Clough Proverbs Lesson 54
DI #1: The Law of the Soul III – The Ultimate Mystery
of the Soul
Before we continue
our study in the book of Proverbs I’d like time to answer one question that was
handed in, a multiple or complex question, all on the same topic. Is there ever a time when a child can stop
being obedient. If a parent wants you to
do something that you would rather not do, like go to graduate school, for
example, and you are not under them financially do you still have to obey them
after a certain age? What about
Christ? You stated in an earlier lesson
that the pressures of being in His responsible position caused Him to look much
older; doesn’t the Christian life deal especially with demonic pressure cause
you to fall apart faster?
Well, first the
authority problem in the third divine institution. The rule in all the divine institutions is
that the institutions themselves are structured according to the Word of God
and when the people in the authority over those structures rebel against the Word
of God in a very obvious way and prevent the Word of God from being applied
inside those divine institutions, the same condition you have with just and
unjust war; all wars are not just and the individual believer has to decide
when and where he draws the line based on God’s Word. And it’s the same thing in a family
situation; the Word of God recommends that at times the family be broken, such
as in Jonathan’s case with Saul, we’ll see how later on that family unit is
broken because he’s a son, obeys the Word, the father rejects the word and
there comes a termination of legitimate authority. But the other rule on the other side of the
fence is Luke 2 where Jesus Christ does submit to His parents even when His parents
are wrong. In that situation His parents
had legitimate authority and they’re using it but they’re not misusing it;
they’re not compelling Jesus to disobey the Word of God, even though they are
wrong themselves. Just parents being
wrong is no excuse for any child to violate their authority. Under extreme cases, which are rarer than you
believe, the parent does sometimes interfere with the application of the
Word. In this case then the parent no
longer warrants obedience of the children.
The second part of
the question about the pressures in the Christian life, Jesus Christ
apparently, from gospel remarks did look older than His age. The reason given is in the passage in John 2
which we won’t have time to go into but it’s hinted in that passage that Jesus
Christ looked some 10 to 20 years older than He was. The reason why was because of the tremendous
pressures that Jesus Christ faced. On
the other hand, to balance it off, Moses, when he died looked like a middle
aged man when he was very old. He looked
about 30 years younger than he actually was.
It’s variable and depends on the situation. The Christian does involve tremendous
pressures. However, the Christian also
gives you answer to those pressures.
So in answer to
the final Christian, doesn’t the Christian life deal especially with demonic
pressure cause you to fall apart faster?
It depends who you are; if you’re a person who goofs off and takes in
the Word of God about once a month and so forth, it will cause you to fall
apart faster; you’ll wish you were an unbeliever where things were simple
again. But if you are a believer who
takes the Word of God seriously and applies it, no problem.
Let’s turn to
Proverbs 14:10 and today we continue our study on the laws of the soul. Remember the book of Proverbs in this
section, between chapters 10 and 22 deal with the way creation is set up and
the way it runs. And in Proverbs
Let’s look at
Proverbs 14:10 and we’ll have to take it very slowly because there are terms in
this verse that must be understood and they are very misunderstood throughout
Christendom today. “The heart knows its
own bitterness, and a stranger does not intermeddle with its joy.” The first word we must study and spend
considerable time in review is the word “heart.” In the Hebrew the word “heart” looks like
this, lev, pronounced l-e-b, but the
“b” sounds like a v, it’s lev. The first thing you want to understand about
this word, lev, is that this that
this is the only word in the Old Testament for heart, for mind, for and for innards,
the inner center of something. The third
meaning of heart that I just gave is the way it’s used in English; so and so
gets to the heart of the matter, that’s common.
But very few people understand there is no word for “mind” secondly, in
the Old Testament, none! And therefore
the distinction that is often made between a head knowledge and a heart
knowledge is wrong because there isn’t any distinction made in God’s Word,
there’s only one kind of knowledge, period.
And there is only one area, the heart.
The heart is not divided into emotions and mind in the Bible.
To see this I want
you to see a phrase that recurs throughout the Old Testament and comes back
into the New. It occurs many times but
the nearest location I can find to the passage at hand is Psalm 7:9; this verse
shows you why the heart has nothing to do with emotions. “Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to
an end, but establish the just; for the righteous God tests the hearts and the
reins [minds and hearts].” Now there are
two words here, heart and kilyah, and
kilyah is kilyoth for plural, it is the word for kidneys, and the two are
used as a word pair to describe that part of us that God tests. Now, first before discussing “test” let’s
look at the kidney and the heart. The kilyah refers to the whole part of the
kidney and also refers to the fat pads that are on top of the kidney. And we know now in modern medicine that those
are the adrenal glands. This was
recognized in the name adrenal because it’s related to the word reins,
r-e-i-n-s as you see if you have a King James translation of verse 9. It’s very disappointing to see but in
passages the New Scofield has shifted the reins here, they shouldn’t have, they
should have left the normal straightforward organic physical organ of the
body. Don’t worry about getting too
involved in this as far as mind/soul category, just first think of the bodily
organ, because that’s what the Jew thought of first, something concrete, not
abstract.
