Feeding the Lambs - Spiritually Discerned
'But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear 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. For 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. 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. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned."
-The Apostle Paul, writing to the first believers in Corinth
1 Corinthians 2:9-14
[31st message of the New Believer Series]
In the preceding message, we discussed how the Holy Spirit is the believer's Helper.
Continuing this mini series (on the Holy Spirit) within this larger series (New Believers), today we read an excerpt from one of the letters of Paul written out to the earliest believers in the City of Corinth, in the first century.
In this passage Paul was telling the Corinthian believers that the Holy Spirit is one of the main differences between them and those who do not believe.
Spiritual Things
Paul told them that it is the Holy Spirit who is revealing the mysteries of God to a new believer.
When believers study Scriptures and when they listen to other believers speaking about God, it is their Helper who is enabling the revelation of "things unknown", things which only the Creator of the universe would know firsthand about. New believers constantly experience epiphanies or aha moments or "so that's what it means" I get it now moments.
Worldly Things
Unbelievers may have a lot of knowledge, a lot of information and even a lot of experience, but most will never admit to the fact that there are just so many things that are above and beyond their capacity to understand or even know about.
Of course throughout human history, humankind have come up with our best theories, our best explanations, or our best anecdotal (or scientific) evidence.
But guess what, what was scientifically sound or medically acceptable just a generation ago is now considered shameful.
So just imagine about the many things scientists and medicine have accepted as scientifically and medically sound a 100 years ago, or 200 or even farther back. Scientific minded people truly believed and some still may believe that lightning doesn't hit the same place twice. (It does and you do not want to find this out the hard way).
Scientists once believed or still believe that humans evolved from apes. (No, the similarities between these two does not provide proof of this and yes the missing link is precisely called that, missing, because it will always be missing, no one is expected to be able to find it).
[If you wish to pursue this, do a little research on the Cambrian Explosion and to a bigger extent, on the so called DNA Enigma]
Great minds (philosophers and scientists) once believe that the earth is stationary with everything revolving around it. (No not true).
Many people still alive today grew up with doctors prescribing medicine with mercury and dentists using them and other poisons in their day to day dental practice. Yes these scientific practices eventually died out, well of course before so many people also died because of these medical/scientific practices.
Out of This World
People perish because of lack of knowledge. But there is just so many things that the human mind cannot and will not be able to comprehend or explain.
Having mapped the human genome is of course a tremendous human achievement and will open nore doors to more human knowledge. But even with being able to unlock this, scientists still cannot completely understand what the human genome is all about.
Mystery
And some things are just spiritually discerned, meaning it is just out of reach of our mortal human capability, whether we believe this or not.
It is normal for an unbeliever to have no spiritual discernment or even understand what we are talking about (hence early in this series we were saying that to proceed with this series we have to have gone through another series first or we should start at the first message if they caught this series in the middle, and work themselves up).
But a believer with no spiritual discernment, is a believer without the Holy Spirit. And if so, they have missed a step or two somewhere. This would be like how it might be like for typical 3rd graders when they are suddenly told to go sit in a college class.
Many people still alive today grew up with doctors prescribing medicine with mercury and dentists using them and other poisons in their day to day dental practice. Yes these scientific practices eventually died out, well of course before so many people also died because of these medical/scientific practices.
Out of This World
People perish because of lack of knowledge. But there is just so many things that the human mind cannot and will not be able to comprehend or explain.
Having mapped the human genome is of course a tremendous human achievement and will open nore doors to more human knowledge. But even with being able to unlock this, scientists still cannot completely understand what the human genome is all about.
Mystery
And some things are just spiritually discerned, meaning it is just out of reach of our mortal human capability, whether we believe this or not.
It is normal for an unbeliever to have no spiritual discernment or even understand what we are talking about (hence early in this series we were saying that to proceed with this series we have to have gone through another series first or we should start at the first message if they caught this series in the middle, and work themselves up).
But a believer with no spiritual discernment, is a believer without the Holy Spirit. And if so, they have missed a step or two somewhere. This would be like how it might be like for typical 3rd graders when they are suddenly told to go sit in a college class.
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