Clough Proverbs Lesson 52

DI #1: The Law of the Soul I – How the Human Soul Works

Before we begin with Proverbs this morning I’d like to take this time to answer some of the questions that have been handed in on the feedback cards. The first question is: We often hear the phrase, “Christ is the only perfect man; should this be correctly understood to mean that he is perfectly righteous all the time and never sinned and not that he never fouled up or made mistakes from his labor or work from an honest mistake due to living in a fallen world and being surely human? I’m not prepared to deal completely with this question because my study has been in the Old Testament to date and we will get into the person of Christ somewhat in the book of Hebrews on Wednesday nights and later on when we deal with the Gospel of John. But I’d have two remarks to make in response to this question; the first one is that Jesus Christ had to learn in His humanity; He had to learn how to speak, He had to learn various skills, Jesus Christ was true humanity. However, as to mistakes that involved a violation of His conscience we would of course have to say no and the real question about this is behind the question that was asked is the nature of the humanity of Christ, so that because He did not have a sin nature and that he was in the likeness of sinful flesh, He was not a sinful flesh, and not being a sinful flesh then was Jesus Christ subject to various impediments of balance and so on, and sight and hearing that we would be? And I am not prepared to answer that question so we’ll just have to postpone that one.

The second question is: will there be punishment for negative volition in time at the believer’s judgment seat. And as far as we know from 2 Corinthians 5 the judgment has to do with the record; negative volition producing mental attitude, is always manifest in a mental attitude or an overt activity. We use the phrase negative volition to emphasize the orientation, but please never disconnect the term volition from an act or thought, it’s impossible. Negative volition or positive volition always is a thought or an action and its those thoughts and actions that are judged. In fact, in the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testament there’s not one noun or verb that refers to volition.

What is the biblical viewpoint on using one’s contributions to God’s work, specifically money as a deduction to one’s income tax? This will be dealt with as we get into the situation of money in Proverbs and we’ll show there that under the existing system it’s all right, but it’s not a right of believers to claim. It’s something the government has allowed and we take advantage of it and that’s fine, but if the government did not give it to us we wouldn’t necessarily campaign for it; it’s just a privilege and a benefit that we have today.

Another question is: I wonder about the conscience; what about the person who says my conscience hasn’t convicted me of that, or that’s just my area of weakness. This seems to come about when there is a definite point of rebellion. I’m finding people who seem to flaunt their grace so their younger brother who has a difficult time in an area of being hurt intentionally because another believer doesn’t like the person to be legalistic. I think it goes back to an attitude, and of course, no one can tell what’s on somebody else’s conscience, only God can. That’s why we have believer’s judgment. But the point is, you can’t operate by faith if your conscience hasn’t convicted you one way or the other. And the point is, as far as being legalistic and watching the other brother we have a clear admonition in Romans 14 and that should be very clear, that doesn’t demand any extensive study to be sensitive to another believer’s needs. And we have people who are on the crusade wagon for legalism and we have people who are on the crusade wagon the other way and you just ignore the crusades and mind your own business and that will solve most of the problem. If you life your life as unto the Lord and never mind worrying about what your brother believes or doesn’t, just let him grow in the word too.

Another part of the question was: when are emotions okay, like when Jesus wept. We’ll be dealing with that strongly tonight in 1 Samuel 20. Emotions are okay all the time as long as they’re controlled by the mind; emotions are fine. In fact, we have one of the most emotional periods of David’s life at the end of the chapter tonight and we’ll see how two believers orient to emotions. Emotions are all right; it’s just that emotions are not the issue in spirituality; spirituality has nothing to do with emotions, it has to do with the heart and it’s significant that nowhere in Scripture are emotions sanctified. Emotions in Scripture are never spoken of as the place of the residency of Christ; Christ is only residing in the heart, not in the belly, and not in the word denoting emotions. Heart never denotes emotions in Scripture. Therefore when the Bible says Christ dwells in the heart it emphasizes that the emotions are outside of the primary sight of sanctification.

Shall we turn to Proverbs 10 and we will deal once again with a law from the book of Proverbs. To date we have dealt with the first divine institution which is responsibility. We have tried to categorize the topics of Proverbs by divine institutions. And so we have the laws of responsible action and under the law of responsible action we have the law of temporal effect, the law of ultimate effect and the law of self-destruction. All three of these laws we have dealt with to date; all three of these I have encouraged you to see, to look around the realm of your own personal experience to see if you can watch how these laws operate around you, so you might be sensitive to see the Word of God in every day history outside of you.

Today we come to a second category under the first divine institution, and these have to do with the laws of the soul. And so once again we are back dealing with the psychology of the Bible and for several weeks we will deal with the laws of the soul that Proverbs [can’t understand phrase]. Again I preface this by saying man is the most complicated part of creation, therefore it is reasonable that we have received a maximum amount of instructions on how to operate the machinery, and therefore the Bible specializes in giving us insight into the psychology of man. And those of you who are studying psychology in school had better be careful, because the Word of God at various key points is utterly antithetic to what you are learning in psychology class. What you are learning there in many areas is sheer human viewpoint and it’s not a revelation of God’s character. It’s fine if you are an atheist and you don’t believe that man is spirit and body, and therefore a soul, that’s fine. But if you accept the biblical position, the position of Jesus Christ, then we cannot agree with much of modern psychological theories.