The word “heart,”
he knew what the word “heart” was.
Medicine in the ancient world was far more developed than most people
think. For example, in studying some of
the monies in
Now if that’s the
case then we have at least one term for the emotional life, and that is in your
King James the reins. Well, if the reins
refer to the emotions, obviously the heart can’t. Therefore, the word “heart” never refers to
emotions. The word “heart” refers to
something other than the emotions. And
what does it refer to. We’ll go on and
develop it but the heart includes the mind and the conscience. It also includes what we would call in
psychology the ego, from the Hebrew point of view. But those two words God tests, your mind and
conscience together, the heart, and He tests your emotional life.
Now that phrase,
“test” means to apply pressure, it is the word to refine metal, and the word
“test,” “God who tests your heart and your emotions” will explain why many of
us have the trials we do in our Christian life.
Testing means that God brings to bear pressures upon you to bring out
into history in an overt fashion what your heart and emotions really are
like. So God is allowing us opportunities
to give testimony to the sanctifying ministry of the Holy Spirit and/or our
carnality, because under pressure the worst or the best always comes out. Now under testings and pressures the heart
and the emotional life emerge and become obvious. If a person is carnal and has been in
carnality for some time the mind is in rebellion against the conscience. As a result of this the emotions are in
rebellion against the mind and you have a complete fouled up chain of command
with the result that the emotions are always out of control. It is not a case of having emotions or not
having them, everyone has emotions. The
question however is whether your emotions are in revolt. And the person in habitual carnality has
their emotions in revolt and that is what God is looking for when He tests the
heart and the emotions. He will bring a
pressure into your life to see whether you’ve got the chain of command right or
wrong.
To see this phrase
again turn to Psalm 26:2; it actually occurs many, many times in the Old
Testament, I’m just showing you a sample today but I want to show you enough of
a sample so you will be convinced that God really is interested in your heart
and your kidneys. Here’s a psalm of
David, “Examine me, O Lord, and test me,” see, there’s your testing, and what
is the testing? Apply pressure, to see
whether you’re going to fall apart or to see whether you’re going to get with
it, to see whether you can apply the Word of God under pressure, “try my reins
and my heart,” in other words, give me an opportunity to prove my
sanctification by my ability to cope with life’s pressures, that I will not
fall apart, that I will apply the Word, that I will give thanks, and I will
enjoy it. You see one reason that God
looks at our emotions is to see whether we enjoy trusting Him in the times of
pressure.
So when God looks
down and He says okay, now there’s a believer, they’ve been sitting in LBC for
enough years to get some doctrine, so what I’ll do is I’ll apply pressure to
them and just see if they can take it.
Now God always screens the pressure by 1 Corinthians 10:13 and Psalms
125. So the pressure He brings in are
always especially tailored just for little old you. They are not general pressures. Every trial that you face has been screened
by God. And therefore, when He applies
the pressure the issue is this: God says to you look, I know you can take this
pressure or I wouldn’t give it to you.
That’s 1 Corinthians 10:13. So
the first thing about the pressure is that God knows in advance in His
omniscience, in fact, He’s known forever and ever, for all eternity, how you
would be this moment in time and He knew how you could be tested
legitimately. You se, it would be unfair
of God to give you or to give to me a trial that we couldn’t take. That would be very unfair of God to bring
some pressure in your life that would overwhelm you, and God, therefore, would
be robbed of His righteousness and His justice.
But God is righteous and just and therefore when He brings a trial in
your life, He brings it in righteously and justly. And so therefore there will never be a trial
or pressure that is beyond your limitations from God’s point of view that
is.
Now from our point
of view that’s another story. Even
though God knows and it is factually correct that we have the capacity to
handle it because we have been exposed to the Word of God enough to handle it,
we don’t always realize that. And so
part of the testing that is given here, the testing of the heart and the
adrenals, is not only to show this in history but to convince ourselves. You see, some people have often gone through
a trial and they’ll say after they’ve been through it, gee, I didn’t know I
could take it but you know, the Word of God works. How about that? And they come out convinced of the
effectiveness of the Word of God by their success under pressure, so now they
have grown. Now they could have done
this, in theory before, but they didn’t know it, you didn’t know it, I didn’t
know it. Now after the test they know
it, you know it and I know it. So
everybody knows it and therefore an issue has been proven.
Now that’s the
testing of the heart and the reins. When
you pass a trial you can never come back and reject the trial. See, often times we reject the trial at the
start; God tests our hearts and our reins and we say no, I’m at the end of my
rope, this test is beyond my ability to cope with it; this test is too much,
I’ve had it. To paraphrase the question
a while ago, don’t I fall apart fast.
And this is the response of unthanksgiving. This is lack of thanksgiving to God’s
pressure and it denies His sovereignty and it denies His righteousness and it
denies His justice. Every time you say
when you face some pressure you can’t cope with we are denying the essence of
God. We’re saying God, I can’t, God,
scoot up here so we can kept it under control so we deny His sovereignty; God
has a bad motive in mind to test me, why doesn’t He test somebody else, why do
I get it all the time, and that denies His righteousness and denies His
justice. So that’s the first response
that is bad to a test of the heart and the adrenals.
