Functions of the
Soul and Spirit
Romans 8:13
Sermon Transcript
Loved ones, what
we're talking about these Sunday evenings is found in Romans 8 and
verse 13. Maybe you'd look at that verse since one of the great
purposes that you'll find God fulfilling among us is that He'll light
up verses of scripture for us all that we've never understood before.
So, it's very important to bring the Bibles, or use the Bibles that
we have in the auditorium here. Romans 8:13 runs like this: "For
if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit
you put to death the deeds of the body you will live."
I think many of us
in these days are all preoccupied with the crisis experience that we
did have or we didn't have. "I was born of the spirit; I wasn't
born of the spirit. I was baptized with the spirit; I wasn't baptized
with the spirit. I do speak in tongues; I don't speak in tongues."
We're preoccupied with all those issues. And this verse takes the
feet right from under us on all those issues, because it states
plainly it doesn't matter what you've been baptized into; it doesn't
matter what you've been born of; it doesn't matter what tongues you
speak in or don't speak in; if you live according to the flesh, you
will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the
body, you will live.
The purpose of us
gathering together on Sunday evenings is to talk about what it means
to walk according to the Spirit. Brothers and sisters, I think that
many of us so-called Christians are actually dead. We have all the
words of Zion on our lips, and we go to all the right meetings and
services and we can testify to the right crisis experiences. But we
no longer walk after the Spirit. We've been walking after the flesh
for years...and we're dead. We're dead to God. That's why we have to
go to so many meetings. We can't get anything from God for ourselves.
That's why we have to read so many books, because we're not getting
anything from God for ourselves. We've ceased to walk after the
Spirit. So why we gather together on Sunday evenings is to talk about
how to walk after the Spirit.
What we've shared up
to this moment is that the Bible teaches us that there are three
levels to our personalities. I won't elaborate on it in detail, but
it is I Thessalonians 5:23 and it runs, "May the God of peace
himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be
kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Those are the three levels of the personality that we can operate
on.
I encouraged you
last Sunday not to have purely academic discussions about whether
we're trichotomous or dichotomous and whether the soul is a separate
entity or the spirit is a separate entity. I'm asking you to regard
it in a practical, spiritual, everyday manner. If you push me and
say, "Is this the only view of the personality?" I say,
bring another one; let's call it "cookie," and "cream,"
and "ice cream." Call it anything, but at least you need to
see that God teaches us that we exist on three different levels of
our personality. And it's possible to experience different things on
different levels.
You can experience
the wetness of water with your body but you can't experience the
wetness of water with your spirit or your soul. You can experience in
a real way algebraic equations in your soul, but you can't experience
them in your spirit. And the important thing that we saw last Sunday
was you can experience God in your spirit, but you don't experience
God in your soul. You express Him through your soul, and you express
Him through your body. But you experience Him in your spirit.
You remember we said
that it was very like the plan of the temple. There is a verse in I
Corinthians 6:19 that tells us we have something in common with the
Old Testament church of God. 1 Corinthians 6:19, "Do you not
know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which
you have from God? You are not your own." Do you not know that
your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, which you have within you?
And in the Old Testament temple, the body was the Outer Court, or the
public place, where there was daylight. Everything could be seen. You
can see all that your body does with no difficulty at all. My hand is
up -- it's down. I hear that -- I don't hear it. It's something that
you can observe easily without difficulty.
The soul in the Old
Testament temple was simply the Holy Place. There was still light
there -- less light, but there was light. The light of candles, and
the showbread was in the Holy Place. The priest could go into the
Holy Place, and you could still see things. So it is with the soul;
you can look into your soul. Your soul has thoughts in it. You can
look into your soul and see those thoughts and examine them.
The Holy of Holies,
in the Old Testament temple, was absolutely dark because God was
there. Everybody in the Outer Court and in the Holy Place believed by
faith that God was in the Holy of Holies working and revealing
himself. Everything that went on in the Outer Court, out here, and in
the Holy Place, went on according to the revelation that was received
in the Holy of Holies.
