Major Bible Themes
Craig Kaes · May 8, 2011
Major Bible Themes (2011), No. 19
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926234121462

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

OK, so this is going to continue to feel weird throughout this whole class, because you guys are way back. So we have two more lessons on the Holy Spirit counting today, sort of a roadmap of where we've been and where we're going. So lesson one was about how he shared Christ's glory with us. This happened at the moment that we believed. And then an ongoing ministry of sharing Christ's glory with us. Mike covered that last week with anointing and filling and sealing and so on.

Today we're going to talk about revealing Christ's glory. difference between revealing Christ's glory and sharing Christ's glory. Revealing is about education, so we wouldn't know the things of God if it were not for the Spirit of God, and so that's what the lesson is about today. When we're called to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, there's that knowledge that we need to pick up somewhere. And then next week, Courtney is going to be teaching us about how, as that's revealed to us, as we begin to grow, how we can glorify God in her. So this slide was from our whirlwind tour of all the ministries of the Holy Spirit, where we really should have gone out and got pledges for, you know, you'll donate $1 for every Bible verse we read this morning, because we would have raked in the loot that day. Today we're going to zero in on a couple very specific, which is guiding and teaching, and honestly more about teaching than guiding.

So there's actual real knowledge that we can have of God, that we can have of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's the Holy Spirit's job to teach us that. So before we jump into that, I'd like to set the stage with, is this really a problem? Do we need God to be able to know the things of God?

And as, I guess, Tia, to start a good fight early, let's go to Romans 1, I think verses 19 and 20. And if I can have somebody read that, that would be great. Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them, for since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. So Romans 1 19 and 20 says that there's no such thing as an atheist. We find out later in the chapter that there are people who intentionally suppress the truth, but there's nobody who does not know God. And it says in there that in 119 and 20 that even the invisible things of God can be Experientially known the words can know scope.

So this is experientially known. So why do we need the Holy Spirit? To teach us if we already know Because he grows us within that knowledge Okay, so there's an increasing in the knowledge of sort of making it real. I completely agree with that. What else? It's through him that we're transformed. Also agree. It's through him that we're transformed.

Romans 1, 19 and 20, I guess what I'm looking for, is it does not say that all aspects are experientially known by everybody. In fact, it clarifies what's meant by the invisible attributes of God that are known by all men. So, without some revealing, can man understand what the peace of God is? No. Can man understand that God is, in fact, love? No. No. Romans 1, 19 and 20 is very specific about the sorts of things that man can know about God. God is really powerful, because you look around, and you're like, this took some power, and he's God. That's about it. So the rest of this stuff, the piece that passes understanding, that we need some help with.

So we're going to spend most of our time today in 1 Corinthians 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verses 9 through 14. It's where we'll spend a ton of our time today, where we get to learn that, in fact, it's the Holy Spirit's job to teach us this stuff. What we tell in Romans 1, 19 through 20 is that even the invisible things of God are can be experientially known, but those invisible things are his power and his deity. So we'll tee it up in verse 9 here with seeing that all the invisible things can be made known to us. So if I can have somebody brave read 1 Corinthians 2, 9 through 14, that would be great.

What do you mean? But just as it is written, thing to which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the Spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolish instead, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually oppressed."

Thank you. Okay, so how I'll go about this this morning is we're going to go through it verse by verse, and we're going to dig in a little deep here and there. and we might get lost in the trees of it. So don't worry about that. We're going to dig in a little bit verse by verse and then we'll come back around and you'll see how clearly God has laid this out for us as we go verse by verse with the high picture. So let's start in verse 9.

What struck me as interesting about this is that constantly we find ourselves in this position where God is the initiator. And so here we've got all these things that eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and it's not entered into the heart of man. So how would we know to seek it out? And how would we go about getting that knowledge? It's going to take God to reveal that to us.

And His grace is continual in this regard, in that when we look in 1 John, I think chapter 4, we find out that we love, why? Because God first loved us. So our ability to love is solely based upon God reaching out first and showing us what love looks like. All the things of God, all these invisible, intangible sort of things have to be revealed to us by God.

So God provides us with justification. We didn't do that ourselves. God provides us with love. We didn't do that ourselves. God has to provide us with this wisdom as well, which was interesting to me. So let me talk a little bit about color coding here. What color would you guys call this thing that I've got the things? We're calling it green? Not a turquoise-ish something. Green. So when you go through, and you might want to note this a little bit.

