Clough Proverbs Lesson 9

Nutrition (Word) and Exercise (Faith) of the Human Spirit

Today we go on to the final area of the human spirit. We have been working with the human spirit for some time now and this Sunday and next Sunday will be the last time we will work with the human spirit as such and then we’ll begin to move to the soul. We have dealt, by way of review, with the human spirit pointing out that when God made man in Genesis 2:7 He first created the body, and when God created the body, this meant that man forever would have an inheritance. The inheritance would be passed to him from Adam. When we deal with the sin nature, its origin and its energy we’ll see that the sin nature is intimately related to the body and why Adam’s body was poisoned in some way that transmitted through the genes this defect into all of our bodies, and thus we have the sin nature. And because of this we all are heirs to this kind of thing.

You can’t understand the make up of yourself or any other individual unless we realize the biblical view that God has made us in His image and if we are to understand who and what we are we must first understand who and what God is. This is why, to repeat a principle that we have stated over and over, no matter learned you may be, no matter how brilliant you may be, based on sheer naturalistic thought no psychological or psychiatric theory or approach will ever resolve the real problem of man because man is higher than all the theories, since man is made in the image of God.

Now the Bible says that we were made, first with the body, and when the body attained its breath, the spirit was given, the spirit is indicated here in the red, it’s overlapped with the yellow, and so we have the addition of the human spirit. We said the human spirit empirically can be viewed in its effects. The human spirit is not just a philosophical abstraction, the Jews didn’t think in terms of philosophical abstractions. So therefore the human spirit is connected with something that you can see, something you can hear, something you can touch, and one of the things that it is connected with is human breath, the presence or absence of the human spirit with human breath. And another feature of the human spirit is that unlike animals, man is facing a situation, we’ll react to that situation with some sort of a response.

But unlike animals which just have a combination of learned behavior patterns and inherited behavior patterns, man has very, very few inherited behavior patterns, all or most are learned, including how he eats. This being the case man has something different in him than in the animals. He has learned behavior patterns and he has God-consciousness in the soul. This enables him to have conceptual thought which is impossible for beings other than man. The outward sign of conceptual thought, the outward sign of the presence of the human spirit when it’s operating fully is the phenomenon we call language. Spoken propositional language is the empirical observable result of the presence of the human spirit. And if language is not present we have every reason do doubt whether the spirit is fully functioning. This is why we say that a baby becomes God-consciousness at the point it learns to speak and learns to think with a pool of language. At that point the issue of God-consciousness becomes the point.

Then we dealt with part of the conscience, part of the human spirit which we said was the conscience. And the conscience was a main and very crucial part of this human spirit. No matter how much we may talk about the human spirit we have not covered it in its entirety until we have touched on the conscience. And so we have devoted the last two or three Sundays to a discussion of conscience, what it is. We said conscience is God-consciousness, by 1 Peter 2:19. The conscience, the human conscience is simply God-consciousness in the human being. The second thing that we have said is what does the conscience do and we said there are at least six things that the conscience does.

The first thing that you conscience does is put you on common ground with every other human being. If you didn’t have conscience there would be no common ground between men. So conscience provides the common ground, it strengthens the first divine institution and of course provides the basis for communication and language. Secondly, the conscience restrains the individual. You have to face not only your conscience but the conscience of the people around you.

The third thing the conscience does, it orients the ego and this is one area that is a critical discussion, those of you who have studied psychology and psychiatry can feel the tension here; modern psychiatry and psychology talk of the super ego, at least they have since Freud and the super ego is precisely what the Bible is talking about by conscience. And we go entirely opposite to Freudian theory. Freud was a Jew; Sigmund Freud has as one of his lifetime mottos to destroy the Jewish contribution to the human race. Sigmund Freud openly said it was the Jew that brought the super ego into history and it will take a Jew to destroy the super ego from history. Freud was exactly right; it was the Jew that brought the super ego into history because it was the Jew that gave man God’s law, or God acting through the Jew to produce His Law, which informs the conscience. So Freud was very right that it was the Jew who brought the super ego into history. But Freud is very wrong in that he, as a Jew, could destroy the super ego. You can’t. No man can; it is a record that is indelibly present in every person from God Himself. No one can destroy the super ego. The super ego is our judge. And so the ego, the super ego or the conscience is what orients our ego or ourselves, or our volition and self-consciousness.

The fourth thing that the conscience does, it approves or disapproves of faith. You cannot personally believe in the biblical faith unless your conscience okays it. No way. You can pretend to believe, you can want very badly to believe, you can work up an emotion to try to believe, you can delude yourself into thinking you are believing, but all to no avail unless your conscience is clean and unless you conscience says yes, this is believable. And when your conscience says that then you can believe, and only then. The fifth thing the conscience does, it stores our record for eternity, for the eternal judgment all men will face the record of his own conscience. You will; I will, as believers at the bema seat of Christ, as those who have rejected, the great white throne judgment, but in both cases the data will be based upon the record of the human conscience. The sixth thing is that the conscience is that part of the soul that responds to the Word of God. While the mind and the emotions may respond to the Word of God, the conscience always responds in some way to the Word of God if the Word of God does get into the mind. So those are six things the conscience does.