Unless the veil was
torn, that divided the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place, nobody
could know what was going on in there. Only God could tear that veil
in twain, you remember, when Jesus died. So it is impossible for us
to see into the Holy of Holies, unless from time to time God lets us
know what is going on in there.
It is in the Holy of
Holies in your spirit that you meet God. It is in the Holy Place, or
the soul, that you meet yourself. You are conscious of yourself
through your soul powers. You're conscious of the world through your
body. But you're conscious of God through your spirit. And God works
there as you exercise faith.
Now, loved ones,
what happens with us all, and what is happening far and wide in
Christendom today, is that brothers and sisters are trying to contact
God in their souls. That's why they get all caught up with, "Do
I feel God?" And that's why they have doubts at times as to
whether God is there or not. And that's why they get caught up in
introspection. The truth is, God works in your spirit by faith, by
your faith.
Now, I know you hear
me saying that, but you don't really believe it. Because tomorrow
morning in prayer, you'll get down in prayer and you'll think, "Is
God hearing me?" Now actually, if you're operating the way God
wants you to, you'll never ask that question. You go in absolute
faith that God is keeping His promise that, "If you speak to me
I will listen to you. If you pray a prayer according to my will you
can have complete confidence that I hear you." God wants you
never to look in to see if He's there. That's like Lot's wife,
looking back. You're turned into a pillar of salt. Your whole spirit,
your life, becomes bitter. All that goes on in the spirit goes on by
faith, by your faith, that God is doing what He said.
At the beginning of
your Christian life, you hear Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand
at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." You've
only got to open the door by confessing your sins and repenting. Then
you can be sure Jesus is going to come into your heart. If you start
looking into your heart to see if He's there, you'll find only doubt
and emptiness. The reason is that no man can see into the Holy of
Holies. We cannot see into our own spirits. It's just that God of His
own gracious goodness at times rends the veil in twain, and lets us
sense something that is coming out from our spirits.
But loved ones,
honestly, it would save you endless pain and grief and depression if
you would just accept that God works in your spirit. You cannot tell
what is going on in your spirit by looking. The only thing you can
look with, as you'll see in a moment, is your mind and the mind
cannot see deeper than itself. The spirit is deeper than the mind.
Now if you can only
grasp that, it will save you a lot of agony. You cannot tell what is
going on in your spirit. God works in your spirit as you obey Him and
believe. That's all. And that's it! If you say to me, "You mean,
I go blind?" That's it. You go blind. You just obey God and you
believe that He is keeping His promise and working in your spirit,
and from time to time it will come up from within your spirit, little
assurances. The Spirit of God will bear witness with your spirit that
you are a child of God, but at times it won't. You think you have
complete control of it. You think you can dial a number and say,
"Give me assurance" and then God's Spirit should
immediately witness.
Now loved ones, the
Father is in charge of this operation, it's not you. God knows how
much consolation you need. The dear old saints, like Thomas A'
Kempis, would talk in those terms. He would say, "This morning,
God granted me the consolation of His presence." I thought of us
with our instant coffee and instant everything. Let's have the house
of our choice, and let's have everything when we want it. We have no
idea of the way God works. The old saints talk in terms of “God
granted me the consolation of His presence.” We think we can dial a
number and get the consolation of His presence just like that.
Now loved ones,
that's not our right. It's not our right; it's God's great gift to
us. Our right is one only and that's to walk blindly by faith and
obedience. That's it. And the Father will keep His life in our
spirits.
That's where we got
to last day, loved ones, and what I suggested that we would do today,
or this evening, is to discuss the spirit and the three main
functions of the spirit, and the soul and the three main functions of
the soul. So if you just get down to some concentrated Bible study
now, perhaps we could cover that.
If you would look at
John 4:23 you'd see probably what is the primary function of the
spirit inside us. It's the function that we've been discussing now.
John 4:23, "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true
worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the
Father seeks to worship him.”