To summarize, therefore, as we begin our study, we have to go back through and understand the concept of soul, heart and body. We developed these extensively as we began the series and therefore I will just briefly review them. It starts out with this; there is a body plus the spirit equals the soul. That equation is given to us in Genesis 2:7. The body comes first, then the breath, then the life and the human spirit is given with the breath and the soul is what we would call a personality or that which we observe.

So let’s take first the body and see what the Bible teaches about the body. These are some points of doctrine on the Bible teaching about the body. The body, according to Scripture, has three states. Down through history bodies function in each of three (?) or states. The first state is the state of innocence; in innocence the body is corruptible but not yet corrupted. The body is corruptible; when Adam was created instantaneously at a point in time and his wife isha was created at a point in time, both of their physical bodies were corruptible. That is, they could die if they disobeyed; they didn’t have to but their bodies were made so that it could be corrupted. Now this is a point that you are going to have to accept on the trustworthiness of God. But the Bible teaches the inheritance of a (?) characteristic at this point, but at one given moment in history, an act, a behavior, a choice, caused a change in the body which has medically been transmitted ever since, and therefore it is not true that acquired characteristics are not inherited. That is a false statement by biblical standards. So the first state of the body is innocence; it is corruptible but not yet corrupted.

The second state is the body in fallenness, and that is the body is corrupted during this point. That means the body is under the curse of Genesis and therefore is deteriorating. Just look around, you see deterioration all over.

So the third state of the body is the state of resurrection, in which the body is not like it was in innocence; the third state is not a reversion to the first state. The first state the body was corruptible, but not yet corrupted. The second state the body is corrupted, but the third state, in the resurrection the body is incorruptible, period, whatever happens. And this is an important point, after resurrection the body can never be destroyed in any way. This is why there is a resurrection for both the good and the evil, so those who have accepted Christ and those who have rejected Him because those who have rejected Him must measure pain forever, and they are going to do it through a body that can never be destroyed, therefore they will always receive pain in the lake of fire. And so the resurrection provides both believer and unbeliever with a body that cannot be destroyed. For a believer, those who have accepted Jesus Christ as Savior it means that they can enjoy life forever and ever and ever. For the unbeliever who has rejected Jesus Christ it means that he will have sorrow and misery forever and ever.

Those are the three states of the body. The first state occurred in primeval history; the third state occurs in future history; modern science can only deal with state number two. It cannot deal with state number one or state number three; those are beyond the domain of science because they are beyond the domain of empirical observation at the present moment. If Jesus Christ were here in His resurrected body then we might be able to say science can deal with state three, but since Christ is not here to observe and run tests then this also is beyond the domain of scientific investigation at the present time.

Another part of the body, not only does it function in three states but the body is associated with what the Scripture calls “flesh,” the old sin nature. The old sin nature includes both body and spirit but the base of the sin nature is in the fallen body. That’s why it’s called flesh. The sin nature is removed at physical death. So its base of operations is in the fallen flesh. If you want an illustration or a picture of the flesh think of any ground, any bare ground out in the front of your lawn some place where the Bermuda grass isn’t growing and what grows there? Weeds. The weeds grow everywhere anyway, but the point is that where you have exposed soil weeds grow easily. Well, calling the body flesh is the same thing; make the weeds sin, sinful behavior patterns, and weeds grow easily; sinful behavior patterns grow easily in the flesh. And so that’s why the body is called the flesh. It’s a term, a derogative term referring to state two.

Another point about the body is that physical health in state two is impossible; perfect physical health in state number two is impossible. Therefore, all claims of divine healers that it is God’s will for you to be perfectly healthy, all those claims are heretical, they are against the Word of God. Nowhere does God ever command believers to be perfectly healthy. He commands us to be perfectly mentally stable, yes, but not physically and the reason is it’s impossible in state two. So all claims of divine healers, it is God’s will for you to be 100% cured are apostate. All right, that’s the body.

The second point, the human spirit; review of the human spirit and this will be important to understand the book of Proverbs because Proverbs in these series is going to refer to the spirit or breath, over and over again and you ought to be prepared to read these with intelligence. The human spirit; first the general concept of spirit. In the Hebrew the word “spirit” is ruach, it looks like that. It is used for wind, and it is used for breath. In the Greek it is pneuma, and that word in the Greek means the same as ruach in the Hebrew; it means wind and breath. So therefore the primary meaning of the word “spirit” is something you can’t see but that which causes things you can see. It is the invisible agent of causation.

So like Jesus, in John 3 said, you hear the wind, you can see it in the sense you can see its effects but you can’t really get at the wind, it’s not really there, you can only measure it by its effects. And so the human spirit can only be measured by its effects. This is why no investigation along lines of psychology will ever unlock the secret of man’s structure, because you’re dealing with a phenomenon that lies beyond scientific empirical observation. The general concept is ruach or pneuma, an invisible agent of causation. That’s the general concept.

Then we have under human spirit, by contrast, we have the animal spirit. Creation is divided by Genesis into plants, animals, and men. Plants are not living according to the Scriptural definition of life which is soul, because the plants do not have spirit. So if man makes certain kinds of bacterial artificially or viruses artificially, that does not prove they have generated life. Life will only be generated when you get into an animal category because with the animals you have the first use of spirit. They have breath; they use oxygen from the environment and expel CO2. And one of the manifestations of an animal spirit, two manifestations, are memory and pattern recognition. In other words, animals can think, they have what we call perceptual thought. They have memory and they have pattern recognition, and this shows us the existence of spirit.

