Distinguishes between three types of people: the natural, the carnal, and the spiritual, all based on 1 Corinthians 2-3. The natural man is unsaved and cannot comprehend spiritual things, while the carnal and spiritual classifications apply to believers. Carnality in believers is marked by envy, strife, and division, indicating a lack of spiritual growth and immaturity, akin to spiritual babies. The sermon emphasizes that true spiritual growth and understanding come from yielding to the Holy Spirit's teaching through the Word of God, enabling believers to discern all things and live a life of spiritual maturity.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.07 → restored 4.35
Shall we turn in the Word of God to the first epistle of the Corinthians, chapter two. Chapter two in the first epistle of the Corinthians. I would like to begin reading at verse fourteen and read down into chapter three through verse four. The Spirit of God writing through Paul the Apostle and saying, But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually or of the Spirit discerned.
But he that is spiritual judges or discerneth all things. Yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord? that he may instruct him. But we have the mind of Christ. And thy brethren could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat. For hitherto ye were not able to bear it. Neither yet now are ye able.
For ye are yet carnal. For whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and division, are ye not carnal, and walk his men, for while one said I am of all, and another I am of a father, are ye not carnal? May God bless the reading, and may the Holy Spirit give out in the ministry of this section of his precious word. May I point out to you that the Spirit of God reveals to us in this section three classifications of men, three classifications of mankind.
Note with me in this order, please. In verse fourteen, you have one name who is the natural man. In chapter two, beginning at verse one, and you have it again mentioned further down, you have the second character who is called a carnal man. And then in chapter two and verse fifteen, you have the third classification, one who is called spiritual. Look them very carefully. The natural man, the carnal man, the spiritual man. These are the classifications of mankind in the word of God.
and particularly in the New Testament age, the age of the church. Which kind are you? Which kind am I? Think with me of them separately. I'm sure we can very readily recognize the character of the natural man. As Paul writes it in verse fourteen, the natural man receives us not the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them, for they are by the Spirit or spiritually discerned.
The natural man is one who is unregenerated. Never has he or she been born again. The gospel to that man has been a message of foolishness. To you and I who are saints, the gospel is the power of God. But a natural man rejects the gospel of the grace of God. He refuses to acknowledge salvation and redemption can only be obtained in and through the person and by the work of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now if you are not one of the other two, for the other two in their names and classifications belong to Christians.
And if you're not a carnal Christian, and not a spiritual Christian, you're not a Christian at all. You're in the category of being what the Spirit of God says, a natural man. That natural person, unregenerous, unscathed, he cannot understand the things which be of God. And may I say, you don't have to stay that way. God can, and you have been hearing even this afternoon, He is able to save you. And you can pass from that natural state of being unregenerated and become a believer in the Lord Jesus and the Christian in the sight of God.
that that natural person is absolutely unsaved and unregenerated, he knows nothing of the things of God. Neither can he understand them. And God gives the reason why men and women unsaved do not understand the Bible. It's their response. Until they know him, they will not. They cannot. And they... will not ever understand the word of God without knowing the author. Many years ago, as I was going back to the office where I worked in my early days of life, sitting on the streets all I noticed, there was an old-colored man, reading one of the largest Bibles I ever saw anyone carry in public.
But there he sat in the public transportation, reading the Bible. I sat near him. And as I sat near in my watch for a while, and then I spoke, I looked up to him and said, That's a good book that you have. He looked up and said, Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I said, I hope you know the author. He looked up at me with a smile, and he said, I've known him for over forty years. Well, praise the Lord. He was a regenerated person. And if there be anyone here, Who indeed feels that the Bible is a riddle to his or her heart and mind?
Get saved. Get acquainted with the author. Find him as your savior. And pass from death to life. But I particularly want to speak on those two other classifications. Our brethren have certainly been getting to us, searching ministry. There's one thing I've got to confess. They didn't give us any soothing ministry. But there's no question of doubt, as Paul said in the last days, men will have itching ears, meaning they want to hear something that will soothe them. Well, God certainly has been giving something to search us this afternoon.
And I would like to follow up very briefly by reminding us from the word of God. that he has stated there are two gratifications of Christians. When God rants about the carnal man and the spiritual man, he is referring to his children, to the believers in the Lord Jesus. And my beloved brother and sister, you and I who are saved, either we are carnal as believers, or we are spiritual. Now when you read the epistle to the Corinthians, and may I say I often thank God, I will never thank God for this letter.
The problems of a local assembly, they are remunerated in this letter. They are just within this letter. And what our brethren have been speaking of this afternoon have been things that give evidence that either we are carnal in our Christian testimony, or we are spiritual. Now, which is this? And in the local church in common, there unquestionably was the existence of carnality in many, many forms, which Paul had to correct again, correct, and accuse, and bring into the light and into repentance and recovery.