Worship takes place
in your spirit. Or, communion with God takes place in your spirit. So
the basic function of the spirit is so that we will be able to
commune with God. You can see that at times it helps to clap hands,
but really, it's irrelevant. It's nice to clap hands if the Holy
Spirit tells us to clap hands, but it isn't essential to clap hands
to commune with God.
Actually, perhaps
the deepest communion with God is Thomas' when he stood before Jesus
having seen the holes in His side and the holes in His hands, and
said, "My Lord and my God." And perhaps the deepest part of
communion for us all is absolute silence before God because communion
takes place there in our spirits. That's how we get to know God.
Could I just say
that a lot of you are empty, desperately empty, even though you call
yourself Christians, because you don't ever commune with God. That's
right. You don't ever commune with God. You say prayers; you say
verbal prayers; and you say thought prayers. But you don't stay on
your knees long enough to get through to God. And do you see that
your mind is so active all through the day that you have to let it
run out before you get to the level of your spirit. So it takes time
to commune with God.
Brothers and
sisters, the 15 minute prayers are only good if you are having longer
prayer times through the week sometime. But 15 minutes...it's hard to
do much with 15 minutes. You've just got the sleep out of your eyes,
and you've got some of the creaks and pains out of the body, and
you've succeeded in forgetting that the car won't start and that
you're going to have trouble with it, and it takes about 15 minutes
to part from all those things in order to begin to commune with God
in your spirit. Your spirit rises up to God. It rises up from the
depths of your being. And it takes awhile to do that. Sometimes you
have to go a little by verbal prayer and by thought prayer. But every
time you go before God you should look forward to a time when the
spirit will begin to commune with Him. And you'll sense a communion.
Now, I really mean that you can know that you are speaking to Jesus
directly. And you can know that He's looking at you and listening to
you. That's what I mean. You can know it. You can know that He's
doing that. There comes a time when your spirit rises up and begins
to commune with God. Now I think many of us are missing it because of
sheer lack of time. But communion with God takes place in our
spirits.
Then, loved ones,
Mark 2:8 is another function of our spirits. "And immediately
Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within
themselves, said to them, ‘Why do you question thus in your
hearts?’” Jesus didn't hear them questioning; He perceived in His
spirit. And that "knowing" that is deeper than the
perception of the mind or the eyes is intuition. That is the second
main function of our spirits -- intuition. Our use of it in
connection with you dear ladies would give us the meaning of it. We
talk about a woman's intuition. She knows something -- she doesn't
know why she knows it -- she just knows it. And often we men will
complain about you because you seem to have such terrific wisdom and
you know the right car to buy after we've made the mistake. You knew
it deep, deep down in your intuition. That is a human action of the
human spirit and many people have that.
When the spirit is
touched by the Holy Spirit, intuition enables you to know what God
wants you to do without long discussion and analysis of situations.
It's a deep knowing. "I know He wants me to do that." We
know, we know we should go to this place even if everything falls on
top of our heads. Even if it is a complete failure, we still know
that's what God wants. Now, that's intuition. That's what we need in
connection with guidance in our lives. If I could even get you to
stop running around picking pages out of Scripture looking for
guidance, or looking at books or scouring maps of the world, or
talking to all your friends, or all your guidance counselors. If
you'd just stop that and see that your God put you here on this earth
for a certain purpose. If you'll stay long enough with Him in prayer,
He'll tell you what to do. That brings a stability and a sense of
security that nothing else does.
If I could say to
you again, I think a lot of us here are running around doing things
that God doesn't want us to do at all. Because we don't spend time
before Him in prayer, we have no intuition at all. We rarely use our
intuition; we've rarely acted upon it, and so it's pretty dead. And
when we want to know what to do, we talk to all kinds of other
people, and we seek advice from everybody. If I could share this even
in spirit-filled circles, this is what has elevated spiritual leaders
into a non-scriptural position of superiority.
