This is the tenth message in a series of messages on the person and the work of the Holy Spirit, and although today's message may have some subcategories, I am going in a direction. I may not finish today, I'm telling you in advance, so there may be a part two to this, because as I've said this is a very complex subject. And it's like layers, you can touch on one area and peel back a little bit, touch on another and peel back and then suddenly there will, it will be like everything begins to come together and you can begin to start putting all of the pieces together and see the bigger picture at work. Now if you will turn first with me to 1 Corinthians 2, beginning at verse 14, and I will show you that the apostle Paul has what I'd call a few classifications of men. And I'm using “man” as the generic term, so women we are included, but men, as in the church, the people in the church. “But the natural man receiveth not the Spirit of God.” Let's put that down here, the natural man. “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 discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.” If you read on into the 3rd chapter, “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ,” babes in Christ. And let me go back because he says, “I couldn't speak unto you as spiritual, but as unto carnal,” and so we'll write that down as well, carnal; carnal believers, and I'm not saying Christians; carnal believers. And let's put down the forth category here: spiritual. And if you keep reading he says about those that were babes in Christ, “I fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are you able. For ye are yet carnal,” is this the church? Yes, “For ye are yet carnal: whereas there is among you envying, strife, divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” Now this is important because this separates in these, they're Paul's words not mine, “categories” if you will, the natural man and he says back there in 2:14, “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: they are foolishness unto him.” And perhaps the same thing is declared a little bit earlier in 1 Corinthians 1:18, because it talks about “the preaching of the cross is foolishness unto them that are,” as we've rightly translated, “in the process of perishing.” To the natural man the things of God remain incomprehensible. The apostle expresses a similar view in Romans 1:21, calling on some who, “became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened.” It seems abundantly clear, both from Corinthians and other letters, that when Paul came, especially to the Corinthians, he said he was, “determined to know nothing among them except Christ and him crucified.” Think of those words as not an end but rather a beginning, a point of departure, a point of proclamation for those people. Why? Because he goes on to say, “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them that are called, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” So it's really important to see how he separates these, he does the same thing, by the way, in speaking of the preaching of Christ, the death of Christ, and the Resurrection of Christ in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4. Now the reason why I've told you the order of, he was just writing a letter, right, so the order of this letter, if a person is trying to categorize, doesn't make much sense unless you look at it as a letter trying to set these people straight. Which is why chapter 15 opens once more with the testimony of those who saw the risen Christ, who were eyewitnesses to the risen Christ, and the declaration, “If Christ is not risen our faith is vain.” He's essentially spent fourteen chapters trying to take all these people back into, “Here is the most important thing, you've missed the mark, you're yet carnal; you can't even process what I'm trying to tell you.” And he says something so nifty here, and it's nifty in my eyes, anyway. He says “You are yet carnal: whereas there is among you envying, strife, and divisions.” And the whole letter is peppered with problems like this. The message to the natural man, then, cannot be received. Now don't raise your hand, don't think I'm looking at you because I'm not, but some may recall a time when they heard a preacher preaching, or somebody saying they read their Bible, and you'd just shake your head, don't━I'm not looking at you, I'm trying to look nowhere━you'd just shake your head and say, “What's the point? Oh yeah, right.” Or maybe some actually believed in God at some cloud somewhere, but not the God of the Bible. The natural man cannot receive. What about the babes in Christ? And this is pretty important because, although you may think I'm not talking about the Holy Spirit operating in a believer, wait until you see and you'll understand why these categories that Paul states are; they're not categories per se but they're important to distinguish. Babes in Christ not ready for strong meat, not ready to take in the deep things of God; even the writers of, the writer of Hebrews in the 5th chapter talks about this, “Every one that uses milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.” This is the problem, the same problem that Peter addressed in 1 Peter, in the 2nd chapter, in the 2nd verse when he says, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word,” underline, “that ye