What is the carnal man? Now, may we repeat again, the carnal man is a believer. Note chapter three, please. And note the opening words. I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. They were his brothers and sisters in Christ. They belonged in the family of God. They were members of the body of Christ. They were participants in the local church and assembly of believers in Harvard. They were his brethren. But to then he could not. He did not. He was unable to write unto them as unto spiritual believers.
Let us search our own hearts again. Would the Apostle Paul write to you, to me, to our resemblance again, and address us? as to spiritual or as to carnal believers? Which would it be? And why were they not spiritual? Nobody adds, but I write unto you as unto carnal, as unto even as unto days in Christ. Now let's recognize the qualification of this expression. What is the meaning that he writes to the believers in college, and he calls them days in Christ? And if I understand this letter, they had the greatest gift that the church ever possessed amongst them.
They came behind in no gift, but possessing a gift is not necessarily possessing spirituality. And so a God-given gift has been given to many of them. They were being abused. And the spiritual character of their life was contrary to the spirit of God's mind. And what does it mean that they were bays in Christ? Well, let me give a comparison to what Peter wrote. In first Peter chapter two, when Peter said in verse two, As newborn bays, Desire the sins to him.
Look at the word that ye may grow thereby. Now see you as lying to newborn men. I hope you know the difference. Newborn men just converted. Get the milk of the word. Grow in that milk of the word and spiritually develop into the testimony of Christ. But to the Corinthians, they should have been spiritual. men and women that had done on with the Lord, his fellowship and holiness of character and walk. But it says, I got the right unto you as days in Christ.
You have not grown. What the trouble was, the spiritual development of their character, the spiritual development of their lives, was washed off. Oh, my beloved brother, my beloved sister, the Christian life is a growth. You begin with babyhood, a newborn baby. That baby must be fed. The milk of the word it can digest, and it will develop, become stronger, so the meat of the word is able to be digested. And the man and the woman grow spiritually in Christ.
These Christians They had not grown. They had not grown. They were still bathed in Christ. When as a boy in England, in my young days, there were times when we walked to school in an opposite direction, that is, in a different direction than usual. And like young students, we like to have a change. And in one of those places, near one of those places, we passed by when we took a different direction. Sometimes we'd see a little youngster, approximately, looking to be about ten or twelve months old, sitting in a high chair. But that youngster, sitting in that high chair in front of that house, was twenty-one years of age.
What a pity. Some physical deformity prevented development and growth. I wonder when God looks at his children in his family, how many babies does he still have that may be twenty-one years of age? Take home the truth of it. My beloved brother, my beloved sister, the responsibility of growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and saying that Jesus Christ is important. But please note with me some of the things our brethren have been saying.
Note with me what follows, the marks of that calm or condition. Know what the Apostle tells. The first indication is the spiritual growth is missing. The spiritual development of the life and of the soul is not gone on. And then second, note that he goes on, he says in verse two, I fed you with milk, not with meat. I can't give you meat. To choke you. And I still have to keep you on the milk bottle. My, I'd hate to see some of you twenty-one and fifty-one and seventy-one and even us ninety-one. Years old people who are slitting on the milk bottle. I still have to feed you with this.
And not with me. Neither to ye were not able to bear it neither yet are. Now are ye able for ye are yet. Ye know that word. Ye are yet. Oh, no. For whereas, now note, whereas there is among you what? Envying. One mark of carnality upon the believer is the spirit of envy. But that spirit of envy does not stop there. It develops and goes on and produces what? Christ. It goes further and produces division.
Now you notice, the lack of spiritual growth in the assemblies of God's people will produce a carnal condition, and it will manifest, it will manifest spiritual immaturity, and it will be manifested by envy, by strife, and ultimately division amongst the people of God. For are ye not carnal? and you walk as man. Now the word karma we know implies flesh, and instead of walking in the spirit, the karma believer just walks as he or she pleases, in the flesh.
Now may I say, well I want to go further on, may I say you don't have to stay a karma Christian. You don't have to continue to be a carnal Christian. You do not have to be a Christian who walks according to the plan. God has an ideal, and that ideal is a third classification. Spiritual! Spiritual! Spiritual! Oh, my beloved brother and sister, if there's anything from the searching ministry of God's word and it Blessedness that it's been to us in this conference that we should carry away.
May it develop every one of us to be spiritual believers. Spiritual believers. Spiritual. Oh, my beloved, let's carry away that ideal that God has set. The spiritual believer. Now look in chapter two and verse fifteen. what God says concerning that spiritual believer. He that is spiritual, judges, and may I say better translated, it's the word discernment, which is the meaning of the original. He that is spiritual, discernment all things, so he himself may not be discerned of all.