Lots of us here
won't go to the trouble of seeking God at length in prayer. Instead
we go to our spiritual elders and expect them to seek. Then they are
forced into a position where they have to get guidance for us. They
become kings where they shouldn't be kings at all over other people's
lives. It's in the spirit that you can know what God wants. Each one
of us can know that. You can know what God wants you to do apart from
the analyzing of your mind and your thoughts.
Another function,
and the third main function that we'll deal with tonight, of the
spirit, is found in I Corinthians 5:3, "For though absent in
body I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already
pronounced judgment."
And so Paul is
present in the spirit and he is able to judge. He is able to tell
what is right or wrong because his spirit is present with him in this
case. And that is the third function: the factor in us that tells us
what is right and what is wrong.
Our conscience,
loved ones, belongs to our spirit. Our conscience will judge us
according to what God is telling us through intuition. The times of
communion that we have with Him, and after those times, God will give
us in our intuition clear guidance about things. Our conscience is
interesting for it will judge us in the light of our intuition. A lot
of us come under condemnation because we don't act according to our
conscience. Our conscience seems to be telling us some things that
it's not telling somebody else and so we judge for ourselves, "Oh,
well, we must be wrong. We must be wrong if that's happening."
And we don't realize that there is a dear verse, I think it's in I
Corinthians 10:23 that would help you to see the importance of
abiding by your own personal conscience. I Corinthians 10:23, "All
things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are
lawful, but not all things build up."
Now, we're all at
different stages in our relationship with God. And your conscience
will tell you to do things that the conscience isn't telling a
brother who lives with you or a sister who works with you. And your
growth in your spirit and the strengthening of your spirit will
depend on you acting according to your conscience.
You'll see that very
clearly if you look back to I Corinthians 2, where there's a verse
that makes further elaboration on that. I Corinthians 2:15, "The
spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no
one." Do you see the meaning of that? The spiritual man judges
all things through his conscience. He knows what is right and wrong.
But he himself is judged by no one else, because no one else can tell
what his conscience is saying to him.
Now, I agree with
you, that there are some clear laws of God about murder and adultery
and fornication that are in black and white in Scripture. But I'm
assuming that if we are children of God we're at least obeying those.
What I am saying to you is further than that. Your conscience now, as
you begin to walk deeper after the Spirit with Jesus, is telling you
things that He is not telling anybody else. If you don't respond to
that, you will grieve the Spirit within you and you will go dead in
your own Christian life.
I suspect that a lot
of us have lost a sense of aliveness in our relationship with God
because we've daily grieved our conscience. We have daily ignored our
conscience. Now do you see that He will tell you all kinds of things
that He'll tell nobody else? He'll tell you not to look in certain
places, and He won't be saying that to somebody else. Somebody else
will be able to read Time magazine and your conscience will say to
you, "Just enough. Your mind is being dissipated in all
directions. Just leave that. Just leave it. You'll be able to take it
up again, but just leave it." He'll say to you, other people can
watch that program on television, that's all right. But you, I want
you not to watch it. They'll be all kinds of little things that you
can do personally for your Lord. And if you do it, you'll find a new
spirit of life coming up within you.
Brothers and
sisters, respect your conscience because your conscience is not that
of a pagan. A pagan conscience can only go according to the
information that the mind has. But a Spirit-filled conscience goes
according to the guidance that God has given you through the
intuition of your spirit. So respect your conscience. I'm preaching
to myself when I say that, because you see, we're all at different
stages. And as we go to different stages, there will be certain
things that you can do that I can't do, and certain things that I can
do that you can't do. And so the spiritual men and women can't judge
each other, but they do have to be judged by their own conscience and
they have to act according to that conscience.
Brothers and
sisters, if you would do that, you would find the body of Christ
becoming such a combination of exciting individualistic personalities
that you would not believe such a group of people could exist. But we
are becoming conformed to the image of this world, the world of
Christendom. Because we're becoming little robots who do what
everybody else tells us to do, and are failing to grow in our own
spirits. So the conscience judges according to the intuition of his
spirit. Loved ones, you have to abide by your conscience; you have to
abide by your conscience.
