Throw Off the Natural Man

You'll stay standing. I'm going to look back a little bit before we look forward. We just have three verses this morning first Corinthians 2. Verses 12 through 16 say now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God.

So that we may know the depths graciously given to us by God of which depths We also speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit combining spiritual depths with spiritual words.

But a natural man does not accept the depths of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually examined. But he who is spiritual examines all things yet.

He himself is examined by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord? That he will direct him. But we have the mind of Christ. Let's pray. What a stunning statement Lord that you have given us the very mind of your Son in Whom all the wisdom and all the treasures of God are hid.

Lord we take it for granted we are fickle and We forget what you have called us to. Lord I pray that you would strengthen us today. That we would not Be as a as a deaf dumb blind man who exist in this rotten natural flesh.

But instead Lord that we would throw off those old garments and that we would see what the Spirit has for us is we would Be led by him Disciplined as beloved children and that we would grow more and more day by day into the image of your Son Who is holy above all and who is exalted by everyone and everything for all eternity?

It's in his illustrious majestic name we pray. Amen if you will be seated. We know from Corinthians and just from experience that there are three types of people who are in the church at any given time.

We have type number one those who are lost. They are completely enslaved to the natural desires. That if they stay in those natural desires will eventually give way to unnatural desires in sin. That is the story of Romans 1.

Those who are enslaved in natural desires will not go from bad to better. They will go from bad to worse as the song saying we just saying If you tarry until you get better, you will never come at all.

It doesn't say you may never come at all. You will never come at all. There is no way to get better outside of the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. The second type to see the first type what we have to do is we have to make them profoundly Uncomfortable with the preaching of the word because hellfire awaits them and it is doing no love to our fellow man.

If we make people feel comfortable in their sin, and so we preach at the sin and we preach to the need for repentance. The second type is the type that bothers me and that is a huge part of being a Christian though and that is the Christian who inhabits the church who has failed to live by the Spirit and Has not thrown off the weight of sin in order to run the race and here's what we know.

Discipline is coming for that Christian. But we don't know how much discipline and we don't know the timing and there is mystery in God that righteous lot Grieved at the sin and Sodom and yet he was living right amongst it.

Embarrassed by it, but not embarrassed enough to run away from it. We don't want to be that kind of Christian. Although in the eternal economy of God you are righteous if you have a regenerate heart you are righteous.

But these types of Christians they slow down the mission. They take inordinate amount of resources and they are stagnant. Uninterested in doctrine unable to discern the depths of the spirit that God has opened up for them.

We'll spend some time on those today. The third type is the spiritual man who is running the race and is mining the depths of God's wisdom. This is the place we obviously want to be and last week I mentioned that at Covenant Baptist by God's grace.

What we want to do is to not be a mediocre church to not be a church. That's surviving and comfortable but to be a great church and in order to be a great church by God's grace. We have to be highly populated with this third type of Christian.

The Christian who has thrown off all the things that make you weary and is running the race with everything that they have. Understanding that the spiritual treasures of heaven far outstrip any temporal comforts that we get here.

In order to put us on this road though I think that it is wise for us and important for us to look at what is this natural man? Who is he because Paul writes about him and says that he does not accept the depths of the Spirit of God.

They are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually examined. The natural man has no spiritual sight. He is the blind Pharisee of Mark. He is the blind prognosticator of Corinthians.

The sophist the philosopher who seems very smart very wise to men that knows nothing of God. And so we see and we look at the natural man. I'm going to give you five attributes of him. Test yourself. See if you're acting like this man.

The Unspiritual Nature of the Natural Man

Number one. He is unspiritual. He is unspiritual. The natural man is enslaved to his desires and his passions. Everything is about the here-and-now. Everything is about what makes him feel good what makes him happy what pacifies his needs in the moment.

See.

This is the opposite of the list of the fruits of the Spirit because when you look at the fruits of the Spirit the fruits Of the Spirit are all about large-scale character attributes and they're never about short-term actions.

But when we look at the laundry list of the opposite of the fruits of the Spirit. They are all about being enslaved to the passions of your belly or of your eyes. Are you dominated by a lust for worldly things?

