Spirit and Intellect [Part 1]

Pastor, author and Bible teacher Alan Wright there is not in God's design of the human being and human personality. There's not a conflict between intellect and spirit. There is designed to be a entity between intellect and spirit faster welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm excited for you to hear the teaching today. In this series word and spirit of unity of balance as presented it were an older church in North Carolina that if you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program to make sure you know how to get our special resource. Right now it can be worse for your donation this month to Alan Wright mysteries.

So as you listen to today's message go deeper as we send you this resource. Today's special offer. Contact us@pastor.org that's pastor out.org or call 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program but now let's get started with today's teaching here is Alan Wright and you walk in the spirit. When you're really full of spirit doesn't turn your intellect off. Then take your mind and make it much the Holy Spirit and you living by the spirit heightens your intellect, your wisdom and your creativity. I want to talk to you today about living a life of both spirit and intellect.

The balance of spirit and intellect will begin in first Corinthians chapter 2. A couple of verses and then in the message were actually going to walk through verses one through 16, but I want to start at through the key text for us today. First Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14 first Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14 the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ in the body of Christ.

There are those that you will meet who value it seems principally the mind and thinking deeply and doing theology, and understanding the word and and mentally wrapping your mind around the great truths of God and then you meet others. It seems that their central passion is worship spontaneity in the spirit, the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit for the presence of the Holy Spirit and the the way to real Christian growth is not one of the other, but both there is not in God's design of the human being, a human personality. There's not a conflict between intellect and spirit. There is designed to be a unity between intellect and spirit, and spirit. The spirit of God, communing with our spirit is the means by which the mind is designed to know the truth and gain wisdom and insight and creativity and understanding in Revelation and II just somehow my Christian life I got the idea that the way that I was going to grow as a Christian was going be primarily pursuing understanding with my mind and yet there was always something within me.

That was yearning for the freedom and spontaneity, passion and power that I saw all of those people that were seem to be so much more full of the spirit and yet I figured that there was some sort of conflict. In fact, it seems so silly to me now, but I distinctly remember feeling that if I were to really invite God spirit the takeover and yield to him and my life and just live a spirit filled life where worship became passionate where the spiritual gifts became manifest in my life where I lived with that sense of immediacy of God's presence.

I had this idea, silly as it seems to me now that if I were to do that that I wasn't have to leave my intellect at the door. You've heard people say things like that probably before site. Well, sometimes your churches need to leave your mind at the door because God and I was a little bit afraid that my mind was going turn to mush and I was going to just become this kind of foolish aiming person and so I was reluctant but I came to a time in my life where I just wanted to know God deeper than I knew him. I just wanted to really experience these things. I read about in the Bible. I wanted to have a supernatural presence in my life and I wanted so much that despite this conflict in my thinking. I just finally said okay God I want to just go ahead and just yield you just come on in. Just come takeover, even if it means my days of of really have in my mind, be sharp and all that's gone.

I'll just become one of these bozos but just, you know, come on in and what I have found beloved is that the exact opposite took place in my life that the more that I am flooded with the presence of the spirit, the more my mind is energized clarified and the creativity that God has designed for my brain to have work and understandings about life and relationship and people and just wisdom itself. In other words, the spirit communing with the Holy Spirit within the Christian's life brings about a heightening of the intellect, I will walk you through what Paul is saying in this chapter because it's absolutely it's it's it's it's just marvelous. What he saying and I am riveted every time that I go back to this chapter and longing to understand it more deeply, but I hope that I could give you as we step through this verse by verse, a sense of what Paul means by the time we get to verse 14 and 15.

I want you to understand what I think he means by the natural person in the spiritual person, but in order to understand that. Let's walk right through this okay at chapter 2, verse one. When Paul says I came to your brothers when I came I did not come proclaiming you the testimony of God with lofty speech and wisdom. Fry decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul is not saying that the only thing that I ever talk about is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

We know that that's not the case at all because Paul wrote most of the New Testament we see is talk about many things. So what is he mean when you say are resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ.

He saying I came in every piece and parked and parcel of the message that I have to share with you is absolutely centered in the finished work of Christ, his crucifixion on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. In other words, beloved, here's the way to look at it is that you never as you grow as a Christian, you never move beyond the cross you just move deeper with the cross.

You never move beyond the fundamental truth of the gospel. The curriculum of the proclamation of God's finish work. You never move beyond that. So I've got that down. I got the whole justification by faith thing down and I got on the move on to other things. What happens in Christian growth is that you revel in it, embrace it and drink of it more deeply.