Then last time we dealt with three things on how does the conscience work. We said first of all that the conscience is located at the interface between the soul and the spirit. It’s very intimately related to the soul and so some say that the conscience is in the soul but I prefer to say the conscience is in the spirit. The second thing that the conscience does is that it works continuously and automatically, you can’t stop it. There’s no way you can stop it and we are going to deal shortly with the mind and we will show you how certain forms of mental illness are man’s attempt to turn off the conscience but they don’t turn the conscience off, what they do is turn the mind off. And the only way you can destroy the problem is to erase your consciousness of your conscience. But you don’t turn the conscience off, it still runs. All you can do is shut your eyes and pretend and hope it doesn’t run. And the first thing, and this is the center of the working of the conscience is that it judges the ego and the soul by its own God-consciousness; in other words, the conscience shores up within itself God-consciousness that it obtains from general and special revelation, and it uses this to constantly judge us.

Today and next week we deal with the final three phases of the human spirit. These three things that the human spirit has are the means of the human spirit. We have outlined these means in the diagram with the following letters, N, E, and E. By the way, this chart on the soul, body and spirit will be available in the tract rack. The human spirit, one of the needs it has is N; N stands for nutrition. There’s a parallel between your body needs and your conscience or spirit needs, and that is the three basic needs of the body and the three basic needs of the spirit. The spirit needs, your body needs, your body needs food and it needs oxygen, it needs water, it needs nutrients, whether in gas form such as oxygen or whether they’re in solid for or liquid forms, your body needs nutrition. No person can go on for long without breathing. And so your body has a constant demand to take in nutrition.

Now it’s that analogy that we are going to use today to show that your human spirit, in order to operate needs a constant intake of nutrition, and you don’t have any choice in the matter, any more than you have any choice in the matter determining what your body needs. You may feel hungry right now, you may not feel hungry but one thing you can’t do, you can’t stop breathing; some of you try pretty hard during the 11:00 o’clock service but so far most people that come in here are still breathing at 12:00 o’clock; I have had some question along about 11:30 or 11:45 but somehow by 12:00 they come alive again and are resuscitated.

So we always have constant breathing. There’s the same thing with the human spirit. The human spirit must breathe, the human spirit must take in, it demands nutrition. If you’re going to deprive your human spirit nutrition you will pay the price, you will pay the price automatically and if you deprive your body of its proper nutrients. If you go to the greasy spoon and have all sorts of junk every day and top it off with some sort of sugar and carbonated water you will pay the price in your health. And it doesn’t matter how much education you have and it doesn’t matter how scintillating a personality you have and it doesn’t matter what your background is, it doesn’t matter what your race is, it doesn’t matter anything except you will pay the price for lousy nutrition. And the same thing goes for spirituality.

The analogy and principle is given in that famous verse, Deuteronomy 8:3 quoted by Jesus Christ, that “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” What Jesus meant was bread is a symbol for the needs of the body and “every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” is what the spirit needs. That is the need for the human spirit, to take “every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” You need the words of God, and you may not like it, you may not be hungry for it but you have to take it in. The same analogy; you may not feel hungry but you have got to eat. You may be sick and you may not like to take fluids but you have to take fluids whether you like it or not, and it’s the same thing with the human spirit. You may not have an appetite for Bible doctrine but you have got to take it, whether you like it or not. So therefore you have this need.

Now since the fall this need has become even more critical. Adam and Eve needed God’s Word; Adam and Eve could not function before the fall without God’s Word. That’s why Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form appeared to Eve and Adam each day at a certain time He came walking in the Garden. Every day they had a Bible class with Jesus Christ before the fall. Now if the man before the fall needed the Word of God, therefore we much more after the fall need the Word of God. It’s very simple. And so therefore we are going to see what the essence of the Word of God is.

If you turn to Ephesians 1:17, here is the central need of your human spirit Paul’s prayer for the believer. This sums up in one big concept everything about the need of your human spirit. In Ephesians 1:17-20 Paul prays and this is a prayer directed for believers, this prayer is prayed for you, it’s prayed for me. “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” Notice that, Paul understood a principle that you cannot find in most evangelical circles today and that is Paul did not pray “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, maybe give unto you” a spirit of evangelism, or a spirit of prayer, or a spirit of worship. It’s very interesting, the fruit he didn’t pray for; he prayed for this, because if this is true the fruit automatically follows and if this isn’t true you can’t get fruit in the Christian life apart from this.