may grow thereby.” Now that doesn't mean that you never stop drinking in milk, it just means that's how the Christian grows. The babe in Christ grows feeding on the sincere milk of the word. Now if you keep kind of following along, plotting this along we might say that babes in Christ are neither, carnal nor are they spiritual at that moment; spiritual. However they can be carnally or spiritually minded, but not enough has taken root in the babe to say that they are spiritual and not enough has taken root in the babe in Christ to say they're completely carnal; does that make sense to you? (Yes Ma'am.) Good, I'm glad, because otherwise we'd have a problem. Now some in the Bible are called sarkikos, “carnal,” they have been born of God, like these at Corinth, and I want you to get the picture when Paul is talking about outside the church, he'll be talking about pagan, and he'll be talking about Greeks or Jews. Right now he's talking to the church when he says, “Ye are yet carnal.” So we have those that have been born of God but haven't grown. Now let's face it, everybody loves a baby, right? You see a baby, “Oh, isn't that cute.” Now go to the spiritual application. I've been in great meetings where it was mostly new converts, and something very beautiful about the gathering of newborn babes in Christ. The beautiful thing is that everything, everything at least in the beginning; I'm not talking about the individual; I'm talking about the way they see things, is pure and good. I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about the way they see the church and the way they see brothers and sisters, and the way they see the whole big picture at work; everything is pure, everything is good. Tears can be shed and pour forth from the heart, and there is no pride at work. I'm talking about those gatherings where I've been, where I've seen people literally on their hands and knees sobbing, crying out, we're not talking about; there's no cameras, it's not an act, nobody's judging, and the difference between those people. And this is why it's important to, we'll talk about this, those people who are in the infancy stages, versus those who are carnal, but born of God and have arrested development. They are in perpetual infancy stages, never moving forward, and there is a good reason for that. He says it right here, 1 Peter says it, there's abundant places where it is declared, but I get a head of myself here. Let's talk about this, the carnal believers, he says to those, “ye are yet carnal.” “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual.” Why? Because they couldn't handle it! They couldn't even wrap their minds around it. And this, my friends, I'm going to tell you something. This is why this whole series is really important, because you in your own circle of people and the people you know and the people you encounter, this is not you, you judge or I'm a judge, this is just a statement of fact and it's the hardest thing for us sometimes to accept: we're all supposedly growing. Remember Dr. Scott's words, and I've repeated them, I'll say, said them again last week, about how the disciples were “cataclysmically changed.” I said the Resurrection and the Holy Spirit, two events that changed them for the better and not for the worse. A Christian, one who is following Christ, who is pressing in, who is feeding on the word of God, may have the ugliness of themselves of their sinful nature of their condition, exposed by the Holy Spirit to them! Not by a brother not by a sister: to them. That's what the Holy Spirit does, brings you to the reality of who you are, like Jacob being confronted at the ford Jabbok, “What is your name?” Wrestling with the angel of the Lord: “What is your name?” “Jacob.” Until he faced himself, then he was changed to “Israel.” That's what God does for each and every one of us, coming not being under the condemnation of somebody else saying, “Hey, you did this and you did that,” but rather, that's what God is doing in and for us as sincere people earnestly feeding on the word of God. But carnal believers, the problem is that they are never confronted with facing themselves. Carnal believers are constantly, “Ye are yet carnal: there is among you envying, strife and divisions.” And what's interesting, “While one saith, I am of Paul; another one of Apollos; are ye not carnal?” Now what are the marks of arrested spiritual development? And if you look right here it says it, first and foremost what is not said here but is said through the whole 1 and 2 Corinthians: self interest, self above everything. Now I ask you a question, and it's a rhetorical one. Christ's message to His disciples, Paul's message, in fact, elsewhere speaking of “I die daily,” or of “picking up one's cross,” is not the message of self-interest. It is not the message of self deification, self gloating. So 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 has this above all, but look at what else is here, “envying, strife, and divisions.” Now later on we'll look at and do a study in Galatians, because it says, “the works of the flesh” and part of the works of the flesh: envying, strife, divisions; that's part of the equation. So when we talk about arrested spiritual development we also talk about the fact that, yes, the flesh and the spirit are always warring, but if you take a look at who's, who's