Clough Proverbs Lesson 13
The Human Soul
This morning we
start again from Genesis 2:7 because this morning we actually come to the last
in a series of introductions to the book of Proverbs. We actually have two more times before we
start Proverbs as such in which we deal with certain states of the soul, in
apostasy and in grace. But this morning
marks the end of our introduction to the various terms. By now if you have paid attention as we have
taught and expounded the various words, heart, soul, and so forth, you should
have a basic comprehension of what these words mean and how these words should
not refer just to ideas, they do not refer just to abstractions, but they refer
to some concrete phenomenon that should be experienced and talked about.
In Genesis 2:7,
the key verse of all the Bible as far as man and how he is made, has three
parts. Again we go to these three parts because this morning we finally get to
the soul itself. God first makes the
body; the body is why man is called Adam.
Adam, which most of you think is the proper name of man only, that it is
but it’s more than that, it’s the categorical name of man. The word m-a-n in the English means a man,
singular, and it means man in its collective sense. If we were to properly translate Genesis 1
and Genesis 2 this is the construction of Mr. Man, because that’s the way
Adam’s name should be brought over; it isn’t some sort of a popular name that
was given to him. It was the generic
name and so the first man was called “Man” and that was his name, “Man.” And his wife’s name was Woman, and there was
no other name, no second names, no nicknames, nothing else, that was their
name. But the important thing about this
is that Adam, or Adam, the Hebrew
word is related to another Hebrew word meaning the ground, adamah, and because Adam is made with a body he therefore has as
part of his generic characteristic that which partakes of the earth. And so he is called Adam.
The body, then, is
the first thing and that is something which we inherit from Adam. At the point
of the fall man acquired an inherited characteristic. And although it may seem peculiar to those of
you who have studied biology, the Bible disagrees with the contemporary dogma
that characteristics cannot be inherited, acquired characteristics cannot be
inherited. At least one and that’s the
sin nature, has been acquired and has been passed through father to son, father
to son since Adam. That is the body. And then it says in Genesis 2:7, “out of the
dust of the adamah, and God breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life,” this is the human spirit and the human
spirit was breathed into Adam and I want you to notice again this is not some
philosophical abstraction, for the Jew who read this narrative in a
straightforward way, without any undue allegory, without straining at the text,
just simply taking it in a relaxed fashion, what does verse 7 mean but simply
the breath. And so the human spirit in
the Bible is correlated to the human breath.
The human breath is the sign of the presence of the spirit. The lack of the human breath is the sign of
the absence of the spirit. So the
existence or the non-existence of the human spirit is tied into a one to one
relationship with something that can be empirically observed, that is breath.
And then we have
“man became a living soul.” The word
“became” is important because as I have tried to indicate on this chart by
using primary colors of yellow and red, the soul is a result of the combination
of the two. Notice again, those of you who
have been biased in your thinking about soul and body because you’ve read a
little too much Greek philosophy, have you stopped short in our thinking and
bring it into submission to the Word of God at this point. It’s very hard, particularly for people in
the West who have been used to reading in Platonic terms the concept of soul is
the immaterial substance and the body is the material substance of thinking of
the soul as a combination of the material and the immaterial. The soul is not what it is to the Greek; what
the Greek was thinking about is what we would call the spirit when he meant the
word soul. So as the Greek philosophers
spoke of soul, as far as the Bible’s terminology what they were talking about and
trying to grasp is spirit. But soul itself
here is something else again.
For example,
notice in verse 7 at the last the soul is said to be living. It’s very interesting that the word “soul”
wherever it occurs in the Bible when compared to the word “spirit” wherever it
occurs in the Bible can be linked with life; it can be said to be living. It can be modified by an adjective called
“living.” The spirit is never modified
by the adjective living; there is never one case in all of God’s Word where
there is said to be a living spirit.
Spirits do not live, they exist.
That’s important. Life in the
Word of God does not mean existence; spirits exists but spirits do not live,
have never lived, and can’t live. The
only time spirits can live is when spirits indwell a body. And so we have spirits indwelling a body
during that time and only during that time is there said to be life. Life is the presence of spirit in flesh and
death is the absence from flesh. It’s as
simple as that; life does not mean to exist; existence and life are two
different nouns and actually are quite unrelated. Obviously you have to exist in order to live,
true, but you can have existence without life.
So therefore the distinguishment between these two words is very
critical.
I want to show you the two sides of the soul; obviously if we have said that
the soul is the result of both sides, it is the result of the body and as the
result of the spirit it should have two sides to itself. And sure enough, when we study carefully the
Word of God with its usual magnificent consistency, the Word of God gives us
these two sides to nephesh; nephesh
is the Hebrew word soul. Now nephesh, when studied, has some peculiar
attributes. Turn to Deuteronomy 12:15
we’ll see that the soul has physical desires.
The soul, remember, is a byproduct of both body and spirit. And the soul, therefore, has physical
desires, as for example here in verse 15.