“That Jesus Christ might give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” “Him” is Jesus Christ and therefore the central issue for your human spirit is to load your conscience with God-consciousness, to increase it, to increase the God-consciousness of your conscience. And that God-consciousness is conscience of the Second Personality of the Trinity which is always the personality that’s revealed. God the Father reveals Himself to the Second Person, God the Son. God the Son is incarnate, therefore that is Jesus Christ, therefore all knowledge centers on the person of Jesus Christ. And therefore the major need of your soul is to know more about Jesus Christ. That is your number one need and it’s as important if not more important than physical food.

Now test your own behavior and performance in this area. A simple question; think of your past week, the last six days of your life. Now you think back and ask yourself of all the things that you did this week, every detail that you went through, how much percent of the time did what you do have as its major objective to provide for the table? And I dare say quite a bit, mustering a guess a lot, but basically during the past seven days you have been engaged in certain activities that have the express purpose of putting food on your table, to provide the nutrition that your body needs. Now you compare the efforts that you’ve expended in the last seven days toward physical food and compare that with the efforts that you’ve expended in the last seven days to take in the Word of God about Jesus Christ. Make a ration mentally in your mind of these efforts and then ask yourself, now do I wonder why Christianity is in the mess it’s in in our generation. A very honest answer but start with yourself; what percent effort are you devoting to getting the knowledge of Jesus Christ into your human spirit where it can reproduce and produce fruit in your life. What efforts are you making in that line? That’s the central issue, knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Notice verse 18, that this kind of a human spirit is described as “the eyes of your heart,” the word “understanding” should be heart, kardia, “the eyes of your heart being enlightened; that ye may know,” notice this emphasis on what you know. The favorite criticism around Lubbock is that over at Lubbock Bible Church all we do is concentrate on doctrine, we don’t concern ourselves with the person of Christ. And of course when I hear that criticism I always bristle because the next logical question is oh, and where else do you learn about Christ. You don’t learn about Christ by experience; you learn about Christ through doctrine. And doctrine, when it’s applied to experience yes, experience does count but only when that experience is analyzed in the light of Bible doctrine will it ever yield knowledge of Christ.

How do you know it’s Christ and not Satan that’s operating; the only one criteria and that’s the Word. Raw experience won’t teach you anything about Jesus Christ. So next time you hear somebody yell and scream about experience you just remember something; experience never taught anybody anything because if it did we wouldn’t need revelation. The reason why God revealed Himself is because man’s experience wouldn’t teach him anything about God; it’s always doctrine, always revelation and then revelation applied to experience, yes, but experience apart from doctrine is utterly meaningless and is wrong. So we have a lot of Christian groups that are thinking they’re learning a lot about how God is working; they’re learning nothing about how God is working if they’re looking at just raw experience. Raw experience doesn’t teach a thing about God apart from the Word of God, then you learn something. So therefore the knowledge of Jesus Christ is the key issue in the Christian life.

Now what are the means that God has provided to get God-consciousness over here in the human spirit? Obviously it’s got to get over there somehow. So God has provided four means to you to provide you with this information. The first means to getting this is found in 1 John 1:3. Here’s the first means that God has provided for you. In 1 John 1:3 we have the means that God has provided for you. I want you to notice all four of these means and you look for them as we go through them carefully and I dare you to find one reference to experience. The first thing that God has provided is the canon of apostolic Scripture. John says, “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” I want you to notice if you look carefully at verse 3 with whom it is that you have fellowship first, before you have fellowship with Christ. Does that look like a seeking experience?

It is not; look at verse 3 again, “that you may have fellowship with us,” who’s us? It’s the apostles, and you can’t have fellowship with Christ apart from the Bible. That’s what that verse is saying. You first have fellowship with the Bible; then and only then do you have fellowship with Jesus Christ. You can’t have fellowship with Christ apart from fellowship with the Bible. That’s why the Bible was given; “us,” the apostles, “That which we have seen and heard,” the historic Jesus of Nazareth. There are a lot of people talking about Jesus and having an experience with Jesus; unfortunately there are about 10,000 different kinds of Jesus’ running around, which is the real one? How do you tell which is the real Jesus? Only by the Bible, Bible doctrine, apostolic Scripture. So the first thing that God has provided to feed your soul is an infallible canon of Scripture from the prophets and apostles. That is the first thing God has provided for your life.

Now your attitude toward God and toward your own spiritual health is going to be determined by your attitude toward what God has provided for you. If you have an “I could care less” attitude about the Bible and about understanding it, too bad. Some of you may have got a bad taste in your mouth because you heard certain things supposedly coming from the Bible that aren’t in the Bible, like this thing about if a Christian commits suicide he’s going to hell. I don’t know where that thing got started; I hear this all over the place. If somebody commits suicide it’s some sort of a special sin; it’s no special sin, it’s a sin but it’s not any special sin. There are no special sins in the Bible; the worst sin in the Bible is pride, mental attitude sin. So I don’t know where this got started, and then this other thing, God helps those that help themselves, it came from Benjamin Franklin, it didn’t come from Paul. All of this stuff, that doesn’t come from the Bible. If that’s what you think is in the Bible you have got at least a pleasant surprise waiting you; none of that stuff is in the Bible. Whenever someone quotes that in my presence I always say oh is that so, would you mind telling me the verse. Just ask them. Well, it’s found in there somewhere, I’ve read it. You have?