talking, who's doing the, the real stuff here. Now God has made a provision for every one of His children to grow spiritually, because we don't all grow at the same time and at the same speed and the same way. Some people will come to a ministry, that's why I said be patient and you'll find out that you and I, we have over the years, I'm sure we're all guilty of this, engaged in being judgmental in some way or another of somebody else's ministry, somebody else's work, but God has made provision. For some are only able to understand A, B, C, D, E, F, G and that's it, and God has made a provision for them in a ministry somewhere that brings them those simple building blocks that's all they can take in and they will eventually grow, but that's where they have to start. God has made provisions elsewhere for those people who are a little bit more of the analytical mind; they've got to examine everything. And most of you are like that, you've got to examine everything. I bet you if I left you in a room and said don't touch anything, you'd be touching everything going, “How's this work? What does that look like?” Because we're kind of likeminded people, we like to take things a part and analyze and, “Okay, we put it back together. Okay, I'm satisfied,” like my car I did one time, and we never heard the end of that story either. But my point is God has made provision for everyone of His children to spiritually grow. To the newly saved he says, “Milk,” and, as I'm going to quote again, 1 Peter 2:2, “that ye may grow thereby.” Milk is not a bad thing. In fact, milk will be required through the course of your whole spiritual life along with meat, the two things are required. You take in a little bit of milk, then you need some strong meat, you need to grow a little bit more, but you'll always be going back. It's not like you're going to have some different type of taste bud. And the concept is to always be growing, unless you lose taste for the word of God. Again, 2 Peter, in the last closing verse of the last chapter, says, “Grow in grace.” There's always the concept of growing; being rooted in or growing up into. So the next question, then is, of all these people, and we're not saying that the spiritual people they've arrived somehow. We're talking about three types of people right here that obviously have been born from above, not the natural man, not yet, but the babe, even the carnal believer and the spiritual; born from above. And the difference between the ability for those to be able to be interested in the deep things of God, even babes who begin, and then there's this, you know, there's the thousand, just like a child, been around a child and the child can ask more questions, “How does this work? Where does that come from?” We begin like that, we start asking questions, “Why did that happen?” And they seem, if we look back at the questions we asked 20 years ago as we began our walk, but that's how every child of God progresses: “How did this happen? And why did that happen? And where did it happen? And who was this person?” On and on and on and on, and then there comes this kind of, “Okay, we've asked enough questions,” we sit back. It's almost like autopilot now, we don't need to do anything else; which is probably spiritual suicide because you need to keep constantly being in the Scriptures to constantly keep growing; you never stop. But let's talk about this spiritual person who's interested in pertaining to the deep things of God. Paul says that “God would have us to know the riches of his glory,” Colossians 1:27 that brings us together in God's love, gives us “the full assurance of the understanding,” he calls it, “the unsearchable riches of Christ” in one place. He prays for our minds and our eyes; the Ephesians, but we'll take it as ours, to be open to receive these great truths. And when I say this, it seems self-evident. There will be people who think they have spiritually mastered; there's nothing more for them to learn. They have never challenged themselves to think outside of what they've already taken in. It's sometimes like turning something inside-out and saying, “Have I really, have I really just seen everything?” Because the reality is no one, no one, no human being is able to see everything, all the dimensions of what's in God's word through their whole lifetime. It's impossible, that would require us being perfect here and now and we're not. There's only one deposit placed in us, drawing us towards, but we don't have that full comprehension of everything, so it's always the desire to keep digging and to keep looking. Now I'm going to give you an example of why I'm using these natural, babes, carnal and spiritual to explain what, and I'm not even to my message yet, so Lord, help me. It's just the introduction. Let me give you an example when we talk about especially carnal believers and spiritual Christians, let's make that distinguishing barrier there. I'm going to use the example, which I think we've all done, so when I say we've all done it, even me. I'm guilty of this, but I want to show you how even something that sounds good can still be geared to our carnality. How many here have said you're praying to know God's will in your life? Okay, those are the honest ones that raised their hands, praying to know what the Lord would have you to do in this circumstance, okay. Now