But you can
rejoice, an opposite way is to say yes to the trial, I’m not saying you ha-ha,
everything’s going to be fun but all right, so I’ve got some pressure, so I’ve
got a trial, so what. God’s grace is bigger
than any trial, God’s grace provided salvation en toto for me years and years
and years before I was even arrived on the scene in history, in fact, before
Adam was created Jesus Christ was crucified in the plan of God, that’s 1 Peter
1, “slain before the foundation of the world.”
So even before I faced the pressure, as bad as it may be, I can say give
thanks for two things: God’s sovereignty, God’s righteousness and God’s
justice, that that trial has my personal worth, value and good in mind, and therefore,
thank you Father for this pressure because now this is going to give me an
opportunity to show forth your grace in history. This trial is going to give an opportunity to
show your Word is valid today. Now
that’s the proper way to respond to a test of the heart and the adrenals.
One more to show
that this phrase is picked up by the writers of the New Testament, Revelation
2. Now so far in the references who is
it that does the testing of the heart and the adrenals? God, isn’t it? All right, isn’t it interesting then who
takes over this function in Revelation 2:23, this is a message to the church at
Thyatira, and Jesus Christ is on an inspection trip. This is like in the military; He conducts an
operational readiness inspection to see if the churches are functioning. And the first three chapters of the book of
Revelation is how Jesus Christ inspects the Church. And I want you to notice that He goes to the
pastors; the pastor is held responsible, not anyone else, for the
congregation’s condition. The pastor is
the one who receives the inspection report in the book of Revelation, not some
outside Christian organization. It is
the pastor of the local church that is in the chain of command and the pastor
of the local church stands or falls according to his inspection report here.
And so therefore
in Revelation 2:23 Jesus Christ is commenting on His report on the church at
Thyatira, He has walked through the congregation, He has investigated certain
believers in that congregation, and He’s noticed several things. For example, before we get to that verse look
at verse 19, He says, “I know thy works, and love, and service, and faith, and
thy patience, and they works; and the last to be more than the first.” In other words he notices certain evidences
of tremendous growth in the church at Thyatira, He notices evidence of
spirituality and He says all right, I’ve inspected that congregation, I’ve gone
through and I’ve examined the hearts and the reins of those people and I see
that they are producing, that there is bona fide production. They are applying the Word of God
consistently.
Nevertheless,
verse 20, “I have a few things against you,” in other words, as any inspection
there are going to be some things wrong and there are some things wrong with
every congregation. Some people haven’t
noticed that yet, always thinking that there’s going to be some other
congregation that’s going to have all the problems solved. Huh-un, and the book of Revelation should
show you and educate you. Every
congregation has something wrong with it and here is what is wrong with the
church at Thyatira. “…because you allow
that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce My
servants to commit fornication, and to eat things offered unto idols,” they
allowed a woman in the pulpit; that was their first problem. And this particular woman was an apostate who
violated the norms and the standards of the Word of God. She evidently was demon possessed, she was a
prophetess and she was giving out false prophecy and false information.
Verse 21, “I gave
her time” or opportunity, “to repent,” there’s God’s grace, Jesus Christ says
I’m the commander of the Church and I have given this woman time to repent of
her sins and of her fornication and she has not repented so [22] “I’m going to
cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great
tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.
[23] And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches” all the churches, all the congregations
“will know,” how will they know? Because
of the historical work of Christ in dividing and pressuring a congregation, in
straightening a congregation out by fire.
I “and all the churches are going to hear about and they are going to
know that I am He who searches the adrenals and heart,” now who searched the
adrenals and heart in the Old Testament?
God, Jehovah; therefore they will know that I am Jehovah, and here is
one of the claims to the deity of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. He identifies Himself with Jehovah and all
the churches will know that I am Jehovah and as Jehovah I test the emotions and
the heart of every believer, and I will give every one of you according to your
works. This is the believers and the
discipline upon believers.
That should show
you enough at the very beginning of Proverbs 14:10 that the word “heart” does
not mean emotions. There’s another word
entirely for emotions. “Heart” is
something else again. Now why
heart? Let’s look at it again, see if we
can get a little closer to it. Why
heart? Remember I keep telling you don’t
think of these things as abstractions or (?) primarily. The Jews never did it that way. The way Jews learned spiritual truth was
looking at physical creation, and they looked at the heart.
Now let’s look at
the heart for a moment, the physical heart, the real heart, pump, pump, pump,
that one. And let’s see what it does and
let’s see why God’s Word for the Holy Spirit is the author of this, why God wants
us to look at our physical heart in order to understand our souls. The first thing and the major thing about the
heart is that it has life in itself. How
do we know this? Because you can take a
heart outside of the body, apply certain pressure on it, and it will beat
indefinitely. The heart does not need
the brain. The heart can go on by
itself. In fact the nerves from the
brain can be totally severed from the heart and the heart will just go right on
beating; the heart has the inherent ability in its own muscle to beat in
rhythm. The brain controls it, for
example, in the medulla section of the brain there’s the cardio inhibiter and
the cardio accelerator; these are points of nerves that speed your heart up and
slow it down but they don’t kept the heart beating, they only regulate the
heart. And the heart can exist and pump
without any brain. So therefore instead
of thinking the way we do in the West, and the way the Greeks do, of the brain
as the center of life, the Hebrews were far more correct physiologically; the
brain is not the center of life, the heart is.