Do you place your stock and value in the things that make you comfortable and the things that make you happy? How much time is spent thinking about talking about dwelling on the things that appeal to your comfort?

See this road to being unspiritual it begins innocent enough. It begins with the simple seductive draw of living for short-term pleasures. Living for the next meal like a dog. Living for the next sexual encounter like an animal.

Living for the next time you get to go out and have recreation like a fool. That is the natural man. He is constantly at war with us Christian because Ephesians would tell us that he's still with us. We do have the desires of the flesh and we do still have the natural man in the flesh warring inside of us.

He's not put away until glory completely and he will constantly seduce you and he will constantly play on the natural corrupt man that We are to desire things that make us feel good in the more in the moment to the exclusion of storing up our treasures in heaven.

See the same man the one with spiritual eyes will always choose the treasures of heaven over the fleeting passions of the day. But it's difficult, isn't it? It's very difficult. I take stock and My wife helps me tremendously about how much I talk about golf.

I Know you laugh in there. And the reason why you laugh is because they're acceptable sins to chase your pleasures and to chase your recreation. And I'm profoundly convicted that it's not funny. It's not funny at all.

How much time is spent and what is the end of this road? See the end of this road is always destruction and the natural man doesn't see that the natural man is enticed By the pride of life and by the lust of the flesh and by what his I see as being good for food.

It's a dangerous place. So he's unspiritual the number two thing and this is why it's so difficult is he is first. He's first. It's who you are. You were born that way. First Corinthians 15 42 through 44 says this so also is the resurrection of the dead.

It is sown a corruptible body. It is raised an incorruptible body. It is sown to dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body if there is a natural body.

There is also a spiritual body. See we all fight this battle because it's who we are. We were born that way. We were born as David said born in iniquity. Born in transgression born with sin ground into us born with the finitude of not being an eternal being in this body.

But being an eternal being in our spiritual body and our spiritual body has one of two destinations Glory with our Creator or eternal torment and isolation from our Creator. There is no in-between.

And so we must.

Destroy the natural man so that the seed would sprout of the spiritual man and that is the Christian life. See we have this moment in time in order to salute us where we are saved. From judgment into grace.

And then we have this middle section that seems so long and so difficult. Which is sanctification which is done through the Spirit not through our own works. But it's very difficult and it's very frustrating because we war with who we are and See God has changed who we are with the regeneration of spirit.

We now love his law who were enemies of God. We are his friends and we love his commands. And yet the natural man that corruptible seed down in there still wars with what? We know to be true in our spiritual sight and church if you're dominated by the natural man, if we become enticed by what we naturally are then we will die and God will take the lamp away as he does many churches.

It's worldliness that kills the church. It's not getting old. It's not losing people. What kills the church is worldliness. It's being blind and that's what Paul is warning the Corinthians about. They are in a dangerous position.

Number three thing that we know about the natural man is that his wisdom man James put this so bluntly, right? It's earthly natural and.

Demonic.

James 3 15 says this wisdom speaking of worldly wisdom is not coming down from above. But it is earthly natural.

Demonic.

Satan and his minions would love nothing better than for you to become a slave of your most simple desires and they will pick the Ones that you are most drawn to to entice you. If it is your belly. Then it will be food.

If it is taking leave of your senses. Then it will be intoxicants. If it is the love of comfort and money. Then it will be working too much and working for yourself. If it is the lust of your eyes, then it will be pornography.

It's coming for you. Be careful. He's after you and that kind of wisdom that says I've earned this it's been weeks I'm just gonna scratch this itch just a little bit. That's demonic. That is earthly wisdom.

That is him getting you right where he wants you. And beware because the consequences of sin or death the wages of sin or death. So he is unspiritual. He is first. He is natural. His wisdom is demonic and number four.

He causes unrest in the church. Jude 19. These are the ones who cause divisions worldly-minded not having the spirit. If you have a church full of people being the natural man or doing their best impersonation of it.

You will have sinful divisions in the church because the natural man is about himself. It'll be his pleasures and his Preferences above anyone else's. And in the reformed circle it might even be our doctrine.