“Notwithstanding, thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates,
whatsoever thy soul lusts after [desires], according to the blessing of the
LORD thy God, which He has given thee,” and so on. Obviously it’s referring to a desire for
physical food. That desire is
experienced by the soul but the soul, therefore, is tied in such a great strong
way to the body that it experiences the intimate physical desires as its
own. Therefore it does not say in verse
15, “whatsoever thy body lusts thereafter.”
The body by itself can’t lust, there’s no self-consciousness. The soul supplies the self-consciousness but
even though the soul supplies the self-consciousness that means that the soul
itself is doing the lusting, thus in the text here it is the soul and not the
body that lusts, [can’t understand word], from Greek thought, where the soul is
unburdened by the body and so on. Here
unashamedly, unabashedly the author says yes, my soul lusts, my soul lusts and
my soul has physical needs and there’s nothing wrong with these physical needs.
Turn to
Deuteronomy
Now of course the
soul has a spiritual side and we need not turn to all those verses but
Deuteronomy 8:3 is the classic one, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” And so therefore again the soul, not the
spirit, the soul is said to cry out for God.
Psalm 45 and 42, those psalms, as the hart pants after water and so on,
so does my soul after the Lord. So
“soul” again cries out for the Lord just as much as it cries out for physical
food. Now is that altogether remarkable;
not at all if we have first noticed the careful construction and seen how
carefully and consistently the Word of God is.
The soul is the byproduct of both the body and the spirit. If the soul is the byproduct does it amaze us
to see that the soul has a dual set of desires?
Of course not. It’s the foolish
20th century materialist that would say the soul only is that which
is material, or it’s the foolish Greek who would say the soul is only that
which is spiritual, but not the Bible, the Bible says the soul is both.
Now the parts of
the soul: the soul can be divided into several parts. One of these words is used in the Word of God
and the other one I have supplied. I’m
not sure I’m totally correct in supplying it but I’ll tell you why in a
moment. Let’s look at the first
word. The first word is “mind.” In the Old Testament there’s no Hebrew word
for mind. This is why it is not true
that the Bible speaks of a head knowledge and a heart knowledge. There’s only one kind of knowledge in the
Word of God and that’s truth, and it is what most people mean when they say
heart knowledge. But mind was a word
that was included in the word “heart” in the Old Testament. The word “heart” in the Old Testament was leb, with a “b” pronounced like a
“v”.
So you have the
Hebrew word leb, meaning heart, but
it meant including conscience and mind.
So in the Old Testament, because largely the Old Testament did not
distinguish, the Old Testament is very general, the heart included several
things. The heart included a conscience,
the heard included a mind, the heart included the volition, the heart included
the emotions. All of this was together
under one word and again we say why? Why
was the word “heart” used? Simple, you
lie down at night and the room is quiet, where’s the activity that you feel in
your body? The heart. And so therefore it’s the heart that was
believed to be the center of life. And
this is not far wrong; in fact it isn’t wrong at all. Without your heart your brain wouldn’t
function. So therefore the Jew, again
not thinking in terms of abstraction but thinking in terms of concrete and
observable, always mentioned his heart, for he realized and observed that when
he thought on something that was truly exciting what would his heart do? What does yours do? Your heartbeat increases, it changes in
response to the content of your thoughts.
And so therefore, this being the case, the word “heart” came to mean
mind.
But when we come
down to the New Testament, no longer are the writers content just to speak of
heart; now the word “heart” is replaced in some contexts by nous which means mind and the word
“mind” is a word which obviously corresponds very closely to our words thought
patterns or thinking device. It is the
faculty of thought. So here we have the nous introduced. This happens for the first time in the New
Testament, and we have other words, like thoughts, these are introduced. So when we come to the New Testament we have
more specific terminology, and therefore the word “mind” out of all this is
part of the soul. We can ascertain this
by a careful study of the Word. So when
we describe what is the soul we say the soul is mind. Not all the soul is mind, but the soul is the
mind.
Now if the soul is
the mind then does it not follow that the mind has two areas from which it can
be affected. The mind can be affected
from the flesh side or it can be affected from the spirit side; again very
simple, very consistent, it goes back to Genesis 2:7. It goes back to a fundamental principle we’ll
meet over and over again in Proverbs, a fundamental principle, which by the way
modern psychiatry does not fully appreciate yet because they have not yet freed
themselves from the bondage of materialism.
To them the mind is influenced only from the side of the flesh. We say nonsense;
the mind is influenced from the side of the spirit.
And so let’s look
at some biblical passages that show how the mind is affected from the flesh
side. Matthew 26:40, the advantage of
struggling through all these terms, and I realize that for some of you it’s
been a great trial, the advantage of struggling through all these terms is that
you will see you’re made of the same stuff the people of God’s Word were made
of. And that you are experiencing the same
kind of things they were experiencing.