this is an example, so you've got to bear with me because I'll show you how even as spiritual thinkers we can take something and make it completely carnal. Nowhere in this book does it talk about our will, our personal; in other words what is God's will in my life personally? It's not discussed like that. This is the thing that sometimes gets warped and morphed into people going into the store and saying, “Lord, I pray You'll show me Your will on what type of toilet paper I should buy today because I'm just not sure and I don't want to make a mistake,” because heaven forbid, right? But if you look at every reference about the will of God, you recognize something very important. In Matthew 6, they come to Him and they say, “Teach us, Lord, teach us to pray.” “Okay: Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,” Thy will be done.” Again, later on in Matthew's Gospel, it talks about those where they say, “Lord, Lord, haven't we done thus and so in your name?” He talks about “Only those who doeth the will of the Father will enter into the kingdom of God,” doeth the will of the Father. He's talking to His disciples in a crowd of people elsewhere, and His mother and His brothers are, His brethren are standing there and they say, “Your mother and your brother are there, your brethren are there,” and He points with His hand to His disciples and He says, “Here is my mother and here are my brethren.” And an underscoring so important part of that whole discourse is His disciples, His disciples: “those that are doing the will of the Father.” His disciples, not “Lord, give me a sign of Your will in my life for me.” We, we begin to personalize things that we don't really have a right to personalize, because if we really want “Thy will be done,” then we want His will. And what is His will for us? That we come to faith in Christ, that we have life eternal. He says, “My will is the will of the One who sent Me, that none of these little ones that He's given Me should perish, but have life eternal,” trusting and faithing in Him. And if you want to keep pressing that envelope of the will of the Father, the will of Father that the Son came and showed to all of mankind, well, it becomes pretty simple and easy to see that we've morphed a lot of this and taken a very spiritual concept and brought it down into our own carnality and put a halo around it and said, “Now Lord, bless what I'd like to have happen to me.” That's not, don't get confused with saying it's━I'm saying it's a good thing to pray and ask the Lord for guidance, it's a good thing to pray and ask the Lord if there's something where you feel “I need to pray about this,” but asking about it being, whether it being His will or not━follow my line of thinking because all of these categories come back to this, whether or not it's His will for your life is tantamount to saying, “This is the book with the instructions and the will is written out pretty plainly, but I just want to make sure, maybe I can add a few personal things in here.” Take that same thing and apply it to someone who's in the army. They're in the army, they have weapons, they have a commanding officer, they've got a general, they've got someone who's leading; they're going into battle and all of the thoughts of that individual are consumed with how they might actually think about the strategy and personalize it for themselves, rather than being a part of the whole army and fighting with the tools that have been given to carry out an assignment that has been ordered specifically and strategically following a certain pattern for this playbook. Now we take this and we think, “Now, I'm in this army and I've, I've been equipped with whatever tools I've been given, but they're first and foremost, they must be for me, right?” That's carnal. First and foremost the self is, swish, pushed aside and I'm looking at how I may serve; remember I told you I'm, this may take me a while; how I may serve God and not initially serve self. I may be the beneficiary after I have committed my way and presented myself a living sacrifice. Now this is what scares people because these, these things that I've just described suggest perhaps that you or I may lose ourselves and therefore lose our identity because the self has been displaced, and not so. In fact, again, Jesus says that if you're willing to essentially lay down your life for His sake and the gospel, you'll actually find out who you're supposed to be and what you're supposed to be doing. The problem is a lot of times we don't want to let go of the self. The problem of those people at Corinth, the self was more important than loving and helping the brothers. In fact, I you want to know, 1 and 2 Corinthians has a great picture of the Corinthians as being stingy, constantly fighting, heretical heresies, divisions, sex, infighting; you name it! Everything that is contrary to the Spirit of God operating in a believer, and yet these people were spiritually endued with all these wonderful gifts. I've said to you if somebody starts telling you about a gift they possess and how great the gift is, you probably need to walk the other way because usually gifts that are given by God, the person knows the gift they have and they're not pushing it in somebody else's face. They're very grateful for what they've received and they're very humble