But man, when you come to man, the human spirit has more that just the animal spirit. We think too, but instead of thinking just in terms of memory or pattern recognition, for example you’ve seen a dog and he can remember what you’ve trained him and you can show him certain situations and he responds to those situations on the basis of how you’ve trained him; the dog has memory and he can recognize a situation and react as you have trained him to react. Now that’s an animal spirit but when men react to a situation we react differently. We think also, but our thinking is different from animal thinking. And again, those of you in sociology and psychology, you’d better learn a careful distinction here. And this distinction, to my knowledge, has never been made in most of the classrooms. We have a man who has done extensive work in showing this, Mortimer K. Adler in his book The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes.

The difference between animal thought and man’s thought hinges on language. Men speak in language that has meaning. For example, we use the illustration, someone rings a bell for dinner. You can train a dog to respond to a bell, he can remember the bell, he can recognize the pattern of sound and put it together and respond; that’s thought, the dog did think. But it was mere perceptual kind of thinking. He may bark and you say well that’s a form of language; it is NOT a form of language, it is a signal. The difference between signals and language is that language carries meaning, signals don’t. Language carries meaning with it, signals do not. Machines work with signals but you don’t say a machine thinks. So there is a difference, a tremendous difference and that difference is being completely overlooked, especially in the area of comparative psychology today.

Language always involves meaning which therefore involves absolute categories which therefore involves conscience. And there you have what is different about man than the animals. Man has conscience and therefore an awareness of absolute categories. Man hears the bell and he knows dinner is ready but now to him it’s not just response to the bell; to him there is something going on in his mind, I wonder what kind of dinner I am going to have. Is it going to be burnt roast because it is put in the over too early for Sunday morning service and teaching the Word of God took too long, or is it going to be something very enjoyable. Man thinks about it, and so when the man responds to the bell, yes, he responds too, but he responds thinking about what he is responding to. And that we call, to distinguish it, we call that conceptual thinking, meaning it involves concepts. Dogs do not have concepts; men do. So the difference between animal spirit and human spirit is the existence of conscience, which is an awareness of absolute categories.

Another point about the human spirit, besides its difference with animal spirit. When is the human spirit given? The human spirit is given at physical birth when the baby takes its first breath independent of its mother. See, I know the fetus gets oxygen through the placenta, that’s no news to me; it’s no news to anyone. And men who have studied Scripture down through the centuries are fully aware of the physiology of pregnancy. We’re not ignorant of that. But today when a few of us articulate the position that the human spirit doesn’t come until the baby takes its first breath everybody goes into hysterics which they’re saying and accusing of being lenient on abortion. Well my understanding is that the fetus is not a living soul so therefore abortion can’t be murder; it’s a false argument. You may be against abortion, fine, but don’t be against abortion on the grounds it’s murder because it’s not murder, the baby isn’t living to begin with.

The human spirit occurs at the first breath. Verses: Genesis 2:7; Psalm 139:15; Ezekiel 37:8-10. And, the human spirit leaves with the last breath, John 27:3 [?]. Those verses are sufficient to prove the case.

The fifth point about the human spirit is that it is limited to an autonomous state of human viewpoint unless regeneration occurs. The human spirit is limited to autonomous human viewpoint unless regenerated; James 2:26; 1 Corinthians 2:14. Therefore unbeliever’s human spirit functions only enough to keep them God-conscious. Unbelievers, those who have not yet personally accepted Jesus Christ, do have human spirits, James 2:26, but they are not called spiritual because the human spirit is very small, very weak, and able to maintain a minimum God-consciousness, as outlined in Romans 1:18-20.

When does God-consciousness develop in young people? God-consciousness probably develops when language is first learned and they are able to think in terms of language. So when your child grows up to where he begins to use language, and be able to communicate concepts with language, at that point he is becoming God-conscious, and you are a parent have the responsibility from that point forward to present the Word of God to your children, and not rely on the church or anything else; it is your responsibility. Regeneration of the human spirit occurs at the point of belief, John 1:12-13. And this is a supernatural act, it is actually a recreation of the entire human spirit and it’s the most radical thing that will ever happen to your soul—regeneration. All this business about speaking in tongues and having a great ecstatic experience after salvation is just a lot of trivia if you understand regeneration. When you become a Christian your soul is revamped completely; it’s regenerated and recreated.

Finally, one other point under human spirit. The human spirit must be nourished, exercised and cleansed. And therefore it nourished by taking in the Word of God daily and systematically; it is exercised by applying the Word of God by the faith technique and prayer and it is cleansed by confession. That’s how you maintain a strong spirit. And I can tell in my counseling with many people, I can tell usually in a social company gathering that a lot of people aren’t taking too good a care of their human spirit, because number one, the content of their language, the subject material, their mental attitude, and their response toward what other people say. And these are all outside indicators of how out of shape their human spirits are in.

Now the soul; finally one statement about the soul. Remember the background; it is body plus spirit equals soul, therefore those of you who are taking philosophy, those of you who (?) at home, don’t get sucked up with the Greek concept that soul is the immaterial part of man, it isn’t. The word “soul” in the Bible refers to both the material and the immaterial; it is the human spirit that refers to the immaterial, the body to the material and the soul refers to both. So don’t get sucked up with the wrong use of the word “soul,” that’s Platonism, it’s not Scriptural.

