Don't Check Your Brain at the Door

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And open your Bible with me and turn to the book of 1st Corinthians chapter 14 and verse 15, 1st Corinthians 14 and just verse 15 is going to be our message for today.
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As we are standing to read, the text says, what am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.
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I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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Lord, as we consider this morning, the nature of the mind in worship.
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I pray that you would first and foremost encourage us to understand the balance between unbridled emotionalism and unbalanced intellectualism.
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And Lord, to see how both are a cliff off which we could fall.
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And Lord, there is a balance that we are to worship you in spirit and in truth.
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I pray that you'll give me the strength to preach this message as Lord, you know, I have been in my heart looking forward to this, and I thank you, Lord, for giving me the opportunity to stand behind your pulpit in front of your people and preach your word.
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And again, I pray for strength.
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I pray to be kept from error.
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And I pray that through all of this, you would draw your people to you.
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For those who have already come to a saving knowledge of Jesus, that this would be to them food and drink and nourishment to the soul.
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And Lord, to those who have yet to bow that knee, that this would be a message of conviction.
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And Lord God, for maybe those who have in their lips made a profession, but in their hearts have not turned to Christ, may today be a convicting fire on them.
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May it show them, Lord, the error of the path they are taking, and may today be the day of genuine conversion.
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For Lord God, only you can do these things.
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So we give them all to you in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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Well, I want to begin with a little bit of an explanation as to the title.
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That's not what, Miss Pam, if you'll just bring the title up.
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That's not what I need just yet.
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Just bring the title up for now.
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We'll get to that in a moment.
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I want to explain the title a little because I got to thinking about it as I, as I, as I was putting the message together.
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And I thought, you know, a lot of us have probably never been to a place where you can check your coat or your bag when you go in.
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It's a little bit fancier than I usually frequent myself.
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But for those of you who know what it is, this will be rudimentary.
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But for those who don't, there are there are restaurants and theaters that you can go to where when you go in, there's a place called the coat check room where you where you can take off your jacket or you can take your bag and you leave it with someone.
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They put it behind the the coat check table and they give you a little ticket.
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And the whole intention is you're not going to use that while you're there.
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You don't need a big, heavy coat when you're inside the restaurant.
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You don't need a big bag when you're inside the theater.
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So you're going to leave that there because you're not going to use it.
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When I first became a Christian, Jennifer and I used to frequent the Christian bookstore together and we would go.
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The first book that I remember buying was by Josh McDowell and it was entitled Don't Check Your Brains at the Door.
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That was the title of the book, and it was written to Christians to remind them that when you come into church, it's not all about the emotions, but it's a place to engage your mind.
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And I remember reading that book and I remember thinking, this is something that we all need to hear.
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This was 20 years ago, but it was still something that even at the time, Christians needed to hear.
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And if they needed it 20 years ago, more so even today.
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That when we come into worship, that it does not need to be a place that is only emotional, only expressions of feelings, but that we need to engage the mind in worship.
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In fact, if you if you ever do happen to read Josh's book, you'll notice that it it's mostly about apologetics and defending the faith.
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And just so you know, I'm not preaching Josh's book this morning because my subject isn't apologetics.
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But I've taken his title because I think it applies to the verse that we're looking at today and the subject for the morning, because too often Christians do not realize the value of engaging the mind in worship.
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R.C.
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Sproul said this mindless Christianity is no Christianity at all.
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You cannot love what you do not know.
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Jennifer's reading a book called Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin.
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I haven't read it, but she just happened to read a quote to me yesterday as she was reading it.
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And this is the quote, the heart cannot love what the mind does not know.
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And I said, well, that goes right along with what R.C.
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said, the heart cannot love what the mind does not know.
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And I've been meditating on verse 15 of 1 Corinthians 14 for the past couple of weeks because I really batted around whether or not I was going to stop and talk about this.
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I mentioned this a little bit in last week's message, and I said, well, maybe that was enough.
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But as I began to really dig in my heart, my soul, I began to realize this is something that is plaguing the church today and needs to be addressed.
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You all know we've been in chapter 14 for a while.
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We've looked at verses 1 to 25.
