WWUTT 1462 Review of 1 Corinthians 2 (Part 2)

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Hey friends, I'm on the road this week, but in keeping with our study through 1 Corinthians, I'll be playing clips from the sermon series that I did through that book,

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Rejoicing in the Message of the Cross, The Power of God for Salvation, When We Understand the

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Text. This is

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When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ, that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here's your teacher,

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Pastor Gabe. Let's go from here, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, let's go to John chapter 3.

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We as elders gathered together this past Tuesday evening in my home, as we often do.

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And so the five of us gathered together, we're talking about Jesus' exchange with Nicodemus in John chapter 3.

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Now this is a very famous section, for it's from this section that we have memorized the gospel verse, for God so loved the world that He gave

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His only Son, and whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. Few of us probably realize that when

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Jesus said those words, He was speaking them to Nicodemus, who did not understand those words.

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Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and we read in John chapter 3, verse 1, that He came,

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I'm sorry, in verse 2 it says, He came to Jesus by night. And that's significant, not just that we would know the time of day that Jesus and Nicodemus had this conversation, but Nicodemus doesn't want to be seen in the light with Jesus.

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It's also a reflection of Nicodemus' heart, that he was a man who still walked in darkness.

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Even though he was a Pharisee and he was a teacher in Israel, he did not understand the things that Jesus was teaching about.

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And so this is a man that comes to Jesus not as a believer, but as an unbeliever. And he says to Jesus, verse 2,

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Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.

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The miracles that Jesus had performed. Verse 3, Jesus answered him, Truly, truly,

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I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now we were sharing this section with our youth on Wednesday night as we've been going through the book of Ephesians together in our

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Wednesday night study. And we were sharing out of John chapter 3, and I said to the students, what was it that Jesus said to Nicodemus that you had to do in order to enter into the kingdom of heaven?

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Truly, I say to you, unless you are what, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. And a couple of the students said, born again.

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I said, right. Unless you are born again, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. What does that mean? They struggled a little bit, provided a few verses, and I said all of us here in this room had grown up in a

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Christian home. So we had grown up hearing our entire lives, these terms like, if you want to live forever, you must be born again.

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You have to receive Jesus into your heart. You must be baptized. You must repent and be saved. We've heard those terms our whole life.

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It was part of the lexicon that was spoken about in our homes, but what did it mean?

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So what does it mean to be born again? So everybody came up with some answers and they were all very good answers.

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I said, now put yourself in the position of Nicodemus. You've heard this term used your entire life, born again.

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If you want to be a Christian, if you want to enter the kingdom of God, if you want to have eternal life, you must be born again.

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What was Nicodemus' response to that? Verse four, Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old?

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Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

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In other words, Nicodemus' response to Jesus was, what, huh, born again?

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I'm supposed to enter my mom and be born again?

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This is the way Nicodemus was perceiving what Jesus was talking about. Why? Because Nicodemus was thinking with the natural mind and not with the spiritual mind.

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He was thinking of things according to his flesh and not according to the spirit of God. What Jesus was teaching was spiritual, not physical.

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This past week, Dr. James White did a study on his

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Dividing Line podcast through Alpha and Omega Ministries. He went through John 6, and I believe the title of that particular devotional lesson was

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John 6 for Catholics. The point of him going through John 6 was to show

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Roman Catholics that Jesus was not speaking literally when he said, if you want to live forever, you must eat of my flesh and drink of my blood.

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And Roman Catholics take that literally. So when they participate in communion and the priest stands up and he blesses the

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Eucharist, the Roman Catholic believes in a doctrine called transubstantiation, that at the moment of consecration, the bread literally becomes the flesh body of Christ, and the cup literally becomes the substance of his blood.

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Because according to a Roman Catholic, Jesus said in John 6, you have to eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, or you can't enter the kingdom of God.

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Jesus was being metaphorical. He was speaking spiritually. He was not talking about eating his actual flesh and blood.

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And the people who were following Jesus didn't understand what he was talking about, which is why at the end of John 6, they all turned around and walked away, because they were thinking he was saying it literally instead of talking spiritually.

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And the Roman Catholics make the same error. They still think that Jesus was talking about his actual flesh and actual blood and not talking about spiritual nourishment.