So the Bible is the first thing that God has provided for you and 1 John 1:3 declares that you must come to the Bible first and only then can you have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The second thing that God has provided for you and me and our spiritual growth is found in Ephesians 4:11, again we’re still concentrating on things that God has provided for our spiritual nutrition. He has provided an infallible canon of writings. This, by the way, is why Wycliffe Bible Translators are interested in taking the Word of God to tribes that don’t have it. If it was just experience they wouldn’t bother; why do you suppose Wycliffe is putting thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and man hours into getting the Word of God to tribes that don’t have the Word if the Word of God is unnecessary? It’s obvious; the Word of God is the means by which the tribes can come to know Jesus Christ, that’s why. And it’s a very sound principle; they respect the infallibility of the canon principle.

The second thing, in Ephesians 4:11 and following is that God has provided for your edification spiritual gifts in the body of Christ. That’s the second thing, He has provided an infallible canon and he has provided fallible gifts. Notice the difference, the canon never makes a mistake, it’s inerrant. The second thing that God has provided, the spiritual gifts in the church, these are fallible, they can make mistakes. There’s no pastor, there’s no board, there’s no individual believer that is ever infallible. Infallibility is only an attribute of the inspired canon of Scripture and nothing else. We do not have popes in the church.

Verse 11 and following, “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets, and some evangelists; and some, pastors teachers.” So he has given these offices, and notice why in verse 12, “For the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ.” Now there are three things that God has done here, notice this sequence. The first thing is for “the perfecting of the saints,” so you might say that’s for the training; those gifts are given to train believers. “Saints” includes all who have personally received Jesus Christ as Savior. If you are here today and you have personally believed on Christ for your salvation you are a saint; try going home and putting “Saint” before your name, “Saint So and So.” Always do it with the first name, that’s the way you do it, Saint So and So. And if you are personally a believer that’s your status and you are listed here as saints. “For the perfecting” or training “of the saints.”

Now notice something; it goes on to a second reason in verse 12, “for the work of the ministry.” Now look at this word “ministry.” I know what you’re used to thinking of, I’m supposed to do that. Huh-un, look again, why are the saints trained if the person who’s the pastor teacher should do the ministry? It doesn’t make sense does it, in verse 12. Who is it that does the work of the ministry in verse 12? It’s the believers, every believer, the believers that are trained; they are trained to do “the work of the ministry.” Now that’s the proper area; some of you have a lot of churchianity in you and human viewpoint and so on and you’ve got a whole bunch of human viewpoint hang-ups about the ministry. And you think that you don’t have to do anything except give money, show up on Sunday at 11:00 o’clock and that’s it. And of course, this isn’t the issue. The issue is: are you personally submitting to the will of God and having your own personal individual ministry? Now fortunately there are some in our congregation that have caught on to this concept. I know several believers that have won people to Christ and they are following them up. And they’ve personally shared the gospel with these individuals, these individuals have received the gospel and these believers are daily working with them, 2 or 3 times a week at least, getting together with them, sharing the Word of God and so forth. Now that’s the ministry. There are other kinds of ministry that are available; we’ll see them in a moment.

The third thing in verse 12, “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ.” “… the edifying of the body of Christ, that’s the ultimate aim, edification of the body. Not edification of Lubbock Bible Church, not edification of some particular ministry, the ultimate aim is to edify the body of Jesus Christ, the holy catholic and apostolic church that has existed down through the history of the church age. That is the ultimate aim, edification of the entire body. So instead of getting a hang-up on one particular ministry over here and another particular ministry over here, all these are just parts of a bigger picture, the great body of Jesus Christ on earth and in heaven. And it’s that body that must be built up.

So therefore, for example, to cite an illustration, you can take a local church over here; say this local church meets together regularly. That local church is constantly drawing information from the body, let’s see how. Here’s a local church, let’s say LBC, we are drawing from the body because where do we get the canon from? The apostles. Aren’t they part of the body? All of you hold a Bible in your lap, that is where you are drawing from something that comes outside of LBC; LBC didn’t give you the Bible, that came to you because of other men in the body of Christ in another generation they gave you. My training and my study comes from other men who have nothing to do with this local church. Those are other teachers in other locations of the body. So we have another input from other parts of the body of Christ. We could go on, we have people here who have been edified, who have been won t Christ by people outside of LBC, outside of the independent fundamentalist movement we have had people won to Jesus Christ. So there’s another input from other members of the body of Christ.