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Last week, I gave an understanding of those verses.
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I did a walk verse by verse through them to give you my understanding of the text.
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And we know that the focus of this is tongues and prophecy, and that's the gifts that Paul is talking about.
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People were able to engage in a gift of speaking a language they did not know before.
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And Paul's talking about that, and he's talking about their behavior in the church.
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And he talks about talking in the spirit.
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And that's what he means by that is talking in tongues under the power of the spirit.
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And we get to verse 15.
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He says, you need to understand when we're in the worship service and he talks about this throughout verses 1 to 25, he talks about the fact that if you speak in tongues and nobody understands and the speaker doesn't understand, there is no interpreter, then it doesn't do any good.
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It's just basically like speaking into the air.
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There's no one that's going to understand it except God.
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But in verse 15, he says, I tell you what I will do.
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Actually ask the question, the interrogative, what am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.
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I will sing with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.
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And some believe that what Paul is saying is sometimes I'll pray with my spirit, sometimes I'll pray with my mind.
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Sometimes I'll sing with my spirit.
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Sometimes I'll sing with my mind.
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I don't believe that's the case.
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And the reason why I don't is because the word also indicates to me that he's talking about engaging both at the same time.
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And this agrees with Christ.
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Because Christ said in John four, the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth.
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The father is seeking such to worship him.
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God is spirit.
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And those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
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Thus, it's not an either or.
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That sometimes I'm in the spirit and sometimes I'm in the mind or truth, but it's both.
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Therefore, I have a simple thesis, if you are taking notes, this is the thesis of my message.
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Christian worship that is genuine.
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Genuine Christian worship is that which should engage both the spirit and the mind.
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Christian worship should engage the spirit and the mind.
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Now, based on that thesis, I want to look at two dangerous extremes that have existed in Christianity that I believe we should avoid.
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Two dangerous extremes that have caused people to go off the cliff, either on one side or on the other.
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So today's a two point sermon.
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Miss Pam, now you can bring it up.
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Sorry for the confusion earlier.
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But now these are the two extremes we're going to look at.
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And that is unbridled emotionalism and unbalanced intellectualism.
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That's our two point sermon today.
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We're going to look at those.
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My hope is to show that while both extremes are ungodly, there is a place of balance between the heart and the mind, between the emotions and the understanding where Christ's worship resides.
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Not off the cliff of emotionalism, not off the cliff of intellectualism, but right where we engage with the heart and the mind at the foot of the cross.
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And so that is our focus today is finding the balance and not falling off one side or the other.
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So let's look first at the danger of unbridled emotionalism, the danger of unbridled emotionalism.
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When I use the word emotionalism, I think some of you, at least most of you, probably have an idea of what I mean.
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However, for the sake of clarity, I want to define my terms because just in case I don't want us to be confused.
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Emotion is the reactive aspect of our consciousness.
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Ever thought about that? The emotions are the reactive aspect of our consciousness.
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We sometimes call them our feelings because they change with how we feel.
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If I experience something very emotional, I get stirred up with great feelings.
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And these may be good feelings.
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I might have a happy or a calm feeling that's good, or it might be bad.
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I may have anger or fear, and that's sometimes bad.
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And so I understand there's a range of emotions and emotions are quickly subject to change.
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Amen.
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I've seen people go from very happy with my preaching to very upset like that.
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A few years ago on Christmas Day, the entire septic system in my house stopped working.
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And so for half of Christmas Day, I was outside digging out the clean out and having to do all the things that go with that, that any of you have ever done it know is the least fun you will have in the history of ever.
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And so I took the great high emotional experience of Christmas morning and I combined that with the great low experience of digging the clean out.
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And I realized this is how quick emotions can change.
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They're often based on circumstance and they are easily manipulated.
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In fact, I think that's the most the big one of the biggest dangers in churches today is instead of becoming preachers of the word, a lot of pastors, preachers, public speakers, what are you going to life coach? I don't care what they like to be called.
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They've become manipulators of emotion.
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And the problem is you can't make sound decisions when you're too emotional.
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Amen.
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When we when our emotions take over, our thinking becomes unclear and we're often at our most dangerous.