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And so Dr. White goes expositionally through John 6 explaining to Roman Catholics that Jesus was not talking about literally eating his body and drinking his blood.

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But this is the way that a natural mind thinks. This is one of the reasons why we say as a

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Protestant church that we cannot be in league with the Roman Catholic church, and why we're even called a Protestant church in the first place.

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It is a protest against Roman Catholicism, because Roman Catholicism teaches according to the flesh, according to the natural mind.

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It is not teaching from the Spirit of God. Let me be expressly clear on that point, lest anyone be led astray.

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The Roman Catholic church does not teach the sound words of the Spirit of God. This is why if you know

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Roman Catholics, you cannot merely say, well I disagree with you, but I'm glad you're at least going to church somewhere.

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They are unbelievers, and they need to hear the true and sound words of the gospel of Christ.

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Nicodemus was taking what Jesus was saying literally, and thinking that you had to physically be born again in order to enter the kingdom of God.

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But Jesus goes on to respond to him in verse 5, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the

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Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. So first Jesus uses a term that Nicodemus did not understand, but then in Jesus' second explanation of this, he used something that Nicodemus should understand.

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Jesus was using a metaphor that was provided by the prophet Ezekiel, which was a metaphor that Nicodemus would have recognized, because Nicodemus was a teacher in Israel.

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And so if Jesus is quoting from Ezekiel, Nicodemus is going to go, okay, so you're equating when

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Ezekiel was talking about having a new heart, being indwelt with the

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Spirit of God, because God said through Ezekiel, I am going to put my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statutes.

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I will wash you with water. I will take your heart of stone, and I will soften your heart.

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So when Ezekiel was talking about those things, that was talking about being born again.

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That was the correlation that Nicodemus should have been making with Jesus referring to the prophet

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Ezekiel. That which is born of flesh is flesh, verse 6, and that which is born of the

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Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

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So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. This was also a reference to Ezekiel, where Ezekiel talks about the valley of dry bones, and he prophesies over the valley of dry bones, and they stand up, an exceedingly great army.

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And then he prophesies to them again, and the winds come from the four corners of the earth and fill that army, and then they are a living and breathing army.

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This is a picture of declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ, and through the power of the word of Christ, a person is brought from death to life.

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So Jesus was using the same words that Ezekiel used to Nicodemus so that Nicodemus could understand this concept.

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If you want to enter the kingdom of God, you must be born again. You were already born once of the flesh.

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You must now be born of the Spirit in order to enter the kingdom of God.

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Jesus was, in a sense, also saying to Nicodemus, your spirit is dead, but it is by the

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Spirit of God that it is brought from death to life. Nicodemus still didn't understand.

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Verse 9, he said to him, how can these things be? And Jesus answered him, are you the teacher of Israel?

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And yet you do not understand these things? Why aren't you making the connection here?

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Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know. Jesus talking about himself and his disciples and the

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Spirit of God that was with him. And bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.

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If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

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That's an important question for each and every one of us. If we can listen to the parables of Jesus and how he will try to equate the kingdom of God with something that is tangible that we experience with our own senses and we still can't understand it then, then how can we understand the deeper spiritual truths of God when they are given to us?

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And that's actually something that we're going to talk about next week when we get into 1 Corinthians 3 because the apostle Paul says,

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I could not address you as a spiritual people, but as a fleshly people because you had not yet been matured in the doctrines of God.

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And so we must understand even the simple points like what Jesus is saying here with Nicodemus if we're ever going to receive the deeper spiritual truths.

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Verse 13, No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

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And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

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I'm going to read from verse 16 through 21 straight through and then talk about it. For God so loved the world that he gave his only

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Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his

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Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

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Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only

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Son of God. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

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For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed.

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But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

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Jesus using here, same thing that Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 2, just using different words. Paul is talking about the natural mind and the spiritual mind.

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Jesus is talking about darkness and light. It's the same thing. Those who are in the darkness love the darkness and hate the light because they don't want to have their deeds exposed.

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But those who are in Christ, who are in the light, will come into the light so that it will be clearly seen that the works that they do are in Christ and not in the devil.