I've modified Roger's slides pretty heavily. He had not gone through Hal's Greek class before he went through it, and so was drawing some conclusions that actually aren't entirely there in the Greek. So the thing about the things is, all these things that we see through the scripture, they aren't there in the original Greek. There's no things.

That something is being inserted in English to sort of smooth everything out and make some sense. So when you read through here and you're reading about the things of God, it's not like, you know, God's pocket change and his pocket knife, individual things. It's of God. So what's being revealed to us is all of God. Not all the individual, piecey, sort of little things of God, but all of God. So anything you see in the sort of green, it's not there in the Greek.

So that might help a little bit. And the other thing is I'm going to differentiate between a couple different types of knowledge, and we'll get into that in a little bit. So there's going to be a blue knowledge, and there's going to be a red knowledge. We'll differentiate between those because it's, if nothing else, very interesting.

Moving on to verse 10, we find out in verse 10 that the Spirit is constantly searching, constantly examining all the things of God, and this is examining all of God. So here life gets a little better for us. We've got all these things of God, and these things are for those who have loved Him. And in our next verse, we pick up that the Spirit is constantly searching these things and understanding these things and examining these things that are of God.

Courtney, you're frowning. No, I'm just looking at things. Looking at the Greek and things. Yeah, there's no things, right? Well, there's one that's a thing. There's exactly one that's a thing. There's one that's a thing. Exactly. But the others are not. And when we get to that thing, you'll find that that thing is not green. Oh, OK. Yeah, because it's a real thing. It is a real thing. Sorry, I was just checking up on you while you were doing it. You're checking my work. That's good. Somebody needs to. All right.

The Spirit's searching all things. The Spirit's searching even the depths of God. So these are not superficial things. And to get an idea of the depths of God, we'll go to Romans 11, I think, verse 31. And I'll read that. 1133. Okay, so, O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. So when we're talking about searching into the depth of God, this is the wisdom and the knowledge of God, which is in fact a very profound depth. On to verse 11. So in verse 11, For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the spirit of God. And so this is where I'll differentiate between the different knows. So, in Greek there are multiple words for now and we're going to encounter two of those, I guess, three primary Greek words.

One of them is γνῶσκω, and the other one is οἰά. So Oida is a complete knowledge of something. Gnosko is an experiential knowledge of something. So I'll distinguish them this way. Gnosko is something that you learn about over time. You get to know something or someone more and more over time as you have interaction with them. The electrician who's been doing things for 25 years, probably Gnosko's, his trade, you gain in this knowledge.

It has a complete and total encompassing knowledge of the subject that may or may not have been derived through experience. The way that I would say this easily is that Bruce, Gnoskos, Monique, they've been married for quite some time and that knowledge is Bruce does not void us, Monique, because who can possibly know the heart and the mind and all of that, right?

Right. Except God. That's right. He may think he void us, but he only can ask us. All right. So the blue no's here are going to be void us. So this is complete, all-encompassing knowledge. Is OIDA kind of an objective knowledge, non-experiential? OIDA, no. Yes and no. The key is that OIDA focuses on having that all-inclusive knowledge. It certainly could have come about through experience.

And as we'll find out, it gets really interesting. I'll steal my thunder from a little way down. The Holy Spirit. Gnosko, Scott. So, experiential knowledge. Which is cool. So anyway, blue is going to be Oita, so this is all-encompassing knowledge. Red is going to be Gnosko, which is an experiential knowledge.

And just to see how these things sort of play out, there's an interesting passage over in John 8, I think it's 54 and 55. Okay, so Jesus is talking to the Jews who, as was typical through much of this period, were feeling pretty puffy about themselves and pretty distressed with him. So Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.

It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, He is our God. And you have not come to know Him, but I know Him. And if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you. But I do know Him, and keep His word. So we've got four no's here in this passage. So, you have not come to know Him. I know Him. If I said I didn't know him, I'd be a liar. I know him. Which node do you think we've got here?

Experiential or complete? Complete. Trick question. We've got them both in there. I know him would be complete. I know him is complete. So when Christ is talking about his knowledge of the Father, it's complete. I know him. If I said I didn't know him, I know him.