about it as well. Now back to this example. I think I've made my, my point in telling you it's possible to have spiritual information from the book and use it carnally. It's like those people who tend to say, you know, the ones that are constantly twisting and wresting the Scriptures about what God's going to give you and what you're going to get from God, those are people who are carnal believers. They can quote Scripture; the devil can quote Scripture too, by the way, but they can quote Scripture, but there is never an application to the greater picture towards God. It's always to the self betterment, to the self aggrandizement, to the self whatever and that's how, I love what Paul does, which is why I pointed towards something last week and made a point to say here's where I'm going. The mark of spirituality is not tongues, neither is it prophesying. If you want to know the real mark of spirituality, you'll find it's the spirit person who is constantly feeding on the word, and whether it be milk or meat, constantly taking in, abiding in, remaining in the word, always gleaning on how to wield the sword of the Spirit. And not wield the sword of the Spirit with intent to chop off the heads of your brethren, chop, chop, chop, chop, or you know, roll up the Proverbs and club somebody over the head, but rather, remember what Paul was always talking about: building up. He says it in Ephesians, he says it in Colossians, he says it in Galatians: to the building up of the body. “Don't use your liberty that you've received,” he speaks in Galatians, essentially “to take you back into bondage or to lure you back in. You're free from a certain set of something, now live by that.” And he goes on to talk about this in great detail. My point is in the spiritual realm, those people who have been born from above, we know something of the nature of the qualities which will be flowing out of them. Now we're not to go and examine somebody else's fruit and say, “Do you have this? Or do you have that? Oh, I'm looking at you; you don't look very much like this, or you don't look very much like that”" That's not what I'm talking about, but something that I said last week, which has to do with the mark of those who can really wrap their minds around something, is really going to be about God's love. Now don't assume that this means weak and mushy, because it doesn't, but if we're going to talk about the mark of spirituality, even Paul, after he's done addressing all of the church gone crazy and derailed, begins to talk about “If you have all these things, but you have not love.” And that got me on the path to thinking there's something that Jesus said, which I've repeated over and over and quoted over and over again that it only makes sense when you begin to line all these thoughts up. Jesus said, “People will know that you're My disciples because you have love to one another,” and it's not love that is humanly manufactured. It is not love that comes and goes, it is not love of brotherly love, it is not the love of eros, it is not even familial love, because we're the body of Christ. Something happens to the believer that in turn essentially bursts them into the kingdom as Christians, followers of Christ. Something happens to have that, we'll call it, moment that begins to change the individual and as they grow, as their understanding, as John Wright Follette called it “progressive revelation” occurs, things begin to open up and become more and more clear. And I wish to show you, at least in part, why I'm saying this is a very important mark in understanding. When people talk about their knowledge, “Oh, you know, I've got great wisdom! I've been a believer for 40 years and I know every blah, blah, blah,” and they have, you can tell, they have no love or compassion for somebody who's just starting their journey. They're more concerned about telling you how much knowledge they have. Paul says “knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” Now I've been threatening to do this for weeks, so here it comes, and I'm going to write out something, because I want to show it to you, although I could just read it to you, but it just wouldn't be the same, right? All right, bear with me if you're listening on radio I know this looks really good. And some of you, I know, read Greek. This is, this is what this is, except I almost started writing in a different language, which you never know with me, tase kardiais umon dia pneumatos hagios tou, don't look at my sloppy writing because I'm doing this so quickly, some of you who are proficient may say, “Oh, what is that?” Okay, it's called as quick as a I can, hoti, “because the love of God.” You don't need to know grammar too much except for the fact that this love, this agape love, agape love is of, proceeding, out of, emanating, coming from; God is the source of this love, has been poured out. This is the same word that was used in Acts 10:45, it's the same word that was used when Peter was talking about and quoting from the prophet Joel, “has been poured out; has been poured out” that is perfect and passive, that means He did it, “in our heart”" or “the hearts of us through” dia, “through Spirit Holy, Spirit, that is given to us.” Now the love of God, this particular love, has been poured out, not upon us. If I went into the grammar, it's dative, “in our hearts” something