Now let’s look at the output; we have young people getting out of this church and when they graduate from Tech and they go into other churches, wherever their place of business is, wherever they marry and settle down and so on, they’re going to be ministering and they’ll be ministering in another part of the body of Christ. You can’t separate a ministry, it’s all interrelated. Everywhere there are believers you have the body. So this is the point that Paul is making in verse 12, that these spiritual gifts spill over and you have many different ministries and after all the details are said and done they all gradually interlock.

In Ephesians 4:13 the historic vision, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a mature man,” that’s every believer in Jesus Christ. Now since we’re on this area of the body of Christ, this second area, spiritual gifts, turn to Romans 12; we’re still on the second thing that God has provided for your food. The first one was the infallible canon; the second one is the fallible spiritual gifts. Now let’s look at some of these gifts. I am serious; people think I’m facetious here. I really am serious folks when it comes to ascertaining God’s will for your life as a believer, you cannot go one step unless you understand your spiritual gift. Now that’s the way it is, sorry but that’s just the way the Word is. I didn’t invent that, it comes out of the Word; you cannot ascertain God’s will for your life until you find out where you’re playing on the team.

Let’s look at some of these gifts, Romans 12:3, “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man among you,” notice that, not some, there are no second class Christians, “every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly,” that means accurately, “according as God has dealt to” whom?, first class Christians only. No! “to every man,” “God has dealt to every man the measure of faith.” Now if this seems still abstract to you try looking at the end of verse 3 again and wipe out “every man” and say it to yourself with your name in place of “every man.” Now re-read verse 3 with your name plugged into it if you are a believer; if you are not a believer you have nothing to do with it, but if you have personally accepted Christ then you have the right to plug your name into that place where you see “every man.” “For I say, through the grace given me unto you, that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God has dealt to” put your name in there, “the measure of faith.” Now what’s your “measure of faith?” What is your “measure of faith” as a believer in Jesus Christ? God has provided spiritual gifts for the body and the gifts are provided for that spiritual nutrition that the whole body needs.

Think of a football team or a baseball team or a basketball team where the rolls are confused; think of a military operation where you have a situation of an attack and half the soldiers in the platoon on the right flank or something decide they want to sit down and have a sandwich while the left flank and the center are trying to advance. What’s going to happen to the right flank in that kind of a military operation? That’s going to be exactly where the enemy, if he has any brains, is going to hit because the guys in the right flank in that platoon are out of it. so the whole company is ruined because some goofballs in the platoon that was holding on the right flank. And it’s the same thing in the Word of God and in this church. We have this kind of a situation. We have all these gifts connected and the person that connects them all is Jesus Christ. Let’s look at these gifts.

And ask yourself, “the measure of faith,” you say how can I know my gift. How do you know your natural talents; let’s not be spooky and mysterious about this thing, how do you recognize your own natural talents? Some of you say I don’t have any natural talent… well, you’ve got to have some some place, just keep looking. When you discover natural talent how do you generally do it? Is it because you, number one, have some kind of a desire to do something, even though you might not excel in it right away, there’s something that compels you and draws you toward that thing. So it seems to me that the same thing operates in spiritual gift, there is an inner attraction or an inner… not a compulsion but an inner attraction is the best way I can think of it, to do that kind of a thing. An inner attraction, and the second thing, how do you understand spiritual gifts, by doing it, trying out, seeing if you’ve got it. Another thing, letting other people outside of yourself evaluate you. Oftentimes I have heard it said by believers, and it’s my own personal experience, that people said I got a blessing out of you when you did thus and such, and you think back, what was I doing when I said thus and such, and there is an activity, you might check that, is that the area where your spiritual gift is showing.

So let’s look at some of these, just quickly here. Romans 12:7, the grace given according to the portion of faith, here’s your portion of faith: “ministry,” or “teaching,” the gift of teaching, imparting information to others, you can explain things clearly to somebody else, the gift of teaching; not necessarily before a large group, you can have the gift of teaching and work in a small group. But do you have the gift of teaching, the knack of getting something across in the Word. [8] “…he that exhorts” this is giving encouragement to other believers. When you see a believer that’s out of it do you feel a compassion for that believer to come and give them a word of encouragement? Are they encouraged when you do that? Then mark it up, maybe God has given you the spiritual gift of exhortation. The next one, “he that gives,” we’ll skip that for obvious reasons; “he that rules,” the gift of administration, do you have the compassion when you see a disorganized mess to step in there and bring some order out of chaos? Do you feel that when you do this you see results come when you do step in and assume leadership? Maybe you’ve got the gift of leadership here, the gift of management or the gift of ruling, that’s what that is. “…he that shows mercy,” do you have a sensitivity to certain individuals, do you happen to notice that somebody isn’t here and you just are not nosey but you wonder why and you begin to search around and see if perhaps they are sick or something. That’s the gift of showing compassion.