Those are all oida. This is complete knowledge of the Father. Now when he's talking about the Jews, here's a subtle little slap in the face that you miss in the English. You don't even have experiential knowledge. You haven't come to know him even that way. I've got complete knowledge. So he's making a very clear distinction. Here's an interesting question for you. Courtney can check my work on this one as well. It will not hurt my feelings. We look in verse 11. Who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the spirit of God. The word thoughts is not there in the Greek.

So wide dark translators, I can understand, as we translate, we can throw in a generic sort of things to make it smoother. But this isn't a generic sort of term that they've slipped in there. They very specifically come with thoughts. Does anybody else have a different translation than NASB? Does anybody else have a different word for thoughts there? Thanks. All right, so that's a little better. I think I've got things here in Wiest. NASB goes with thoughts. I have thoughts. What do you have? I have thoughts. Thoughts? Yeah. It's an interesting one to throw in there, and I think that the NASB has actually taken some liberties here. I would translate it, the things of God, because we're still talking in general terms.

I've got one If I were wanting to translate it in thoughts, and I wanted to go looking somewhere for some justification around why I would do that, you can turn to Jeremiah 17.9, and there, this is where we find out that the heart is desperately wicked, and who can possibly know the heart? So in Jeremiah, we find out we cannot know the heart of a man. And I think that this holds pretty well true for ourselves. But verse 11 says, who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?

And this know is complete knowledge. And think about that for a second. So the assertion made in this verse is that you can have complete knowledge. Your spirit has complete knowledge of you. And we do all these crazy things that make no sense to us whatsoever. But scripture tells us that our spirit that lives within us, the spirit of man, has complete knowledge of the man. Of what we're going to do before we do it? Well, it's complete knowledge.

I don't know if a temporal aspect comes into it. Yes? Could you say that both about the unredeemed man and the redeemed man? I think at this point we're talking about both unredeemed and redeemed. Yeah, I think that's the correlation that's being made. I think at the back half of this verse we start moving into the believer. Right.

So the natural man doesn't know, I don't want to say this, You think he's cognizant of how evil his heart really is? I would answer that question, if he is, and now we're in pure philosophy, right? I would argue that if he is, it's in the same way that man is aware of God. while still suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and believing himself to be an atheist. I think it's very similar to that.

So going back to answer my question around why would the NASB go with thoughts, we find out in Jeremiah that we can't know our own heart. And this is saying that we know the things of ourselves. So if we can't know our heart, we've got to be able to carve some of that off. And we certainly understand at least what we're thinking.

You don't know what I'm thinking right now, but I do. So I think it's talking about it at that very basic level and that's why the NASD felt comfortable going with thoughts. Here's the reason I question it is because I know as, and I hope I'm not jumping ahead, as a believer during the spiritual growth process there is a revelation to me of the evilness of my old man that I probably couldn't have even comprehended before I was a believer.

I couldn't have tolerated it either. Right. Well, again, the Jeremiah passage says that you could not possibly know the evilness of your own heart. The heart is evil and desperately wicked. Who can know it? As a believer, not only am I growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, I'm also growing in the sinfulness of good old Mike. I know more about the evilness of my heart than I ever knew. Because of your conscience? I don't think it's conscience, it's just the capacity within me for evil. You're not saying you're growing more evil, you're becoming aware of the evilness that is you. What I'm becoming aware of is the potentiality within me.

I mean, I look at Adolf Hitler now, he's a fighter compared to what goes on in my mind. Really, I mean, these guys that go around murdering people, I can't tell you how many people I've murdered in my own mind. The way that I would say it is that... I had a friend one time that told me, who understood this principle, he said if you could just read my thoughts for a minute, you'd never talk to me the rest of your life.

Yeah, I think that goes. you know who you are in Christ, it becomes evident who you are in Adam. And that's where you begin to see how desperately wicked you are. Because of the contrast? Well, because if you know who you are in Christ, then you see who you are in Adam. So when you're in Adam, you've got no clue that anything can be any better. That is life. There's no comparison. There's no doing anything about it.

But as the Holy Spirit does his work and reveals the things of God to us, we realize, wait, that looks completely different than this. And we can recognize when this is not that a lot better, a lot faster. I'm this. I'm not that. That's right. That's absolutely right.