That's what happens if so, every message is a gospel message for Paul and so he saying I resolve this is what I'm I know amongst you. He says in verse three I was with you in weakness and fear, and much trembling my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

So here is Paul once was named Saul of Tarsus, who both secular and Christian historians would all affirm is one of the most erudite scholars of his day. He had studied under a very famous scholar Gamaliel and he was by every historians agreement a and intellectual and had soup here your understandings not only the Scripture, but of the discourse of his day, and of all of the philosophies of his day, but what Paul is saying here is that I didn't come to you is the way the Greek philosophers would come to you.

I didn't come simply trying to out debate or have a more clever sounding philosophy than someone is abut. I came to you proclaiming Christ and him crucified and in the proclamation of the gospel, God performs signs and wonders that affirmed that gospel and I came to you this way because I never wanted you to have your faith built merely on the fact that Paul came and sounded so smart and had such clever things to say because of your faith, or just found it on something like that then you don't have any substance to your faith at all. So he seems like he's almost saying something anti-intellectual here, but read on. He's not because it verse six he says, yet among the mature we do impart wisdom so he's stopping here to say I didn't come with just trying to lay out all this philosophy and my wisdom in human wisdom to be impressed. Instead we came with God's power. But then he quickly says but we do teach wisdom but he says it's not wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age and he says this is wisdom for the mature, so he saying here that as you grow in Christ.

That which began in you by the miraculous revelation that God is real, that Jesus died for you that he's been raised for you and all the ways that God by his glorious presence would convince your heart of this. That's Alan Ryan will have more teaching moment from today's important series being filled with the Holy Spirit shutting off your mind hearing for a wonderful surprise God's word and God's spirit never meant to be separated spirit always belong together when you make a gift of support. This will send you Alan Wright's newest album on CD or digital download word and spirit. The beauty of the highlights embrace the fullness of God's word and his spirit realm like never before with wording spirit realm up helping someone else grow as well. And remember, when you partner with Alan Wright Ministries to be broadcasting the love of God to thousands every day, six 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website pastor at Gatwick today's teaching now continues here once again is Alan Ryan. You have your whole life rooted in the substance of the gospel, but there is ever increasing wisdom for the mature, there is revelation God wants to teach you things that you could have never ever dreamt up on your own, and he saying that this is a wisdom that is not of this age or the rulers of this age. In other words, the people that put Jesus on the cross and any demonic force or principality that conspired to lure people into such deceptions. All of that, the wisdom of this age would have never ever put Jesus on the cross. If they really known the wisdom of God. None of the rulers of this age.

Verse eight understood this. For if they had they do not crucified the Lord of glory, for the very fact that they didn't understand what was going to happen at the cross men. They didn't understand the redemptive love of God and this is what he says in verse nine, but it is as it is written, what no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love him these things God has revealed to us through the spirit. So what he's saying is that your natural eyes and natural years and even your heart's capacity to imagine things could never ever apprehend the fullness of the massive inheritance that is yours in Jesus Christ.

There is no earthly way that you could ever by simply reading about it with your eyes or just simply hearing about it in a natural sense would ever be able to really be able to grasp the nature of the depth and height and width and breadth of the love of God. These things are spiritually imparted to you and this is the case that Paul is building here. He says in the second half of verse 10. The spirit searches everything, even the depths of God for who knows a person's thoughts, except the spirit of that person which is in him, so also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Have you ever had a time in your life where your own mind doesn't understand your own mind yet read a time like that is like your little anxious about something and you don't even know exactly why you're anxious that you need some kind of revelation, even to figure out why my anxious or maybe you been sometime you been upset or angry about something disproportionate to whatever is happening you go. Why am I feeling this way their times in which you might on the opposite in have a peace that passes understanding or joy that you can't give anybody a reason for their ways in which you have thoughts that your own mind can't understand. But as a spiritual being. There is a way in which the spirit searches out all of your thoughts and in the same way. Paul is saying.

By analogy, he saying, so it is with God's spirit because God is father, son and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons, and the Holy Spirit knows the heart of the father because the Holy Spirit is God and he is been with God. And so when you become a Christian and you receive the Holy Spirit in your life which is the inheritance of every single Christian every single Christian is a temple of the Holy Spirit. If you accept Christ you're a temple of the Holy Spirit.

If your design is who you are. You're no longer an ordinary person you are. The inhabitation of the most high God the Holy Spirit within you is God himself who has searched out all of the affections and designs and intentions of the father and so he lives in you and what Paul is saying he who has searched out these things knows you and knows the father that he continues on with this in verse 12 now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

What a marvelous statement. What good news is this he is saying the things that God has freely given us. Every part of your spiritual inheritance.

Every promise of God.