Your experience isn’t unique; you haven’t got some special problem these
people didn’t face. God’s Word isn’t
addressed to a group of queers that weren’t made the way you’re made, that
you’re somehow very, very different because you live in the 20th century
and anybody that existed before 1900 is passé.
The new model of humanity didn’t drop out of heaven in 1901; we’re made
of the same stuff, precisely, as these people are.
So in Matthew
26:40 we have a passage that many people, many who aren’t even believers, and
actually it’s quoted usually in a very accurate context. It’s a situation where in verse 39 Jesus
Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane is having a great struggle because He can be
tempted; Jesus Christ, as true humanity can be tempted. It may shock some of you if you thought you
had to confess your temptations. You
don’t confess temptations, it’s not necessary to confess temptations;
temptations aren’t sin. Your soul is the
center of your consciousness and you soul can be a collecting device of all
sorts of things. You can get impregnated
into your soul sinful temptations, temptations to sin and they can come and can
lodge in your soul. It isn’t sin in
itself until you’ve acted on it. So you
don’t confess temptation. Now many new
believers are frequently confused at this point; they become Christians and
then after two or three weeks they get discouraged because they thought good
night, here I’m a Christian and I’m still being tempted, just like I always
was. Why is this? For the simple reason that you’re humanity
like you always were. Temptations come
in but temptations do not have to be confessed.
So Jesus Christ is
facing a tremendous temptation; it’s a temptation to chicken out, it’s a
temptation to avoid the cross. And so in
verse 39 He finally says, and gets down to the point in His prayer when He can
make His grand submission to the Father, a tremendous act and this act must be
included in all our prayer before we can really be honest before the Lord. “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from Me;” “this cup” refers to His death on the cross. Jesus Christ did not like this, Jesus Christ
was sinless, this meant that Jesus Christ had to touch your sin and mine and He
didn’t like this at all. And so He said,
it’s My personal desire that this cup pass from Me, “nevertheless, not as I
will, but as Thou will.” Now that is a
grand submission, it is not passivity; it is an active choice, to choose the
Father’s choice. Jesus Christ is not
turning into a robot here; He’s not destroying Himself and, so to speak,
becoming a suit of clothes for the Father.
It’s not that at all. Jesus
Christ in an act that’s all His own, an act for which He will be eternally
responsible, chooses, independently of the Father, chooses all by Himself,
independently of anyone else, He chooses to do what the Father wills.
Now all this time
He asks that the disciples would help Him by praying; praying requires
concentration in the mind, so we have the disciples asked to do something that
has regards to the mental part of the soul.
Matthew 26:40, “And He comes to the disciples, and He finds them
asleep,” that’s what happens after five minutes of prayer usually, “and He said
unto Peter, What, could you not watch with Me one hour.” In other words it does show that at least he
expected the minimum prayer time for the disciples to be one hour. Jesus Christ apparently had taught the
disciples long enough over the three year period of time where it was
reasonable for them to spend one hour in prayer, and He asked them why couldn’t
you expend at least a minimum time in prayer, an hour. [41] “Watch and pray, that you enter not into
testing; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” That is the explanation for the
sleeping. In other words, we have again
the spirit and the body, but as we said last time since the fall the flesh is
dying, the flesh is weak.
To use the same
analogy that Genesis 3 uses with the weeds, the agricultural analogy, think of
the thorns and thistles that the ground, the adamah, brings forth to Adam.
The adamah brings forth that
which is not desired, and it doesn’t bring forth that which is desired. There are two things about the curse of
Genesis 3; the man tries to farm the land and he tries to bring forth a fruitful
crop and the land, the adamah that he
is farming to bring forth the fruit doesn’t bring forth the fruit. That’s one thing that’s wrong. But the other thing in the agricultural
analogy is that the ground does bring forth something but it’s thorns and thistles,
that which is not wanted, that which is the unfruitful vine. So there are two things to the curse but the
thing that we noticed last time about the flesh is that there’s an analogy even
deeper than that. The analogy in Genesis
3 anticipate Paul’s final point that he makes in Romans and that is that on the
surface Genesis 3 looks just like a story for a farmer, it says here, here’s
the explanation of why it’s so hard to farm; here’s the explanation of why the
ground rebels against your efforts. It’s
because the ground has been sucked into rebellion against you becuase you have
rebelled against the Lord of the earth.
To therefore it is as though God says you have rebelled against Me and
now the ground under your feet will rebel against you, and therefore you will
bring forth fruit only with the sweat of your brow.
Now this has a
larger application and here’s where linked last adamah and Adam. What is adamah?
It’s the ground. What is
Adam? It’s man. And what is Adam’s body made of? Flesh, it’s made of the same as adamah, this being so then the
agricultural analogy carries over to the man’s character. The flesh, the body; the flesh is corrupt as
the ground is corrupt. The flesh is
corrupt as the ground resists the farmers the efforts so the flesh in the body
resists the ethics of the spirit to bring forth spiritual fruit. The body resists spiritual fruit in the same
way the ground resists the farmer; the ground—what does it do? It doesn’t bring forth the fruit that is
desired and so the flesh doesn’t bring forth righteousness that is
desired. Not only that but the ground,
the adamah brings forth the thorns
and the thistles and what does the flesh do?
