Why Do You Believe?

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Standing and open your Bibles with me to the second chapter of 1st Corinthians.
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1st Corinthians chapter 2, looking at verse 6, and we're going to read down to verse 16 with our primary focus being on verse 14.
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So, as we read the entire section for the context, know that the focus is going to be on verse 14.
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Beginning in verse 6 it says, These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
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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.
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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.
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And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
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The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him.
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And he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
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The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
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For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth of it.
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I thank you for the depth of it.
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And as we look today at the absolute necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit of God, for us to even be able to understand the word of God, to be able to receive it.
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Lord, I pray that you would by your Spirit open our hearts to understand what this word says.
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For Lord, without the Holy Spirit, we would not be able to.
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This text tells us that very thing.
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And Father, as I preach, I pray to be filled with the Spirit.
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And I pray that you would keep me from error.
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For I know that I am capable of error.
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And I pray, Lord, that your Spirit would speak through me.
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I pray that he would speak to the hearts of the people in this room.
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And for the believers, I pray they would be convicted, Lord, and drawn closer to Christ and in conformity to him.
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And for those who have come today who have not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, whether they be young or old, Father, may today be today a day of regeneration.
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Spiritual rebirth.
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Father, grant them the gift of the Spirit, whereby they might have the scales which are over their eyes fall off, that they might see the plugs from their ears fall out, that they might hear and understand your word.
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And I pray this all in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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I'd like to begin the message today with pointing to an event in the life of Jesus Christ, which I would think that most of us would be at least partially familiar with, if we're not very well familiar with it.
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And it is the event in the life of Jesus wherein he was at the area called Caesarea Philippi, and he had his disciples with him, and he asked them, you may remember this specifically, Matthew chapter 16 is where this event takes place in the Gospel of Matthew.
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It is also reiterated in Mark and Luke.
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But in Matthew 16.13, Jesus looks to his disciples and he says, Who do the people say that the Son of Man is? In the other Gospels he says, Who do the people say I am? Who do the people think I am? Obviously at this time Jesus had been going around and doing many wonderful things, he'd been doing many miraculous things, and he had gained for himself much attention, some positive, much negative, but he had received a lot of noteworthy conversation among the people.
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So Jesus asks the disciples, Who do the people, who do the crowds say I am? And the disciples, I imagine in sort of talking over one another, they just began to answer, and the Bible says that some say you're John the Baptist, others say you are Elijah the prophet, others say you're Jeremiah or one of the other prophets, come back from the dead.
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The world knew Jesus was someone special, but there was a lot of confusion about who Jesus was.
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But one voice stood out among the crowd, one voice was louder than the crowd, and he normally was.
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Peter was a man after my own heart, because Peter didn't know when to be quiet, and I'm often guilty of such impropriety of speech, I sometimes speak quickly and without thinking, which is not always good, it's never good actually.
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But Peter in this case, it was good that he was the loudest, and it was good that he was the one who was speaking out, because what he says is said with great profundity.
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He says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
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We've called that in this church and in many churches, it's identified as the good confession.
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In fact, when someone comes to join the church, when they come up before the church, if they've already been baptized in another like-minded church, when we receive them into membership, the one question that I ask them before the congregation is, do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? Because this confession of Peter, that's where it comes from.
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And I want you to hear what Jesus says to him right after this.
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In verse 17, in Matthew 16 verse 17, Jesus said, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
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Jesus tells Peter that this special insight that he had was not a result of some type of intellectual prowess.
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This insight that he had was not something that he had garnered or gained as a result of his own intelligence.
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Neither was it something that someone else had told him.
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He didn't get this information from a guru or a spiritualist or someone else who was looking on from the outside and was able to discern these things simply intellectually.
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Jesus said, this insight that you've been given is a blessing.
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Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah.
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That word Bar-Jonah simply means son of Jonah.
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Blessed are you, Simon, because God revealed this to you.
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And here's the thing I want to point out.
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Had God not revealed this to Peter, Peter would have remained as ignorant as the crowds.
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Had God not revealed this to Peter, he would not have properly been able to discern the question that Jesus asked him.