Let’s turn to Proverbs 10:9 for the first verse on the laws of the soul. Here is an exposition of the mechanics of how we operate, the rise of the soul. And by the way, this is a point where some of you should realize why I say dealing with people in an evangelistic context and dealing with people in a counseling context is not the place for amateurs. You are dealing with the most complicated mechanism in creation, the human soul. So what do we have? People with five minutes training trying to explain the gospel to somebody. You’re not qualified to communicate the gospel until you have spent hours of study in the Word of God, know the concepts and know how the soul operates. And you would do a lot of people a favor by keeping your mouth shut so you wouldn’t foul up the waters so that those of us who are trying to communicate the Word of God could communicate it without having to undo all the botched up mess that we encounter because some amateur tried to do it.

So learn, this is not saying that only professionals communicate the gospel, that’s not true, every believer is an ambassador. But please, let’s have qualified ambassadors; let’s have trained ambassadors; ambassadors that know what the country is that they’re representing. And please know the mechanics of the soul before you go out and try to witness to somebody and try to straighten somebody out or help somebody. You can’t and you’re not qualified until you understand the mechanisms of the soul. So these verses are for you, not to inhibit in any way good motivated believers that want to do this; don’t use that as an excuse to cop out. Just pick up the pieces, move on and learn what the Scriptures have to say.

Proverbs 10:9, “He that walks uprightly walks surely, but he that perverts his ways shall be known.” This verse is a powerful verse and we’re going to pick it apart word by word and tell you how the human soul works. To some of you this will be a first time experience, for others you’ve heard this before but never get tired of repetition in the Word of God; you’re not so smart and I’m not so smart that we can’t learn something from the Word whether we’ve heard it before; we’re not. I go over verses in my study during the week 8 to 10 hours a day, verses that I’ve read a thousand times, I’ve translated them dozens of times, and I don’t have that attitude that I can’t learn some more because I’ve translated that word before. Or I’m not having problems in this area so I don’t need that verse right now. But God the Holy Spirit has worked our your circumstances so you are hearing the Word of God in some area and you don’t think that area pertains to your life, you’d better watch it because the Holy Spirit evidently must consider it does pertain to your life or He wouldn’t be presenting it to you now.

So Proverbs 10:9 speaks of the mechanics of the soul and we’re going to start with the first three words in the English, “He that walks,” except in the Hebrew it’s all one word, it’s a Hebrew participle, halak, and a Hebrew participle can be used two ways. It can be used as an adjective or it can be used like a verb. When it is used as a verb it is the motion picture tense. It means he is walking, walking, walking, walking, walking, walking, continually walking, it’s a motion picture tense. There’s movement to it when it is used as a verb. Now, when the Hebrew participle is used as adjective, as it is here, it no longer refers to active motion, it refers to abiding character. For example, God is called God the Creating One. Now you know He only created once, so obviously there’s something wrong. How can a Hebrew participle when applies God, call Him the Creating One, it means that at one point in time God did an act that forever indelibly marked His character. So because of a point act God’s character has god a laundry mark on it; it’s got something written in indelible ink that scars it and identifies it forever.

Same thing in the New Testament, this is why we are called believers, the believing ones in the New Testament. It’s always amusing, you run across people in some of these cults that have had about a three weeks course in Greek and they like to impress people on how much Greek they know and they say see, the Bible says in John 3:16 that unless you continually believe you can’t be saved, and because the Greek uses a participle there and participles denote continuous action. Yes, when they’re used as verbs, but it just so happens in John 3:16 it’s being used as an adjective and a noun and it doesn’t refer to that. It means that at a point in time I have received Jesus Christ as my Savior and that indelibly marks my soul forever and it does not mean that you lose your salvation if you stop believing. Believers stop believing all the time, just look around, look at your own life, you know how believers stop believing. You don’t lose your salvation every time you quit. So that’s a false doctrine that’s erected on a three week course in Greek.

But (?) uses a Hebrew participle means a characteristic of the person who walks. Who walks how? And the qualifying adverb, “uprightly” in the Hebrew is a noun but it’s used as an adverb so we’ll just handle it as an adverb today, that qualifies it is that marks this person’s character. The noun has already told us that he has an abiding character of some sort. Now what is it about this abiding character? It is that he “walks uprightly,” and in the Hebrew, bacom, the ba on the front of the word means “in,” there’s a little mark underneath the “b” that looks like a dash, it means “the,” and “com” comes form a word to mean integrity. “He who walks in the integrity.”

Now what is integrity? Integrity is a word that refers to walking with a clear conscience. Look at Proverbs 11:20, it’s usually translated in this section of the King James by the word “upright.” So if you look in verse 20 you’ll see, “They that are of a forward heart,” see the word “froward,” that’s coming up in the verse with we’re dealing with except it’s translated “perverse.” And notice “froward heart” is contrasted with “those that are “upright in their way,” the word “upright” is com, integrity. Look at Proverbs 17:20, you’ll see the same contrast. “He that has a froward heart,” the word “forward” is the opposite of com, “and he that has a perverse tongue,” that is the same word for perverse, this doesn’t have com in it but its antonym, perverse and forward. Proverbs 19:1, there we have the contrast; integrity. “Better is the poor that walks in his integrity, than he that is perverse,” see the contrast, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, so you have two contrasting words; com and the other one that we’ll come up with later. But the word com or integrity or uprightness has to do, not with perfection. This is not, minus perfection, this is not talking about perfectionism. It is not saying that they who habitually walk perfectly so don’t get discouraged. This still can apply to you. Integrity means walk with short accounts; the one who clears it with is conscience.