Now all believers don’t have all these gifts, that’s the point. Everybody expects the minister to have all the gifts; wrong, absolutely wrong! This list disproves your theory wherever you picked it up. This list proves to you and to me that this is the second great thing that God has given for our spiritual growth, gifts, and they all have to be functioning. But what usually happens in a local church? One gift functions, pastor-teacher, maybe not even that one. Sometimes what happens is we have the gift of evangelist and he happens to be in the pulpit and so all we have is an evangelistic sermon every Sunday so we don’t even have the gift of pastor-teacher functioning there. And once in a while you might have a few men on the board with the gift of rulership and so they function, and apart from that there’s no other gifts functioning. But you know what that says? The other believers are not being led by the Holy Spirit.

Now does it not follow if the Holy Spirit Himself endues your life with a gift, if it’s the same Holy Spirit that gives you the gift that every believer professes to want to be filled with the Spirit, doesn’t it make sense that the Holy Spirit that gave you the gift is going to lead you to develop that gift, so that when you are filled with the Spirit there will be a gravitation toward your area of specialty. And just think of it, the whole body is incomplete without your gift functioning. No man lives to himself, no man dies to himself. There’s no such thing in the Bible as Lone Ranger Christianity.

This is a problem why we had such a stink at the board meeting, this congregational thing. I’m not trying to make a big campaign out of this thing because we didn’t get a quorum, I’m just pointing out that that shows you what I have been saying over and over, except some of you don’t recognize it. You didn’t catch the connection; this is the connection, right here in the passage. Here’s the connection. If you can’t get a quorum for a congregational meeting what does that show about the believers and their attitude to using their spiritual gift in that local church? I don’t have to say anything more; the fact that we don’t have a quorum proves… proves mind you, what I have taught over and over and over and over and over again, we do not have operating in this congregation the maximum number of spiritual gifts; if we did we would have a functioning congregational meeting. That would be one sign that the gifts were functioning. The fact that we didn’t shows you it’s a spiritual problem, it can’t be chalked up to anything else; it’s not laziness, it’s not just I don’t care attitude, it’s deeper than that, it is a spiritual problem that we have as a congregation. And it comes about because we have many believers, many mind you, in this congregation sitting right here, and you have professed over the last couple of years absolutely no desire to learn your gift, you could care less and this is the result; it’s got to follow, as night follows day. I’m not picking on you individually, I’m just saying the principle; if you have this kind of attitude it’s got to lead to a certain kind of fruit, and that’s the fruit that is produced by that kind of an attitude.

So the second thing that God has given for our nutrition is spiritual gift, including the gift of pastor-teacher of course as the teacher of the particular local church.

The third thing that God has provided and this is one and why we have the pause of prayer at the beginning of each service. Turn to 1 Peter 2:9, the third thing that God has given for our spiritual nutrition, He’s given the canon, He’s given the spiritual gifts, by the way, on the spiritual gifts you say well I don’t see the connection between the canon and the gifts; if the gifts are fully functioning what are the gifts going to be doing? What is the teacher going to be teaching? The Word of God. What is the ruler going to be doing? He’s going to be ruling the local church in conformity with the will of God expressed in the canon. What is he that gives going to be doing? He’s going to be giving to see that the canon’s message goes forth. What is he that shows mercy going to be doing? He’s going to be showing mercy according to the norms of the canon of Scripture toward other believers. That’s the connection between those two.

Now we come to the third one, 1 Peter 2:9, “You are a chosen generation and a royal priesthood,” now the priesthood mentioned in verse 9 to most of you means not too much, but 400-500 years ago men laid their lives on the battlefields of Europe because of that one word in verse 9, “priesthood.” That meant no church can stand between you and God; that’s what priesthood means. You have the right to approach God through Jesus Christ apart from me, apart from any other minister, apart from any religious organization. This is perfect access before the Father. That’s what priesthood means. That is what the Protestant Reformation was fought about. We don’t have to go through a religious outfit to get to God; we only have to go to the apostles and the canon of Scripture, true, to get to the revelation but we have our priesthood and when you stop and pause at the beginning of each church in LBC and we have a few moments of silent self-examination, what you are doing is right then exercising your priesthood. You have the freedom to exercise your priesthood or not when you sit in here. You have the freedom to sit around and annoy everybody else in the pew like you did today, in spite of the fact this verse is on here [tape turns] I sat back for a long time back at the back until 2 minutes before the service began and I was watching what was going on, I had no announcements made, I just wanted to see what would happen and I saw. I saw case after case as I looked down through the pews on both sides, I saw believers sitting there with their bibles open trying to read it and I saw a couple of them sitting there looking at Hebrews 5 and every once in a while, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, in front of them and finally I saw a couple of them just put it down. So some of you who are blabbermouths are depriving others from using their priesthood.