See in the reformed circles. What we've got is we've got a self-defeating premise. We believe that our doctrine is so important that the doctrine itself saves you. Which is in contradiction to our doctrine.

Do you see we believe that we are saved by faith alone through grace alone? Not through understanding of doctrine alone. And We look at our other brothers and sisters out there who have different doctrine than us and we think how can they possibly be saved?

And the answer is because we are idiots. That's why. Do you understand how how worthless is your doctrine when you can't even hold it consistently? It's very important and these this kind of stuff. This kind of moving the goalpost it causes unrest in the church.

We have to stop you're being the natural man. And number five. He does not understand the depths of the Spirit of God who explains spiritual depths to the spiritual man. See the man who is a natural man.

He can say some spiritual things. But his life bears zero fruit in keeping with repentance. Jesus said that a tree is known by the fruit it bears. Look at the fruit. Always look at the fruit and look at the fruit over time not over this last three months.

Look at the fruit in season. Because fruit trees produce fruit every year. It is a long-term project. A Man or a woman is known by the fruit that they bear and that fruit bears out over time. See the natural man will speak in slogans about God.

But he has no application or no regard no matter what he says for God's Word and commands. No regard their bumper stickers to him that go no deeper than that and the church is infested with this. All right, so now that we know what the natural man is let's talk about what happens when Christians embrace the natural man.

Let's talk about Corinth first before we move it to here. I Matriarchal feminist hellhole you want me to prove it? I will. They accept sin even the most egregious kind of sin to show their love and acceptance outside of formal church discipline.

They have a man who is in such gross public sexual immorality that they are in the Corinthian Church. They think that they are doing God a favor by showing their love and acceptance for this man. By letting him stay among them and live in the whole loaf.

Is that a feminine or a masculine tendency, let me ask. Women are running the show as we'll see later in the book by displaying their abundant gifts of prophecy outside of their covering. They have stepped outside.

There'll be no man ruling me and I'm gonna speak my prophecy because they're so important and I'm gonna cause disorder in the church and no one's gonna say boo about it until the Apostle Paul comes and says something.

They have appealed to outside forces as we're gonna see in chapter 6 they've appealed to outside forces to settle disputes out of the fear of having face-to-face fights and Trusting the church to sort it out.

They trust the civil magistrate. The Roman pagans to sort out their differences inside. Because they're too afraid to look each other in the eye and have church discipline and have their fights in public with the people.

They love the most. Sound familiar. Chapter 7 tells us about the sexless marriages that are going on in Corinthians. Let me just ask you. Is that a male problem or a female problem? My body my choice leads the day in Corinth and.

Then we see in chapter 8 that there is a legalism that's pervading over conscience because what's important in Corinth is outward piety.

Not.

Spiritual sight. How do you look on the outside? Ooh, I went over to their house. They had some of that meat from the Aphrodite place. Not very holy. That defines Christians who have embraced the natural man because like the old way they want to go back to the vomit of Legalism that was always outside of the will of God.

What they want to do is they want to look on the outside always instead of waiting to examine what's on the inside and At Corinth you have a church that's typified by sexual lawlessness. By fighting and infighting but all of the passive-aggressive kind right because we're not having church trials.

We're all just whispering about each other. Did you see did you see I went over there? They had that idle meat. Did you hear about their marriage? That's what's going on in Corinth and it's destroying the church.

And so when Paul says the biting things that he does he is talking about the natural man dominating a church and it can happen not because they're not redeemed but because they've let the little nose of the camel get under the Tent and they have started to imbibe and drink the lies of the enemy.

We've been doing this in the church for a long time. And it's very easy for us to point the fingers and to point the guns outside and too often we do that. It all sounds familiar doesn't it. We have denominations that have female pastors.

Essentially what Corinth was doing we have men that are stealing money out of the offering box extorting their flock fleecing the sheep by bringing them to their charismatic flag and it's easy for us to point fingers all day at the Bad guys and you all know who they are.

Right. I can name them. It's fine. It takes no courage whatsoever. But friends, I think we need to look inside. It always is easy to have the common enemy on the outside, but it's always hard to look inside at what's going on here.