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Because apart from the Spirit, this information, this truth, is not known.
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And this event in the life of Jesus is important because it points to what we're going to study today in 1 Corinthians 2.
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If you remember the context for those who haven't been here, Paul has been explaining to the Corinthians why their divisions are inappropriate.
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He's been telling them that they've been chosen by God, not because they were intelligent, not because they were wise, not because they were of any kind of nobility of birth, but God chose the weak of the world to demonstrate His strength through the Corinthian people.
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And in chapter 2, we've seen in verses 1-5, he said, I've came to you with a very simple message.
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It's the message of the gospel.
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Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
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And then in verses 6-8, after that, he tells them, this is what we looked at last week, he tells them that the wisdom of this world is not the same as the wisdom of God.
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He says, we've been giving you wisdom.
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The wisdom that we've been giving you is the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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We've been giving you truth.
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And the truth that we've been giving you is the truth of the gospel, that Jesus Christ died and was raised again.
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And then at verse 9, he begins to deal with the issue of how they came to really receive this knowledge.
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Just like Peter and Caesarea Philippi did not come about that knowledge on his own.
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Just like Peter did not come to that information or insight about Jesus because by any type of intellectual prowess, the people of Corinth had not come to salvation in Jesus Christ because they were smarter or intellectually better or wiser than the rest of the Corinthians.
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The reason why they came to Christ was because Christ, by the Spirit of God, had opened their hearts to believe.
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And may I tell you this morning that you're in that same situation.
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If you're a believer this morning, it is because God has been gracious to you and has given you His Spirit whereby you can understand and receive the truth.
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That's the thesis of today.
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Why did you believe? And in fact, I didn't say that.
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I said, why do you believe? Because I don't believe it's a did.
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I believe that you still do.
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Why did you believe? The same reason why do you believe is because God's Spirit is in you, enabling that faith.
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So let's look at the text.
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We're going to begin at verse 9.
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I'm just going to make comment as we go, but we're going to focus very particularly when we get to verse 14.
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But I don't want to just simply overlook what he says prior to that because this gives us a context.
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Verse 9, he says, following up verse 8, of course.
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Verse 8, he had just said that if the rulers understood this, they wouldn't have crucified Jesus.
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If they knew who Jesus was, if they had the insight Peter had, that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God, they wouldn't have crucified Him.
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But as it is written, What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.
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Now that's a quote because it says as it is written.
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But here's the issue.
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It's not a direct quote of any particular Old Testament passage.
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You can't go to one particular passage where you'll read that statement as written.
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For some people that's an issue.
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It's not really an issue.
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What we have here is simply an amalgam of several truths of the Old Testament put into one verse.
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We see this in other places as well, where the disciples will say, as it is written, and they'll quote two or three different passages in a line.
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Not to say we're quoting this verbatim, but this is what the Word of God teaches.
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If it were as close to any verse, I would say Isaiah 64, 4, is about as close as you're going to find to this particular passage, but it's not direct and from that.
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But this is why it says, as it is written, because this is Old Testament truth.
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And the truth is this.
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This is what it's saying.
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Man's mind is insufficient to receive the things of God.
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Our eyes are insufficient to see the truth of God.
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Our ears are insufficient to hear the truth of God.
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Our heart is insufficient to imagine the truth of God.
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I heard this morning, I didn't get to go into the class, but Brother Andy was preaching on hell in Sunday school.
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And I don't know all of what he said.
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I'm certain that we would agree, but I did hear at one point as I was walking by, exercising my pastoral prerogative and eavesdropping, I did hear for a moment him say something about, it's easier to imagine hell than heaven.
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And like I said, I didn't stay for long, but I got the gist of what he was saying, and I imagine it's true, because can you really imagine what heaven is like? We really can't.
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We can imagine at least a sense of hell in the sense of the torturous place that it must be, but to imagine a place where there's no sin.
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To imagine a place where our thoughts are sinless, and our actions are sinless, because we've been sanctified.
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We can't even do that.
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But here's the thing about this passage that I want to point out.
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This passage, even though it's often used about heaven, this passage isn't about heaven.