So, learning about the evilness of ourselves comes not by self-examination, but by understanding what is really of God. Okay, so that's my thoughts. Oh, and know in this verse for the Holy Spirit, like I was talking about earlier, is Gnosko. So the Holy Spirit, Gnoskos, God. So this is an experiential knowledge.

But the verb in this particular verse, translated, no one knows except the Spirit of God, it's actually a perfect tense. So the Holy Spirit has, through experience, come to completely know God. So it's not, you know, Holy Spirit knows God 72% at this point in time, but getting better. He came to know God through experience.

I'm confused. Did you say earlier that Gnosko was growing knowledge and Oida was complete knowledge, or the reverse? Exactly as you had it, not the reverse. And that's why this is really interesting to me. Because I would expect to look into scripture and see the Holy Spirit, Oida's God, right? Complete knowledge. But the point made in this verse is it's a perfect verb, which means that it was completed in the past. So the Holy Spirit came to a full experiential knowledge of God in the past and has that knowledge now. I understand how it's being used here.

Can you give an example of complete knowledge today? What would somebody have complete knowledge of? God would have complete knowledge of all aspects of you. God would know your heart. God would know your thoughts. God would know your mind. Okay. Yeah, because he knew you before you were born. Sure. But I was just thinking you used the example of like an apprentice. That's for experiential knowledge. Right. So there you're... Is there any such complete knowledge in some simple... Like an apprentice. Could you have complete knowledge of something otherwise? Are we talking just specifically, God would know my heart? God would know your heart.

Okay. And that's really the only way that works? Yeah. Okay. So we've got this passage, we've also got a passage in John. I'm not going to be startled if we don't make it out of this passage, and that's okay. Okay, so, verse 12. Now we have received, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given us by God. So, there are a few gems that we can pull out of this.

Number one, that we received the Spirit of God, and that is a past completed action. We received the Spirit of God. There are denominations who will encourage you to receive and re-receive and re-re-receive the Holy Spirit. And this time, once you finally get it right, once you finally receive it for the best time, then things are going to go more smoothly.

And what scripture says here is, we received it. Period. And I'd like to look at just a couple verses to drive that point home. So the first one is Romans 8. And I'm going to find out exactly where. Romans 8, 9. So Romans 8, 9 says, however, you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. OK? So what this is saying is, if you've got the Holy Spirit, you belong to God. If you don't have the Holy Spirit, don't belong to God.

Pretty basic. Yes, ma'am? What are your... What are your issues? This one says, if the spirit of God lives in you. And I feel like the one that we've been reading is this idea that That whole idea of like there's no such thing as an atheist because that spirit is already in us. So how can this verse say if?

Yeah, I understand where you're going off the tracks there. So the reason why there's no such thing as an atheist has nothing to do with the spirit being in them. Only believers are indwelt by the spirit. The reason why there's no such thing as an atheist, if you, um, and you can...

It's been revealed to you? It's been revealed. You clearly understand that there is somebody who is deity, who is very powerful. But you have to invite that spirit in. Uh, you actually don't end up inviting that spirit in. You believe the very simple fact that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, at which point God takes care of the rest of it. There's no invitation, hey, Holy Spirit, come, come hang out in me.

But in that belief, then you've then taken care of this if thing. Yes. Completely. I know it seems like a fine point that I'm poking on, and I don't mean to pick on you, but in your belief, you accomplish nothing. In your belief, God accomplishes the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And it's just that it's been revealed, and in that way, then everybody has the opportunity to have the Spirit in them. So then this if part That is correct. Well, we all have the Holy Spirit, right? God gives it to everybody.

But there are people that don't believe so they go poof and away it goes. They just don't agree with it, right? Disagree. I disagree. So the Holy Spirit is for those who are believers. And at the moment that we believe, that is when the Holy Spirit seals us and dwells us. Doesn't that if indeed really mean it's a past completed action? So so that if indeed is a hypothetical, right? So if. I've got a whole class that I do on first and third class conditional statements.

You have to be really careful with that sense. If you follow the rules that people tell you about when to put that sense in, you'll get some really absurd things like, you know, since Christ's death was meaningless, blah, blah, blah. Okay, that didn't quite work out right. But here it is. Anna, I'm comfortable with this being a hypothetical. Let me read it again.

If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. True statement? Doesn't have to be a sense, does it? If the Spirit of God dwells in you, you're gods. Right? No spirit, not gods.