It brings forth the –R learned behavior patterns.
And so we have a
beautiful analogy that is tied on the doctrine of creation. This is the origin of the flesh and why our
flesh today is corrupt, corrupt not because, as the Greek said because in and
of itself it’s bad, but because it has inherited an acquired
characteristic. So in Matthew 26:40-41
we have an instance where the flesh, because the mind of the soul needs the
flesh, why does the mind need the flesh?
It’s simple, where does the thought occur? It occurs in your brain and what is your
brain; it’s part of the central nervous system.
And so therefore there’s a link and so therefore as the flesh is dying,
the central nervous system is part of the flesh, it means the system or
instrument of thought that you have is also dying and in rebellion against the
spirit. This is why prayer is so hard;
these two verses teach us this.
Why is prayer
hard? Think of the farmer again; why
does the ground incessantly rebel against him?
For the same reason that your mind incessantly rebels against your
honest desires to pray; honest resolutions to lead a better Christian life, but
when you go to try it, it never seems to work out because your body is in
rebellion against your spirit. Why? Because of the curse.
Romans 8:5; in
Romans 8:5 Paul contrasts two states of the mind, one in which the mind sides
with the spirit, and one in which the mind sides with the flesh. “For they that are after the flesh do mind
the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the
Spirit. [6] For to be carnally minded is
death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Now those “that are after the flesh” means
where the mind falls back and is controlled by the flesh rather than by the
spirit. You see, the spirit has
God-consciousness in the conscience; it has the indwelling Holy Spirit that is
a teacher, that is constantly trying to illuminate the mind. But this is work because as the human spirit
is empowered by the Holy Spirit, the human spirit empowers the mind and the
mind does the thinking. Where must the
mind get his energy to think on truth?
From the spirit side, never from the flesh side; left to completely the
flesh the mind deteriorates. Left
completely to the flesh the mind deteriorates.
But you say wait a
minute, what about the non-Christian?
The non-Christian doesn’t have the indwelling Holy Spirit. Isn’t his mind left to the flesh and yet I
know many, many brilliant non-Christians, far more brilliant than the
Christians I know. Yes, but that is only
because of common grace. Aas we have said, conscience is filled with
God-consciousness, and even in the non-Christian he has God-consciousness in
his spirit. He may have his conscience
partly scarred over but still, in his conscience there is God-consciousness. If this were not so he could never be held
responsible in the great white throne judgment.
The God-consciousness in the unbeliever’s mind is what keeps him going
mentally. He rebels when this is
mentioned, he refuses to acknowledge it but yet if you study the philosophy of
the West or the thought of the East you’ll see the same theme come up, that
anchored behind it all is some replacement, some God replacement, some
idol. Men always acknowledge their
God-consciousness because they’re always trying to substitute something for it
in their thought system. So even the
most brilliant non-Christian although he is carnally minded his mind has not
yet been destroyed.
Now those “that
are after the flesh” here in verse 5 would be, obviously the unbeliever, but
also the Christian out of fellowship.
“They do mind,” this means they think upon, mentally occupied, with the
satisfaction “of the flesh.” And there
again, thinking back to that simple picture of Genesis 3, there will be the
farmer who finally succumbs to the thorns and the thistles, and says to heck
with it, I’m not going to struggle any more, I’m going to go along with the
thorns and the thistles, I’m going to play with it, I’m going to sit out here
and I’m going to watch it grow, and he gives up the struggle. This is the same as the carnal mind; it gives
up in the face of the lusts and so on that come forth. [6] “For to be carnally minded,” Paul says,
the word “carnally minded” is again mental occupation with the flesh. But he says this “is death;” now what kind of
death in verse 6? Remember we said in the
Bible always interpret it literally unless there’s a reason in the context for
doing so, therefore we interpret it as physical death.
In what way is
being carnally minded resulting in physical death? In what way does Paul mean “for to be
carnally minded is death?” It’s simple,
what is the end product of the produce of the cursed ground? What is the end product of it all? Is it not physical death? Is it not the separation, is physical death
the separation of the human spirit from the flesh? Then of course to be carnally minded is death
because every time you are carnally minded what happens? You die a little bit. It’s as though you die a little bit even then
because as your mind sets itself with the flesh instead of the spirit you have
a breakdown here. So between the mind
and the conscience you have a break and between the mind and the conscience
there comes a barrier, a barrier that is caused because the mind is now siding
with the desires of the flesh. So this
death here as mentioned in Romans 8 is not some mystical type of death. It’s simply saying go ahead, be carnally
minded and die a little bit. And in
verse 7, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God,” this, of course,
shows how the mind is in contact or in isolation or in rebellion against the
conscience. The word “enmity” means that
the mind either goes with the conscience or rebels against the conscience. And this is the explanation that corroborates
what I just said about dying a little bit.
