WWUTT 1451 The Naturally Minded Man (1 Corinthians 2:14)

1 Corinthians 2 .14 The natural person does not accept the things of the

Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you Becky. We're back to our study of 1 Corinthians chapter 2. I do not have my

Legacy Standard Bible today, so I'm back in the English Standard Version. We're picking up in verse 14, but to keep things in context, let me go back to verse 10.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. These things God has revealed to us through the

Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the

Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the

Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the

Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Consider verse 12 again, where we read, We have received not the spirit of the world, but the

Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

And what is it that has been given to us by God? It has been the prophetic word more fully confirmed, that which we have in the

Bible. From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, God showing us what he is doing in history to even redeem a sinful people unto himself through Jesus Christ.

As it says in Colossians 1 .20, he is redeeming all things through the person and work of Christ making peace by the blood of his cross.

And we understand these mysterious things, the purposes and intentions of God, when we open up the

Bible and read it. And the Spirit of God that has been given to us helps us to understand this.

And not just to read it and have understanding, but to behold it, to marvel at it, to awe in wonder at God's grace and his mercy and his love.

We would not know these things if not for the Spirit of God, nor would we worship God for them.

It is the Holy Spirit having transformed our hearts that makes us into a person that now desires

God. Before the Holy Spirit, we hated God. That was our nature. And we did only what was in our nature to do.

As fallen creatures, as descendants of Adam who inherited his sin nature, it was in our nature to rebel against God.

An animal can only do what is in its nature to do. I'm not calling us animals. I'm using an example here.

But a cow can only do what a cow does. A cow is not going to hunt down a gazelle and eat it.

A cow doesn't even have the digestive system to be a carnivore, whereas you've got a lion who's going to hunt down a gazelle and eat it.

That's what lions do. They do what is in their nature to do. A pig wallows in the mire will have fun rolling around in the mud because that's what pigs do.

That's what's in their nature to do. We in our nature sinned against God.

We did what was only in our nature to do, rebel against God. And having worldly minds, having a natural mind, we went after worldly things.

We did not consider those supernatural things, nor did we behold them, nor were we even looking for them.

It wasn't until we heard the gospel proclaimed to us. And there's an order in which all of these things happen.

God had predestined from before the foundation of the world. The ways in which these things were going to take place, that it would come first by his son, who through his disciples, his apostles, he would send them out with the message of the gospel.

And then from that work that started at the beginning of the church 2000 years ago to the present day, we have come to our faith.

We have come to know God through Jesus Christ, the son, because of this work that God has been doing.

So all that he's been doing in redemptive history, we've been given a mind to see it and love

God for it. It is in our nature now with a new nature that has been given to us by the

Holy Spirit. We have a nature that desires God. We have a godly nature. Before the gospel, before the transforming work of the

Holy Spirit, we had a godless nature. We had a rebellious nature.

But now we have a nature that loves God and desires to obey him.

And this all according to his word. Once again, Romans 10, 17 says that faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

But as we read today in verse 14, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him.

Why? Because he is still in his natural state. He is still by his nature fallen.

And he goes after those things which are fallen, that which is against God, that which is contrary to the spirit.

Remember what the apostle Paul says in Galatians chapter five, where he compares and contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the spirit.

He even goes as far as saying that the works of the flesh are obvious.

They are evident, is the word that is used there in the ESV. Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality.

Those first three right there all have to do with sexual immorality. It is the desire, it's fleshly desire.

It is that hedonistic leaning towards selfish pursuits that we have in our flesh by our nature when we are in a state of rebellion against God.

And the manifestation of that, the outward manifestation of those hedonistic desires is most often sexual immorality.

That's why in a list of vices, sexual immorality is often top of the list.

Then you go on into verse 20, other works of the flesh, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

So we begin with sexual immorality. We end that way as well. Paul goes on, I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Those things that are the fruit of the Spirit don't come naturally to us. They don't come to us by a good -willed nature that everybody just happens to have.

Everybody is good by their nature. We know from Scripture that everybody is inherently wicked by their nature, primarily because in our fallen state, having received the natural state from Adam, we are by our nature rebellious against God.

So if that is who we are by our nature, then we're not going to pursue those things that are spiritual according to a spiritual nature.

Now where we read here in 1 Corinthians 2 .14, the natural person does not accept the things of the

Spirit of God. I'm not meaning to directly tie in the fruit of the Spirit into that. So all

I'm talking about here regarding the fruit of the Spirit is this is the outward manifestation or the evidence that a person has the

Spirit of God in their heart. You may know a person who is not a

Christian but is loving. You might think of them as a loving person or a kind -hearted person.

But these things are not natural to us. It is not natural for us to demonstrate the fruit of the

Spirit. What is natural for us to do by our nature to do these things, our sinful fallen nature, is that which was described as the works of the flesh.

Those who are not of Christ are going to demonstrate the works of the flesh. Those who are of the

Spirit should be demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit or at least desiring those things, producing those things, growing those things.