placed in us. This is why when people say “this love” and they say “this love and some other loves are, they're all synonymous.” No, they're not! Because the love of God is a completely different kind of love than the love we're capable of. This type of love that is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit makes us creatures that by nature we are not. And it doesn't mean immediately and it doesn't mean that this happens in one fell swoop. But if you keep pressing in and you keep abiding in the word, this love of God that has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit begins to take root. And then you can go back and read what John wrote in John's Gospel, Jesus' words, “How will they know that we are your disciples? That you have love to one another.” It's in that same passage leading up to Him speaking about “It's expedient that I go away; if I don't go away, the Comforter won't come.” How would they have love toward one another in their current state? They had not yet received the gift of the Holy Spirit, so all they could think about possibly was what they had in terms of purely human, purely natural. But this is not the love I'm talking about. This type of love, this type of love, I'll, I'll read it to you. There are several passages I wish to refer to. This type of love, Jesus says, “A new commandment I give unto that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men know that ye are my disciples if you have love to one another.” What did Paul say to the Corinthians? “Ye are yet carnal because there are strifes and envyings and divisions among you.” Have you ever noticed why I told you, why the church is always so busy; I'm not telling you that we should be joined together and every single denomination should hold hands and sing Kumbaya. We have great chasms of differences in our way of approaching and thinking about the Scripture and its interpretation, its biblical interpretation; not opinion. But have you ever noticed why there are some people in the church and all they do is cause strife, envying and division? These are what Paul referred to as “carnal” Christians. They are only looking for trouble all the time. The Bible says, “Mark those that cause contention among you and avoid them,” so I'm telling you right now, church, because it has been brought to my attention that some of you like to feed off of other people's garbage that they throw out, you can, you can make a choice today and you can remain in that frame of mind that says, “Well, you know, I'm going to do this,” or you can look at what the spiritual man would do, which is exactly what Paul said multiple times over: mark those that cause contention among you and avoid them. Their whole purpose is to bring seeds of division, seeds of people turning against one another. Their purpose is not to unite; their purpose is not to build up. The Holy Spirit operating in an individual looks at individuals and says, “Okay, listen, you may have a difference of opinion in your theology, you may interpret the word agape and think that it means something else. And I'm going to, hey, if that's where you want to go that's fine.” When we come down to the bottom line of things, did Jesus Christ come out of the grave or not? Was He crucified? Did He come out of the grave or not? And is He coming back? Tell me we can agree on those things, because that fundamentally is what makes us believers in Christ Jesus, that He rose up from the grave, that is He is Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior of the world. Tell me we agree on that and all these other things that are what I would call Corinthian pettiness, fall into the garbage can of your carnality and your fleshly, impetuous thoughts about what you think, versus what God says: “This is how people will know that you are my disciples; you have love to one another.” And we're not talking about the love that you choose to think it is, it's this love that I just talked about out of Romans 5:5, the love of God is poured out. It's the same thing, as I've said, in Acts 10:45, when it spoke of the Holy Ghost being poured out upon the house of Cornelius, the same Greek word is being used to talk about “has been poured out.” And by the way, if you'd like to know, God uses the same word for pouring out His Spirit onto His chosen vessels, onto His children as He does about pouring out the wrath that is yet to come upon the world when you read the book of Revelation. It's the same word, so don't think, “Oh-ho, He poured out! Ooh-woo-woo!” because the same hand that pours out love and goodness will also turn around and say to those who refuse to listen, who were hard of heart, who could not receive the message, “I will pour out my wrath,” He'll begin with all those vials being poured out upon the earth. Now that's not my message for today, but my point is this. You keep reading; I don't want it to be just one independent verse here, because some people say, “Well, you're just quoting from one thing here.” Again, John 14, and He says in verse 23, “If a man love me, he will keep my words.” Now people have been disturbed about this, when Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment,” “Well, there are no commandments,” well, isn't that what the Lord said: “I give you a new commandment: love one another.” “Aw, I can't do that!” “If a man love