Let’s look at the conscience and mind for a minute. Here’s the mind, here’s the conscience. The mind receives some situation; so the mind is faced with a situation. Under the (?) of integrity the mind immediately seeks the conscience’s approval or disapproval of the situation. Positive volition always carries and presents what is in the mind to the conscience. This is automatic. This is the first thing after (?); this is the man who is sincere and upright. He (?) something in his head and he tests whether it’s true or false, right or wrong. He is constantly comparing his mind to his conscience. Now in the conscience is God-consciousness. It may be developed more in some believers and less in others, but in everybody some of it’s there; in fact, it’s there in unbelievers and that’s why they’re held responsible. So the mind searches the conscience; or the conscience searches the mind, whichever you want to say. The mind presents material. Now the conscience gives a feedback or a judgment. That’s Hebrews 4:12, “The Word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit,” this is the conscience, “and is a judge” of what? “the thoughts and intake or the heart,” which is the mind. So here we have Hebrews 4:12 showing that the conscience passes judgment upon the content of the mind. [Tape very hard to hear]

Now, the person who walks in integrity at this point agrees with his conscience, in particular he’s agreeing with the God-consciousness in his conscience and he would say yes, that is right. So he has three parts to his response. The first part is a feedback to his own mind that develops divine viewpoint framework. In other words, he learns in this situation, look, this thing is life, this is an illustration of the Bible doctrine that I’ve learned, and so therefore I’m going to pack it away and this forms a new insight that I have. For example, the person may have been in Bible class and heard and heard and heard and heard about how lousy compound carnal believers can be but never really believed it. And then so and so was out on the job and really got (?) by some Christian, and he says, well, instead of being resentful about it, let’s go back; I have a tendency to be resentful but it’s in my mind, my conscience says don’t be resentful, go back to what you were taught in the Word. What did the Word tell you to start with before you got in this situation? Watch out for carnal Christians, those are specialists in compound carnality. So instead of developing mental attitude bitterness your conscience says don’t, relax about it, this simply illustration of the concept that you learned in Bible class. So now your mind says okay, and your divine viewpoint framework is strengthened and edified.

So part of your response of the man who walks continually in integrity is that his mind is strengthening and developing the divine viewpoint framework in everyday experiences of life. It’s not just when you are in Bible class, it’s not just when you’re studying the Word of God, it’s every point of your life you are building up or tearing down that divine viewpoint framework, that way of thinking. All right.

But that’s not all; the man’s response has other ramifications. Let’s get this out here; the situation response. Now the response you see mentally is divine viewpoint framework, that’s part of the response. Another part of the response is that it gives direction to the emotions. So there you are in a business situation and you get the (?) up one side and down the other and you have a tendency for your emotions to react. And your emotions really react, but if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit and you have an adequate divine viewpoint framework your emotions will be submissive to the authority of your mind.

Your mind tells you look, this is an illustration of what God has been trying to tell you for the last three months. Now I see it, and so your emotions begin to turn and help you give thanks to Him for illustrating the Word of God. And you now know if you put it all together that you can claim certain promises in that kind of a situation and move on and relax. So your emotions follow your mind; your emotions, then, bow to the authority of your mind, they stay under control. They are there, they are not eliminated, they are never eliminated. We’re never taught that. It’s wrong for people to go around and say we’re against emotions; that’s not true. What we are against is when the emotions revolt out from the authority of the mind. But here the emotions adhere to the authority of the mind.

A good illustration of this is in sports; you name a sport where the athlete who is in control, particularly in a situation, saying in crew where you have the cockpit and the bow, or in football where you have quarterback, you take the athlete on the team that’s in charge of making decisions and leading, he’s going to have emotions, he’s always going to have emotions. But, the trick of a good athlete in that situation is their emotions are bound to the authority of his mind so he can remember the strategy, so he can remember to think. His emotions never interfere with his mind; they search his mind. The emotions are a blessing. If you didn’t have emotions your mind would really never work, you’d never get jacked up, never move, you’d be just sluggish all the time. So emotions can be used as a powerful basis for you mind, if they adhere and respect the authority of your mind.

So the man who walks in integrity has one response; in his mind he erects a powerful divine viewpoint framework. In his emotions he now directs them by the authority of his mind; the emotions respect the divine viewpoint framework and they essentially say “yes sir” and move on.

And then the third part of the response of the man that walks uprightly is that when he gets a directive from his conscience, he not only does this, he not only controls his emotions but in his behavior, in his overt actions he is loyal to God; he is loyal, he loves God with all his heart, with all his soul. Loving God with all your heart means this: the divine viewpoint framework. Loving God with all your soul means this, and the emotions fall between the two categories. So this is the falling out of nothing else but the first and great commandment, isn’t it? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul.”

So these three parts to the response characterize a man who walks uprightly. It isn’t that he is perfect. He will make mistakes, because number one, his divine viewpoint framework isn’t big enough; he is going to do things that are wrong, his conscience is going to take him out at times because his conscience is… [tape turns] because he hasn’t grown enough, but to his degree of growth he is loyal to God. Looked at from another standpoint, here you are, you believe in Jesus Christ. God the Holy Spirit puts you in position, the position that can never change, but nevertheless, you have down here this bottom circle of your temporal experience, that circle gets larger and larger and larger as you grow spiritually, but you can only believe inside the circle. So therefore a person who walks in integrity is a person who walks in his bottom circle. The sphere of integrity, the sphere of over which his conscience works is this sphere, the sphere of his bottom circle.