That's the way those
three operate together. You can see why when you don't commune with
God, you're virtually giving up the ship. Really. When you miss
prayer during the day you may run for two days, but I doubt if you
can run for more than two days. I think you bluff yourself when you
think you're still operating in the spirit after two days of
prayerlessness. I think you're bluffing. I think I was bluffing when
I did it. I think we continue to operate in our souls because there
is a great deal of soul Christianity around. There are a lot of
Christians who are "soul Christians." And that's what we
do. We continue to operate on a level of our souls, but we're no
longer operating in a level of our spirits, because communion with
God and our spirit is the basis of intuition and it's the intuition
that our conscience judges. When we don't commune with God for one
day or two days, you're operating in the soul level after that. You
still call yourself a Christian, but actually, you don't have any
spirit life to communicate to anyone else.
You fall into the
same situation as many other pagans because, do you see, pagans have
spirits; they have spirits. The only difference is their spirit is
not related to God and is not energized by His Holy Spirit. But their
spirit is very much alive, so it's important for you to realize that
the scripture does not praise or admire people who are spiritually
alive. There are lots of people who are spiritually alive to evil
spirits. People like Jeanne Dixon [a medium in the newspaper] are
very alive to all kinds of spirits. Spiritualists are very alive to a
whole spiritual world that has nothing in common with Jesus. The
scripture does not praise people who are just spiritual. It praises
people who are spiritually alive to God.
Everybody has a
spirit that is more or less alive. Some people are very spiritual,
some are not very spiritual, but don't be misled because people are
interested in spiritual things. There are all kinds of séances, all
kinds of revelations that evil spirits give, all kinds of miracles
that evil spirits can perform through people. They make them very
spiritual people, but they're not spiritually alive to God. So the
pagans do have spirits.
However, the great
majority of us have spirits that are so weak and so sick that they're
virtually nonexistent. And so in most people's lives, (and of course,
I'm asking you to be careful of your own), the soul is the stronger
factor. The spirit is almost completely crushed under the heel of the
soul. I hesitate to say it, but I'm afraid that the great majority of
Christians have spirits that are crushed into virtually nothingness.
Let me tell you a secret. They are among even the charismatic
Christians. I think there are great numbers of loved ones who are
regarded as charismatic Christians and their dear spirits are dead.
They have no real daily communion with God in prayer. They exist on
the level of the soul all the time. And so in the Bible you'll find
that there are some verses that refer to functions of the soul and
yet it uses the word "spirit". That's to show you plainly
that there are people who so die in their spirits that their souls
actually do the things that their spirits should be doing.
Therefore the
function of the soul becomes attributed to the spirit and the
function of the spirit becomes attributed to the soul. You'll find
one in Proverbs 17:22. "A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but
a downcast spirit dries up the bones." Well, of course cheerful
is something that the emotions experience, not that the spirit
experiences first. And a downcast spirit really refers to a downcast
or depressed emotion. Depressed emotion dries up the bones. But the
word "spirit" is used because in this person in whom this
is true, the spirit is virtually dead altogether. And that's what we
find in our own lives. When your spirit becomes crushed, you come to
a meeting like this and you worship in the soul. That's right.
Because your spirit is only made alive by the Holy Spirit pouring in
as you commune with God and spend time with God. But if you don't do
that, and you come out to this service with no prayer preparation,
then you actually worship in your soul.
Now, I'll just show
you very quickly, loved ones, the functions of the soul. And you can
find them easily if you look at some of these verses. It's Psalm
41:2. "The LORD protects him and keeps him alive; he is called
blessed in the land;
thou dost not give
him up to the will of his enemies." The Revised Standard Version
translates it "will". The word is "nephesh" in
the Hebrew, and it is N-E-P-H-E-S-H. It means "soul." And
that's why that verse reads in Hebrew, "Thou doest not give him
up to the soul of his enemies." And the Revised Standard
Version, of course, translates it "will."