If the mind, the carnal mind, lodges with the dying flesh, “it is enmity
against God.” Where is our knowledge of
God located? The God-consciousness in
the conscience. This being so we have
enmity against the conscience and so the mind and the conscience are brought
into collision. Here’s the heart of all
psychological problems that are not due to organic causes. All psychological problems that are not due
to organic causes are located here. It’s
due to a split between the conscience and the mind and the struggle that goes
on.
Now there’s
another theme that runs in verses 5-7; in the last half of each verse it says,
“they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit,” there’s some
ambiguity whether pneuma, the word
“spirit” here means human spirit or indwelling Holy Spirit but nevertheless the
theme is clear in verse 6, “To be spiritually minded is life and peace.” That doesn’t mean there’s not a struggle,
again it’s looking at the end point.
What kind of life? It means the
human spirit solidly embedding itself in the body and controlling it, and
there’s peace. Verse 7-8, “the carnal
mind is enmity against God,” here’s the opposite theme, which would be the
opposite, the opposite of the opposite would be the first one and so here we have,
if we wanted to retranslate verse 7 in the theme that we’ve traced in verses
5-6 it would be the spiritual mind is friendship with God. That’s why it’s peace. You see, if the mind is no longer fighting
the conscience, this is what brings peace and harmony in the soul; this is the
source of true inner peace and joy, when your conscience isn’t fighting with
the mind, all the members of the team are working together and that’s why
they’re peace instead of all the discourse and disruption and so on.
Verse 9, “But you
are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell
in you.” And the word here is not after
the flesh but “in the flesh,” this is position and verse 9 and verse 8 both
teach that it’s the believer’s right, it’s the believer’s position, it’s the
believer’s… actually he should be, this is what he should be because the Spirit
is in him. Now by that Paul means that
at the point of regeneration the indwelling Holy Spirit has come to rest in the
spirit. This means the indwelling human
spirit puts power in the human spirit.
When the human spirit has power, then through the conscience it can
empower the mind. And so you have the
mind influenced from the side of the spirit.
So we can see then, tracing it as briefly as we have, that the mind and
the Word of God is a struggle, it’s a source of struggle between the flesh and
the spirit; you should be more acute as time goes on and you grow further in
the Christian life at spotting what is of the flesh and what is of the spirit
in your mind.
To show you that
in order to live the Christian life your mind must be fortified, turn to Romans
12:1, that famous verse that is used for dedication. There’s one little part of Romans 12:1-2 that
speaks to this problem of the mind and the soul, let’s look at that. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the
mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” What is it?
It’s the body and on our chart what do we say? Why is that necessary? Because the body is the instrument for
service. The human spirit will give you
the power but the human spirit doesn’t live, remember spirits don’t live; the
human spirit can only do something for God in space/time history as it is
operating through a body and so therefore this is why the body, not the spirit,
must be consecrated. And Romans 12:1
speaks of the body, “bring your body as a living sacrifice,” it couldn’t be the
spirit because the spirit is not living, “the body as a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God.”
Now look at Romans
12:2, “And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed,” and then
this is the key phrase, “by the renewing of your nous [mind],” now how is the mind renewed? The mind is renewed by receiving power from
the human spirit as energized by the Holy Spirit. And this can’t happen until you want it to
happen. In other words, you’ve got to
choose this, this is an active choice in Romans 12:1, it’s not some passive
thing, it’s not running off to a deeper life conference and having some
ecstatic experience. This is an actual
real choice that is made in time; time after time after time after time after
time again and again and again and again.
That’s what Romans 12:1 is telling you, it’s not a one-shot thing. This is repeated over and over and over and
over and over again.
Now, it says “by
the renewing of your mind,” that means that you can’t… what’s the
implication? You can’t perform the will
of God unless your mind is renewed. That
is very important. This is the key to
all that I have said from this pulpit and other places; this is the key to all
I have said as to why the modern charismatic movement is anti-biblical and the
very core of the whole thing is anti-biblical.
Nowhere in Scripture do your emotions precede your mind. It is the mind first, and always. The emotions are the caboose, always, never
the engine. The emotions follow but the emotions cannot lead you. And here you have it. You couldn’t have it clearer stated; there’s
no word in the Greek that can’t mean emotions better than this word can’t mean
emotions, nous, it was used by
Aristotle and Plato for the rationale of the soul; it is the most intellectual
word available in the Greek vocabulary.
And I want you to see that the will of God can’t even be performed
unless first the mind is energized from the human spirit through the Holy
Spirit.
Let’s read
further: “by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good,
and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
The word “prove” dokimazo, is
a word that was used to heat metal and test it; it was used to take raw ore and
heat it and refine it by heat so that you drive off the pure metal by
heat. It means to take a lump or
unorganized material, apply energy to that material and to sort into that which
is valuable and that which is not valuable.