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Now, we know what emotions are now put ism on the end of that, when I say emotional ism, I add the ism because emotional ism is when we actually create a system based around emotions.
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So think for a moment about what emotional ism is.
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It's when the focus of what you're doing is to try to find or or create an emotional response.
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One author defined emotional ism like this, a false teaching within Christianity that glorifies our emotions and makes them rather than Christ and his truth, the central focus of our identities and our relationship to him makes emotion central.
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It's an attempt when we come into church to seek out and acquire a particular feeling.
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And once we have that feeling, we can say, I felt God.
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Think about how how much this language comes into our vernacular.
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People say things all the time.
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I really felt the spirit move today.
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You hear that? I was really moved by the singing today.
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Say that all the time.
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The sermon really touched my heart.
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We say that all the time.
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And I'm not saying those those statements are inherently bad.
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My point for us is to simply say that we've become dependent upon the language of feelings.
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In fact, some think that if they don't have the feeling, then they haven't worshiped.
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And so worship is a is a pursuit of feeling.
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I know a man once there was a pastor in his church and I knew this pastor and I had heard him preach and I'd sat under his preaching at times.
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And this pastor was a marvelous expositor of the word of God.
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And there was a man in his church that left his church and I just happened to be friends with friends.
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And I I was having an opportunity to hear what he had to say about why he left the church of a of where the word was preached.
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And he said, well, when that man preached, I just didn't get the fuzzy feeling when that man preached.
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I didn't get a fuzzy feeling.
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Let me ask you a question.
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You be honest with me.
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And there are a lot of things in this world that give you a fuzzy feeling.
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They got nothing to do with Jesus.
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I mean, you can get a fuzzy feeling from a secular song.
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There's a lot of songs that when they're played, it brings up something in my mind, a memory.
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And I'll just start to tear up.
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And I'm the worst at movies.
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My wife likes to watch sad movies.
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I can't do it.
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I said, life's sad enough.
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I don't need to get beat in my emotions for I don't want to pay for it.
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Go watch a movie that's going to make me cry.
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So I know what fuzzy feelings are.
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It doesn't always have anything to do with Jesus.
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There has to be more to our Christianity than just a fuzzy feeling.
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And I want you to hear me clearly, I'm not saying all emotion is wrong, but what I am saying, that emotion should not be the driving force of our faith.
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Jerry Wragg wrote this article.
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He's with Expositor Seminary, actually here in Jacksonville, and this is what he wrote.
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Evangelicalism's descent into spiritual lethargy and sensuality over the past 40 years has been noted by almost every student of the church and culture.
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The naked result from years of entrenched pragmatism is a superficial, narcissistic Christianity that exalts emotion, experience over just about every other consideration.
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Now, listen to this part.
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Emotionalism plagues our corporate praise, our counseling, our preaching and our approach to spiritual growth.
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In short, so much effort has been expounded in seeking out emotional experiences that it's changed the very face of the Christian church.
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Emotionalism has changed the face of the church.
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It has created a fundamental change in what people are seeking when they come.
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They're not seeking truth.
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They're seeking how they want to feel.
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The church is filled with folks who are very satisfied doing whatever it takes to create feelings for which they long.
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In fact, I want to I want to quote Thomas Sowell, and I know Sowell is not a Christian, but Sowell is a is a author.
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He's an economist.
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He's a man that I respect.
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His what he's written, even though, like I said, he's not a believer, but this is what he wrote on the subject of education.
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On the subject of public education, he wrote this, he said, the problem isn't that little Johnny can't read.
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The problem isn't even that little Johnny can't think.
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The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is.
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He confuses it with feeling.
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Now, I want to take Sowell's quote and I want to transliterate it to the church.
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The problem with the church isn't that we can't read.
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The problem with the church isn't that we can't think.
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The problem with the church is that we don't know what thinking is.
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We have confused it with feeling.
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It's like R.C.
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Sproul said, he said, the sensuous Christian is one who lives by their feelings rather than through their understanding of the word of God.
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One television preacher said this.
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We don't need knowledge in our head.
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Actually, we don't need head knowledge.
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We need revelation.
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How did this person define revelation? Something that doesn't come through the mind.