The will is one of
the functions of the soul by which you're determined to do this or do
that, to make judgments and to execute actions in your own life and
to say words. Your will determines what you do. Your will is the
central general in your personality that directs all the other parts
of your soul and your body. So the will is the function that makes
decisions and that executes action. It is in a way, the key point
together with the conscience, of your own personality. So the will is
one of the functions of your soul.
Then if you look at
Proverbs 3:21 you'll find another function of the soul. "My son,
keep sound wisdom and discretion; let them not escape from your
sight, and they will be life for your soul and adornment for your
neck." Wisdom and discretion are life for your soul. Wisdom and
discretion are found in the mind. That's where you exercise wisdom
and discretion. The mind with the ability to size up situations,
judge things, reason, argue, debate and think is a function of the
soul. So you have the will and you have the mind.
The third one, that
we should glance at before we finish this evening, is I Samuel 18:1.
In fact, Psalm 42:5 might be better to look at. Cause it's one that's
very relevant to many of us. Psalm 42:5, "Why are you cast down,
O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I
shall again praise him, my help and my God." Your emotions are
the third main function of your soul.
Brothers and
sisters, do you see the whole danger? God alone can give life to your
spirit. He does it on the basis of two conditions that you fulfill.
One is belief; you must believe that He's working. You must not doubt
and try to look in and find out is He working; you must believe. And
two, you must obey. If you believe and obey, or you trust and obey in
daily Bible study and prayer, His Spirit comes into your spirit. He
shows you in your intuition what you should do. Your conscience
constrains you to do that. Your will obeys your conscience and
directs your mind and emotions to make your body do what God wants.
That's His plan.
But, if you don't
trust and obey, if you don't believe and obey Him, if you start
looking in and doubting whether He's there or not, if you disobey Him
in the matter of daily prayer and Bible study, if you disobey Him in
some other part of your life, your spirit becomes crushed after about
one or two days. It becomes crushed deep down.
But, the old thing
that comes to the rescue is up here in the mind with all kinds of
murky reasons. "Well, I'm a Christian." "Well, the
person in the office thinks I'm a Christian." "Well, I know
when this discussion comes up, I know the Christian line on this."
So with the old mind you express the Christian line, "Yes, I'm
against that." And, "Well, at least I witnessed. My prayer
life is in bad shape; I'm not very aware that the spirit is coming
through me, but at least I said the right thing." Probably you
spoke death.
It's very hard to
operate up here at all as a Christian and spread anything but death.
That's usually what you do. Unless you're coming from a spirit that
is alive and that is in daily communion with God, anything that you
produce by your soul is worthless. It has no spiritual life because
your soul is your great self. It's your SELF. That's the way you
operated before you even became a child of God. That's the way the
four billion people in the world operate. They operate, most of them,
on the basis of their soul with a very few on the basis of spiritual
contact with evil spirits. A much smaller few operate on the basis of
the contact of their spirits with God's Spirit.
So, loved ones, you
can see how all important that old hymn is, "Trust and obey, for
there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."
I pray that this week you will be Spirit-filled people. Not people
who were filled with the spirit three months ago or five years ago. I
pray that you'll be people filled with the Spirit each day of this
week. I pray that you'll stay with God long enough to receive that
dear Spirit of His.
Let's pray.
Dear Lord, I ask you
for my brothers and sisters and for myself, that you'll make it clear
to us through the blessed conscience that you've given us; you'll
make it clear to us when we're not acting according to the intuition
that you're giving us. Lord, whatever everybody else is doing, what
does that matter? It matters nothing. Lord, we thank you that you've
called us to personal obedience, to a personal Lord. We would commit
ourselves to obeying you personally so that our spirits may be filled
with your Spirit and our souls may express the life that is coming
from you. We ask this, that we may be spirit Christians and not soul
Christians, for your glory. And now the may the grace of our Lord
Jesus and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be
with each one of us, now and throughout this coming week. Amen.
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