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This passage in verse 9 has been used at many a funeral, because people are talking about heaven, and they'll say, What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.
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And they think that's about heaven.
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It's not.
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This isn't about heaven.
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It's about the Gospel.
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Because what it's saying here is that the people before Jesus could not understand or imagine what God had planned and prepared, and He was going to do through Jesus, and when Jesus came, they didn't see it, they didn't hear it, and their hearts didn't understand it.
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See, the context here isn't what's coming.
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The context here is what came.
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Look at verse 10, and I'll prove that, because He says, These things God has revealed to us.
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See, this isn't a future revelation that we're going to get when we get to heaven.
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This is a revelation that's already came.
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These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
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Verse 9 is referring to the Gospel.
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And the Gospel is something that eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and heart has not imagined outside of the work of the Spirit of God.
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You ever wonder why when you talk to people, they just don't get it? You ever wonder how much you can sit and plead with people, and they just don't understand it? And they don't want it? And they have no desire for it? What's right here? This tells us it's not fit for the natural eye, it's not fit for the natural ear, it's not fit for the natural imagination.
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It is a supernatural sight.
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It is a supernatural hearing.
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It is a supernatural heart.
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There's a new TV show coming out.
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I do not plan to put it on my list of shows to watch, but I do know that many people will, and it is called Living Biblically.
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And I don't know if you've seen commercials for it, but the entire show is based on a man, at least from the commercials, because I obviously haven't done much research.
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But according to the commercials of what I've seen, the idea is there's a man who's going to live his whole year living according to the standards of the Bible, very specifically down to the law of the Old Testament.
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There's a little scene in it where somebody's cheating on his wife, and he picks up a stone and throws at him, you know, because he's living biblically, right? So, here's the problem with that show.
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Number one, I'm certain they have no New Testament scholars on the writing staff, I can guarantee that, who would understand the difference in the New Testament and the Old Testament and the covenantal law and how covenantal law, the Bible says in Hebrews that the Old Covenant has been made obsolete because the New Covenant has come.
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There's nobody going to be explaining that in the show, I can guarantee you that.
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But the reality is, even if that were the case, even if an unbeliever said, you know, I'm going to give God a try, and I'm going to pick up a Bible, and I'm going to try to live for God for a year, outside of the Spirit of God, it would be an absolute fool's errand.
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Without the Spirit of God, it would be an absolute travesty.
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Because to try to seek to obey God apart from His Spirit means you're trying to do it in the flesh, and Jesus Christ tells us in His Word that the flesh profits nothing.
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So this is Paul's message to the Corinthian people.
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He's been talking to them about wisdom, he's been defining the difference between worldly wisdom and godly wisdom, and he says, know this, apart from the Spirit of God, you're not going to be able to see it, you're not going to be able to hear it, you're not going to be able to understand it.
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That's the prerequisite.
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The Spirit of God must be within us.
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And then he goes on to verse 11, and he begins to describe the why.
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Because in verse 11 he says, 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.
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Let me ask you a question.
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This is an interesting question.
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Is there anybody who knows you, now some of you might say my wife or maybe God, but just be honest for a second.
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God only would be the answer.
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Is there anybody who knows you better than you? And you say, well my wife knows me pretty good, my husband knows me pretty good, my parents know me pretty good.
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But they don't know every thought.
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In fact, I have thoughts that my wife doesn't know about.
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I have things run through my mind, and I have to immediately, the Bible says, take every thought captive.
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You have to take those thoughts captive and eliminate them.
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Because we have these things that come into our minds, and we say, where did that even come from? And so this text is saying, who knows a person's thoughts except that person? The only person we can say is God.
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The only person who knows me better than me is God.
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And the point that he's making here is, if nobody knows me better than God, or rather if nobody knows me better than me except God, then who knows God better than God? No one, right? The only person who truly searches the depths of God is God.
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The Spirit of God is the only one who really knows God as He is.
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So, what's he saying? He's saying if we're going to know God, we've got to go through the Spirit, because He's the only one who really knows God.
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If we're going to understand God, we've got to go through the Spirit, because He's the only one who really understands God.
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And if we're trying to understand God without the Spirit of God, we are missing the only way to really know Him.