It ends up being that simple. Okay. Okay, you know when... I used... I used to ask God, fill me with the Holy Spirit. But I didn't have to ask him. He would have given it to me. Were you a believer? Yeah. You already had the Holy Spirit. It was sort of a nonsensical prayer. So it's silly to... Yeah. Right. Alright, thank you. Yes.

Pray to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. Okay, so we find out, if spirit, then God's. If God's, then spirit. This is how this lays it out. I mean, it's very simple. So now turn to John 10. The gem will be in John 10, 29, but I think we'll start back in 10, 28. Or 27. My sheep. We are God's sheep. We are Jesus' sheep that he's talking about here. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

And I give eternal life to them, and this is present tense, it's got the notion of continuity, so I'm continually giving eternal life to them. They will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. So at some point do we become not Jesuses? No, nobody's going to snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. And no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. So, are they going to not be the Father's? Are we going to not be the Father's at any point? No. Can't snatch them out of the hand.

So, what we learned in Romans is, if God's, then Spirit. What we learned in this is, once we're God's, we're His forever. Nobody's snatching them out. Right? And so, we've continually got the Holy Spirit. I think that's a great feeling. It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean it's amazing when you think about screwing up two days later. Yeah. You still belong to Christ and nobody can take that away from you. Exactly right. Yeah, nobody can take it. Alright. So, um, yeah, actually I'll... Whenever I doubted my salvation or something, this was the one I'd go to. I could never climb out of his hand. It's still like that ability to almost climb out or do anything. It's you're on your own. You're just in his hand. You're separate. You're in his hand. It all changed after identification, though.

Because, what does this one say? My father who would never get out of his hand. Well, who are we in? We're in Christ. Right, so is he saying here in this verse, you know, is Christ in his hand and we're never able, I mean We can't get out of Christ. Christ can't get out of his hand.

But that's my point here. Is this my father who... I mean, does he say, Christ is in my hand, Christ will never get out of my hand? Because, like I said, it seems like there's that wiggle room. If you had a good lawyer, you could get out of his hand type of thing.

Whereas this one, I have to give you an application. I never doubt my salvation anymore at all. Because you're identified with, you're placed into Christ. You have the death and placed and identified in Him. Whereas this one, like I said, it's kind of like you're in His hand and you're squiggling around in there and you know, kind of looking out, trying to get out or do whatever. When you get identification, there's no question about even this, that you're able to squiggle out of His hand. I'm going to make a point that Hal made, and I think he made it really well. And then I'll get to you. This is a desperate point.

So in this picture, which I think makes it really clear, Courtney gets to play the part of Jesus. I get to be God Almighty. And this little thing right here is the believer. So the believer is in Christ's hands. And nobody is going to be able to snatch that out of Christ's hands. No. Okay. God is greater than all and this is the situation that we're in right now. He has both in his hand.

Yeah. But you know... No, go ahead. Okay. You know, it's just Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. I don't get it. Because like when Christ died and he said, Father, they don't know what they're doing. Is he talking to himself? Because Christ and God are the same? three and one? I'm not following the question. So Christ during his time here on earth was continually praying to God. But he himself supposedly is God. That's right. So they split in three and then they're all together in one?

It's a very tough one for us to wrap our brains around, and this is why I'm so grateful that we have scripture that just makes it really clear that that's the case. And if it doesn't make the most sense to us, I think that's okay. But scripture is really clear. You can find individual passages that refer to each of them as individuals, as having distinct personalities. And you can find scripture that shows Holy Spirit, Jesus, Jesus, God, Holy Spirit, God, as the same entity.

And so we just know that to be true. Your point, Mike? My point about John and relationships and identification truths, I think if you look at the context of John 10 and who he's speaking to, he's speaking to the Jews with the Jewish mentality. And so a shepherd and sheep and all of that and have a cultural example makes a lot of sense to them. But when you get to the book of Romans, Paul is using the Greek mind to teach Gentiles who don't think like Jews. And so he can logically go through the identification principles, and they make sense to a Gentile, where they might not make sense to a Jew, but shepherd and sheep would make a lot of sense to a Jew.

Sure. That was my point, it's different now, you know, when you look at identification, it's different than the audience he was talking about. He doesn't say Christ is in my hand, but the implication is, if you're in Christ, like the analogy. It was a different audience. So once you get the identification through, it speaks differently. You can go back to this and understand it in a different way, I guess.