The natural person does not accept that those things that are described as the works of the flesh are bad.

They won't accept that that is evil against those things the wrath of God is coming.

The natural person is not going to accept that. That's folly to him. And as it says in 1

Corinthians 2 .14, he is not able to understand it because these are things that are spiritually discerned.

What we have in Scripture, understanding God's will, seeing what he is doing through redemptive history, knowing

Christ is the Son of God, our Savior, all of these things are only by the transforming work of the

Spirit of God that has been poured into our hearts by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, where we read previously in 1

Corinthians 1 .18, where it says the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing.

You could also read that as the word of the cross is folly to the natural minded man.

He is perishing. He is naturally minded. He is who he is by his nature and also perceives only natural things.

But to us who are being saved, to us who have the Spirit of God, to us who have a mind to ponder and contemplate the supernatural, we can perceive of these things.

We can marvel at the supernatural work that God is doing throughout redemptive history.

What we hear about the message of the cross to us who are supernatural, who have the

Spirit of God, the message of the cross is the power of God. It's foolishness. It's ridiculous to those who are perishing, who are naturally minded.

But to us who are being saved, who have the Spirit of God, to hear these things, to listen to the gospel being proclaimed, it is the power of God to us.

It is beautiful to us. It is wonderful to think about even our own sin and how

God has rescued us out of that, knowing what we deserve for our sin and what God has shown us by his own grace to the praise of his glorious grace is mercy, is love, is redemption, is salvation.

We wonder at these things. We are overjoyed at these things because we have the

Spirit of God. No matter how difficult or hard life gets, we still rejoice in God our

Savior because we know that he, as sovereign over all, is working even the most difficult of circumstances in our lives for his glory so we do not despair.

A person who does not understand the sovereignty of God and those things which he has decreed and how he is working all things together for good for those who love

God and are called according to his purpose, those who do not know that cannot make sense out of any evil that ever occurs.

There's nothing redemptive about any evil act. It's just some monstrous, meaningless evil that happened somewhere in the past and we just have to deal with it and move on.

Whereas God is taking even evil things to work all things together for his glory, there's no greater evil that's ever been perpetrated than the death of his own son.

It's the greatest evil act done by mankind to put the Son of God, the only perfect man who has ever lived, to death, to death on a cross.

And yet, God had foreordained that this would take place and praised

God that he did for it is for our redemption. Those who believe upon the

Lord Jesus Christ, we would be forgiven our sins and have eternal life because of this evil that had taken place.

Joseph saying to his brothers in Genesis 50 -20, I mean, we have this theological understanding going all the way back to the first book of the

Bible. Even in the evil thing that Joseph's brothers did to him, selling him into slavery in Egypt, Joseph looks at his brothers and says, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

You intended evil. God intended good. This search, this situation, this circumstance,

God intended it for good. You intended it for evil. You did evil against me.

God did it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.

Let's look at this from the perspective of the naturally minded man and the spiritually minded man.

Joseph ascends to the second highest rank of authority really in the world at that time.

So he's second in command just under Pharaoh and his brothers come in in the midst of a famine to get food from him.

They don't recognize Joseph, but Joseph recognizes them. He knows them as the brothers who did evil to him all those years ago.

The naturally minded man would say, Joseph can treat them just like they treated him and he would be perfectly justified and in the right to treat them that way.

In fact, you might even rationalize it as Joseph is doing justice, right? That's how a naturally minded man would think.

How does the supernaturally minded man think? How does a person think who has the spirit of God?

They marvel at the fact that Joseph could forgive his brothers, though he had done such evil against them and even attribute all of this to God.

You did evil against me. What you did was intended for evil.

What you did, God intended for good. A naturally minded man is going to hear

Joseph say that and go, what? You are crazy, man. What are you thinking? Get your revenge.

Do to your brothers what they did to you. Throw them in a dungeon. Let them let them go through the same number of years in prison that you went through.

Separate them from their families like they separated you from yours. That's what a naturally minded man is going to say.

But the person who has the spirit of God sees what God is doing, contemplates the work of God, and he's able to understand these things because they're spiritually discerned.

First Corinthians 2 15, the spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

Verse 16, for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ, I'm going to come back to that tomorrow, we'll look at verses 15 and 16 as we finish up chapter two, and then

I'm even going to go into chapter three a little bit. Let's finish here with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the goodness that you have shown to us in your word.

And I pray that we would not be naturally minded, but we would be spiritually minded, that you would forgive us of our the sins that we have committed in our flesh because it's our tendency to do those things.

And you would give us your spirit that we may contemplate what you have done through redemptive history, even what you are asking us to do, what your will is, what your commands are.

And we desire to keep them and to follow them in worship to our

God because you are so good to us. May we not despair when things go wrong.

May we not fall into hopelessness. But we continue to trust in the

Lord who has worked all things together for our good and for your glory.

We trust in your loving kindness because you have dealt bountifully with us through your son,

Jesus Christ. Give us the mind of Christ today. We ask in Jesus name.

Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt

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