So let me ask some questions when Christians start to embrace the natural man I'm gonna deal with men and women separately and I'm gonna deal with women first. Let me ask this do our women do you hear sisters.

Do you fear what others think or say about you and then project this suspicion on to others without any evidence whatsoever? Are you afraid of what they're saying about you behind your back? Are you afraid of what they're thinking about how you looked what you said what you brought in and then do you?

Propose or put that suspicion of they're talking about you. Do you put it on them and then judge them that way with no evidence whatsoever? See suspicious thoughts make us directly think the worst not the best of our fellow Christians and is a sin.

That's besetting in women. It would be naive To think that that's not happening. Let's call it out if this is you if You if it brings it to mind if it brings the woman to mind that you thought I wonder if they're talking bad about me.

You have one of two options. Go ask them or Put it to death. Pray that God will take this sickness this disgusting sin away from you. Repent. We are not authorized To think the worst and hope for the best.

See Christians what we do this means something right. We say that we have to fear God. We say as Calvinist that God has us in his hand and that he controls our destiny and Yet at the same time We're afraid of the unfair fight and we try to gain every advantage by carnal means that we can Christians understand that we don't have to be lambs to the slaughter.

We don't have to be stupid. But at the same time we are gonna lose some battles because we have to think the best of other Christians and Sometimes they're gonna hurt us and you know what we should do when they hurt us.

We should turn in our Bibles to Matthew chapter 18 and we should go to our brother when they sin against us and we should Confront them with it and ask for repentance. And if they do not repent we should bring another witness to them and we should confront them in their sin.

And if they do not repent we should repeat those steps as much as is wise and necessary. And if that doesn't work, we should bring them in front of the church. Call a meeting any member can do that. You can call a special meeting and you can say this is going to be a church discipline meeting and it would moderate it and you will bring your case in front of that brother or sister and it will be heard by the congregation and if the congregation deems them to be an unrepentant sin, they will pass that judgment and that person has a Decision to make do I repent or do I leave the table?

Serious thing. Have you ever seen it happen? Have you ever raise your hand if you've seen it happen? We are in willful disobedience to God because it hasn't happened and he's not happy with us. It starts here.

Are we to believe that no one sinned against one another? No, but what we do is we go off like little cowards and we talk behind people's backs. Never dealing with the issue head-on and how can you trust someone when you don't have the conversation?

You can't. You can't and we mirror Corinth. What does the scripture tell us women. It tells us that we have to think well of others. It tells us that we have to invest in relationships knowing that they can go wrong.

It tells us to cast off gossip and tailbearing. These little morsels, they're so tasty to the gossip. The Proverbs say that they go down deep into the innermost parts. We love to hear just a little bit of salacious stuff because we know that it tickles our ears and it makes us feel a little bit better of ourselves because we're not doing that thing and You are crawling around in the grime and the muck along with the person that you're talking about and don't be fooled.

We know this any person that would gossip to you is Gossiping about you at the same time with somebody else. It is an infectious contagious disease that has destroyed more churches than probably any other sin I can think of.

Make holy war against it. Refuse the suspicions of other people and believe your assumptions. Do not believe bad assumptions about people but assume the best and you always have to have evidence. And if you don't have evidence you let it go.

If you have evidence, we have to go to Matthew 18. Let me ask a second question. Do our women run homes? By taking over leadership in the vacuum of male passivity. This is the besetting sin of our age from men and women first.

Peter 3 1 says. And we don't like this verse in the same way you wives be subject to your own husband so that. Even if any of them are disobedient to the word. There may be they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives understand this women your husband's disobedience in.

Failing to lead is not an invitation for you to step up to headship. You are gonna have a difficult time of it. You have no authority to lead your home ever. I Don't care how sinful he is. You don't have to join him in his sin, but you lead nothing and if you lead it You're leading it straight to hellfire where the natural man dwells.

I know it's your desire. It was our mother's desire from the very beginning. Her desire will be for him. Just like sins desire was for Cain to rule over him to dominate him. So you have to do what's in your spear by making a home by encouraging.