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And yet, what is Romans chapter 12 say? We are to be renewed in the mind.
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Renewing our minds because of the rise in emotionalism, the church has by and large lost its grasp on the importance of seeking to know God.
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And they've replaced that with a desire to feel God.
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Hear that again.
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They've replaced knowing God with feeling God.
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In fact, knowing God used to be the goal.
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J.I.
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Packer wrote a book, a wonderful small book called Knowing God.
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And here's what it is.
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Just a quick blurb.
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It says it was to direct our attention to the simple, deep truth that to know God is to love his word.
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But that's not what people want today.
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They do not want to know God.
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They want to feel God.
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In fact, they often make the mistake of equating the two.
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I know God because I feel him.
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But here's the problem.
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People are passionate about feelings that they don't understand.
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Vaughty-Bockham said this.
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The modern church is producing passionate people with empty heads who love the Jesus they don't know.
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Producing passionate people with empty heads who love the Jesus they don't know.
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And going back to the beginning of the message, what did R.C.
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say? You can't love what you don't know.
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Now, years ago, I saw an illustration and I want to share it with you.
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I brought a whiteboard today.
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If that offends you, I will go ahead and say I'm sorry because this is just an illustration tool.
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I'm not here to pretend I'm teaching a college class, but these sometimes can be helpful.
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This illustration, some of you may have seen it.
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So if you have seen it, you'll have to just give me your a little bit of forgiveness.
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If I wrote down three words that are all aspects of the Christian faith, and I just want you to think about these three words for a moment.
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The word faith, the word facts, and the word feelings.
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I want you to think about those three words just for a moment.
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Faith, facts and feelings.
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And if you wanted to maybe put, you could say trust instead of faith.
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You could say truth instead of facts.
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And you could say emotions instead of feelings.
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You say, OK, we got three words here and all three of these are aspects of the Christian faith.
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All three of these are important things.
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Now, in your minds, I want you to imagine a train.
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A train that has three cars.
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The first car is the engine.
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The second car we might call the passenger car or the boxcar.
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And the last car is the caboose.
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OK, so just because I have a good imagination, I went ahead and drew it for you.
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So we have we have the we have the engine, the boxcar and the caboose.
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Now, thinking of those three words I just gave you, faith, facts and emotion.
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We have one car that's pulling everything.
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We have one that's sort of riding along and one that is pulling up the rear of these three things.
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Where do we think we would put faith? A lot of people say, well, faith is the engine that drives everything.
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So faith goes first.
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It's not right.
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Some people think that emotion pulls everything along.
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That's dangerous.
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The first thing that goes right here is the facts.
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What comes here is faith.
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And what last comes in is our feelings.
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So we'll explain that to me, explain to me why that is, because if your facts are wrong, your faith doesn't matter.
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You can believe in something that's not true and your faith is useless.
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I like the word truth here and trust here, but I couldn't find a TR word to go for that one.
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So so for the sake of alliteration, I used the three F's for facts, faith and feelings.
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But the reality is this, that which pulls the train is the truth.
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God created the world, man sinned and fell short of the glory of God.
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We stand before God, judge guilty of our sin and outside of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Jesus Christ deserved the wrath of God.
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God sent for this son born of a woman born under the law that he would redeem those who are under the law and give them the adoption of sons.
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When we come to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith, we are adopted into the family of God and thereby our sins are totally covered in his blood.
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And we are granted his blessed righteousness, whereby we can stand before the throne of God and be completely righteous in him.
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That is fact, not feeling.
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And my faith is in the facts.
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And my feelings are the result, my excitement, my happiness, my joy.
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Everything is based on the facts.
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If your emotions are pulling the train, then you are in an unbridled emotionalism.
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That's a dangerous place to be.
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If your feelings are mediating your faith, then you are in a dangerous place.
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And let me say this.
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I'll add a thought.
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If you are not concerned about knowing the truth, you are not concerned about knowing God because God is truth.
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So we fall into a dangerous trap when we allow our faith to become an expression of unbridled emotionalism.
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But now let's look at the second thing.