He discernment, he has judgment, He or she has a discerning mind about all things. Now let me remind you what the all things are. It has a particular bearing. And if you will note, in verse fourteen, it has a particular bearing upon the things of the Spirit of God. She discerneth the things of the Spirit of God. How did he give up to that? How did he come into the development of being a spiritual person? Oh, my beloved, the spiritual believer, he's yielded to the Spirit of God's ministry, the Spirit of God's guidance, the Spirit of God's instruction, and the Spirit of God's work in his and her life and heart through the Word of God.
through the Word of God. Now, may I put it in another way very plainly, in the moments we have left. The spiritual believer is not neglected his or her spiritual education. I value the words that were written once, I think perhaps forty or fifty years ago, by William Lyon, the who was a Christian man, professor emeritus at Yale University in the English languages, who said, he said, I believe that every young person should have a university education.
But he said, I prefer that every young person should have a university education with a Bible education. Rather than to have a university education without a Bible education, the man put the word of God first before the secular education of the world. And though he was high in the intellectual realm, the word of God was preeminent in its preaching and in its counsel. Might you love it, I want to say? Contest it to you, John Paul.
Your spiritual education is more important than your secular education. It is. So you go off to school. So you're privileged to enter into the intellectual world and pursue whatever may be the guidance of God, the spirit in your life and your life. What? Let me tell you, the spiritual education of the Word of God is what you need more than anything. You know, it's a wonderful thing. You and I have a university, and it is the university of survival. I want you to go back to me in this chapter two, please, very carefully.
And I want you to follow with me, that which develops the spiritual man and the spiritual woman. Let me go back and read, if I may, in verse nine. As it is written, I have not seen. nor ear heard, neither event and into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him. And I want you to know something. The scope of spiritual education is greater, is higher, is more extensive than any earthly education. The human eye cannot penetrate and reach the vastness and the greatness to the boundless extent of what is a spiritual education.
And you know, the human eye can see millions, trillions of miles away by a powerful telescope, but says God the Spirit, the education of the believer, his spiritual education, goes further than where the human eye is able to penetrate. Likewise, the human ear, the sounds that it can take in, From the universe around, whether minute or great, the spiritual education of the believer in its cult is beyond all that human ears may be able to speak to. And then further, the things that have entered the heart of man, and what has not entered the heart of man, the great discoveries, the realm of nuclear physics, the realm of planetary exploration that is amazed as in our days.
May I tell you that this Bible holds a vastness of education. Bring on what the hardened man could ever conceive. Hallelujah. But know what God goes on to say. So the scope of it is so great. Yet God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit. My beloved, may I say, we've got a divine teacher. We have a divine revealer, and the things of God can be and must be revealed to us by the Spirit of God. And nobody goes on to say, but God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God, the depths of God.
I don't know how you feel about it, but I want to know God. Not in a shallow way. In a deep way. The deep things of God. And there's only one person who can teach them. And that is. The Holy Spirit itself. For what man knoweth the things of a man? Say the spirit of man. Which is in him. Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the spirit of God. My beloved look. We've got a university of the Bible, sixty-six books. We have a divine teacher, the Holy Spirit, the Redeemer of the truth of God.
And may I say it timely, I don't care where you may go. Whether you feel led to go to Bible school or any institution where you can develop your spiritual and biblical knowledge, I don't care whether you go or whether you don't. It will only be the Holy Spirit that will make the truth real to you. you'll never learn anything unless the Holy Spirit teaches you. I read of an incident in a magazine, Christian magazine a long ago, where a school teacher who pursued her studies every summer at a university to develop her work in teaching in her particular studies.
And one winter she found the Lord as her Savior. And then the next summer came, She again went to the university that she attended regularly, with many others, teachers, professors, who also were following their studies and furthering their education in that realm. And she began to speak and talk with them of the things of God. And then one old professor took her aside and said, My dear, come here. You're talking about something we never heard about. Think we saw you last summer? Who's been teaching you? She looked at him with a smile, and she said, I got a new teacher, a teacher with a capital T.
As she told him of a conversion, and the Spirit of God was now teaching her the Word of God. My beloved, what a teacher. No, now I'm pleased. And I want you to note this in verse twelve. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God. May I again repeat? It is the spirit of God who alone develops the spiritual character and knowledge and the spiritual growth of the believer. And we have not received the spirit of the world. I want to put this very carefully before you. Blame me. The world cannot make you a better Christian by its vegetation.
What? May I repeat that again? May I put this statement before you. The world is the best place for God to develop you a better Christian. But the world is not in its character able to make you a better Christian. Only the Spirit of God can do that. Now look, Paul says, we have not received the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God's wife. that we may know the things that are freely given to us of God.