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If anything specific is to be known about God's nature, it must come from the Spirit of God.
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Now, there is something called, and I want to make sure this is clear, there's something called natural revelation, or general revelation.
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We've talked about that in the past.
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You can walk out, an unbeliever can walk out, look at the sky, look at the sun, moon, and stars, and say, yes, I believe God created this because it has order, because the world has things in it that give the fingerprint of a creator, and so we see the fingerprints of God as creator, and the unbeliever knows enough about God to be condemned, according to Romans 1.
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It says they suppress the truth and unrighteousness, they know just enough about God to know that they're sinners, and know that they're condemned.
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This is why man is so religious.
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This is why man is called homo religiosus.
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In Latin, it simply means the religious being.
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We're called homo sapien, the thinking being, but we're also called homo religiosus because cows don't go moo and bow down to some cow deity.
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Pigs don't bow down to a pig deity.
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We do.
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Every culture seeks to find some way to satisfy this need of dealing with the fact that God exists.
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Because we know it.
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But the only way to have specific truth about God is through the Spirit, because only the Spirit knows God.
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So for us to know God, we've got to know the Spirit, because He's the one who enlightens us.
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He's the one who illuminates us.
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He's the one who gives us that information.
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Are you guys with me so far? Because now, verse 12, he says, 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 to us by God.
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And we impart this in words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
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Now remember who the we is.
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We talked about this last week.
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Paul, when he says we, he's either talking about himself as one among the apostles, or himself as one among scripture writers, or himself as one among the teachers or elders of the church.
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And whatever sense the we is coming across here, it's coming with a sense of authority.
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We're teaching you and we're imparting to you spiritual information, but it's only going to those among you who are spiritual.
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But here's the thing about that word.
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Oh, that word comes so loaded with baggage.
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The word spiritual is loaded with terrible, terrible baggage today.
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Because if you go out into the world and you talk to people, they'll tell you, Hey, listen, man, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.
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I'm not religious, man, but I'm spiritual.
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I want to tell you something right now.
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What they mean and what Paul means ain't the same thing.
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It ain't.
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Because when somebody says I'm spiritual, they can mean anything.
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In fact, some people, that refers to some type of Eastern spirituality, transcendental meditation, yoga.
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Mindfulness is the new big term.
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If you see these apps for meditation that are coming out, they're very popular to get you into a state of mindfulness.
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This is all about raising and heightening your spirituality.
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This is the purpose, actually, a quote.
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Quote, to raise their state of awareness and experience a sense of oneness with the universe.
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To raise their state of awareness and their sense of oneness with the universe.
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That's spirituality.
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That's the thing.
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But I got to tell you, that ain't what Paul means.
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When Paul says he's imparting spiritual truth to spirituals, that's actually the Greek, but it's to those who are spiritual, but to spirituals or spiritual people, what he's talking about is those who have been born of the spirit.
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How do I know that? Well, in John chapter 3, Jesus was visited at night by a man named Nicodemus.
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Old Nick at night comes to Jesus, and he came to talk to him.
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I love that.
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It's a terrible joke, but I like it.
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He comes to Jesus, and he says, we know you're a great teacher sent from God, and he's trying to get Jesus to talk to him.
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And Jesus says, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
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And Nicodemus didn't understand, so he asked him another question.
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And Jesus says, I tell you, verily, verily, I say unto thee, unless a man is born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
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That born of the spirit is where we get the term born again.
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The word regeneration.
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You were born D.O.A.
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Do you know what D.O.A.
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stands for? Dead on arrival.
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Born dead in trespasses and sins, in which we once walked.
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Right? According to Ephesians chapter 2.
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And you were dead in trespasses and sins.
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But God made us alive.
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But God made us alive.
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How did he make us alive? He put his Holy Spirit within us, and granted us the gift of regeneration, whereby we went from being natural, that's the term Paul uses here, to spiritual.
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You go from being of the flesh, to being of the spirit.
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And that's why he says in verse 13, he's explaining the things of the spirit to those who have the spirit.
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That's what that phrase means.
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If you do not have the spirit, we can jabber on in your ears all the live long day, and all you're going to get is information.