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Unbridled emotionalism is dangerous, but so too is unbalanced intellectualism, because some of you may right now be thinking I'm an unfeeling robot.
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You've heard me excoriate emotionalism and therefore you might think I'm opposed to emotions, but I want you to remember the illustration of the train.
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I didn't leave out feelings.
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I just said they didn't draw the train.
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They don't pull everything, but they're a part of it.
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I am in no way and hear this, take this home with you.
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I am in no way advocating an emotionless faith.
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Christianity is not stoicism.
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In fact, some people have tried to bring, by the way, if you don't know what the Stoics are, there was a it was a first century group that were known for trying to repress all of their emotions to try to bring themselves to a state of emotionless living whereby they were attached to nothing.
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They had no feelings of hurt or good or anything.
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They lived a Stoic lifestyle, meaning an emotionless lifestyle, trying to anyway.
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Some people thought that's what Christianity was supposed to be.
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In fact, asceticism, which crept in in the first millennium of the church, the idea that people should separate from everything and not enjoy anything.
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They should go out and be monks and and you can't enjoy food because that's bad to you.
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So you eat very little and what you do eat doesn't taste good because if it tastes good, it's bad, you know, and you don't have relationships.
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You have to become a hermit.
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You don't have sex.
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You have to become a celibate and all of it because all those things are bad to enjoy.
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Anything in the world is bad.
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And that's that's a that's a form of Christian stoicism, trying to divorce yourselves from the feelings the Bible calls us to joy.
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And to have our joy in Christ.
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So if you think I'm advocating an emotionless faith, then I can tell you I'm not.
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However, the pendulum swings, right? You've got those who everything's about emotion and then you've got those who everything is about the intellect and the emotion is left out.
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Those who are known for emotionalism are juxtaposed with those who are afraid even to say amen.
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Now, I mention that because did you know that saying amen and worship is biblical? In fact, if you're if you got your Bible open, just if you're still at verse 15, I want to read verse 16 just to show you something.
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Verse 16 says, otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say amen to your Thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? Right there, Paul seems to be indicating that saying amen is actually expected.
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And the reason why they can't say amen, because they don't know what's being said, this goes back to the issue of the tongues.
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But the point is, they should be able to say amen.
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If you say something that's in accord with God's word, if you say something that's truth, it's OK to say amen.
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Thank you.
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OK, praise God.
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I got a gift this morning.
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Miss Sue brought me something.
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I thought this was very cute.
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And I said it couldn't have been at a better appropriate time.
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It's a little sign that says, can I get an amen? So here I just leave this right here.
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And I thought, what a what a what a funny day to bring that in as a gift.
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I and again, I don't beg for amens, but it is encouraging to the man of God to hear that you understand and you agree.
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And so I'm not you know, I'm not telling you what to do, but I am saying this, if we're afraid of allowing ourselves to be emotional, don't be afraid of that.
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As long as we're not being pulled by the emotions, as long as we're not being driven by the emotions.
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If we allow ourselves to express something as an emotional thing, that's not necessarily bad.
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And by the way, not all amens are expressions of emotion.
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It's usually an expression of the mind agreeing you are supposed to engage your minds.
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In fact, did you know every one of you is a theologian? Now, not in the technical sense, not every one of you is a theologian in the sense of having gone to school and gotten a degree in theology.
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But every one of you, because theology is simply thinking about God.
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And because you're here thinking about God, because you're a Christian, everyone has thoughts about God and everyone's a theologian in that sense.
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In fact, James White says, if you're a Christian, you are a theologian.
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Part of the very goal of the Christian life is theology.
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And R.C.
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Sproul said this, no one can avoid being a theologian.
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The question is whether you're going to be a good one or a bad one.
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So we're all theologians.
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We must engage our minds.
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But we don't engage our minds by disengaging our hearts.
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There's that other cliff, because the cliff of emotionalism says we engage our hearts without engaging our minds.
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But the cliff of intellectualism says we engage our minds to the expense of the heart.
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What a shame it would be to know about God and not love him.
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What a shame it would be, a horrible tragedy to be filled with knowledge in your mind, but have a heart that is cold as ice.
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And I've met folks that unfortunately were there.