Every fruit of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the spirit life everlasting God the opportunity to ever increasingly know yourself as one who is been authorized by God to be the head and not the tail to be a light in a dark world. Every single thing in your inheritance. What the Holy Spirit is doing. Paul says is revealing to us what God has freely given us soon as you become a Christian and amazing things start happening. God not only says okay check your saved get to build heaven. One day, but no, the journeys just begun and the Holy Spirit takes up residence in your life, and he begins to communicate with you. You're a child of God, the Holy Spirit bears witness our spirit that we are children of God, and then begins to teach. If your child of God are also an air and if you're an air your co-heir with Christ himself.

So the Holy Spirit has.

This is his central task when he comes into your life. He is revealing to you the things that God has freely given us in Christ. Listen. Spiritual growth is not about you doing something to impress God so that he'll do something for you. Spiritual growth is about the Holy Spirit revealing to you the things of been freely given to us by God in Christ he's already laid up in inheritance that beyond what any I can see your ear can hear any heart can imagine it, would you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you communion with your spirit so that your mind can begin to apprehend the glorious riches that are yours in Christ. This is extraordinary news and he says in verse 13 and we impart this we share this. We share this and sharing the gospel and sharing our teaching we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

Now we come to verse 14 where this is our key text for this and I lay all in the context so you can see that Paul is building here towards an invitation to live according to the spirit and to have your mind be heightened as it is subservient to the things of the spirit in order to understand what Paul means by the natural person in verse 14 and what he means by the spiritual person in verse 15. I need to talk to you about two really important Greek words in the New Testament. I like you to remember these words.

The word for mind is interchangeable with the word for soul. So the word for soul or mind is the same word and that word in the Greek language is Sue K if you were going to transliterate this into English. You know Greek is a very different looking different alpha batten we bring words over the English, we try to spell them in a way that would make sense to us transliterate it, you would recognize this word because you would spell it PS why CHD psyche okay so in Greek. It looks like it's okay psyche.

That's the word for soul. That's a word for mind and you can remember that because psychology is the study of the mind, the word for spirit in the Greek language is a word Numa if you're to bring this over. Usually we put a silent P in front of it. P in UEM a Numa and what is interesting in the study of the New Testament is that while there are a lot of commentators and theologians who would say that God has made the human design such that we are soul and body, and that whatever you see, soul and spirit. Those words mean the same thing there others and I'm one of them they would say that it seems much more convincing to me that the New Testament gives a picture of the human personality of the human being as tripartite spirit, soul and body part of the reason that I base this is because of a very important verse in Hebrews chapter 4 I won't turn there, but in Hebrews chapter 4 the writer is speaking of the amazing power, clarity and indecisiveness of the word of God. He's talking about how sharp it is like a two-edged sword and begins to speak here of the word of God is if it is something like maybe if they'd had laser beams in that they might as it is like a laser beam whatever you can imagine the kind of scalpel that could could separate the most narrow of margins uses the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any two-edged sword, and then says is able to separate even unto bone and marrow or joint and marrow depend on your translation will bone and marrow are in one sense the same because there there one night, but the marrow of the bone is different than the bone. And so, in the same way. He then turns and says and able to separate even spirit and soul and today's teaching spirit and intellect in the series. The beauty of balance we get more with Alan in the studio here in just a moment, stick with us more insight on what we just heard in today's final word being filled with the Holy Spirit shutting off your mind hearing for a wonderful surprise God's Word and God's spirit were never meant to be separated. Word and spirit always belong together to keep your abundant life in Christ knowing your Bible. The secret is being filled with the spirit, the answer is both word and spirit.

When you make a gift of support. This month will send you Alan Wright's newest album on CD or digital download word and spirit. The beauty of the highlights embrace the fullness of God's word and his spirit can grow like never before with wording spirit realm up helping someone else grow as well. And remember, when you partner with Alan Wright Ministries to be broadcasting the love of God to thousands every day when you get today. We will send you a special offer. We are happy to send this to you as I thanks from Alan Wright Ministries, seven 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website past Rowan.work Alan I love are you going here, spirit and intellect.

I believe this and I hope that this is what is being conveyed here to everyone that's listening is that it's not either/or, right. Your knowledge is so spiritually minded that you can't use your brain or your so intellectually that you squelch the spirit and I think there could be listeners who are like I was Daniel that I should think of our really surrendered to the spirit about allow the Holy Spirit to move them alive with gifts and wonders and power in and take over the my heart and in all. I thought some reason I thought, oh, I got shut off my mind it out and I don't know that he why all those impressions that we might have, but what I have found that this would only say to the listener to is someone who loves to think and you had this concern the Holy Spirit heightens the intellect. He is God and I promise he is far more intellectual E is wisdom. He is intelligent and is everything and so what you find is that when you relinquish yourself to God and worship and prayer and really have that sense of what we say when you let go and let God.

It doesn't mean oh, and therefore I'm not turn off my mind. He's gonna turn on your mind by the truth. Today's good news message is a listener supported production Alan Wright Ministries