The analogy that Paul is building here with this verb, dokimazo, or “prove” in verse 2 is
simply this: he’s saying look, your mind
is the only thing you’ve got going for you when it comes to facing the
circumstances of life. Here are the
circumstances of life. What is going to digest those circumstances and bring
order out of chaos? Your emotions? Negative!
Your mind; but, just like it takes heat to the ore in order to melt off
the gold and silver so it takes heat, it takes the heat of intense
concentration on the circumstances, the heat of intense concentration and
prayer in order to discern the Lord’s will, and as he points out, to “prove”
means to prove the ore, it means to bring the pure out so to find God’s will,
this is not only discerning God’s will but actually performing God’s will.
So I hope Romans
12:1-2 and also for those of you taking notes the parallel verse is Ephesians
4:23, I hope you look that up and you’ll see the same teaching there. The thing to notice is that the soul
primarily is the mind. I, on this
diagram, have indicated a second part of the soul, the emotions, but I want you
to proceed cautiously with me and don’t overshoot, because here’s an
interesting thing. There’s no word in
the Greek for emotions; there is for mind, there is nous, but there is no other word in the Greek language for
emotions. In other words, emotions are
not viewed abstractly like the mind is; mind is, but not the emotions. What other word for the emotions? “Bowels” and that links it very strongly to
the body. That’s talking about the physiological
reactions; as I showed you earlier, your body responds emotionally.
Dr. S. I. McMillan
in his book None of These Diseases
has a little diagram and he points out that there is an emotional center in
your brain, and that emotional center gathers together the emotions and
transmits them throughout the body, so your emotions, your stomach, your gall
bladder, your colon and so on will respond to your emotions. And so the Jew didn’t have any word or
abstract, so what did he do? He read his
emotions by his physiological response and this is how emotions are read in the
Bible. They are read by how you
feel. The Jew, put in another way, felt
his emotions in his gut, and that’s the way he spoke of them; he didn’t speak
of them abstractly, he never did. And so
it’s most interesting, then, that the two words that are often used in
association with the soul, mind, has very great prominence but emotion, very
little, and when it is it is presented in bodily terms and NEVER do emotions
lead. Never! Now emotions can hinder and I’ll give one verse
reference where the emotions actually hindered taking the Word of God and
that’s 2 Corinthians 6:12.
If you want an
analogy to how the emotions work with the mind, it’s like a flywheel. You have a machine and you want to set
momentum into the machine to let it go, have a smooth performance, what you can
do is get a large wheel, made of iron or steel or some heavy material, put it
on an axle and apply torque to it. And
it’ll take you a while to build up momentum, or what you’re doing is
transferring energy into that flywheel.
And it’ll take you time to do it, and that flywheel has to suck energy
from something, you’ve got to put energy into the thing to get it going, but
once you’ve got it going then this acts as a store device for energy and so
later on you can tap off of that, you can put a gear on the end of the thing or
something when you get it going and later on, suppose you have intermitted
energy, suppose you have energy source that, say three fourths of an hour you
have energy put into the flywheel and then for a quarter of an hour it shuts
down and you have no energy available; you can kept the machine going by a
flywheel, and on the three quarters of an hour you can load energy into the
flywheel and get that thing going and then for a quarter of an hour when you’re
not having any input you take if off the flywheel again. And so the flywheel
acts as a device for keeping the machine in shape, keeping it going.
2 Corinthians 6:12
we see a very similar thing that emotions apparently do for the mind. It’s all brought out in a little remark Paul
makes to the Corinthians: “you are not striated in us, but you are straitened
in your own bowels.” Now what Paul is
talking about is that through negative volition they have developed the –R
learned behavior patterns that has trained their emotions. And this also shows you that emotions are
trained, I point that our just in case; emotions are a result of
conditioning. Your present emotional
pattern, depending of course on other physiological problems, but generally
speaking your emotions are a result of what you’ve done with them in the
past. If you’ve been a person that’s
lived on your emotions you’ve trained your emotions to respond just the way
they do. Now here’s the trick; there’s
no way you can untrain them, you don’t untrain them directly; you untrain them
through the mind. But these Corinthians,
because of negative volition, entertaining human viewpoint, had established –R
learned behavior patterns in which they no longer responded. Emotions, again, are like a flywheel….
[Tape turns] …
where the Word of God has never been taught and their first response to Bible
doctrine is oh, that’s cold, oh, they don’t talk about [can’t understand word],
and so on. And we don’t mention praise
the Lord every other sentence, and hallelujah and all the rest, and we don’t
have an invitation to trot down the aisle, and that’s just cold. What they mean is their emotions can’t
respond to that. Why? Because they’re
not used to it and because they’re not used to it simply because they’ve never
desired it; they’ve never desired truth.