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A true change comes when the Spirit of God enters the person, and they go from being a person who is natural, to a person who is spiritual.
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Now having said all that, now we get to verse 14.
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That's the setup to verse 14.
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Here's the real sermon, that was the introduction.
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Because now we're going to get to verse 14, and what does he say? And by the way, if you're Reformed, if you know what that means, and you know what total depravity means, you know what those things are, this is one of those verses that we point to.
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Because listen to what it says.
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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.
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Now think about what that passage says.
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It says the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.
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Now that's an important thing, because later it says he's not able to understand them.
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But here's the thing you need to understand about that, that word accept and that word understand, how they're being used in the context here is very important.
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Because what it's not saying, it is not saying that a person in the flesh can't understand the facts about Jesus as presented.
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Because I've got to tell you, there's a lot of unbelievers out there who understand the facts.
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Some of them understand the facts better than believers, in the sense of just understanding what the facts are.
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And I'm going to say this, some of you might want to argue with me, just send an email.
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There are some scholars who are unbelieving scholars, who do better scholarly work than believing scholars.
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And if you've ever studied scholarship, you have to say amen at that, because some of these guys really do good research.
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But there's something missing, isn't there Mike, when you read what they're writing.
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There's a fundamental understanding of truth that they're missing.
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Somebody like Bart Ehrman is fantastic as a scholar, but when he gets into the area of theology, he just...
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It's like all of that genius flies away.
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And as erudite and as intelligent as he is at being able to interpret scholarly information and historical data and reading all these several languages that he can read, when he begins to describe God, he goes off the rails faster than you can imagine.
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Because he cannot accept the truth.
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He cannot understand the truth.
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He can understand facts, but there's something called the noetic effect of the fall.
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Not Noah like the flood and the ark thing, that's Noah.
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This is noetic, N-O-E-T-I-C.
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The noetic effect of the fall is the mental problem that began with the fall of man.
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And it's a mental inability to really see God's truth.
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What did God say? What did Jesus say? He said it's like blinders on their eyes.
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They have been blinded to these things.
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Can they see facts? Do they understand the facts? Yes.
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But they won't receive those facts.
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They won't truly understand those facts.
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And it comes out when they start to try to talk about spiritual things.
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And we see it all the time.
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I have a few quotes here.
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I hate to read lengthy quotes during a sermon, but these are just good information.
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I want you to hear this.
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The first one is short.
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It's Alistair Begg.
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He says, Man, by his nature, does not have the resources to recognize, appreciate, and welcome what the Spirit of God proclaims in the Word of God.
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Hear those three things.
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Recognize, appreciate, and welcome.
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They can know the facts, but they won't recognize, appreciate, and welcome those facts.
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That's key.
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Even though it's a short quote, I thought that was very powerful.
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Because that's what Paul is saying.
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Daryl Bach, in his study of this passage, and this is a word study commentary, this is a lengthy quote, but listen to it.
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Quote, It is not that the unbeliever is unable to comprehend spiritual things, but that such truths are not welcomed, received, or embraced.
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They are judged as foolish.
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On the other hand, it is also true that the unbeliever cannot truly understand or comprehend spiritual things without the aid of the Spirit, because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
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Thus, the unbeliever's handicap is twofold.
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It's volitional or moral, and that he or she rejects the Gospel is foolish, but it's also cognitive, and that he or she is unable to grasp fully spiritual truth without the aid of the Spirit.
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This cognitive problem is the result of human finiteness, and what theologians often refer to as the noetic effect of sin.
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That is the damaging and corrupting impact of sin on humanity's thinking and reasoning ability.
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This is the unbeliever's state.
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This is the fallen state.
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John Calvin, probably the best...
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Well, one of the best theologians of the last 500 years, certainly.
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But on this, I think gives the greatest analogy.
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He said that the unbeliever is like a donkey at a concert.
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He says he knows something's happening, and he can hear everything that's happening, but he can't for a moment appreciate what it is, and he's more likely just going to interrupt.
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That's insightful if you think about...
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We're not calling them stupid or ignorant.
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We're saying they can't get it.