Providing counsel for sure raising kids and then get this pray for submission. Submission never happens in agreement. You understand that. The word itself is about following the orders of the captain and sometimes your captain is a moron.

So what. I don't say that to deprecate men. I say it as a fact men our Responsibility is we're gonna lead them wrong sometimes and they are going to follow us and we bear the weight of all of that. Just like the military captain who leads his men to a slaughter.

He hopes he dies, too. That's the way it is.

You.

Have to learn to trust your husband knowing that your obedience is righteous in God's sight. Even if your husband is wrong, and I would say especially if your husband is wrong see Sarah looked at Abraham and she called him Lord and In many ways he was a lordly man.

But Sarah hatched a plan because she wanted to know better than God and God had promised an heir to Abraham. And so she brought in her maidservant her slave Hagar and said hey have a child with Hagar.

Abraham. And this will provide our line. It will make God promise God's promises come true and Abraham like a big bozo said, okay, but what is the fundamental problem? He wasn't leading. What he should have said is get out of here woman.

You want to entrap me with fornication adultery? No, but he didn't say that.

And a whole.

Ancestry of people. Became the enemies of God. Because of the disobedience and the inversion of the headship submission relationship. Women are you running your homes? Do we really know let me just tell you you're fooling.

No one we know. We know and I know it could be because he's not doing anything. Guess what you do. This is the hardship. Peter says it. Even if any of them are disobedient to the word. That is a hard calling wives.

Very hard very difficult because in the absence of leadership things are going to start breaking and falling apart and it is not your job to fix them and You're gonna pray to the Lord for strength and for perseverance as things fall apart hoping that God will bring him to the very end of his sin and his foolishness and That he will repent and everything will be made new and it will be better than it was before.

Because you will have known the depths and you will see the heights. That is the calling wives. Are you the natural man? Or are you throwing it off? I think these are the two vehicles that we see at the most in the church.

Functional headship of the woman in the house. We're okay with it here. We've got this on lockdown, but in the house not so much. Wives run the show and it's obvious to everyone it may not be obvious to you.

I urge you today to take inventory. I urge you. I Urge you and if you love gossip, I. It's easy to beat up on men and I'm about to do it. But we say this and no one's gonna disagree with me. Do men need to make holy war.

No holds barred against pornography. The answer is absolutely. Yes. We all agree to this right women, where's the fire on. Making holy war to the things that destroy you. It is the sins of the mouth. It's gossip.

It's tailbearing. It is taking over leadership in a way that's much more unnatural than pornography is. I'm not minimizing the greatest scourge that's taken men off the battlefield that I could ever imagine.

It's unbelievable how bad it is and yet it is natural men desire women natural. Women desiring leadership of the home is unnatural that is against God's order. Beware. Beware, it is your besetting sin men.

Let's talk about this and I want to start with a positive vision for you. This is what you have to be men. You have to act boldly and you have to tell the truth to everyone. We have for too long set truth against love.

There is only one way to love people and that's to tell the truth and there is only one way to tell the truth Riley and that's to love people if you don't love your brother. Then you will coat and you will nuance the truth to protect yourself.

Don't be fooled. You're not trying to protect them. You're trying to protect yourself because the besetting fear of men is the fear of man. Our sin men is that we are afraid of men and it's always been the besetting sin.

We've always wanted to take the back seat and we've always wanted to be David while being much more like Barak always. Men don't fear man. And I know that we live in a culture that beats us on the head about toxic masculinity and friends.

We are all feminists. It's so obvious to me. We are going to be tempered. We are going to be afraid of our wives. We are gonna say things that would probably get us publicly hanged if we truly are not feminists.

It's the truth. I've seen it over and over again men I'm begging you do not be led from the shadows by your wife and thus be ruled by sin. This is what happens if your wife is running the home, then you are being ruled by sin.

It's the sin of Adam you step aside and let it happen and you pacify yourself with your fleeting passions. See men we have to protect our wives from outside danger. But we also have to protect her from the dangers of sin that are besetting to her.

Her desire is to lead you. You must shoot her down in blunt direct terms. There is a difference between encouragement and browbeating men. Do not lose your authority by stooping down to argue about foolish things and quarrels.