The fourth thing that God gave us to provide for nutrition besides the infallible canon and the fallible pastor-teacher and the priesthood of the believer, is the indwelling Holy Spirit, 1 John 2:27; the fourth thing that God has provided for our priesthood. John says, “But the anointing which you have received of Him abides in you and you need not that any man teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it has taught you, you shall abide in Him.” Now this is the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. This teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit operates through various ways. The first way the Holy Spirit operates is to open your eyes, that is spiritually. He increases your perception. The Holy Spirit is not in the business, as some would say, and this is why I was answering the question, what about this idea of the inner life concept, when the Holy Spirit open eyes He doesn’t communicate content directly from Himself. What He does, He opens your eyes to the Word of God; it’s the Word of God that’s always the source of the information. What the Holy Spirit does, He takes the scales off your eyes so you can see what’s in the text.

Now that is the fourth thing, the indwelling teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is another reason why we pause at the beginning of the service, because look at those four things that we have said that God gives you to feed on: the canon, the first thing is that you need Bible; the second thing is that we have spiritual gifts, we do have some operating here in the congregation. So the second thing is provided, you don’t have anything to do with either of those, but you do with the last two; priesthood can’t operate unless you’re in fellowship, so that’s why we pause at the beginning of each service, so you have time to get in fellowship if you’re not. And the fourth one, the Holy Spirit you can’t expect to teach you if you’re not in fellowship either. So the priesthood and the indwelling Holy Spirit can’t function and that explains why some of you can trot in here and sit for 2 or 3 years and never get a thing, because you’ve got the first two but you haven’t got number three and number four going. You’ve got to have all four going in order to get anything complete. It can’t be three out of four, it doesn’t work, it wins ballgames but it doesn’t win this. You’ve got to have four out of four, period, or nothing. So you’ve got to have all four of these things functioning. So this is why you see that period of quiet is so important before the service begins and why we keep things down to a minimum roar so the person next to you can at least concentrate for a few moments and get his priesthood functioning.

This is the first need the human spirit has, the need of nutrition. That nutrition is basically solved in one answer: you need the Word of God. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God,” and God has provided many things to address it to your central nervous system, to your mind and give that to your spirit. The Word of God, that’s the function of the local church, the local church is not an evangelistic agency. It’s a means of feeding believers.

Now the second need, and we’ll approach more quickly than the first one. That is the need for exercise; the second need. The second need is the need for exercise. Some of you look like you’re okay in the first department, getting nutrition. The second need is the need for exercise and this has to go along with the food, this has to be used to process the food and convert it into something that’s useful. So the same thing is true spiritually. Turn to 1 Corinthians 2:1-3 to see this concept. There are three words in this passage and these three words have some very important principles behind them. Paul says, “And I, brethren,” you see the word “brethren” means he’s referring to believers, “could not speak to you as unto spiritual,” in other words, Paul couldn’t exercise his gift. Now I want you to notice something, Paul couldn’t exercise his gift to the full limit against these other believers. Why couldn’t he? Something in their lives was preventing Paul from fully teaching something to them; let’s see what it is.

“I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual,” the word in the Greek looks like this, pneumatikos, and it means one who is mature and filled with the Spirit, that is a spiritual believer. It isn’t just being in fellowship or just being filled with the Spirit; pneumatikos believers are believers who are mature. A better word for “spiritual” here would be “mature.” “…who are mature, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ.” Now the first word, translated “carnal” here is sarkinos with an “n” the second “carnal” word that’s translated that way in the King James is sarkikos with a “k.” Now the first word that’s translated with the “n”, sarkinos, is defined for you at the end of verse 1, by the comma, sarkinos, [comma], that is, “as unto babes in Christ.” So sarkinos or carnal believers in that sense are new believers, those are babes in Christ, they are new believers. Now do you see why I say over and over there’s no New Testament reason for putting new believers in leadership responsibilities, I don’t care what the group is. Any time you have a ministry where new believers are injected into leadership positions you are putting carnal believers in leadership positions and it’s forbidden by the Word of God.

So Paul says the new baby believers are carnal, sarkinos, meaning that their human spirits do not yet predominate over their flesh. In other words, put another way, God’s will for them is like that; it’s a very small circle, that’s a sarkinos believer, a baby in Christ, that is, they have a limited area over which they can believe and act in the filling of the Spirit and so forth. So that’s where they stand and since that is so small, though they can manifest the fruits of the Spirit the fruits of the Spirit are only from small areas. There’s just a sign of the beginning of life there, and it’s true they’re regenerate but they are still sarkinos, that is, they are still dominated by the old sin nature and by patterns that they picked up, human viewpoint thinking and so on. So that’s a sarkinos believer, verse 1 and Paul says that the immature believer cannot take in the Word.