Can you imagine a brain functioning without the heart, without any
supply of food, without any oxygen?
Where would it get it from? The
brain cannot function without the heart but the heart can function without the
brain. So therefore we have a situation
where the heart is correctly designated by the Holy Spirit to be the center of
life. It is independent of other parts
of the body.
What else does the
heart do? The heart drives and nourishes
the whole body, so you have nourishment, both in oxygen and food; the (?) the
blood. So the heart, basically, is the
physical center of man, the supplier of life.
The heart is your supplier of your life.
You can’t exist without it.
Now by analogy
what is the heart spiritually? The heart
spiritually, according to the Word of God is the center, the spiritual center
of man and includes the ego, the mind, and the conscience, as you can determine
for yourself if you just get a concordance and look up every word, every time
the word “heart” occurs and ask yourself, what is it talking about? Don’t take my word for it, it’s in every
concordance so you check it for yourself.
So the heart is the spiritual center of man.
Now there’s one
problem and that’s brought out in Proverbs 14:10, “The heart knows its own
bitterness, and a stranger never intermingles with its joy.” This means that the heart has a life unto
itself. Now to see this principle let’s
think physically first. Start with the
body and then we’ll work into the spiritual matter. The heart blesses the brain; the brain is
dependent upon the heart, not the other way around. You can’t stop your heart. The brain is dependent upon the heart, not
independent. Therefore, by analogy, in
the spiritual realm what is called the heart includes and is the basis of what
is called the mind. Now the word “heart”
sometimes includes the whole system; the word heart occurs and includes the
brain. The reason for it is that in the
circulatory system, arteries and veins go to your brain, so the word “heart”
can also refer to that entire circulatory system besides the physical
pump.
Now the word
“heart” spiritually can refer to what we might call the pump and the arteries
and veins, so it’s the whole circulatory system; that’s one use. That’s when the heart includes the mind. But the mind, what we call our conscious
mind, what you use to think with, at least some of us use to think with and
that mind is dependent upon our heart.
Spiritually speaking our understanding is a function of something else
more basic, and here is where is destroyed immediately the whole concept of
human viewpoint. Since the time of the
Greeks; man has worshiped the power of the intellect; the intellect alone would
solve man’s problems, and the Word of God says no, that’s not true because the
intellect itself is dependent on something more basic, just like your physical
brain is dependent on something more basic.
All right, what is
it dependent upon? We get a clue in the
word “know.” “The heart knows its own
bitterness,” “know” is a Hebrew participle; the Hebrew participle means
continuous action, it continually knows, it has total awareness, total
awareness of its own bitterness. Notice
in the last part of verse 10 the word “joy.”
So the two nouns, “bitterness” and “joy” depict the range of human
experience and this verse teaches that your heart, my heart, knows continually
the entire range of experience. It
monitors, it knows, it has what we might call intuitive contact with the whole
area of man. Now, does your mind? No, the mind only understands some of your
bitterness; the mind only understands some of your joy. It never can understand all of its
bitterness; it can never understand fully all of its joy. You mind understands some of you but not all
of you. The heart is more basic than the
mind; the heart knows everything about you.
The mind only knows part.
Now we can see
something else of the mysteries of the heart.
If you turn to Ecclesiastes 3:11, the heart in Scripture cannot fully be
understood and that’s the big point of Proverbs 14:10, the human heart will
never fully be understood (?). The
reason is you can’t get outside of yourself to look at yourself. So the heart can never fully be understood,
Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells some other features about this heart. Let’s look at it again; here’s your mind,
let’s give you some concrete situation.
You’re very happy over certain things; suppose right now you’re sitting
there, some of you look bitter, some of you look joyful, some of you look in
between, and then some don’t look but nevertheless there’s a range of how you
feel and what’s happening inside you right now.
Now there are certain things that you can monitor; you can sit there and
say I’m not, I’m cold, my heart’s beating, I’m breathing, I feel this emotion,
I can’t stand the overhead projector, I like the girl in the front row or
something else, but things are going on inside.
Aall these things that are going on inside you can’t fully
understand. In fact, there are things
going on inside you that you are not aware of right this moment. This is why, we’ll make the application in a
moment but this is why the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not a self experience,
we’ll get to that in a moment.
Ecclesiastes 3:11,
“He,” God, “has made everything beautiful in its time,” now that was taken out
of context and used for a song several years ago, unfortunately not anything to
do with Solomon’s thought. “also He has
west the world in their heart,” now what does this mean in verse 11, “set the
world in their heart.” The word “world”
means the sense of eternity or the need for absolutes. He has set that in the heart of man. In other words, we are designed with a need
that can only be filled by an infinite person.
That’s Ecclesiastes 3:11.
Why? Look at it this way; here
you are; no matter how smart you are you can only have knowledge that extends
out to a certain limit; you are limited in your knowledge. No matter who you are, no matter how much
education you have, your mind is limited.
But in order to decide things you have to have infinite knowledge. Why?
Because you’ve got to operate on the basis of what is truth and what is
falsehood; you’ve got to operate on the basis of what is right and what is
wrong and you can’t operate on that basis and I can’t either, unless we tap in
on absolutes. But the trouble is, as
limited man we don’t have any absolutes, we can’t generate them from
ourselves. Therefore, Ecclesiastes 3:11
teaches that man’s heart has a need for absolutes that can’t be met by
itself. This is why every person,
including non-Christian and unbelievers as well as believers daily operate
borrowing from the Lord.
The unbeliever in
many ways is unconsciously dependent upon God at practically every point in his
life. How? Give some specifics. All right, the first place where an
unbeliever is consciously, 24 hours, dependent upon God is every time he opens
his mouth. Every time the unbeliever
talks or says a word with meaning he is borrowing an absolute; he is borrowing
something that can only come from infinite knowledge, the concept of truth
itself is an absolute. Anytime some
unbeliever walks up to you with that famous cliché, all things are relative, he
has just made one of the most titanic absolute statement in existence because
says a truth, all things are relative; in other words, he has omniscience and
has gone through the length and the height and the breadth and the depth of the
universe and not only that he has gone past, centuries past, centuries future
and is able to deduce with infinite knowledge that all things truly are
relative. You see the internal
contradiction. The average unbeliever in
the street, when he wants to get off the hook and you point out something that
is true versus something that is false, something that is right and something
that is wrong, it’s a sidewalk argument, used by imbeciles to avoid the
authority of the Word of God. All things
are relative… truly, is that so? The
next question you should respond to is that true, and see what he does in
response to that question. It’d be a
most interesting conversation to pursue.
But that is one
way every man, Christian and non-Christian is totally dependent upon an
absolute somewhere, some place. A second
way in which unbelievers are dependent at all times on God is in the spiritual
realm. We contemplate in the mental
realm whether is true or false but on the spiritual realm, that there is truly
justice versus injustice. Certainly many
non-Christians today shout about the injustice and that which is just and we
want social justice for this and social justice for that. Where does justice come from? Who determines justice? And that very concept is false. It is dependent upon something prior and that
is absolutes. So you see, don’t be
fooled, no matter how smart anybody is they still have God-consciousness,
whether they are believers or not they are still relying on absolutes from
God. Now, those who have received Christ
have bowed their knee morally speaking to God and accepted His salvation, and
therefore further things are granted.
Let’s turn back to
Proverbs 14:10 and finish this verse, summarizing its content and meaning. “The heart knows its own bitterness, and a
stranger does not intermeddle with its joy.”
This means first that the heart can never fully be understood by the
finite mind. I can never fully
understand my own heart, period. You can
never understand your heart, ever.
Therefore, that’s the first thing it says, that the heart is always an
infinite mystery. Conclusion: psychology
and psychiatry, when they attempt, and only when they do this, otherwise they
would be legitimate areas of science, but when psychology and psychiatry
attempt to come up with a complete and total theory of man they are attempting
the impossible, and the Christian can never agree with that as a goal in the
science of psychology. No Christian
psychologist who is biblically informed will ever agree that his goal in life
is to come up with a complete theory of the human heart. To make that goal as your ultimate goal is to
deny the Word of God, and to rebel against His authority that He has expressed
here in this verse. The heart is of
limits; only part of it can ever be known.
That’s one conclusion that psychology will always be a limited
science.
Another
conclusion, that is, when you confess your sins you are never confessing the
tenth of what all of them are; there are many, many sins in thought, word and
deed of which you have no understanding and which you may never understand. There may be sins and sin patterns that are
so complicated, that reach down into the very depths of your soul, that are so
deep it’s like an iceberg; here’s an iceberg, one-tenth above water. All right, that’s the way this heart is and
here’s a conscious mind, you say I’m going to confess my sin, and therefore
boom, I’m okay. Now that’s all right, we
do confess our sins, but here’s where you can see God’s grace in action. Learn this point and it will produce a
tremendous relaxation, particularly for some of you who have a tremendous
problem with guilt. Just listen and
understand (?) for a moment, and it’ll give you great understanding when you
deal with your own personal guilt.
Look, even if you
are operating with the most comprehensive understanding of Bible doctrine, even
if you were operating at your peak mentally, so that you could understand to
the maximum your heart, and you had a deep, rich relationship with the Lord
Jesus Christ, you would be confessing a very, very small amount of your sins,
even then. There’d be wads and wads and
wads and wads and wads underneath the water that you can never see. Now that is why, if you have memorized 1 John
1:9 and I hope all of you have memorized 1 John 1:9, if you haven’t, do
it. “If we confess our sins He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.” Now why do you suppose
the Holy Spirit tucked that “all unrighteousness” on there? Because above water are your sins, below
water are those unrighteousness things in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins,”
that which we can see above water, He will take care of the unknown ones. That is grace. [Tape turns]
…in the heart that
can never be (?) and consciously into the courtroom of your mind to deal with. Confessing never could be a legal thing in
the first place. It would always be a
partial trial, never a full complete trial.
The full complete trial occurs at justification when God reaches down in
your heart and says all right, all of it, ALL of it has been placed on Jesus
Christ, completely, all the way down into the dark deeps of the depths of the
mind into the heart, all of it under water, all of that I place legally on My
Son. And to all of that depth I apply
the righteousness of My Son’s work on the cross. Now that is done by grace and this is why I
keep saying to you that when you first become a Christian you never can
appreciate salvation because you have no understanding of the darkness down
here that was dealt with at the point of salvation. Some of it yes, you say oh, I had a great
sense of sin. So what? The sense of sin that you have at the time
you trusted in Christ, if you have trusted in Christ, was a thousandth of what
the sin was, less than that. So
therefore you can’t emotionally and subjectively appreciate Christ’s work when
you first become a Christian, any more than a child when he’s first born can
appreciate breathing. Did you ever have
a three week old infant tell you how nice it was to be living? He can’t appreciate that, he’s barely
conscious of it. And when a person
becomes a Christian it’s the same story, you are barely conscious of this. And that’s what’s so stupid about taking
somebody who has recently trusted the Lord Jesus Christ and have them trotting
out preaching the gospel some place. He
isn’t prepared to preach the gospel, he hasn’t grown enough.
All right, so this
is the third application; confession can’t be the means of saving you through
time. You don’t lose your salvation
because you don’t confess; it wasn’t set up on a legal basis. Confession was set up as a family thing
between you and your father. It is part
of the family, and God as your father isn’t going to embarrass you as His child
and isn’t going to require pulling out all the crud every time you have to
confess some sin. You confess what you
know and by faith you accept the cleansing from the rest and move on.
Now here’s what
happens: people confess something, like this, here’s the iceberg again. As icebergs are unfamiliar, the ice cubes in
your iced tea, they do the same thing as ice in water and the ratio is exactly
the same. The next time you have an ice
cube take a measuring stick and measure; how much of the ice cube is above the
water and how much is under the water, it’ll make a lovely experiment for
Sunday dinner. The ice cube is an
example of sin. All right, here’s the
ice cube at salvation; all of this is sin underneath here.
Now someone
confesses; they say oh, I’ve got sin, and so they confess their sin and they’ve
done it right, fine, they’ve used 1 John 1:9, but because of a false doctrine
of sin they immediately get back out of fellowship. Well, I confessed my sin and then I get out
of fellowship; I confess and get back out of fellowship, because of guilt. And the reason why is because you’ve got a
false concept lurking up here, and it is that your confession really does
something here; your confession doesn’t do a thing, all it does is tell the
Father that you recognize that part of the ice cube is above the water and you
take responsibility for it and move on, that’s all. That’s all confession is doing. God does the rest, you don’t do it. What about all this down here, who takes care
of that? God does. Do you feel it? No, because by definition it’s under water. The heart cannot be understood, you don’t
understand what’s going on underneath there.
So therefore will you please recognize that the Christian life is lived
with total dependency upon God at every point?
You don’t take your life into your hands at any point in the Christian
life. It’s all by grace, grace, grace and more grace. That is the application of the mystery of the
heart. The heart is so mysterious that
all we can do is follow the Word of God in the known areas and trust Him with
the rest.
Now turn to a
parallel verse, Proverbs 20:27, very similar except it approaches it from the
standpoint of the word “spirit.” “The
spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts” of the
belly. Now first we reverse the wording
because in the Hebrew it’s “the candle of the LORD” that’s the subject of the
sentence, predicate nominative is “the spirit of man.” “The candle of the LORD is the spirit of
man.” Now what’s the “candle of the
LORD?” It means the lamp of the Lord and
was used for five different ways in the Bible.
The lamp of the Lord is an expression used in the following ways.
First, the lamp of
the Lord was used as the lampstand in the tabernacle and there it spoke of
Jesus Christ as the light of the world.
So the first way lamp of God was used is that in the tabernacle, the
lampstand. This is sometimes in Jewish
art you’ll see this thing, it’s got seven candles on it, that’s the lampstand
in the tabernacle and originally it spoke of Jesus Christ as the light of the
world.
The second way the
word lamp of God was used was as the Law in Psalm 119. “Thy word is a lamp unto my way, and a light
unto my path,” and so forth. That was a
use of this same thing, the Law though in this aspect.
The third way in
which the lamp of God is used is 2 Peter 1:19 for Old Testament prophecy that
was fulfilled. “Take heed, as a lamp
that shines in a dark place,” Peter says.
So it’s fulfilled Old Testament prophecy.
A fourth way in
which the lamp of God was used in God’s Word is for Jesus Christ, John 5:35,
where John says, “He was a lamp in His generation,” a lamp of light, so Christ
Himself was called the lamp of God in John 5:35.
Point five, the
lamp of God is used for the churches in Revelation 1:12-13, remember John sees
a lampstand and Jesus Christ is in the middle of it and he says those lamps are
the seven churches. And so the fifth way
in which the lamp of God is used for churches.
What does this
mean? The lamp of God is the revelation of
God to His creation; all these meanings can be summarized by that
expression. The lamp of God equals God’s
revelation to His creation, in whatever form, in whatever age, whatever
dispensation that revelation takes, but the basic idea is God’s revelation of
Himself to creation.
Now therefore,
apply it to Psalm 20:27, “The lamp of the LORD,” translated, “God’s revelation
to creation is the spirit of man.” Now
what does that say? “The lamp of God” as
the revelation of God is man’s breath; in other words, what part of
creation? The rocks, the animals, the
plants, the stars or man? Which part of
creation is the revelation of God? It is
the spirit of man. So what part of
creation is the closest to God? The
spirit of man. What part of creation,
therefore, is the most hard to understand?
The spirit of man. What part of
creation is it that you need the Word of God to understand? The spirit of man. This is why psychology will forever be
limited. As long as psychology ignores
the categories of God’s Word it will make no progress in solving man’s
difficulties.
So, “The lamp of
God is the breath of man,” now the word “spirit” here is the word “breath,” it
is used interchangeably with pneuma
but it is not pneuma, the Greek word pneuma, the Hebrew had two words, ruach, ruach was the Hebrew word for
spirit, and then they had another one, nishmah,
and nishmah was the breath as it
comes out the mouth. The nishmah is physical breath. Therefore we have an analogy, like we did
with heart. Remember we dealt first when
we started this morning with the physical heart; we got an understanding of
that, we moved it over to understand the soul.
We’re going to do the same thing now.
Let’s study physical breath and move it back over.
The first thing
about breath; let’s form a seven part analogy between breath of man and his
spirit, human spirit. The first analogy
is the breath supplies the need for life.
Two areas, physically it supplies oxygen and on exhale not only removes
CO2 but allows speech. Breath, you can’t
speak without breath. And this becomes
critical when you sing and you have to regulate your breath but you’re
regulating your breath even when you’re learning to speak. Some of you involved in speech therapy know
this. So breath supplies two things,
oxygen and it makes speech possible.
Therefore, what by analogy, does the human spirit supply? The human spirit supplies the same thing
oxygen does in the spiritual realm, it supplies energy, and the same thing as
speech, it supplies or makes thought possible.
To the human spirit supplies basic forms of energy and it makes thought
possible; no spirit, no thought. This is
why thinking is a spiritual activity eventually. And why people who are lethargy spiritually
are usually lethargic mentally.
Secondly, the
second point of analogy between physical breath and the human spirit. Physical breath is like the atmosphere around
us; we are in an atmosphere of O2 and we interchange with that atmosphere. So also, according to Ephesians 2 we are
surrounded with a spiritual atmosphere of beings, and when we are born, at the
point of physical birth the human spirit is made like the atmosphere that
surrounds us in the spiritual realm, the principalities and the powers and so
on, which are unseen but all around us.
Man partakes of this spiritual atmosphere. This is why it is very, very foolish in deed
for someone to think that they can get on in the Christian life without the
Word. The Word is the only thing that
orients you to the spiritual atmosphere round about you, nothing else does, and
without the Word of God you’ll be victimized by spiritual delusions.
The third point of
analogy between physical breath and the human spirit is that breath through
oxygen gives strength, oxidation proceeds in the human body and as a result we
gain strength from it. The human spirit
gives strength, in some way we do not know but Paul says so in Ephesians 1 and
3. The human spirit is the source of
great strength. If you want subjectively
to understand a little bit about how this works I think I can give you one
that’s in Scripture and it will probably make some sense to most of you, if you
want an understanding of the power of the spirit. Remember, we are talking about things that are
hard to talk about, but there’s one analogy that’s given in the New Testament,
1 Corinthians 9, when Paul is talking about athletics. Now some of you have had experience in
athletics, running or doing anything in athletics. You know that when you’re pushing the limits
of your body how you get that feeling you want to quit, you want to quit, you
want to quit. It’s as though your whole
body cries out “quit!” Now when you have
that subjective sensation, when the body cries against you to quit, and you’re
involved and you know you have to push on and on and on and on and on when
everything says quit, quit, quit, quit, quit, you know you get a reservoir of
energy that says go on, go on, go on.
Now that reservoir is analogous to the human spirit. That’s what the human spirit does. And Paul uses that thing and ends, the last
two verses of 1 Corinthians 9 if you want to explore it. But to give you something that you can
personally understand within your own experience, that sensation of going on
when the body cries out quit is analogous to spiritual energy.
And that should
also demonstrate once and for all to you--is spiritual energy necessarily
associated with emotions? Now, when
you’re running or when you’re involved in some athletic sport, when you’ve been
running up and down a football field and its the fourth quarter and you’ve just
run 50 yards one way and 50 yards the other way and this has gone on for
quarter after quarter and you’re in the last quarter and you’ve just have had
it, it’s a hot day, and the shoulder pads are sticky and everything else, when
you have that thing go on I guarantee you don’t go oh, praise the Lord. That’s the last thing, you don’t feel like
that, you just have a dogged quiet determination, I am going to win this game,
we are going to continue, period. If anything,
your emotions are against you doing that because your body is crying out quit,
quit, quit, it’s too hot and you’re too tired, you’re out of breath, just quit,
quit, quit; your emotions aren’t with you then.
So that little
experience, if you run it through your mind should show you where to look for
spiritual energy and why it’s wrong when you experience emotions, which you
will in the Christian life, when you’re experience these emotions of joy and
pleasure, those are not necessarily the signs of your human spirit operating,
that may be just your response to what’s happening. There is something else there that is not
connected with that and you want learn to perceive the in draft of spiritual
strength; it will be enjoyable but in a very quiet way. There is a quiet joy and enjoyment from
spiritual strength under pressure. You
can face it, you’re aware of it and you give thanks for it. But it’s not something that gets you high
emotionally. There is a difference. Don’t confuse the two.
The fourth point
of analogy; breath comes in and the oxygen goes to every cell in your
body. O2 goes to every cell. The human spirit includes every part of your
body; the human spirit isn’t like a little ball that’s located in your
brain. The human spirit inter penetrates
all of your body. The reason we know
this is because when the spirit comes out of the body, as we’re going to see in
1 Samuel, it looks just like the body.
How come the human spirit has the same shape the body has? Because it says it occupies the whole body,
that’s why. So the human spirit occupies
the whole body; it is shaped like the body if you want to think of it as a
shape. This is why there’s only one
thing that can penetrate to where the human spirit is in every part of the body
and that’s the Word of God, Hebrews 4;12.
The fifth thing of
analogy between physical breath and the human spirit; both are common to all
men. Moral men have breath, immoral men
have breath; Christians have breath, non-Christian have breath; unbelievers have
a human spirit, Christians have a human spirit, Christian spirits are
regenerate and radically different but the unbeliever has them; if the
unbeliever didn’t have a spirit he couldn’t think, he couldn’t speak language,
he couldn’t have meaning, the gospel couldn’t be communicated.
The sixth point of
analogy between breath and the human spirit is that it continually operates in
your life; it’s not on again off again.
The breath continues and your human spirit continues at all times. Now in Proverbs 20:27 that verb “searching”
is what is meant by the sixth point of this analogy. Both are continuous. “The candle of the LORD” or “the revelation
of God is the human spirit.” Now what
does the human spirit do? The human
spirit is constantly searching, searching, searching, searching, searching, the
word “searching” is a Hebrew participle meaning continuous activity. Just as the oxygen goes into every part of
your body continually, if it doesn’t the body starts to die, so the human
spirit goes into every aspect of your soul, always, continually, and it is the
human spirit that knows.
Turn to 1
Corinthians 2:11, this is the last real point in the analogy; we’ll just leave
it at 6. This is an analogous truth to
what we just learned with the heart; the heart is a mystery, the spirit is in
some ways parallel to the heart and the spirit is a mystery because in 1
Corinthians 2:11, “For what man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of
man which is in him?” So what is Paul
saying? That where you are fully known
is in your human spirit. That’s, by the
way, why conscience is located in the human spirit. Your conscience knows you. So the human spirit constantly knows all your
inward parts, you are constantly known.
But you cannot be aware of this.
So by summary,
both of these verses in Proverbs teach that if this circle represents all that
can be known about you as a person, that circle represents what you know about
it. And a few other people know about
this much about you, so you see, you are a big mystery. And this truth should help you understand why
salvation must always be by the unseen grace of God. God’s grace must extend over into the unseen
realm. You, maybe later on in eternity
you’re going to be able to sit down and say now look, what was the meaning of
this trial, that trial, some other trial, and God who tests the heart and the
reins is going to say you know why I gave you that trial, sometime Wednesday
night in 1971, because this was in your soul, this was in your soul and this
was in your soul, and the Holy Spirit, according to Romans 8 constantly prays
for all this part of you.
So that’s how much
you don’t know about yourself. Now how
much more should this drive you to trust and relax in the directions that the
Word of God gives for running your Christian life? Those of you who are here without Jesus
Christ you don’t have any concept of sin, because you don’t you disrespect the
cross of Christ. It doesn’t make sense
to you; it can’t make sense to you. But
as God the Holy Spirit works in your heart you should understand at least some
things about you, that you personally are out of line in a legal way with God,
that you personally have no claim upon Him, that you may think you’re pretty
clean in this area where you can look and where you can see, bur the Bible says
you’re filthy and rotten in the areas where you can’t see; all of us are. And for that reason it requires salvation
from outside of ourselves, meaning you do not give money, you do not respond to
various religious invitations, you do not do good works, none of those things
can ever remove the sin in this area; only one thing can, the application of
the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on your behalf, and that’s why you
must receive salvation from outside yourself given in the person of Christ.