Okay. We have somewhere between five and ten minutes, depending upon where the bells are actually ringing. That clock's really on time today. Check it out. My watch would be pretty... Twenty-five after six. Let's see if we can get through this passage in Corinthians. I'll try to take very few detours from this point on.

The things that are freely given us by God, you'll see the things that are is just sort of gloss. We're smoothing this all out. We might know This is such that we might know the freely given things. It's all one word in the Greek. And this freely given is karas, which is the same word that we use for grace. So, by the grace of God, we're given all of these. What's the no there? The no is where?

So that we can have complete knowledge. Is that true? Mine took liberty and used understand. Sure. But this is the complete knowledge? This is complete knowledge. We can have complete knowledge of things given by God. I would say yes, it's true, because the information is communicated by the Spirit of God. Yeah. Exactly right. It's not dependent upon the finiteness of our mind. Yeah. I think that's the key point there.

Okay, so verse 13. which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words." Okay, now here's some more Greek excitement for you, which might be why Courtney's frowning. Neither the word thoughts nor the word words are there. In the Greek, it says, combining spiritual with spiritual.

And we can actually pull out, tease out a little bit more about this. So the combining is actually two Greek words. One is sun, which is together. So we're doing something together with something. The back half of that word is krino, which is to judge, to examine.

So we're examining together spiritual things with spiritual. Right? Does that make sense? We're not taking spiritual things and trying to comprehend them using worldly philosophical sort of principles. We're taking things that are spiritual and understanding them in our new state as spiritual beings. So I really don't care for the for the words in that second part. Spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. We're judging together spiritual things using spiritual. Well, that's great, because we're spiritual beings now.

So natural... Let me see if there was anything else I wanted to say on that. Oh, the only other thing I'd say is that at the front of that, which things we also speak, that actually is there. And I think it indicates that as we gain this knowledge through the Holy Spirit of God, we can now share it with others.

And if those others are also spiritual beings, then we can examine those things together, spirit to spirit. But sharing these things with non-believers, how well does that work? Not well at all. Try to go out and tell somebody who does not believe the basic gospel that you've been identified with Christ or seated in the heavenlies and have all the spiritual blessings that are there.

And see how far you get. Oh, the King James actually. Does anybody have a King James? I have a new King James. Let's see what New King James does with this, because I thought they did a lot better with the translation. These things we also speak not in words, which man's wisdom teaches, but with the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. There you go, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. So they didn't throw in this thoughts and words and try to smooth it all out into something that's not there. Yeah, I like that translation a lot better. Moving right along to verse 14.

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And the word foolishness there is the Greek word from which we get our English word moronic. They're foolishness to him and he cannot understand them. And this understand, this is Gnosko. So he cannot have any experiential knowledge of the things of the Spirit of God.

And kind of ruminate on that one a little bit because that one's truly sad to me. So they can't know anything experientially about the things of God. What do we know about God? the peace that passes all understanding, right? Can a non-believer have any experience of peace? No. Love? No. Sad. Really sad. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. So it takes the spirit to understand the things of God. So I promise We'd circle back, we went into this type of knowledge and that type of knowledge, and you know, spirit in me, spirit not in me, of God not... The way that this lays out is just really clear, and I absolutely love it. So, let's walk through. I've got one bullet point per verse. So, first bullet point is verse 9. We'll walk through what it says. So, number 1.

The things of God are not experientially tangible. We can't see them, we can't hear them, they have not entered our heart. The things of God are not experientially tangible. Verse 10 tells us they are knowable through the spirit. Okay, so there's a way to get to know them. Verse number 11, it takes the spirit of a man to know the experientially intangible aspects of a man, so that which can't be seen. Similarly, same thing with the Spirit. The Spirit can know those things that can't be experienced about God.

Next verse, we've received the Spirit. We have that Spirit in us, which is very cool. Based on having that Spirit in us, we can know the things of God. And the next verse says, and we can share those things of God with other believers. So we can teach and encourage one another.

And the last verse in that, which is sort of the frowny face, which is unbelievers miss out. They don't get to know any aspect of this. All right, so with that, let's close. Lord, thank you. Thank you for your word and how you make things abundantly clear to us and how you're constantly revealing yourself to us through the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.