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They knew chapter and verse, but they didn't know Jesus.
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So often what happens in such a case is that people become puffed up with knowledge.
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But what does Paul tell us in 1 Corinthians 8, 1? Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
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Now, some people take that verse and they say, see here, Paul is saying we shouldn't worry about knowledge.
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That's not true.
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Paul's not saying we shouldn't worry about knowledge.
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In fact, the context of that is a very specific type of knowledge.
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It's the type of knowledge that's devoid of love.
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It's the knowing that you can eat the foods that sacrificed idols.
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It's not really going to hurt you.
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But you have that knowledge, but you don't care enough about your brother to love him enough to resist the temptation to do what you know you can do so that you love your brother.
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That's the context of chapter 8.
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So don't ever think that Paul is saying knowledge is bad.
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Knowledge is good.
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Knowledge of the Holy One is the beginning of wisdom.
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These things are important.
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We must know God and we must know him with our mind.
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But we must not do that divorced from the heart.
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If all we have is a knowledge of the truth, but the truth does not move us to our very soul, then all we have is a mere intellectual exercise.
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The mind is important, but the heart is also important.
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If all we have is emotionalism, we will lack the truth.
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And if all we have is intellectualism, we will lack love.
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Therefore, let us pursue both.
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As Paul admonishes us, I will pray with my spirit and I will pray with my mind.
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I will sing praise with my spirit and I will sing praise with my mind also.
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Anthony Thistleton wrote a wonderful commentary on this passage.
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And I want to draw to a close by reading some of his comments on that verse 15 of what we looked at today.
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This commentary is rather technical.
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It deals with the language more so than the application.
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But I want you to hear what he says about this particular verse.
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He says, and I quote.
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Paul declares that being spiritual, i.e.
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of the Holy Spirit, occurs when the Holy Spirit controls both the spirit and the mind.
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If only the mind is active, everything remains at the theoretical level.
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And if only the heart is active, the door lies open to self-deception and credulity.
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If both are open to the Holy Spirit, the result can build up the community and bear the fruit of love for one another.
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He goes on to say, Paul argues equally against uncritical enthusiasm, uncritical renewal traditions or uncritical mysticism on one side.
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That's the cliff of emotionalism.
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And against Gnostics, theological theorists or any who would seek to intellectualize Christian faith into a mere belief system on the other side.
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Christians are confronted not by an either or, but by a both and proposition.
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Do you know what Gnosticism, he mentioned Gnosticism, do you know what Gnosticism was? Gnosticism was a heresy that arose in the first century, really had its heyday in the second century.
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And and began to influence the church greatly in the second century.
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Gnosticism made the argument that Christianity wasn't what we find in the Bible, but that it was a special type of knowledge that one had to receive to be able to truly be saved.
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That's where the word Gnosis comes from, is knowledge.
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And the idea was the way somebody gets saved is by a special kind of knowledge that comes from God.
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And it's not something that everybody gets.
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It's a it's a it's Gnosis, it's a special type of knowledge that God gives to some.
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And that's the the pursuit is the pursuit of this special type of spiritual enlightenment or knowledge.
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I think the dangerous dangerous thing for both sides is that because the person on the one side who is an intellect will say it's all this knowledge I've amassed.
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That's what makes me spiritual.
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And the other person says, no, it's this certain type of knowledge of the feelings that I have that makes me spiritual.
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Both are a type of Gnosticism.
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Both are focusing on the wrong thing.
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We ought to be focusing on God and allowing God to be the focus of our mind, allowing God to be the focus of our spirit, allowing God to be the focus of our heart.
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And engaging it all.
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Worship is an act of the whole man.
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Therefore, we go to Jesus in Matthew 22, when the Pharisees came to him and they asked him, teacher, what is the greatest commandment? And Jesus responded and said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.
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Beloved worship is more than emotionalism.
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It is more than intellectualism.
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It's an activity of the whole person.
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So may we never, ever check our brains or our hearts at the door when we come to worship our 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 your truth.
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May you write these eternal truths on our hearts and in our minds.
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And may we focus all on you as we move now into a time for communion.
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In Christ's precious name and for his sake.
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Amen.