Turn to 1 John 1:7, this is another way of saying the same thing Proverbs 10:9 says. I want you to get used to different portions of the Word of God that say the same thing but with different vocabulary. If you will master the concept you can go from one passage of Scripture to another passage of Scripture and never get waylaid by different vocabularies. John is using a different vocabulary than Solomon. But truth is truth, truth is the same to Solomon as it is to John. So when John talks about it he’s using a different vocabulary but it’s the same doctrine. So let’s look at verse 7. This is John’s way of saying Proverbs 10:9.

“If we walk in the light as He is in the light,” “If we walk” is third class, maybe we will and maybe we won’t, meaning it is up to the volition of the believer, it is some believers will walk in the light and some won’t, and all of us at one time won’t and all of us at some time will; third class, maybe we will, maybe we won’t, but if we do “walk in the light,” now what is “the light?” “The light” is the same thing as “the integrity” of Proverbs 10:9, the same truth, the same doctrine. It’s talking about the light that you have which is obviously available through your conscience as the conscience is informed by the Word of God. And this is going to be great with some people and less with others. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light,” now what does that mean, “as He is in the light?” It means that God is perfectly consistent with His own character, and so “if we walk in the light” we will be consistent with what we know of His character. “If we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,” now notice, the fellowship mentioned here is not fellowship with Jesus Christ. It is “fellowship one with another.”

Now why do you suppose the Apostle John here is talking about horizontal fellowship rather than vertical fellowship? Because in verse 3 he has qualified the issue. Verse 3 and verse 7 go together in the matter of fellowship. What does verse 3 say, “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us,” now who’s “us” in verse 3. The apostles; the apostles! “And truly, our fellowship” together “is with the Father.” Now look at this strange sequence; it’s (?) sometimes and it leads to all sorts of oddball believers. Your fellowship is first with the apostles because they wrote the New Testament which is the Word. Your fellowship has to be with the Word of God before it can be with Jesus Christ. And then, when your fellowship is “with us” John says, then your fellowship is with us and with our teaching, then your fellowship will be with the Father. So therefore what does come first? Fellowship with Christ or fellowship with the Word? Fellowship with the Word of God.

Now it’s being very pious and I know most of you have heard this phrase before but you know, the pious jargon that goes around that says well, I think they make too much of doctrine, we just like to have a personal relationship with Christ but we don’t want all that doctrine business getting in the way of our personal relationship with Christ. Now how does that fit with verse 3? Does verse 3 say that we will have fellowship with the Father and then after we have fellowship with the Father then your fellowship will be with us, the apostles? Is that what verse 3 says? No it doesn’t. Verse 3 puts the apostles between us and God, and therefore puts their words and teachings between us and God, and you cannot have fellowship personally with Christ apart from the Word of God. And so that should solve that little argument. If you want a verse to cite when that little thing comes trotting to your door or you are on the telephone with somebody and they don’t… we don’t like doctrine, we just believe in a personal relationship with Christ, kind of thing, you just quote 1 John 1:3. Your fellowship with Jesus Christ is because you have fellowship with the Word, period, and it’s not the other way around.

Now why is this; this is not just trying to be hard-nosed toward believers. That’s not the point of this passage; it’s related to how your soul works. Let’s go back and look at the soul once again. It shows you why it has to be that way and why people who say they have a personal relationship with Christ independent of doctrine are wrong. Your soul isn’t built to function that way. Here’s your soul; here’s the mind; the mind has thoughts in it; the conscience uses the mind for understanding but the mind uses the conscience for categories. And all of this means that you have to have ideas first, before your conscience can operate. Your conscience can’t swing an emotion unless you give it something to work with. How are you going to give it something to work with apart from the Word of God? You have emotions down here, what can emotions give the conscience? Nothing. Emotions can’t give the conscience a thing; the only thing that gives the conscience something is the mind. This is why in the Old Testament mind and conscience are always together under the word “lab,” long “a” and the “b” is pronounced like a “v”, lab, it is the word for heart in the Hebrew and it never means emotions, it means mind and conscience but it never refers to emotions. So why do you suppose the Holy Spirit, when He had the canon written, was so careful to put the vocabulary accurately? Because he knew there would be a great confusion. But emotions contribute zero to the conscience. Therefore, the man who walks in integrity or here the man who walks in the light first has fellowship with the teachings of the apostles that are stored in his conscience. And when he is line with the Word of God, then and only then is he in fellowship with Christ personally.

Do you see that? If you see that, and if you grasp what I have just told you, it will save you a lot of heartache, it will save you a lot of wasted hours fiddling around with emotional activities when you could spend all that time taking in the Word which you desperately need and I so desperately need.

Let’s go back to Proverbs 10 and see what happens, the result of the man who walks in integrity. “He that walks uprightly,” or “in the integrity” or lines his mind up under the authority of his conscience, “He that walks uprightly walks surely,” now this is a benefit. Here you have a tremendous benefit and blessing that follows from adhering to the conscience. The word “surely” is batach; it was an Arabic word for wrestling. It originally meant to pick somebody up and throw them down on their face and then came to mean you’re lying flat sprawled out on something. And from that it came to mean you’re totally laid out, resting completely on something. And therefore it is used in the Old Testament as a word picture for faith. Faith is total, complete lying out on a platform that holds you. So the batach here, used as an adverb means trustingly or with confidence. And one of the fringe benefits of a person who walks with integrity is that he has tremendous confidence. Why does he have confidence? We’ll see why when we finish with the last part of the verse. But he has… outwardly you will see this; he walks confidently.