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They won't get it because it hasn't been given to them yet, for whatever reason.
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And this is honestly where the truth of Reformed soteriology, that's the study and doctrine of salvation, this is where Reformed theology, Reformed soteriology rests.
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Man has not the capacity to receive the things of God without the Spirit of God.
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Therefore, the Spirit of God must come upon a person, an inner person, for him to be able to come to faith.
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So listen to this.
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Faith, then, is a gift.
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Faith is not something you work up in your heart.
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Faith is not something you produce out of the willfulness of the soul.
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Faith is a gift God gives you by the Spirit, because the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.
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So why does a person accept them? Because he's been made spiritual.
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Spiritual person does, natural person doesn't.
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How then did we come to faith? God gave us a new heart.
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The Bible says in the Old Testament likens it to this.
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We had a heart of stone.
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God reached into that heart of stone, and He took it out, as it were, like a heart transplant, and He put in a heart of flesh.
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The heart of flesh does what it's supposed to do.
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It pumps life-giving blood.
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And that's what the spiritual heart does.
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We now are able to see, and to hear, and to understand.
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Not everything in its fullness, because we still battle with the flesh, and that's part of what Paul's going to talk about in the next chapter, but we have spiritual eyes, and spiritual ears, and a spiritual heart.
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And then he says in verse 15, and we're going to start drawing to a close, He said, The spiritual person, or the person with the Spirit, judges all things, and is himself to be judged by no one.
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For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ.
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The term judges here is a little open to some misapprehension, and that's why I wanted to mention this before I draw to a close.
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Because he's talking about spiritual people.
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We know that means a person born again, a person who has the Spirit within them.
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And he said, The spiritual person judges all things, and, or rather but, conversely, is himself to be judged by no one.
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And this term judges has been misused some, because I think some people think that what that means is, and I've heard people say it, I'm a Christian, don't, you can't judge me.
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Right? You've heard people, and I mean to say it with a little sass, but you know that's how it usually comes across.
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We'll say, well you can't judge me, you know.
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Actually, later in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is going to say that within the church we do have to make judgments.
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Sometimes we actually have to condemn if there's sin going on, and sometimes church has to exercise discipline, because that's the necessary nature of having to deal with sin in its midst.
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So it don't mean don't judge me.
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That's not what it means.
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The better word here, I think, is the word understand or discern.
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So hearing it like that, if it says this, The spiritual person discerns or understands all things, but he himself is to be discerned or judged or understood by no one.
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Let me explain what I think this means, and I do believe I'm correct on this.
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The spiritual person understands all things.
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What does that mean? Well, it doesn't mean that just because you get saved, you can automatically do calculus, or just because you get saved, you can paint as good as Mike, or you can do stocks as good as you, or you can play guitar as good as you gentlemen, or piano as good as Miss Deborah.
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That doesn't mean that.
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But what it does mean is that you have new eyes to see the world, and now you understand things through a worldview that's different.
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And you understand things better now, and you understand things rightly now, because you see through spiritual eyes.
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And you see, I often hear people say, you know, when I was growing up, I never understood how evil the world is.
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Now God has saved me, and I look out and I see just how much evil and how much opposition to Christ there is.
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That's those spiritual eyes.
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And then the opposite of that, it says, but you're understood by no one.
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That's the reality, because as a Christian, you live in a world that lives opposite to you, and when they look at you, they say, man, what a weirdo.
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They say, that guy there is always telling me about Jesus.
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He's swinging that paintbrush and telling me about Jesus.
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What a weirdo.
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Sorry, Mike.
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You know, it's true, though.
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People avoid us.
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People think we're strange.
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People don't understand us.
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Have you ever noticed that you have unbelieving family members, that you'll do something, and they'll just look at you and say, why would you do that? I don't really have to give you an example.
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You know.
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There's a lot of things we do as believers that the world looks at us just with a puzzled face.
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Why would you do that? But the blessing of being a believer in Christ is that we're not subject to their appraisal.
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We're not trying to please them.
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We're trying to please the Lord, and yeah, there's going to be weird things that we do, and that's going to happen.