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And Paul equates this with the natural mind and the spiritual mind. Those who are in Christ have the spiritual mind and are able to discern spiritual things.

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But those who have a natural mind that is still involved in the world, instead of meditating on the things of God and want the desires of the passions of the flesh, can't understand the things of God, nor will they remain with the people of God because they are of a natural mind and they will retreat into the darkness.

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There is no mystery about why people leave the church. Even though we do survey after survey and questionnaire after questionnaire to try to figure out why it is that non -churchgoing people once attended church but no longer do.

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And we'll read the statistics and the findings and we will declare them from our church pulpits when the answer is actually given to us in 1

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John 2 .19. The reason why they went out from you is because they were never of you in the first place.

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They went out from you so that it would be clearly seen that they were never really of you.

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When a person is not dwelt with the Spirit of God, they cannot stand the things of God, including the people of God.

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But I want you to know that even though I read a statement from a person who previously attended this church and how upset he was at the direction that things are going,

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I do not take things like this personally because it's not against me.

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It's against God. And my heart breaks when I read things like these.

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That this person would repent of this kind of thinking and instead love the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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For as we read over and over again in Romans 1 .16

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when we were doing our study of the book of Romans, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.

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And we've read also in 1 Corinthians 1 .18, and this is a passage that we will come back to over and over again as we do this study of 1

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Corinthians. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

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We cannot soften this message. We cannot change it into something that it is not.

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But it is by the declaration of the full counsel of God a person is brought from death to life.

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From hell to heaven by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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We live in a world, in a culture, in a society where churches are trying as hard as they can to make something that is as entertaining to the masses as possible to try to draw people in the church doors.

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There are conversations about this on even our convention level, the

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Southern Baptist Convention at a conference that was held just this past September by the SBC.

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There was a conversation between two men, one who was taking the position of, we must teach the sound counsel of God, the full counsel of God according to what is said in the word, thus saith the

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Lord, while the other man who was sitting across from him says, no, I can't teach that way. People don't understand that. So I'm going to teach,

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I'm going to throw up flashy lights and all of these electronic things that we can do in the church, stuff that is the most entertaining as possible to draw in the carnal mind, and then we will teach them the word of God.

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The irony about that statement though is that same man said that he will go entire sermons without ever even quoting the scriptures.

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Eventually we get to that, but it's not necessary for me to have to do it in every sermon. And this is the way we think.

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This is the way that the American culture thinks that, the American church culture thinks that we need to win people to Christ with flashy lights and techno sound, or a gospel message that is more in line with this world instead of the gospel message that is aligned with what is said in the scriptures.

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It is from the word of God, as the Apostle Paul says, 1 Corinthians 2 .10, these things

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God has revealed to us through the Spirit. My brothers and sisters in Christ, how is it that you and I can read the

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Bible and we see in the Bible the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, but somebody else can read the entire

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Bible and what they come away with is a really boring book with a

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God that's kind of vindictive, likes to kill people every once in a while, who even put his own son to death.

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What's that all about? With apostles that can do miracles and heal people and yet there's people who are sick all over the place, a

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God who is proclaimed in the Bible as a God of love and yet people are sick and dying everywhere, so what in the world is that God doing?

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Why is it that there are people that can come away from this book and have that impression of God, and there are others that read this book and see a

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God of grace and love and mercy? It's because those who see the God of grace and love and mercy have the

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Spirit of God to understand the things of God. While the person who sees a God of wrath and who is unjust and who is unloving of people, when that's all they see when they come away from the

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Bible, it's because they have the mind of the flesh. They're thinking with the natural mind instead of the spiritual mind.

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We understand these things because we are able to search the depths of God through the Spirit that lives within us, for the

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Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. Verse 11, Paul gives us a metaphor.

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He gives us an analogy to help us understand this. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him?

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So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. So you can do a nice act for somebody and it can seem to that person and anyone else who sees you do this kind act for somebody else to be a completely selfless gesture.

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Oh, what a kind act that that person did for somebody. But you know in your mind whether or not you were actually doing that for the benefit of somebody else or whether or not you had something to gain from it.

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So you know your own thoughts and your own intentions within you.

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You know that. So the Spirit of God knows the things, the thoughts, and the intentions of God.

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

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.com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our