A man whose conscience bothers him you can always tell; he’s always afraid somewhere along the line he’s going to be found out and this always causes him to act peculiarly in certain areas. If you watch long enough you’ll always see it. He always has a weakness somewhere that he’s afraid somebody is going to find out. But if you’ve correctly oriented to grace, if you have taken everything by 1 John 1:9 to the Father, if somebody finds out about something that’s too bad for them because as far as you’re concerned you’ve straightened it out with the Lord, the Lord accepts it and that’s all and you move on and you don’t feel guilty about it. The word to walk safely, or surely, here means without guilt complex. And that’s a tremendous blessing that comes when a believer adheres to his conscience. He walks without guilt, he isn’t afraid that somebody is going to find something out. Who cares, the Lord has settled it, period. If someone wants to make an issue out of it, let them; if they like to dig up dirty laundry go in the laundry business. There are a lot of people like that, good Christians and others.

All right, the last part of Proverbs 10:9, “But he that perverts his ways shall be known.” “He that perverts his ways” again is one word that contrasts with “he that walks uprightly.” “He that perverts his ways” is a Hebrew participle and it looks like this, it is (?) ma ‘aqash, this is a hard “h” and it is a participle that refers to twisting, and it has a particular flavor to it.

To get that turn to Micah 3:9, this shows you what twisting means and how the Jewish person would read this and what he had on his mind when he saw the word, “he that perverts.” What is a “pervert?” Micah 3:9 this is a condemnation upon the government officials of Israel. “Hear this, I pray you, you heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment and pervert all equity.” The word “pervert” means to twist. Now you don’t have to be a scholar to understand what is happening in verse 9. What is happening in verse 9? Isn’t it that the government officials are taking standards of justice and because they do not want to enforce those standards of justice, are replacing God’s standards with their own. In other words, they’re substituting God’s righteous law for their own feeling of what should happen. It’s like the Supreme Court today, that regularly tries to replace the Constitution with their own sociologically derived decisions. It is a function of destroying law and replacing it with tyranny. And so the leaders in Micah’s day were doing the same thing; they were replacing God’s law, given through Moses with sociological norms and standards, and this God calls perversion. The judges were perverts because they were transforming God’s absolute standards into man’s standards. All right, that’s the meaning or the word picture behind pervert, or twist.

Now turn back to Proverbs 10:9, “him that perverts his ways,” what is this. Let’s go back to the soul and peek inside. We’ve looked inside of the soul of the man who walks uprightly. Now we’re going to look inside the soul of the man who perverts his way to see what happens. He’s faced with a situation. Let’s make it the rulers, that’s what Micah says for illustration, that’s fresh in our minds, he takes a situation that involves a government or legal decision. That’s the situation that presents itself to their mind; their mind immediately goes to their conscience, but when the conscience goes to feedback and judge, ala Hebrews 4:12, they don’t like what their conscience says, and so therefore they begin to rebel land begin mental rebellion or mental revolt. The mind revolts against the conscience and starts using various defense mechanisms, fantasy, (?), isolation, suppression, projection, and begins to deploy its arsenal of weapons against the conscience, it begins to severe this link and so we begin to have a callous or scar tissue set in between the conscience and the mind. The mind is now in revolt against the conscience because it doesn’t like to submit to the authority of God that is revealed in the conscience.

So, “he who perverts his ways,” now the word “pervert” is a measure of what’s happening. Here is your mind; the mind has rejected the authority of the conscience, therefore the mind is now in revolt. So the mind in its response, what does it do? The first area, it begins to replace divine viewpoint with human viewpoint, and so just as the rulers in Micah’s day were replacing Moses’ law with their own sociological norms and standards, so the believer who perverts his way is replacing the divine viewpoint framework that it may have taken him ten or fifteen years to build up, he may have been a very faithful believer, he may have been an outstanding believer, but no believer is ever immune to this on this side of death. As long as we live in this world every believer can go out in the toulies. As some of your young people call this, the toulie trip, the two t’s. It’s not an epidemic hopefully, but if you hear it that’s what they mean, an extended period of carnality, out in the toulies.

All right, so part of this toulie trip is when human viewpoint begins to replace divine viewpoint. Another part of the response; now the mind has been weakened because human viewpoint basically always is unstable, and so now down here the emotions begin to disrespect the authority of the mind so you have a second revolution. The mind revolted against the conscience, now the emotions revolt against the authority of the mind. So now the mind has a very weak control here, and then finally a third aspect of the mind’s response to the situation over here is the area of overt behavior, this is treasonous by God’s standard. So those are the three areas of how the mind responds when you have “he that perverts his way.” His ways includes his mental ways, his emotional ways, and his overt ways, and “he who continually,” remember it’s a participle, it’s saying it’s characteristic that this guy does, over and over and over, it’s characteristic that he perverts his ways and this process develops chaos in the heart.

“He who perverts his ways,” but what is it true about “he who perverts his ways,” the last phrase of verse 9, “he that perverts his ways shall be known.” It is a passive voice. A passive voice, the subject receives the action. This means “he shall be exposed.” A person who perverts his ways is going to be found out under the law of self-destruction which we’ve studied before. How is the person who perverts his ways known? He is known in several things. First of all, here’s human viewpoint. If he develops, and you and I develop enough human viewpoint what’s going to happen to us? We’re going to find ourselves not able to use the faith technique in a crisis, that’s the first sign of it, right there. There’s going to be something happen that may be totally independent of your particular area that you think God is going to test you and you think God’s going to test you over here, huh-un, He’ll come in over here, over in this area somewhere, and you’ll fall apart. Why will you fall apart? Because you have… maybe you haven’t even noticed it, that’s why Jeremiah says the human heart “is desperately wicked” and deceitful. We can deceive ourselves and actually be building up masses of human viewpoint and never even notice it until we are found out. And we are found out under conditions of pressure. This is why Jesus Christ taught in the book of Revelation, as well as Jehovah’s is “I am He who tests the heart and the reins,” that means God is constantly evaluating us through circumstances to see what’s on our minds and on our emotions.