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What bothers me the most is people who call themselves Christians, and then I'll be doing something that's seeking to please the Lord, and they'll say, well, why would you do that? Well, I'm trying to please the Lord.
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Well, I don't think that's necessary.
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Well, I'm not trying to please you.
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If I do something at my house, it's different than the way you do it, as long as it's not an essential thing, it's none of your business.
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That's right.
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Absolutely.
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If I want to homeschool my kids, and you want to send your kids to school at a different school, or you want to go to private school, public school, that's your business, and you're going to answer to God for that, and you know what? How we school our children is up to us, and it's not your business to judge me on that.
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As long as I'm being a faithful husband and a faithful father, write it in your notebook and throw it in the trash.
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But this verse is more about the understanding of the world, and how the world doesn't always understand us, and that's okay.
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The world's not going to understand us, because the reality is we have the mind of Christ, and this is where Paul draws his conclusion.
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We have the Holy Spirit, and he compares that to having the mind of Christ.
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That doesn't mean, again, that we know everything, and it doesn't even mean that what we know is perfect, because we still deal with the flesh, but as believers, God has given us the blessing of His Spirit, whereby we have three things.
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Number one, we're able to receive His wisdom and not reject it.
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The world rejects His wisdom, and by the Spirit of God, we're able to receive it.
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Number two, we're able to have a worldview which allows us to see the world through the lens of Scripture, where the world thinks Scripture's a joke, and they make TV shows about it to make fun of it.
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But we believe the Scripture is the very light to our path and the lamp to our feet.
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And number three, we're able to possess the mind of Christ, meaning we look through Christ as the absolute rubric for everything.
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Christ is the absolute standard against which we judge all things.
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As believers, we no longer have minds that are opposed to God's Word.
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Praise God! Because when I was a kid, when I was growing up as a teenager, even though I would have went to church and I would have probably called myself a Christian, I had no desire for the things of God.
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I had no desire to see God glorified in my life.
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I didn't care.
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All I wanted Him to do was answer my prayers, because my prayers were essentially a wish list, and I looked at Him like Aladdin's genie.
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And maybe if I pray hard enough, or if I pretend like He's Santa Claus, and I make my list clear enough, maybe He'll answer my wish list.
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But as believers, we've been given a new mind.
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We've been given a new spirit.
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We can now receive the things of God, and we can appreciate the truth and the wisdom of the Word.
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No longer do we see the truths of God as things to be opposed, but rather we see the blessings of God as things to be embraced.
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And this then becomes a good way for us to discern our own spiritual condition.
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And this is where I want to draw, I want to end here, I want you to hear this, with this question.
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Because off this message comes an important question.
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When you hear the truths of God's Word, does your mind and heart receive them even when they're a rebuke in your life? As wisdom from God? Or do you hear them as foolishness and attempt to immediately put them away as quickly as you can? When you leave this place, do you try to erase the memory of the sermon as quick as you can because it was stepping all over your toes and all over the comforts of your heart? Beloved, the answer to that question speaks volumes about your heart.
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The person born of the Spirit receives the things of the Spirit.
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But the person not born of the Spirit receives not the things of the Spirit.
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Where are you this morning? Are you a natural person, not yet born of the Spirit? Or have you been born of the Spirit of God whereby the Word of God penetrates into your heart and you receive it even in its hardness, even in sometime in its rebuke? Do you receive it as gracious wisdom from God? Only you know.
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Only you know your heart.
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You and God.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your Word.
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I thank you for this passage.
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I thank you for the truth.
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And I pray that this would be a moment of clarity for us all, that we would all know and ask ourselves those important questions.
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Are we the spiritual person? Or are we the natural person? Have we been born again? Or are we still just playing the role of Christian in a world that we treat as if it were like a play? Father, we know the word hypocrite means one who would wear a mask.
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Father, may it be that we're not trying to wear masks to look like Christians this morning, but that we truly have been born of the Spirit of God.
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And that that Spirit would give us eyes to see and ears to hear.
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And Lord, for those who have not, Lord, I pray that now, even now, you would grant spiritual life that leads to faith in your son Jesus to those who do not have it.
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I pray it in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen.