Latest / The Immutable Word / EP041 Revelatory Epistemology: Hearing God’s Mind in 1 Corinthians 2

Transcript

EP041 Revelatory Epistemology: Hearing God’s Mind in 1 Corinthians 2 · The Immutable Word

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He even kind of pushes back on God and says, Will thou slay a righteous nation?
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And what does God say? He goes, I knew that you did this in the innocence of
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your heart. I knew that you did this. You didn't do this maliciously.
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Therefore, I withheld thee from sinning against me. To me, one of the most amazing
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statements in the Bible.
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God actually stopped a man from sinning against him.
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Because that man obeyed his God-given conscience.
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Welcome back to The Immutable Word. Today we have another exciting episode for you today.
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We're going to be walking through 1 Corinthians 2 and talking about revelatory epistemology.
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I almost got through it without messing up.
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Anyways, talk about revelatory epistemology.
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And we're simply breaking down that true knowledge is impossible without the
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Holy Spirit and the preserved words of God.
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But so we're just going to do a little bit of an exposition on this chapter.
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We'll go ahead and get started.
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Would you like to get us rolling into this one and then we'll go from there?
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Yeah, sure. And this chapter has always fascinated me.
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We often say as Bible believers, we always say, you know, that the most important
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thing that we need to do when interpreting Scripture is comparing Scripture
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with Scripture, right? Right.
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It actually comes from this chapter. That particular teaching, that doctrine.
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That emphasis on what we call hermeneutics, which is the study of God's Word.
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You know, and that very, very, very key tool is comparing Scripture with Scripture.
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And what that means essentially is that Scripture defines Scripture,
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Scripture interprets Scripture differently.
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You know, Scripture explains Scripture. And if, you know, we can't come to conclusions
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about Scripture just out of our own reasoning and rationale,
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we need to ground whatever our understanding is about the Scripture the way
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God intends us to understand it.
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And so, meaning that we can't separate any particular passage of the Bible from
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the rest of the Bible. We have to interpret the Bible with the Bible in context and so forth and so on.
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So this particular chapter is really fascinating because what Paul is doing
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is he starts to kind of unravel the foundation of what we call revelatory epistemology.
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Epistemology is simply the doctrine of knowledge, how we know what we know.
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Okay, that's probably a simple way to put it.
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Epistemology asks a question, how do we know what we know? How did we obtain this information?
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That's important because if you're an evolutionist, you have to believe that
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your knowledge, comprehension,
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and understanding came through some kind of an evolutionary process,
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through chemical synopsis, synapses, you know, through chemical interaction.
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Somehow it just evolved. When we say that a child grows up, starts to learn
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certain concepts, principles in life, what we're trying to say is that they
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understand the things that they know through what we call epistemology.
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That's the obtaining or the possession of knowledge and information and so forth. So.
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When we say revelatory epistemology, as a believer, we're saying that we know ultimate truth, right?
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Objective, perfect truth, not through human reasoning, which is rationalism,
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you know, rationalization, things like that, or even human experience,
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which we would call empiricism, right?
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Empiricism is what I actually experience. It's empirical evidence.
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Right. What I experience, touch, taste, feel, so forth and so on.
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But we say that we know ultimate truth about everything, absolute objective
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morality through divine revelation.
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That's what revelatory means, reveal epistemology. Our knowledge is based off
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of the revelation of God. So, Paul argues in this chapter that the mind of God
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is inaccessible to the natural intellect.
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He describes the natural man and the spiritual man in this Bible,
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in this particular chapter.
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So, what he means by the natural man, that's the lost man. That's the man that
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does not possess the Spirit of God.
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And then, of course, the spiritual man is the man that has the Holy Spirit and is sealed by the Spirit.
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So, therefore, true wisdom is not discovered through natural means.
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It's revealed by the Spirit and recorded in words.
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And that's what it means. So how do we discover the truth about God?
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Through his revelation. And the only way we can understand it is through the
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author, which is the Holy Spirit.
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So that's kind of what, you know, this particular chapter is.
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We'll go through, we'll, you know, we'll go through the select passages.
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It's not a very long chapter. It's only about 14, 16 verses.
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And those 16 verses reveal a ton about this revelatory epistemology.
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I know it's a big word for some, but you know what I say?
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Learn big words, expand your vocabulary, right? But epistemology is a legitimate term.
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Here's a simple way somebody might ask the question before they understand what epistemology is.
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Man, how do we understand the things we know? How do we understand what heaven and hell is?
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How do we understand afterlife? How do we know our purpose in life?
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Well, those things are revealed to us by God, right?
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When you start to read what God says, like Revelation 4.11, it says all things
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were created for his pleasure, created by God and for his pleasure. So guess what?
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We find out that the things that please God are part of his will.
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That is the purpose of his creation, is to please him.
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If you live outside of the revealed will of God, guess what?
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You're going to be miserable.
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You're going to have what they often say is a God-sized hole in your life, you know?
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So anyway, epistemology, revelatory epistemology simply means that we understand
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the things of God because they're revealed to us by God.
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You can't naturally obtain this information.
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And that's through the word of God. That's right. And it's all captured in the
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word of God. And that's kind of what he actually reveals here.
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So, I mean, with that, let's, you know, we can just kind of jump into the chapter.
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Yeah, let's do it. So in verse 1, he says.
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Of wisdom. He wasn't trying to rely solely on, you know, the Socratic method
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or the Aristonian, you know, like Aristotle logic to persuade them.
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He wasn't trying to use Greek philosophy to try to persuade them of the truth.
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He says, when I came to you, I didn't come with excellency of speech or wisdom
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declaring unto you the testimony of God.
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Another reason why I think it's important is that when he delivered the testimony
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of God, he explained to them what God said, not what Paul thought.
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And of course, the result was their faith in verse 5, it doesn't stand in the
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wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
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So the theological connection there is that demonstration of the spirit and
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power that he says in verse 4, it's the word of God itself.
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Because John 6, 63, Jesus said, the words that I speak unto you,
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they are spirit and they are life.
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Jesus Christ, when he was speaking and testifying the words that God gave him,
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he said it even in John chapter 12. he says, I'm not going to judge you.
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The words that I speak will judge you in the last day. And he says, I don't speak my words.
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I speak the words that the Lord gave me.
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Okay. But it was the Holy Spirit that authored those words.
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We find out second Peter one 21, holy men of God spake as they were moved by
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the Holy Spirit, by the Holy ghost.
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And then guess what happened? You had somebody, a scribe, would write those
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things down, they would transcribe them, then that would get preserved and then
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eventually transmitted, translated, and so forth and on.
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But anyway, the Holy Spirit was the originator of that.
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2 Timothy 3.16 says, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,
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not by the church, not by the apostles and so forth and so on.
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The origin of Scripture is God.
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That's important to kind of clarify, because you have the Catholic Church running
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around today telling you that the Bible came by way of the Church.
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The Church produced the Bible, not the other way around. But that's not what Scripture reveals.
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Scripture reveals to us what the Church is long before the Church existed.
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You know what I mean? So it's important to understand that distinction.
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So the power, you know, another thing that he said, this power and demonstration
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of the Spirit and power was part of the speech, the words that he used.
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Matthew 22, 29, you know, we know this verse, Jesus is correcting these Sadducees.
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He says, ye do err not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God.
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So these words, these spiritual words that Paul is giving the Corinthian church
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is a demonstration of spirit and power.
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And I think that's kind of revealing. If a man is called to the ministry and
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he's a preacher, a pastor by trade, Bible says he's supposed to labor in word and doctrine.
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That means when that man gets up behind the pulpit, the power of his preaching
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is not in his personal agenda or his personal preferences or his personal conviction.
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The power of his preaching is in the explicit words of God.
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Notice Paul said, he goes, I didn't come to you with excellency of speech or of wisdom.
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Why? Because verse 5, I don't want your faith to stand in the wisdom of men.
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That's the danger of not being an expository preacher.
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If you're an agenda preacher or a topical type preacher, the danger is that
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you're going to preach your personal preference.
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You're going to preach a performance Christianity and not the words of God.
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The Bible says you're supposed to preach the word in season and out of season,
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not preach your opinion.
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So this opening, these first five verses, is really a powerful argument Paul
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is making and saying, look, everything I told you, Corinthian church,
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the truth, the doctrine,
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everything that I've been giving you is not by man's wisdom or rationale.
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And one other thing I want to point out is he says from the get-go,
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from the very first verse, and this is important, he's talking about words.
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Why does that matter? Because later on, he's going to use the phrase things
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or spiritual things to refer to words.
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So the whole context is about the words of God.
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So again, the powers in the inherent authority of the spoken and written words of God.
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So that was verses one through five that he covers, you know,
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the testimony versus rhetoric. It's not just Paul's personal rhetoric, right?
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And then in verses 6-8.
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He kind of shows why the princes of this world missed it, the elites, the hidden wisdom.
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So he's showing that, again, kind of reinforcing the argument that this information
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is not obtained through natural means, through education, philosophy, and so forth.
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It must be given to you by spiritual divine revelation, therefore the revelatory epistemology.
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So, what he says in verse 8, he says, which he goes, you know,
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he talks about that Jesus Christ is the prince and so forth, and he's the Messiah.
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And he says, which none of the princes of this world knew, for had they known
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it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
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So, he introduces kind of a specific category of wisdom, which is hidden wisdom.
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They didn't know it. It was hidden from them. So this refutes the idea that
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man can just find God through just simple intellect and education.
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Now, God gives us enough light to know there is a God through our conscience, Romans chapter 2, okay?
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The Bible says when a man does by nature the things that are written in the
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law, in your heart of hearts, there's something inherent of you,
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inside of you that says it's wrong to murder, kill, steal, so forth and so on.
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Well, God says that's your conscience. I gave you a God-given conscience without a written word.
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But the conscience is like a candle. It gives you a very small amount of light.
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And it's not until the law, the law gives you a greater, broader spectrum of light.
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Now he gives you 613 specific commandments, right? Right.
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And so what he does with the law is he gives you more of the specific will of God.
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Well, then what happens? What comes after the law? Jesus Christ.
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The Bible says Jesus is the light of the world.
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He starts giving even more light than the law gave. And the law gave more light
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than the conscience gave.
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This is dispensational truth. That's why dispensation is important.
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Well, guess what happens? Jesus Christ, he didn't give all revelation though.
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There are certain things he hid from them.
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Remember, there was times where he was telling parables and he says,
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hey, you know, I tell parables so they don't understand, but I'm going to explain
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to you what some of these parables mean.
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So there was certain things that Jesus Christ hid or kept back.
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So he didn't reveal everything. Even though he's the light of the world,
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he gave much greater light on the law than the law did in and of itself.
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Remember when Jesus said, hey, you've heard it's written that thou shalt not commit adultery?
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But then what did Jesus say? He goes, but I say unto you, if you look upon a
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woman of lust after her, you've committed adultery already in your heart.
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And remember, he says, look, the Bible says, thou shalt not kill.
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He says, the scriptures say, thou shalt not kill. But I say unto you,
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if you hate your brother, that you've already committed murder in your heart.
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See that? So Jesus Christ, he shed more light on the law than the law did in and of itself.
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But the law shed more light on the conscience than the conscience did in and of itself.
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See that? So, again, the argument here is that the elites missed it because
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they didn't understand that, they didn't believe the specific revelation God gave them.
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But that's the only way they would have known that Jesus Christ was the Messiah
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and they wouldn't have killed him. Okay?
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So, this hidden wisdom, again, it just proves that man can't just simply find
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God through their intellectual education.
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So the princes of this world, the political, the religious, and philosophical
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elite, they committed the greatest error in history by crucifying Christ because
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they lacked this data and knowledge.
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So the failure of secular wisdom, it kind of highlights two things.
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One, the failure of secular wisdom. If the smartest men of the age could look
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God in the face and then kill him, then human reason is completely bankrupt
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as a tool for spiritual discovery.
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You cannot discover God without scripture.
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That's why, you know what God does to the man that obeys his conscience?
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If a man obeys his conscience, then God gives him more light.
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And then as a man obeys that light
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that God gives him, God continues progressively to give him more light.
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Have you ever read that passage in Proverbs where it says that the candle of
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the wicked is put out in Proverbs?
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Yeah. That candles your conscience. Guess what happens when you continue to
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sin against your conscience?
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Eventually, your conscience is like a filter. The dirtier the filter gets,
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the less light comes through.
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Is this where their conscience would be seared? It could be seared.
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It's connected. Right. They could sin against their conscience.
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Their conscience could be defiled.
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Yeah. Okay. I'll give you an example in the Old Testament. In Genesis,
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I believe it's chapter 20, there's Abimelech, you know, King Gerar.
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And of course, he thinks that, and I don't know if we covered this before,
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but Sarah, he understood Sarah to be Abraham's sister.
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So he took her, thinking, oh, I'm going to take her to be my wife.
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God comes to him in a dream and says, you're a dead man.
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And he says, why am I a dead man? He said, because you took a man's wife.
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And Abimelech goes, God, I did this in the innocency of my heart.
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I didn't know that was another man's wife. He said, and she even said that she was his sister.
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And you know what the Bible says, God said? He goes, and of course,
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he even kind of pushes back on God and says, will thou slay a righteous nation, right?
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And what does God say? He goes, I knew that you did this in the innocence of
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your heart. I knew that you did this. You didn't do this maliciously.
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Therefore, I withheld thee from sinning against me. To me, one of the most amazing
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statements in the Bible.
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God actually stopped a man from sinning against him because that man obeyed
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his God-given conscience.
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Now, did that man know who Jesus Christ was? Did that man understand all the
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intricacies and the technicalities in the law? No.
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Did he understand the second coming and the advent and the body of Christ? No.
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He didn't understand those things. He just simply knew what was right and what
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was wrong. He just knew what little light God gave him.
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He obeyed it. He knew it was wrong to take another man's wife.
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Hundreds of years before the law was even written. How do you explain it?
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Conscience. I'll give you another example. It's a powerful example. Remember David?
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He sinned with Bathsheba, right? Kills Uriah, her husband.
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So he conspires, commits adultery with Bathsheba.
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She becomes pregnant. He's got to cover it up. So he puts this elaborate plan
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together to try to get Uriah to, you know, lay with his wife.
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And of course that doesn't happen.
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So he ends up killing Uriah. As a result of that, Bathsheba's pregnant and Nathan
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the prophet comes to David.
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Okay. Now we know who David is. David wrote, you know, a lot of the Psalms.
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In some of those Psalms, you know what David said?
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In thy law do I meditate day and night?
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David knew the law of God. Let me ask you a question.
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Could Nathan have just entered into David's palace and said, thou shalt do no murder?
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You know the law, David. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
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Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. Could Nathan have said that?
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But what did Nathan do? He tells him a little story about a ewe lamb that,
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Interesting, isn't it? He tells him a parable about a man who has one female
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lamb who he loves as if it's his daughter.
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Now, why do you think Nathan would tell him a story about a sheep?
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What was David before he was a king? He was a shepherd.
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So that means there was a personal connection that he had with shepherding and sheep.
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He could have understood where this man who had this lonely little ewe lamb,
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and he says this rich man who has thousands of lambs, takes the man's one little
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ewe lamb, cuts it up, and serves it as dinner to a guest.
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David's enraged. He's angry. He says that man shall surely be put to death over
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killing a lamb, an animal.
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Then what does Nathan do? He goes, thou art the man. He basically points the
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finger and says, you're guilty.
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You're going to get upset about a man taking a lamb and you took a man's life over his wife.
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Nathan didn't quote to him the law. You know what Nathan did?
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He appealed to his conscience.
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One of the most powerful stories, there's another story about Herod,
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where Herod believed that Jesus Christ was John the Baptist, rose for the dead.
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And he was just upset and frustrated over it Thinking that, why?
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Because he knew he killed an innocent man When he cut off John the Baptist's
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head And he said, surely this is John the Baptist Risen from the dead His conscience was getting to him.
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Man, a study on the conscience is a powerful study in the Bible.
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But here's the point. God gives the conscience, a man, a conscience.
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John 1, I believe it's chapter 1, verses 10 through 12, he says that Jesus Christ
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lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
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That light is the light of the conscience.
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He gives you just enough understanding of wrong and right in your conscience.
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Now, what you do with that conscience will determine whether God gives you more
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light. To whom much is given, much is required, right?
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So guess what happens? God will take that little bit of light,
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and if a man obeys that light, God will give him more light.
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It's progressive revelation, revelatory epistemology.
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It depends on your heart, right? Right.
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It's written in your heart. That's the law written on your heart.
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So, the point here is that these men, the smartest men of this age,
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the political and the theological elites, they rejected the knowledge of God,
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they rejected their conscience,
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and they killed the king of glory.
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Now, the second one, so the failure of secular wisdom, and then it also shows,
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it highlights the necessity of revelation. God's wisdom is ordained before the world.
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But requires a specific key to unlock it. There is only one way to understand
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the knowledge, the hidden knowledge of God, and that is through the revelation of the Holy Spirit.
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That's why we're talking about, that's what Paul's doing here.
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So that's what he talks about in verses 6 through 8.
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Then in verses 9 through 12, he starts talking about the mechanism of transmission.
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How does the Holy Spirit, what's the role of the Spirit, both in man and in
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God? That's what he's talking about verses 9 through 12. This is what he says in verse 10.
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He says that there are things that have not been revealed to us,
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that we've not known and understood those things before, but that hath,
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but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.
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For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
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So literally, revelation, revelatory epistemology, God hath revealed them unto
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us, the hidden things of God.
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By what? By his Spirit. So he starts to outline the physiology of revelation.
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So just as a radio receiver must be tuned into the correct frequency,
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the human spirit must be turned into the right frequency the Holy Spirit gives
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you to receive God's data.
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If you're not connected to that frequency, it's going to be a jumbled mess.
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You won't understand it.
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So you know what he does? He does here in chapter 2, verses 9 through 12, he makes comparison.
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He says, what things knoweth a man save a man's spirit?
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And then he says, what things knoweth the things of God save his spirit?
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So he says the spirit, he reveals to us, the spirit is the seat of understanding in a man.
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Before we get saved, before a man gets saved, you know how we communicate?
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We communicate through our spirit.
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We can't, we can, we have, you know, we barely communicate with animals, right?
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We can give animals and train them through physical ways to respond to the tone
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of our voice, through physical discipline, whatever the case is, right?
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But we can't sit down and have a philosophical conversation with our dog.
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It'd be a one-way conversation. I mean, if you gave your dog a tax return,
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he'd never figure out how to... See, the point is this, is that men understand
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men through our spirit. It doesn't matter if we speak a different language.
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You and I have gone to the Philippines, and there was still a sense of camaraderie
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that we had with other brothers and sisters of Christ, even though we spoke
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two different languages.
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You know why? Because man has a spirit that communicates with other men.
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Guess what? Animals have spirits and they communicate with other animals.
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God has a spirit and only way to understand the things of God and communicate
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with God is through his spirit. See that? See the connection?
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So again, just like a radio receiver must be tuned to the correct frequency,
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the human spirit must be tuned by the Holy Spirit to receive God's information, his data.
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So, he says in verse 9, eye hath not seen nor ear heard. Again, natural.
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The natural man understands things that he sees and understands things that he hears, right?
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In Proverbs chapter 1, it says that, you know, a man will understand by what he hears.
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Hears, you know, like Romans chapter 10, verse 17, faith comes by hearing,
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hearing by the word of God.
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So you can't, you can't observe spiritual truth in a lab, like in a,
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you know, through science.
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You can't deduce it logically through philosophy.
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You can't understand truth unless you connect it with the words of God.
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Think about it this way. John chapter four, verse 24, the Bible says God is a spirit.
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They that worship him must worship him in spirit, number one and truth number
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two which means you cannot correlate the truth without the spirit.
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Okay, so the solution is God hath revealed them the hidden things of God.
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He hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. That's revelatory epistemology.
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He's revealed them. So here's how the transfer works.
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God's Spirit knows the things of God, verse 11. We receive the Spirit,
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which is of God, verse 12.
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And then we know the things that are freely given through that Spirit, verse 12.
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That's the argument he's making. So without the indwelling Holy Spirit,
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the transmission of truth fails. This is the core of revelatory epistemology.
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So, we cannot understand the things of God through natural means.
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Natural means is normal epistemology, through study, through deduction,
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through empiricism, through empirical laws, observance, fact.
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That's normal epistemology, but you cannot obtain spiritual knowledge through
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normal epistemology. That's why this whole chapter, Paul is making basically
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a logical argument for revelatory epistemology.
27:13
Okay? Then, verse 13 is the nature of the text. The things are words.
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He says in verse 13, which things also we speak.
27:26
Okay? So which things we speak. Words, we speak words. Not in the words.
27:33
The Bible is defining the word things.
27:36
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth,
27:41
but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, watch, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
27:48
That's where we say scripture with scripture.
27:51
Because Paul is basically telling you, I didn't come to you with enticing words of man's wisdom.
27:57
I didn't come to you through natural epistemological, you know,
28:01
understanding, through laws of deduction and philosophy and Greek wisdom.
28:05
That's not what I'm doing.
28:06
I came to you in demonstration of the Spirit and power, which is contained in
28:12
the words of God. And the only way you can possibly understand it is through the Spirit.
28:19
You cannot have full understanding of the spiritual things of God without the
28:24
Holy Spirit. But he basically clarifies in verse 13, this is a pivot of the entire chapter.
28:31
He moves from this abstract, quote-unquote, wisdom to actual words, W-O-R-D-S.
28:39
Now, I know a lot of people like to say, you know, we live by the principles of the Word of God.
28:43
Yeah, that's great. But if the principles, your principles, don't line up with
28:47
the W-O-R-D-S, the words, then your principles are wrong.
28:53
Because God didn't preserve principles, he preserved words. He didn't preserve
28:57
ideas, he preserved words.
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He didn't preserve thoughts and intents, he preserved words.
29:05
That's very important for the believer to understand.
29:09
A lot of times people come to me, you know, Brother Robert, I don't understand
29:12
this. Or, you know, can you tell me what this verse means?
29:15
I tell them, I don't know what it means. All I can do is tell you what it says.
29:19
My job and your job as a believer is not to determine what it means.
29:24
Our job is to determine what it says and then make a willful choice to believe what it says.
29:32
Then through time, the Holy Spirit will teach us. That's what he says in John.
29:38
The Holy Spirit is going to teach us all things. So this pivot in chapter,
29:42
you know, in chapter 2 and verse 13 is he's now moving from wisdom to specific words.
29:47
So the identity of the things, the context, again, the things freely given to
29:52
us, verse 12, are communicated as words in verse 13.
29:56
Revelation is not a feeling, it is verbal. It is connected to words.
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Jesus Christ, when he comes to the earth, he is the logos, which is the word
30:06
we get logic from and so forth and so on, right?
30:10
Right. But he is the incarnate W-O-R-D, word.
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When God created the heavens and the earth, he spoke words.
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When he spoke to the prophets about future before it happens, he gave them words.
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When the Israelites came into the land of Canaan, he says, you need to obey my words.
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Deuteronomy 17, when they had a king that would sit over them,
30:40
that king had to make a copy of the words.
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Words, words, words. It's critical.
30:48
This is actually, this is where we logically come to, you know,
30:53
a logical deduction that we must have words in our hands in 2025 that are preserved by God.
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Jesus Christ said in Matthew 4, 4, man should not live by bread alone, but by every word.
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Proverbs 30, verse 5, every word of God is pure.
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Psalms 12, 6, and 7, thou shalt preserve. The words of the Lord are pure.
31:18
Thou shalt preserve them and keep them from. You see, over and over again,
31:22
the argument is not principles, ideas, best guesses, right?
31:27
It's pretty specific. It's very, very specific. him. So that's why this pivot
31:32
that he makes in verse 13 is so critical.
31:34
He's not talking about abstract wisdom here. He's not talking about abstract
31:38
principles. He's not abstract ideas and thoughts.
31:41
Okay. So the methodology is, here's the methodology he outlines.
31:46
He says, comparing spiritual things, words with spiritual.
31:49
This is the biblical definition of hermeneutics.
31:52
This is how we interpret scripture. We don't interpret scripture by history,
31:56
culture, or science or philosophical deduction.
31:59
We interpret the Bible by comparing Scripture with Scripture, words with words.
32:06
And John 14, 26, Jesus Christ says the Holy Ghost is going to teach these words.
32:13
So not only is he the author, he's the instructor.
32:17
That's important, right? Because what do people mostly do? They always go,
32:21
oh, that's just your interpretation.
32:24
Or this is what it means to me versus what it means to you. Then all you really need is the Bible.
32:29
And if you possess the Holy Spirit and you have the words of God,
32:34
there is no need to interpret anything.
32:36
The Bible interprets itself. So that's what he does in verse 13.
32:42
Then in verses 14 through 16, he starts talking about the binary state of man.
32:47
You have the natural versus the spiritual man.
32:50
Now, some people who interpret spiritual in verses 14 through 16 as a man that obeys God.
32:56
That's not the definition of the spiritual man in this passage.
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The entire context of this chapter is the natural man that doesn't have the spirit of God.
33:06
Cannot understand the things of God or the deep things of God that eye hath
33:11
not seen nor ear heard. You cannot obtain this information through natural means.
33:18
Some preachers like to go, oh, you're the natural man, you're the carnal man.
33:21
It's because you're living in sin.
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It has absolutely zero to do with this chapter.
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The spiritual man in this chapter is a saved man that has the Holy Spirit indwelling him.
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The only way a man can understand the words of God through the correct interpretation
33:40
is that he has the Spirit of God.
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That's consistent with the entire chapter. If you deviate from that,
33:47
you are destroying the context.
33:50
So he shows in verses 14 through 16, he draws a sharp line between two types of people.
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This is, it's not a distinction again from the mature versus the immature Christian.
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That's really a shallow definition. It's between, the distinction he's drawing
34:07
is between the saved and the lost man.
34:09
So the natural man, which is the unsaved man, verse 14, he says,
34:13
but the natural man, receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
34:17
the things, the words, for they are foolishness unto him.
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So, a man who does not have the Spirit of Christ, according to Romans 8 and
34:25
9, is a man that's not saved.
34:27
Condition, he is physically alive, but spiritually he's dead to understanding.
34:34
Okay? Inability, he cannot know the things of God, and it's not that he will not, but he cannot.
34:41
He lacks the spiritual hardware to process the data.
34:45
It appears as foolishness to him because it's spiritually understood.
34:50
Those things are spiritually learned. So when a man, you start telling a man
34:53
that God made the earth in seven 24 hour or six 24 hour days, that's ridiculous.
35:00
I can look at a rock. This Ignis rock has 15 different layers.
35:04
It's got to be billions of years old, right?
35:07
There's no way. I mean, the oldest cultures of men have been around for hundreds
35:11
of thousands of years. Well, your Bible says they've been around for tens of thousands.
35:16
Or under 10,000 years. Problem. The natural man cannot understand those things.
35:22
You know what Jesus Christ said? He says, there's no greater love than this,
35:26
than a man lay down his life for his friends.
35:28
Very true. We understand that we see that in combat veterans, right?
35:32
That men have laid down their lives. We know that in law enforcement,
35:35
in a family home invasion, a man will lay down his life for his family.
35:41
That's understood, right? But what about a man laying down his life for his enemies.
35:45
Romans chapter five says, therefore being justified by his blood.
35:50
Why? Because he can, he goes,
35:53
the verses, I always, I preach this verse all the time, but he commended his
35:58
love toward us in that while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us,
36:03
not our friends, no greater love than this.
36:06
So that means there's a greater love that a man will lay down his life for his enemies.
36:13
Listen, a spiritual man can understand that because you have access to the Holy
36:16
Spirit and the things of God.
36:18
The natural man, not the immature Christian that doesn't tithe.
36:23
Please be serious.
36:26
Have some respect to God's words. This is a lost man that doesn't have any spiritual
36:32
understanding of the words of God.
36:36
So, he spiritually, these things are spiritually discerned, meaning that they're
36:41
spiritually understood.
36:43
They're spiritually learned.
36:46
So the spiritual man is the saved man.
36:49
So if the natural man is the unsaved man, the spiritual man is the saved man.
36:52
This is what he says in verse 15, but he that is spiritual judgeth all things,
36:57
yet he himself is judged of no man. Hello.
37:00
That verse right there, you know how most preachers will interpret that?
37:04
Oh, the spiritual man, the man that's right with God, can judge your sin.
37:08
Oh, you know, being immodest is sinful. Oh, you didn't tithe? That's sinful.
37:14
Oh, you're not going to church every Sunday and every Wednesday? That's sinful.
37:19
That spiritual man, the mature Christian, has a right to judge every man.
37:22
That's not what he's saying.
37:23
To do that, you're ripping that verse out of the entire context of the chapter.
37:28
He says a man that's indwelt by the Spirit, he judges all things.
37:32
It doesn't mean that he's sinless or arrogant. It means he possesses the absolute
37:37
ultimate standard of truth, the scriptures, by which all reality can be measured and judged.
37:44
He has the ability to judge life, death, the things of life,
37:51
politics, religion, truth, lies, everything. He has the ability to judge the intents of man.
37:59
He has the ability to judge the right character versus wrong character.
38:03
He has the ability to judge, I mean, everything because he has the Bible.
38:09
It has nothing to do with whether he tithes or not, or whether he's been saved
38:13
for 10 years or not, and he goes to church every time the doors are open.
38:17
That's a shallow interpretation of that verse.
38:22
And the immunity he has that he's judge of no man is that the world cannot adequately
38:27
or accurately critique the believer because the world lacks the capacity to
38:32
understand the believer's operating system, which is the spirit.
38:36
They cannot naturally obtain through natural epistemology the deep and hidden
38:45
things of God. They can't.
38:47
That's verses 14 through 16.
38:50
Then to me one of the most amazing statements in this
38:53
chapter is verse 16 for who has known the mind
38:56
of the lord that we may instruct him but we
39:00
have the mind of christ i i used to struggle with that verse because i would
39:09
think i don't think like christ all the time i'm selfish i give in to my own
39:15
fleshly desires i'm carnal sometimes matter of fact in the next chapter in chapter three,
39:20
verse one, he says, I can't even speak to you as spiritual because you're carnal.
39:25
He spends an entire chapter talking about the saved man or the natural man versus the spiritual man.
39:31
And then he turns around and tells a bunch of these believers,
39:33
you're carnal, which tells us that the entire chapter three has to do with behaviors
39:38
of the Christian after that's where the maturity of the Christian is in question, is in chapter three.
39:46
But that's not the context of chapter 2. Chapter 2 is revelatory epistemology.
39:53
Okay? Now, so what does that mean we have the mind of Christ?
39:56
How do we possess the mind of Christ?
39:58
We don't have his omnipotence, right?
40:02
We don't have his omniscience.
40:04
We don't have his divinity. We don't have infinite knowledge like God.
40:09
So how do we possess it? It's real simple.
40:11
We have his words. We have a Bible in our hands.
40:14
I remember Brother Raymond Barber, he used to preach at our church,
40:17
and he would always say, let us, he goes, when we open up, he said this,
40:21
when we open up the Bible, he goes, we open up the mind of God. Yeah.
40:26
Because the Bible is the expressed revelation of God's will and his mind and his thoughts.
40:35
It is the very words of the divine creator of this universe.
40:40
If you want to know what God thinks, open up that Bible.
40:43
If you want to know what God thinks is wrong versus right, if you want a sense
40:48
of God's perfect, absolute, objective morality, open up a Bible. It's that simple.
40:54
We have the mind of God or the mind of Christ because we have his words.
40:59
His words are the expression of his mind.
41:01
Therefore, by holding the preserved scriptures, the very thing spoken of by
41:06
the Holy Ghost, we hold his thoughts, his judgments, and wisdom.
41:09
That would be impossible if he didn't preserve his words. See,
41:13
this is where when you start to delve into these things and you start to learn
41:16
your Bible instead of just talking about your Bible, where you actually learn your Bible.
41:20
Everybody loves to talk about the Bible. Oh, I love the Bible. I love the Bible.
41:24
I just hide it to my heart and I love it. It just sits on my coffee table in
41:28
the morning and I love staring at it.
41:30
Yeah, you could talk about the Bible all you want, but until you start learning
41:33
the Bible, you are never going to understand the hidden things and the will
41:37
of God and those types of truths that are just buried deep and only the Holy
41:42
Spirit can teach you those things.
41:44
But here's the other implication. If God did not preserve his scriptures,
41:50
all of this would be impossible.
41:53
If we had no perfect Bible we could hold in our hands, it would be impossible
41:57
for me to obey John 5.39, where Jesus said, search the scriptures for in them
42:01
you think you have eternal life, they are they which testify to me.
42:03
It would be impossible for me to obey 2 Timothy 2.15, to study,
42:08
to show thyself approved unto God, rightly dividing the word of God, right?
42:11
It would be impossible for me to obey Matthew 4, 4, that man shall not live
42:15
by bread alone, but by every word. It would be impossible for me.
42:20
Isaiah 8, 20, if they speak not according to this word, it's because there is no light in them.
42:25
How can I speak the words of God? Or how can I speak in a way that's aligned
42:29
with the words of God if I don't have them?
42:31
See the implication? If there is no divine doctrine of inspiration and preservation.
42:36
To no point. It's useless. So this is another argument for the King James Bible, by the way.
42:41
It's an implicit one. But the point is, it's there. I don't have the mind of
42:46
Christ if I don't have the words of Christ.
42:49
So here's the summary. This is really what it comes down to.
42:53
1 Corinthians 2 really proves the truth, that this fact, that truth is objective.
42:59
It's located in God's words. I can find it there.
43:02
It's exclusive. It's revealed only by the Spirit, and it's verifiable.
43:06
I can validate it by comparing Scripture with Scripture.
43:09
Any worldview that relies on human reason, apart from the biblical revelation,
43:15
is doomed to the ignorance of the natural man.
43:18
Natural man cannot understand the things of God.
43:21
So 1 Corinthians 2, powerful, powerful chapter on how we know the things of God.
43:29
It's through revelatory epistemology, not natural epistemology,
43:34
but by direct divine revelation of God.
43:38
And the only way we can understand them is that we possess the author.
43:42
We are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
43:45
And he is the one, according to John 14, that will teach us all things.
43:50
So, that's revelatory epistemology. Yeah, that's pretty fascinating.
43:54
Hey, it's a supernatural book and running through 16 verses,
43:59
about 16 verses in this, I mean, I've been sitting here silent,
44:03
just trying to absorb everything that was that you've been covering here. I'm like.
44:08
There's so many different, it's like a four-dimensional approach when looking
44:12
through this, because at the same time, Paul is emphasizing the importance of the Word,
44:18
the Word of God, and that it's a supernatural book, because somebody who's not
44:23
saved cannot understand it.
44:27
It's not revealed to them, as opposed to a person who is saved.
44:31
They have a very limited understanding because of their conscience,
44:34
but they'll never be able to fully connect the dots until they get saved and understand this Bible.
44:41
Yeah. I love these exposition walkthroughs.
44:45
It's a deep, it's 16 verses. I know, 16 verses. This book, on the face of the
44:49
planet, in 16 chapters, 16 verses, it can explain divine revelation to natural man. Yeah.
44:58
Other than the Bible. It blows my mind.
45:01
Yeah, the other thing, too, that, you know, you're talking about the doctrine of preservation.
45:07
I mean, like you said, it's implied. Right.
45:10
And that the reliance on scholarship and relying on men who tend to see themselves
45:18
as the arbiter of truth, none of this would be true. Like you said,
45:22
all of this would be at risk.
45:23
It wouldn't matter. And this is the impact, all in 16 verses in one chapter. 16 verses.
45:28
You know, we've talked about it before when we were talking about communication
45:31
and stuff like that with the management stuff.
45:34
The military, you know, they teach us the BLUF, the bottom line up front. Right.
45:38
And really what it comes down to, and both of us have understood and we've learned,
45:43
that effective communication is saying a lot with less.
45:49
Right. Somebody once said, communicating, you know, succinct communications
45:54
is communicating volumes with an economy of words.
45:58
Saying a lot by saying a little. And that's the masterful design of the King James Bible.
46:06
There are times where God, I mean, just like, you know, take 1 John 5,
46:10
where it says, he that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
46:15
Boom. All single-syllable words.
46:18
Simple. Nothing communicates truth the way that sentence does.
46:22
I mean, it's just, that's where Paul was saying, look, I'm not relying on the wisdom of man.
46:29
I'm not relying on Greek philosophy.
46:31
I'm not relying on that. Whenever I'm communicating to you the words of God,
46:35
I'm communicating to you the power and the spirit of God.
46:40
And you cannot get it outside of the word of God. And you cannot understand
46:44
it without the spirit of God. Man, what a powerful.
46:48
Anyway, 1 Corinthians 2 has become probably one of my most favorite chapters
46:54
in the Bible over probably the past five to six years.
46:57
The more I studied that. So that's why I wanted to do this episode on revelatory
47:01
epistemology, because I thought, man, what a powerful way to convey to believers.
47:06
The only way you can understand that book is by having the spirit.
47:10
You cannot just naturally obtain it because if I go to a JW,
47:14
if I go to a Mormon, if I go to a Muslim, if I go to a one is Pentecostal,
47:19
if I go to somebody that's not
47:20
saved, but they profess to be a religious person or a Christian, right?
47:25
The fact of the matter is, is you're going to hear a very different message
47:28
from them about what they think saves them.
47:31
You're going to hear a very different message from them what they think eternal
47:35
life is about or what the afterlife requires.
47:38
You're going to hear a very different message from them of what it means,
47:42
you know, as far as the definition, the purpose of their life. You know why?
47:45
Because they're lost. They're the natural man.
47:49
They don't possess the Holy Spirit. Therefore, they cannot understand that book.
47:55
Revelatory epistemology, man. Something else, man. So you learn something new.
47:59
Every day when it comes to the word of God. Amen. Something about it.
48:04
But this was good. I really like these expository walkthroughs and just,
48:08
you know, sometimes it's just.
48:10
I mean, isn't it amazing? It's amazing. It's stunned to silence just listening
48:14
through it. Well, let me just ask you, it's like, you know, and again,
48:18
I mean, we just take the time to read it carefully.
48:21
That's all we're doing. So, we're reading carefully, but we're explaining what it's saying. Yep.
48:27
And we're determining its meaning through the consistency in the context of
48:32
the passage and the rest of the Bible.
48:34
Think about how powerful, how many messages have we heard on 1 Corinthians 2?
48:40
And just by reading it expository, we realize there's a whole lot more in that
48:44
chapter. It's so deep, man.
48:46
I mean, it was just like when we talked about John 4, you know,
48:50
a couple of episodes back.
48:51
How many times have we read through that? I'm like, oh, okay,
48:54
he's just talking about, he talked to some lady at the well and,
48:57
you know, talked about all her husbands and things like that.
49:00
And then that's it. That's right. You just move on. That's right.
49:03
And it just, it gives you, it gives me pause. There's so much in that book.
49:08
You can read one chapter. Right.
49:11
Randomly in Psalms and just like sit there. That's true meditation.
49:15
We talked about meditation a while back. Yeah. Long time ago.
49:18
Meditation, yeah. Meditating on the word of God, right? You had...
49:22
The Bible describes that. That careful contemplation, that careful thinking
49:26
about what's actually said. What is it saying? Yep.
49:28
And then if your heart is right, it's interesting.
49:32
It's a supernatural book, number one. Absolutely, yeah.
49:35
You start reading it and just staying on one chapter and really understand what
49:41
is the author trying to say here. That's right.
49:43
And at the end of the day, I think that's probably the most critical point,
49:49
argument for expository preaching.
49:50
When you devote and commit yourself to just clarifying what the Word of God
49:57
is saying in its context,
49:59
in its consistency, in its actual original intent of the author, when you do that,
50:07
you're giving your audience so much more than just your agenda or personal opinion or convictions.
50:14
Yeah, 100%. The way I can describe it is when somebody approaches it from an
50:22
expository method and preaching or just talking through it, something about
50:27
it, it just, it comes alive.
50:30
The scripture just comes alive.
50:32
And there's something more that makes you appreciate the word of God even more
50:37
when it's delivered to you that way.
50:40
I mean, I think that's where true growth happens. If the Bible says,
50:44
you know, that his word would not return void, but it'll accomplish the thing whereunto I've sent it.
50:49
That means that God, and of course we just read it in 1 Corinthians 2,
50:53
that God can do more with just his raw word and the Holy Spirit than a thousand
51:00
of the greatest preachers ever could in a million years.
51:04
So, you know, that's a humbling thought. You know, our pastor has been preaching about humility.
51:10
Humility comes from, you know, submitting yourself to the Word of God.
51:13
And when a man who's called to preach and teach and handle the very words of the living God,
51:20
if he is careful to exposit that passage and those verses that he's preaching
51:26
to his people, he will do more justice for his congregation by giving them the unfiltered,
51:34
unmitigated words of God than trying to explain it 10 different ways.
51:39
At the end of the day, that's all that matters.
51:41
Read the text, explain the text, provide the context, and your people will walk
51:46
away with spiritual truth that'll make vast,
51:51
vast impacts in their life that you can never, I mean totally ever understand
51:57
I mean that's why expository Preaching is so important.
52:02
Alright so that's another Like I
52:05
said I like these expository ones And I'm sure we'll have opportunity To do
52:10
more of them hopefully Matter of fact since This is the Christmas season you
52:14
know And I know depending on how you guys You know some people have some strong
52:18
convictions about it I wanted to do I actually answered a question for another
52:23
brother in Christ recently this week,
52:25
he was concerned about the King James terminology of that holy thing called
52:30
Jesus Christ, that holy thing in Mary's womb.
52:32
But by using this hermeneutic, comparing scripture with scripture,
52:37
the Bible tells you why holy thing is a very powerful term.
52:43
And it's the most accurate term.
52:45
Because if you go to the NIV, it says holy child.
52:48
Somebody goes, well, oh, you're calling Christ a holy thing?
52:51
That seems like, you know, that seems almost derogatory.
52:55
Yeah. So anyway, we'll save that for another episode this month in December, the end of the year.
53:02
But I wanted to talk about that because, again, when you compare Scripture with
53:06
Scripture, God will tell you what the definition is and why he used that term holy thing.
53:13
You don't need to change your King James Bible.
53:16
You don't need to sit there and try to make corrections and try to,
53:19
you know, oh, well, God just made a mistake there I think it's,
53:22
you know, whatever But the point is or the translators made a mistake God knew
53:26
exactly why he put that phrase in there and he preserved it exactly as it was intended.
53:32
So, most people, they need to quit trusting scholarship or trusting their intuition
53:36
or their own ideas and just trust what God said.
53:39
So, anyway, that's why, again, that's why expository preaching is so important
53:43
because it forces you to accept the text as it is plainly written.
53:49
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a good commercial for something we'll cover.
53:53
That's a Christmas theme.
53:56
That's right. I think that'd be a really cool one to cover. It'd be Christmas
53:58
or aliens, one of the two.
54:00
Maybe both. Or maybe both. Yeah. Before we wrap up, I know we were talking about
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expository preaching, but there's the book, we've mentioned this before,
54:08
and this is an episode way back, talked about expository preaching,
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but it's called Biblical Preaching.
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Preaching by Haddon Robinson. Yeah, Haddon Robinson.
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Really, really good book. I think it's hands down the best book on homiletics.
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So, homiletics is the art or the study of sermon preparation and delivery. Yeah.
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So, but homiletics, there's no other book. And there's some good books out there.
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Alfred P. Gibbs has The Preacher and His Preaching.
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Brother Jim Lentz has a book called Old Paths Preaching Methods.
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Great books. But I honestly believe that Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson
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is hands down the best book on expository preaching you'll ever pick up.
54:49
Yeah, if you're a young preacher and you're looking to organize the way you preach.
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Whether you preach or whether you teach or. You just want to sit there and exposit passages yourself.
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I can tell you personally, I'm not a preacher, but it's helped me approach the Bible differently.
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And that's, I alluded to this earlier, just stopping and just reading what it says. Yeah, amen.
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And God just really does reveal more things.
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And he forces you, you know, we talked about, you know, communicating a lot
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with economy of words. Yep.
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You know, he calls, there's a statement, a phrase he uses called the pregnant
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sentence, meaning that you should be able to summarize your entire sermon or
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teaching in one complete comprehensive sentence.
55:28
Yeah, that's your elevator pitch.
55:31
We ought to circle back and like maybe revisit that again.
55:35
I think expository preaching is one of those things that at least once or twice
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a year, you need to come back around and talk about it.
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Because honestly, it's a lost art. It's a dying art.
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And I honestly believe it's, and this is again another, maybe a conversation,
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but I believe it's another path to apostasy.
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The more and more you move away from the explicit,
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plain reading of the text, and you start preaching your agenda,
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your convictions, your preferences, you are diluting the message of God.
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And anyway, it's Jeremiah chapter 23. We might end up doing another expository
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review of Jeremiah chapter 23,
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but that's where expository preaching is highlighted the best, probably.
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And one of those passages is really, really good. So, yeah, anyway.
56:24
Nice. All right, we'll wrap it up there. As always, another good episode. Got more planned.
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Stick around. Any questions as usual, let us know. We'll be happy to provide
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any resources that you might ask for the book we just mentioned,
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Biblical Preaching. Great book.
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But we hope to see you on the next one. Thanks for joining us.