So the first way that he is found out is because human viewpoint can’t trust; human viewpoint can’t relax; human viewpoint always falls apart under conditions of pressure and it always results in some screwball plan or gimmick. That’s one way that he is found out.

Another way that he is found out is in his emotions; the emotions go haywire. Now everyone has emotions, this is not saying or advocating a zombaic state or something. Emotions are fine within limits controlled by the mind but when the emotions break out of those limits then you are in trouble. People just relax, you have some people that get very high, called condition mania, and just for no reason, all of a sudden they’re very ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, and you wonder where the switch is, turn them off, disconnect them, where’s their plug, let’s unplug it. And their emotions are really going 100 miles an hour and it’s totally unrelated to anything that is available in their immediate environment. We call that condition mania. The opposite is depression, that’s when their emotions are awful; they’re just totally depressed, for no reason at all. Now it’s not wrong to be depressed when there’s a reason for it, scripturally; Jesus Christ was when He wept, He was depressed for a while. It is a normal emotional response but when you have depression over nothing, over absolutely nothing, maybe it’s chemicals or something else, hormones, but if it’s not and it’s spiritual it’s because the emotions have broken out.

Or you could have another condition of sheer apathy. This person walks around and they are just completely emotionally drained, and that’s a condition where the emotions are just shot because of something screwy somewhere. And then you have anxiety reaction, people are afraid of their shadow, have to have lights on 30 degrees so there won’t be any shadow. Anxiety, anxiety over nothing. They may have some little tiny problem and they build that thing up until the point where they just almost fall apart. All right, that’s what it means that “he who perverts his ways will be found out.”

Now there are cases, particularly with manic depressive conditions where they are chemically caused, and some of these conditions can be caused by various hormones so don’t come to the conclusion just because you may, or you may have some friends in this state, that it’s always due to spiritual reasons. Remember what we said about the soul; the soul includes both the immaterial sprit and the material body. So they can be affected from either side.

And finally, a third way in which he will be found out is through his overt actions. We’ll see more of that in King Saul tonight and how he was found out as time goes on by the screwball decisions that he makes. .

Now there is one interesting case that illustrates 9 better than anything that I’ve given you. It’s found in one of the psychologist’s books that has been written, O. Hobart Mowrer, Crisis in Psychology and Religion. He relates the story of a student who was a major in psychology, a man by the name of Yoakum; this boy was an intense schizophrenic and after he got reasonably well from his schizophrenia, Hobart and Allen had the boy write a critique of how he got involved and what was on his mind when he was involved in this schizophrenic state. And the content of what Wilkins wrote is very interesting. He was at college and he didn’t go into the particular problem but he had fouled up somewhere and violated his conscience. In terms of verse 9 he had “perverted his way,” and the schizophrenia was a way of perversion for him. It started out with some simple act; he was afraid people would find out that he had done this thing. So it was a fear. Now what he should have done, what any person that knew doctrine should have done was use 1 John 1:9 and if some restitution needed to be made and God directed, take care of it, move on, don’t be so proud to think that you can’t screw up, we’re all this side of the fall, we all have sin natures. So relax, take it to the Lord, let His grace handle the problem. But no, Wilkins didn’t do that.

He had this simple act and he was desperately afraid that his parents would find out, he was desperately afraid that certain members of the faculty would find out. And so instead of confessing his sin, instead of if he was an unbeliever of coming to Jesus Christ for total cleansing, instead of doing all that he kept it to himself. And then as he wrote in his own words: The real goal I had for acting the way I had was simply to avoid (?).” That was my real goal in life, to avoid being found out, “to avoid (?) and so therefore I quickly found that in order to avoid censure I would just avoid being understood by other people.’ And so you see what happened was at first Wilkins was able to nullify his own conscience. This is quickly done through scar tissue, and the person can develop scar tissue and essentially wipe out their conscience. But there are other consciences in the universe and there is other people around so instead of dealing with the problem, no he’s wiped out, this is the first perversion, he has “perverted his way” by short-circuiting the work of his conscience; he has tubed it out and now the next thing is he’s got to fight back against the conscience’s of his classmates. And so Wilkins began to act queerly and he noticed the more queerly he acts the more people would avoid him, and so by acting queerly he separated himself from others and went into isolation, and schizophrenia. And the schizophrenia wasn’t a disease, in this case it wasn’t caused by body chemistry, it wasn’t caused by something he inherited from his parents. No-no.

Schizophrenia was simply a defense mechanism so that he could pervert his ways and avoid being known; but eventually he was found out. Fortunately he was and that was his cure, because when it all came out, for some strange reason the schizophrenia instantly disappeared.

Proverbs 10:9, then, warns us about perverting our ways. If you are a believer here this morning and you know that you are out of fellowship over certain points of rebellion, you usually can tell them very easily by simply asking yourself, where is it in my life that I can’t give thanks? A very obvious little test. Where is it that I really can’t give thanks and I am in rebellion against God for permitting this in my life?

Where is some of those points? Don’t pervert your way; don’t even try to pervert your ways because Proverbs 10:9 tells you that one of the laws of the soul is that you will be found out.

[tape hard to hear; accuracy may not be the best]