true goodness.  Thats what happened to man in the fall.  Our experiences were no longer being discerned through communion with the Word.  Our souls that were fashioned to find life through communion with Christ; began looking to our bodies for life.  Our bodies, which were meant to see God, through our souls having communion with the Son, were now seeking life through communion with the material world, and the experience of pleasure.  

Just like the rats we became captive to unbridled lust and our lives were being destroyed by the love of pleasure.  Our lives were moved by the love of pleasure instead of the love of God.  Our God became our belly.  All our desires and wants were centered around needing pleasure.  We began reasoning by the knowledge of good and evil.  If our senses don’t feel good that’s evil.  If our senses feel pleasure that’s good, and whatever makes us feel good must be the source of all goodness.  And now we live by that.  We live by the pursuit of pleasure, and we live trying to deliver ourselves from whatever brings infirmity to our senses; instead of living by the knowledge that the communion of perfect love in the Father, Son, and Spirit is the source of all goodness.  

So how does God reorientate the faculties he gave us to find Him.  

Heb 11:24  By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter;
Heb 11:25  Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
Heb 11:26  Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.
Heb 11:27  By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.

The reproach of Christ is talking about the cross.  Hebrews 5:14 talks about the exercising of the senses.  That connects with Moses esteeming the reproach of Christ to be greater than the pleasures of Egypt.  Moses was crucified with Christ.  His senses were exercised by the Logos.  His senses were discerned by Him who was invisible.  He saw the pleasures he could experience in Egypt.  He saw they werent the source of true goodness.  He saw the source of all goodness; He saw that which is truly good; he saw the source of all lovely goodness, when he saw him who was invisible.  That moved him away from seeking the pleasures of the material world, and shepherded him towards God.  He was crucified to the world and the world to him.  

The resurrected Jesus is the image of the invisible God made visible in human flesh.  Jesus was always the image of the invisible God, but his divinity was veiled because he partook with us in flesh and blood.  The image of the invisible God was made flesh.  Christ became a man, to appeal to our senses, so our experiences could be discerned by the one who is the source of all goodness.  Christ is the divine revelation.  He reveals that the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the source of all lovely goodness.  That discerns our senses.  It reorientates our faculties back to their natural function, gathering us to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.  The source of all beauty; all goodness; all mercy; all grace; all compassion, was revealed in the resurrected Christ.  That causes us to have communion with the crucified God.  So now whether our senses groan with weakness, or groan for pleasure, or they are animated with pleasure, they communicate to us a desire for God; they’ve been exercised by the appearance of God in the flesh, and because of that, they gather us to God, the source of all goodness.

Psa 16:7  I will bless the LORD, who hath given me counsel: my reins also instruct me in the night seasons. 

Reins … Feminine of H3627 (only in the plural); a kidney (as an essential organ); figuratively the mind (as the interior self): - kidneys, reins. N

Example of Paul Damascus road senses discerned …