me, he will keep my words”" Think on what exactly that means. To the carnal man, “Oh, I can't do that! Jesus said this, this, this and that; I can't do that.” To the spiritual person, they think and meditate and pray and perhaps they think, “Wow, I fall so━I fall so far short of the words of Christ and the thoughts of Christ and the ideas that are conveyed, but I at least think upon them, I meditate on them; I consider them.” “And my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and we will make our abode with him.” He goes on to say, “He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which he hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.” You keep going into the 15th chapter, “As the Father hath loved me,” verse 9, “so have I loved you: continue ye in my love,” the same words. And again somewhat interesting because these things are being repeated: “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” There'll be people that say, “Well, I don't, I don't like this type of stuff because it makes me uncomfortable.” Well, that tells me that you've yet to go back and look at what I just said today. I remember and some of you will remember this, many years ago when I went to preach, it was my first trip back from San Quentin, teaching in San Quentin. And man, I got letters from some of the; they're ex-King's Houses now, “Well, Dr. Scott didn't do that, and what type of stuff is that? We don't, we don't do that!” And I'm thinking, “What type of reaction is this?” If the Lord put that burden on my heart to go and minister to those people, then that's, I'm going to be obedient to what I feel the Lord has impressed upon me to go and do. And that is showing love, by the way, to people who society, and rightly the law has said shouldn't be loved or are unlovable, but this is exactly the thing that I'm looking at saying this is exactly the thing that has been put on my heart: go and preach the word and if nothing else, be a beacon of light. If nothing else, preach the word and if those, some of those can hear and receive, praise God. I remember coming back and standing on the platform at the Cathedral and saying I have, I had never heard worship like that, do you remember that, in my life. And man, I got letters from some of the King's Houses saying, you know, they didn't like that and “If Dr. Scott didn't do that, and this is wrong.” And I'm thinking to myself, “Wait a minute.” If Dr. Scott wanted to be with Dr. Scott, he would have married Dr. Scott━well, I am Dr. Scott now, by the way, but, but, but━perfect, perfect balance in all things. And being what they are I think if Dr. Scott would have still yet been alive and I would have taken on that ministry, I think he would have said, “You be obedient first unto the Lord, and if the Lord has impressed that upon your spirit, if that is the way you'll demonstrate service and if that's the way you'll demonstrate and preach the gospel and if that's the way and whatever it is.” But the response from the people, even now today, I replay in my head and I think to myself, “What type of love is that?” And that's why I said to you it's really important to read what Paul said; the problem with the Corinthians, some being born from above, yes, but not having gone beyond the infancy stage and arrested development, never growing. Understand that there's a world outside the little cocoon we live in where people could be enriched. This is one of those things where people take my words and they twist and they like to play around with things that are said, but you who are spiritual understand what I'm saying has much to do with the mindset of how we deal with things, even the most difficult things when we encounter them in Scripture, they're difficult; you know why they're difficult? Because we are still flesh, and the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to one another, constantly at war. We look at certain things and we say, “Well, this is a hard thing,” like many of those that were with Jesus and they said, “This is a hard thing; who can listen to this?” And many of them stopped following, because they said, “It's too hard!” Jesus has not asked you or me to do something or to act a certain way. He's given us a gift and the deposit of that gift, that, we'll call it the earnest, the sealing of that gift which He has given in the person of the Holy Spirit has given us the doorway to, which as I told you, I'm probably not going to finish, so, you know, bear with me. The problem is we get to thinking we've wrapped our minds around certain things and the reality is we kind of step back and take some spiritual inventory, and for the person who has the sensitive spirit, and I do. I'll say I've got much that I need to press into this word about because it is very obvious to me when I read about Paul's battle with the Corinthians and those people who, as I said, were stingy; 2 Corinthians 8, he says, “The thing I asked you to do a year ago,” what was that: “the collection, you still haven't done, you cheap sons of Belial! I asked you to do something, you didn't do it.” They were stingy. They were cheap. And he juxtaposes their behavior with the Macedonian Christians in that second chapter, 2 Corinthians 8, he juxtaposes; read verses 1-10, “You see the Macedonians and they gave out of their deep poverty and they begged with much