So therefore, verse 2, he says, “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat; for hitherto you were not able to bear it, neither are ye now able to bear it.” In other words, Paul must restrict his teachings to the very simple ABC’s because he is working strictly with carnal believers there. He can’t go into the great things of the Christian faith. This is why… in fact 1 Corinthians doesn’t really have any big involved doctrine in it because the local church to which it was addressed was filled with sarkinos believers or new believers that were dominated by the flesh.

Let’s look at verse 3 now, “You are yet carnal,” now here it’s sarkikos, that means they are out of fellowship, that can be any believer, sarkikos, anytime you’re out of fellowship it’s sarkikos, you’re carnal. “You are yet carnal; for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” Now here’s the problem in Corinth. You have new believers, nothing wrong with being a sarkinos believer, every one of us starts off that way, new believers, nothing wrong with verse 1, what Paul says is the trouble is that they stayed that way. Why did they stay that way? For the same reason another group stayed that way and to see this other group and the importance of spiritual exercise and what it is, turn to Hebrews 5:11.

Here is the passage that shows what spiritual exercise is and what happens when you don’t spiritually exercise. Hebrews 5:11-14, “Of whom,” now this writer, whoever he is, has giving us great detail about the person of Christ and he says, “Of whom,” that is of Jesus Christ, “we have many things to say,” in other words, there’s lots more about Jesus Christ that I want to tell you, a lot more, but seeing “these things are hard to be uttered, because you have become dull” not are dull but “have become dull,” in the Greek it’s ginomai and it’s a point in time with a perfect tense, “you have become dull of hearing,” that means at one time they weren’t dull of hearing, at one time they were tremendous believers, at one time these people had accepted Christ and they were moving in the Christian life and then they hit a snag and they went on negative volition and they had all this doctrine that they had learned before, they had all these things that they had learned, it’s all in their memory but because they have rejected the Lord, they do not care to be filled with the Spirit, they do not want to exercise their spiritual gift, there’s a result of negative volition he says, “you have become dull of hearing.”

In other words, you have destroyed your perception. This is one function the conscience has, when your conscience is violated it isn’t destroyed, your mind is destroyed. And when you go on negative volition and you say no to your conscience, your mind has an automatic response, it begins to anesthetize itself, it begins to contract and contract and contract and contract and you lose your perception. And this is what has happened to believers by the thousands in our generation. At one time in their Christian life they took in the Word of God, one time they were rolling but now they can’t even understand the simplest things because of this principle. These things are hard to understand anyway, this author says, and “you have become dull of hearing.” Verse 12, “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers,” in other words, these people have been believers so long that they should be teachers by now, you should be teachers, “ye have need that one should teach you again, the first principles of the oracles of God; you have become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat,” there’s the sarkinos believer; milk and not meat.

Verses 13 and 14 gives us the concept of spiritual exercise. “For everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness; for he is a babe.” The word “unskillful” is apeiros, and it means to be without an experience of test. In other words, these people have never encountered and used the faith technique. That’s the problem; they have never believed the Word, they have taken it in but they never used it. They’ve never applied it in their lives and they’ve rejected the faith technique. And so therefore verse 14 defines what a strong believer is.

[14] “But strong meat belongs to them that are mature,” that’s what the word “full age” means, “strong meat belongs to them that are mature,” and then he defines maturity; here is your definition of pneumatikos that Paul used back in 1 Corinthians 3; this is what a mature person is, “who by reason of exercise” the word “use” means exercise, “who because of exercise has their senses exercised” again the words mean very much the same, “have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil,” that is the function of the conscience, to discern good and evil, and what it means is you can’t believe without the conscience okay. So you have the conscience that gives its okay and then you use the faith technique. And if you have used the faith technique in your life you have appropriated the promise of God, your conscience gets stronger and stronger and stronger.

So we have seen this morning two things that are provided by God for the believer, two needs that you have and they’re answered by many things that God has provided. The first thing is your need for nutrition; you can’t stop that, God has provided the canon for you, God has provided for you the local church, I don’t care what Christian organization you may be in or working with, this is the central area where this is provided. There’s another thing, God has provided a priesthood for you and you have a right to use it or reject it. God has provided also for you the indwelling Holy Spirit and you have a right to use Him or reject Him. You have a choice, to eat or not to eat, to grow or to starve to death. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” And then God has provided a system of exercise for you, day by day, exercise in the faith technique. Are you using the faith technique each day of your life, to appropriate and use the Word that you have already got, the Word of God that has gone in and formed part of the God-consciousness of your conscience, are you responding to that by faith, when you have the little trials, 1 Peter 5:7, “Casting all your cares upon Him for He cares for you.” Are you using that promise? If you’re not, you’re spiritually flabby. If you don’t exercise you cannot expect to grow. Exercise is just as important as nutrition and that means in the physical area as well as the spiritual, the spiritual as well as the physical.

Next week we’ll get on to the third need but you concentrate for a few days thinking about these two needs that you have as a believer and whether you are personally meeting these in your life.