They always remark that; any person that makes that remark always is a
person that’s never sought truth. A
person who has sought truth will always be interested in the Word. This has been proven right here in this
congregation, week after week. We have
had people from the university and other places who come in here who have been
out and out atheists, and they have had more concentration than some numbskull
Christians that have been floating around Christian hallelujah circles for 20
years. Do you know why? Because they came in here and they meant
business; they wanted some truth, they had all the garbage and they wanted
truth. And that’s what they were after,
they were serious. They weren’t here for
the emotions, they get that at the football game. They know where they can get that, but they
wanted truth.
And so emotions,
then, the second part of the soul can also be carnally or spiritually
activated. Now let’s look at the
principles in review. The mind is part
of the soul; emotions are part of the soul, but since the soul is a composite,
so these are a composite and your mind can be influenced from your spirit side
or your body side. Your emotions
influenced from your flesh side, body side and your spirit side.
Now another little
trick, the emotions are secondary to the mind; the mind will train your
emotions for you. This is a trick a lot
of people haven’t learned. You train
your emotional response by how you think.
And for a while, for 2 or 3 weeks sometimes, it generally takes 2 or 3
weeks, that’s generally the period for habit breaking or habit forming, about
ten days to two weeks, and if you can maintain a thought attitude for 2 or 3
weeks consistently, you can shape your emotions as a result of that. It’s just a law; you can observe it operate
in your own life. And people who are
letting their emotions get a hold of them actually desire that; no sympathy for
somebody that says oh, I can’t control my emotions. Sure you can, you just don’t want to, that’s
all.
We have one more
final note on the soul before we leave this overall review of these various
terms and that is the problem of “another spirit.” In other words, we have this thing develop;
we have the human body, we have the soul.
Obviously the activating thing behind it all is the human spirit. But if the Bible is correct, the Bible seems
to imply that other spirits can come to indwell the soul. For example, the human spirit can pull back
and another spirit can come take the place.
So another thing, to go back to our chart, before we said the soul was a
byproduct of the flesh and the spirit.
Now I have to change what I just told you and enlarge it just one step
further and say this: that the soul can be a composite, it can be the result of
the flesh and it can be results of several spirits. It can be the result of an evil spirit, it
can be a result of your human spirit, it can be a result of the Holy
Spirit. In other words, any spiritual
entity can, under certain circumstances, influence the soul.
But I want you to
notice something; the human spirit, though influenced from the Holy Spirit is
not influenced by an evil spirit. The
evil spirits want nothing to do with the human spirit; nothing! The evil spirit only wants the soul.
Why? That’s how they live. I have in the angelic conflict series
developed four categories under which the evil spirits can influence the soul.
Those of you who have studied the angelic conflict series will have this on a
firmer basis; I only repeat this in summary this morning to show you in this
series the four categories of demon influence on the soul.
We begin by
drawing four concentric circles. We draw
four concentric circles because we wish to show the idea of percent; in other
words the percent of believers that are affected by these various
phenomena. The percent of believers that
are affected by the first phenomena is 100% and that is demonic
temptation. Every believer faces demonic
temptation. You’re silly and very
foolish if you don’t think so. For
example, how many of you growing up have said over and over again the Lord’s
prayer? Don’t you realize that one of
those phrases in the Lord’s prayer is the request to stop this category one
activity? “Deliver us from temptation,”
what do you think that’s talking about.
It’s talking about right smack in the Lord’s prayer, though nobody ever
does it, or nobody ever thinks that’s what meant, that’s his first activity;
every believer can be influenced by the temptations; they come in many ways, I
refer you to the angelic conflict series for the specifics.
A second category
is when you are out of fellowship as a believer. When you are out of fellowship
you are in rebellion against the Lord and your soul, for that instant of time
now is subordinated to the flesh. This
means it is weakened as to its connection with your human spirit; in such a
case it can be used more easily by demonic forces. So part two is when you are out of fellowship
you can be used. The demon forces can
use you various ways; one of the best ways they have of using you as a
Christian is through gossip and maligning and saying the wrong thing at the
wrong time in front of the wrong people.
You may be unconscious of it, all you know, for all you’re concerned
you’re just out if fellowship. But you
just had a fleeting thought that went through your mind and without thinking or
giving it a thought you just voiced it and all of a sudden, if you could stand
off and see what you have just done, you would have seen that that fleeting
thought in your mind wasn’t even yours, it was put in there, and when you
voiced it you put it on the gossip grapevine, and somebody else picks it up and
now swish, the whole thing goes through the congregation, tears the guts out of
the Christian fellowship because for an instant of time you were out of fellowship and you got
tricked, and a sucker believer; you weren’t alert to the fact that you can pick
up these kind of things, voice them, and never even know you’re doing it.
Then we come to
the last three categories of demonic phenomena, these are the controversial
ones. Again I will not go into the
proofs of these, I’ve given them in the angelic conflict series, but you can
have the demon actually indwell the body of the believer. Now careful here, remember what we said about
the human spirit. When the human spirit
was given in Genesis 2:7 how was the human spirit given? It was given with a physical breath; the
human spirit was given and the human spirit came into the body. Now demon powers evidently do the same thing;
they can come into the body. Where in
the body I haven’t the foggiest idea except I think it’s something to do with
the central nervous system but they can come and they can root in the body like
germs, and just sit there. Sometimes
they can remain dormant for a decade or longer; sometimes as long as 20 years
and never really show themselves, waiting for the proper time.