We say it all the time there, you know the guys at Ogden that do bright hearth and all that kind of stuff. They talk all the time. They call each other Kings. Hey King. Good job King. Here's the thing.

When you get involved in petty quarrelings with anyone. You're not acting like a king that stuff's well below the level of that person. You're not dealing with petty little squabbles between three-year-olds if you want to lead you have to lead and leading oftentimes means standing above it and Declaring what needs to be and then letting your people do that.

It's very important. Do you put your wife in her place with her besetting sins as she no doubt will do with you? See, we don't have trouble With wives correcting their husbands. That is ubiquitous. We have a huge amount of trouble with husbands correcting their wives and that's because we're all feminists.

Man, you have to purge the sin from your midst. If you haven't done that it's going to infect your house. Get pastoral help today. If you are enslaved to sin, and I know some of you are I Know you are.

Pornography is the biggest sin of the day. Don't fight alone for one more day with that one. It is a lethal mortal danger. It is sapping your strength is Making you a little coward and it makes you act more effeminate by the day.

It's taking away all of your masculinity if you're passive if you're afraid of men.

Talk.

Get pastoral help. We will call you out. See the natural man acts like Abraham in that episode where he just does what his wife says because let's not be real. Why. Because he was being a pervert. He wanted the maidservant.

He didn't control himself. Men you cannot lead at times without overruling. Here's how you know, if your wife is leading the home. You've never overruled her. You're not leading anything. Do you think I have to overrule my students at school.

Yeah.

All the time now look. Hopefully your wife is not as idiotic as my high school students at the public school. If it is then brother you have a cross to bear and you're gonna have to be prayerful and steadfast in this.

But probably not but listen in your marriage. There's going to be friction. That's why we're told over and over again the way this works. There's going to be friction. You have to be resolved as a man that you're gonna do this thing and in order to do this thing.

You're gonna have to cast off the sins that take your courage away because this task is mission-critical. If we want to put things in order in the church if we want to be men who cast off the natural man.

This is what it takes. It takes throwing off the sin in our midst making war with it with no tools off the table. Why do we lack elders and statesmen in this culture. Have you ever asked yourself that why are our politicians so horrible?

Are they not?

They're awful and It makes you hopeless. Does it not. There is no great man. I Can't think of a single one. We got there is not a great man in American politics today. I don't know of one. Not of one that's even close.

Do we lack elders in church? Yeah. We do. It's difficult. Why it's because here's the deal men. We cannot find the stomach to rule our own home and in the midst of this. We've tried to throw Christ out of the church by obeying women in our ritual in our reform types.

We don't do it by making them pastors. We do it by making them the functional elders in the elder board. You're doing what your wife says at the elder board and you are being ruled by women. You might as well stop the pretense and just let her come up here and preach.

What are we doing? You cannot submit to Jesus by disobeying him. Isn't that obvious? You can't love God by disobeying him. And Wives. You can't love Jesus without obeying your husband. It's as simple as that and the limitation is very narrow if he calls you to sin.

Don't do it. But you have to obey him everything else and this has been very easy women because we don't we don't lead you. There's nothing to obey. That's the absence that I'm talking about and it's time to step up.

The Spiritual Man Has the Mind of Christ

So let's end on a positive note. Let's talk about the spiritual man. This is what we are guys. This is what we are. I want to read this again because I think it's critical he who is spiritual examines all things yet He himself is examined by no one for who has known the mind of the Lord that he will direct him.

But we have the mind of Christ. Paul is an apostle of God who spoke the words of God. God speaks to the spiritual man. And what Paul is doing is he is lifting off and working through Deuteronomy 4. I'm gonna give you a sampling of it.

Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire as you Have heard it and lived Talking to Moses. Or has a God tried to go take for himself a nation from within another nation with trials with signs and wonders.

And with war and with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with great terrors as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes. To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord he is God that there is no other beside him out of the heavens.

He caused you to hear his voice to discipline you and on earth. He caused you to see his great fire and you heard his words from the midst of the fire. Was it a dangerous thing to question Moses?