I want you to think of this carefully. Here you and I are told we can know the things of God and through the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Many years ago, out in the East in Pennsylvania once, after speaking along some similar line in this section of the book. A dear old brother came to me and he says, Father John, I want to show you something I've written in my Bible from Matthew Henry's commentary. And he showed it to me. And these were the words that I read. And Matthew Henry wrote, At the judgment seat of Christ, we shall be called to account for what knowledge we had of the Word of God, and what we did with it.
But we shall also be called to account for that which we might have known and did not. Can I repeat it? I tell you when I read the words, they went down my spine and scraped my soul and searched my heart. As the judgment feed of Christ, We shall be called to account not only to give account to what we knew and what we did with the knowledge that God gave, but called to be accounted for what we might have known, and we did not. Let me ask you something.
When will you ever graduate in the things of God? When will you ever matriculate from the school of God? A lady said years ago to me, Mr. Brown, what school did you go to? I looked at her and said, Sister, I'm still in school. And if I wish to be as old as my future, and praise God, I won't, I still would have to say the same. Now, what did you notice? We have been given the spirit of God that we might know the things. which are freely given to a good God. Here you've got a university. The word that God can cover to cover.
Here you have a divine teacher. Praise the Lord. And here you have the tuition free. That's a lot better than going to college. And some of you parents, one of them, I'm going to get the gift proof. That is quite a hard thing, teacher. But here's an education that's free. How many want it? How many appreciate it? How many will go after it? And my beloved brother and sister, in the searching of our souls and hearts today, the very things that our brethren have mentioned would indeed take a proper place in our lives and in our testimonies if we permitted the Spirit of God to develop our spiritual and Christian character and growth.
He that is spiritual, and that no... I want you to know verse thirteen particularly, which things we also seek, said Paul, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches. Oh, may I re-emphasize again, oh, my beloved young brother and sister, don't put your confidence in a wise man of the world to teach you the things of God. The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. And it's not by the wisdom of this world God teaches his people. He teaches it by his own wisdom, the wisdom of God, which is by the Spirit. But with the Holy Ghost teacher, comparing, now think of these words carefully, comparing, communicating spiritual things by spiritual or with spiritual.
Now I want you to think of this last statement. It's a wonderful explanation how you can understand the Bible. how the Holy Spirit will teach you and me in the knowledge of the Word of God. Communicating things spiritual with spiritual. And the word communicating could be literally expounding, expounding the things that are spiritual. And the word expounding means mixing and putting the truth together. And here's an example. Remember Luke twenty-four. When Jesus walked with the two men that went on the road to Eneas, and if he asked us for the sadness of their countenance and why, they told him their disappointment, they knew him not.
But he said to them, O fool, blow of heart, not to believe all that the scriptures had said. And then he began, and from Moses and through the prophets, he thought to them of all the things concerning himself. or not Christ who has suffered these things that he may enter into his glory. And the Lord Jesus took the scriptures from the beginning of the book, and he put them together, every reference concerning that he must suffer, that he must die, that he must pay the death of the cross before he could enter into his glory. And the word expounding means He put the Word of God together on the subject of his death and of his person.
And do you know what happened to them? Did they say, did not our hearts burn within us? Why leave faithless, by the way? And my beloved, you and I should be the students of the Word of God, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, teaching us, putting together. the truth of the Word of God from the beginning to the end of the Bible for our spiritual growth. Do you know we live in days when the Spirit of God is so greatly emphasized in certain truths? Then may I say that I believe that a Spirit-filled believer will be a Bible-filled believer.
The Word of God will abide and fill his and her apart. For the development of a spiritual believer by the Holy Spirit cannot be consummated apart from the knowledge and the teaching of the Word of God. So let me close, but close I must. And repeat, here are three men. Which kind of mind? First the natural man. Unsaid. Unregenerate. on the way to hell. I hope none of you were there. But Christ God, you need not go out of this building today without being saved.
Then here are two other times, classifying the believers. Ask your heart the question, am I a carnal Christian? Have I neglected my spiritual growth? Have I said other things before my spiritual development? my spiritual life, the spirituality of my testimony for the Lord. Am I carnal? Am I walking in the weight of the flesh? And all that our brethren have said to us in warning us and searching us have been the evidences of the flesh. But then, he that is spiritual, he that permits the Spirit of God, in yielding us to his authority and his throne, to teaching the ways and the truth of God, and growing the grace and the knowledge of the Lord through this book, he will be able to discern all things.
One of our brethren said, oh, how we need it. Amongst us today, if there's one thing we need, it is spiritual believers, spiritual elders, spiritual leaders, and spiritual believers, both men and women. My deep and earnest prayer is, as the result of God's ministry by the Spirit, through the Word, through our brethren at this conference, we shall go our home with ways and grow in spirituality for His name's sake. Amen.