And so demon
powers can indwell, they can indwell Christians. How can they indwell Christians? Same they indwell non-Christian. Oftentimes the argument is made, why I
thought the Christian can’t be indwelt because the body is the temple of the
Holy Spirit. Yes, but what kind of a
temple are we talking about? A temple
that is so corrupt that this particular temple can’t inherit the kingdom of
God, 1 Corinthians 15 says. A temple
that is so corrupt that Paul, in 2 Corinthians 11 has to pray I hope you don’t
receive another spirit beyond that which you’ve already received. What is Paul talking about there, “another
spirit?” So therefore both by
observation of missionaries who for years and years have reported this thing on
the field, pastors have reported it and the New Testament text, we say there
must be demons indwell some Christians.
But notice I say “some,” and this is why again we go back to the
concentric circles. Very few,
apparently, are demon indwelt and only by the sovereign purpose of God. The demons are only there for one and only
one reason.
Turn to Matthew
18:34, a much neglected little parable of the Gospels. In Matthew 18:34-35 this is the conclusion to
that parable where Jesus is talking about the unrighteousness servant, you
remember the master forgave the servant and the servant didn’t forgive somebody
that owed him some money and he was griping about it and so the master got mad
at the servant for his lack of compassion.
And so verse 34, “And his lord” or “his master was angry, and delivered
him to the tormenters, till he should pay all that was due unto him.” Now look at the last verse. “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also
unto you, if ye, from your hearts, forgive not every one his brother their
trespasses.” Who do you think are the
“tormentors?” And who is it that does
it? The Father, He does it as a system
of chastening in order to train and purge out from the believer’s life that
which is weak, weakness.
So this is why we
deal with the last two, the first two are common. Points three and four, the third and fourth
categories are not so common. They both
involve indwelling demonic powers; category 3 and category 4 the fine points
are explained on the angelic conflict series, we needn’t go into those here
except to say that this is a possibility in Christians, I am sure, for example,
that this is the explanation behind the charismatic movement in my own
thinking.
Now one final note
and that is, in summary, what are the learned behavior patterns? Remember in our chart on the soul there was
one last item that we have. We can very
quickly summarize what that means.
Remember at the beginning we spent a long time, in fact, we spent two
Sundays pointing out that learned behavior patterns are the sign of life, for
learned behavior patterns distinguish man from the animal, or rather animals
from plants, both man and animals have learned behavior patterns. The difference however is, between man and
animals is that men have learned behavior patterns plus understanding, in other
words, they have conscience, absolutes.
So the learned behavior patterns get together and form the content of
your character. The learned behavior
patterns are what you personally acquire by choice in your life. With this I want to conclude with one final
look at the soul. Learned behavior
patterns, the term is self-explanatory.
There can be two kinds, there can be what we call +R learned behavior
patterns, those behavior patterns that are a result of the Holy Spirit’s work
in your life and –R learned behavior patterns, those patterns that are
developed because you have yielded to the flesh. And so without seeing what’s
happened over and over again you’ve yielded, yielded, yielded, yielded,
yielded, yielded, until finally you have an automatic response to certain
circumstances, you don’t even control it because it’s so automatically
ingrained by force of habit.
There are two
parts to your soul from out of all of this and only one part has to do with
spirituality. Your soul, then, when it
comes down to the final analysis, has a type and it has a content. Think, if you will, of a bowl; think of your
soul as a bowl, a dish. It has a shape
to it; that means that you have inherited, by the type of soul, I mean that
which is caused from your body side, from your flesh side in the good sense, it
is inherited. For example, you may have
musical talent. You may have art, artistic
talent. You may have a great
intellect. All of these things are the
type of soul you have. The type of soul
you have is a product of your inheritance; you can’t do anything about that,
that’s your type. That is not judged by
God. What is judged is what you put in
it, not the shape of the bowl but what’s in the bowl and you can have a bad
artist or a good artist; you can have a carnal musician or a spiritual
musician; you can have a carnal intellect or a spiritual intellect. Don’t make the horrible misapplication of
spirituality that so many new believers do, and that is they get to looking at
all this and they say, why so and so led me to Christ and so and so has this
type of soul, so now I too must have this type of soul. No, you don’t have to mimic the shape of the
bowl, you only mimic what’s in the bowl, the content.
So out of all this
you want to see that we have the body and the spirit, the result is the soul,
and this soul, because it is such a byproduct is inherited on one side, for
which you are not responsible. On the
other hand, through the new birth you have the choice of bringing into your
soul new content or a new righteousness and that should be the issue for you
today. Next week we will deal with
Christ in the soul and chaos in the soul, the two states of maturity and
apostasy in the believer’s life.