begging. And you, I asked you a year ago to give and you still haven't completed the thing which I asked you to do. And you want to talk to me about who's spiritual here?” I'll have you notice something. It's always the people who complain about giving, the people who talk about, “Oh, well, they're always talking about money and dah, dah, dah!” If the word is being rightly divided and you, and you're receiving, you should never have anything that makes you curl back from the sound of somebody talking about worship and giving and paying the one who teaches you and responding to the teaching. Why? Because the Spirit of God is obviously opened up your eyes and your mind to be able to receive and you rejoice with joy like those Macedonians and them out of their deep poverty to be able to participate in what Paul was calling them to do. The people who lack the Spirit of God, there'll be always those people who complain and they're always the same people: they're the carnal believers; they are the natural men who always complain about, “Oh, money━oh, everything should be free.” Everything is about━these are the carnal folks, these are the people who would pervert the gospel and make it sound as though Paul never took a dime, never raised any money. Well, sorry, friends, it's exactly what Galatians 6, that whole chapter talks about very carefully, not abusing the collection, neither being ashamed of it. And if someone is actually reading, it says if you sow to the spirit━“if you sow to the flesh, you shall reap of the flesh; sow to the spirit and of the spirit you shall reap.” Well, you figure out what that means in that context and you'll find and sort out where you belong in the picture of things, in Paul's words, not mine. But let me continue, because I'm almost done here. The same writer, John, takes up in first, in his first epistle and in the 3rd chapter, and verse 23: “And this is his commandment, That we should believe,” that we should faithe “on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.” You know, if you read through 1 John, and I did this in my Bible. I know mine, it's, I'm holding it upside down; lots of red marks. All those red marks are where John uses the word “love” and it's the same word over and over and over and over again. And he's not saying, “Let's play at church.” Chapter 4, and verse 7: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God.” He doesn't say here, later on he'll say something about the━people have always twisted this━about “God is love,” and they're taking it out of context, but he says “love is of God,” and that's what Romans 5:5 is saying. This type of love comes from God. It is poured out into the believer's heart and it is expressed, by the way, Galatians 5:22 onwards about the “fruit of the Spirit” that which is the expression of the Spirit flowing outward. What's the first thing? Love; and all of these other things flow out of that love: peace, joy, longsuffering, meekness, on and on and on and on. But he says here, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” And he loves these; we'll call them positive and negative. There's always a negative with John. He says, “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” And if you keep reading, I love what he says, he says, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” Which brings back to the age-old question that I've asked here before, people will, “Well, how do you define a brother?” and I just told you earlier when he said, “Your mother and your brother are here,” and He says, pointing to His disciples: His disciples, His learners, His followers, those that were abiding and listening to the teaching and following after Him. Not somebody who's following after the other things out there that are the peripheral; following after the words of Christ, the Master Himself. He points to His disciples and says, “These are my mother, brother,” and He includes “sister” in the whole mix that He says “My disciples, those; these are those that do the will of the Father.” Don't start mincing words and trying to figure out the definition of 'brother' is. “Well, I don't like you! That makes, that makes you not a brother.” Is this person doing the will of God? And the will of God is not independent and personal to me. It's carrying out the application of the things foremost spoken to us through His word into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. So I, when I said to you it's important to peel apart these layers, it's important to peel apart these layers because it helps us to understand that there's a lot of superficial stuff that gets put on, put on Christianity. This group over here says, “The mark of spirituality is being able to speak in tongues and if you don't speak in tongues, you're not saved.” This group over here says, “Well, of course, it's prophecy and if you're not prophesying, then you're not in.” How about what it says here? There's a mark of discipleship that talks about loving one another and also hating one another. Now I don't know about you, I just said two things. There, there's more to say on this because the same writer, John, will also say, “Love not the world.” Distinguish between the world and the, the talk, the straight line that is being put to those people who comprise the church and the body. “Love not the world, nor the things of the world,” and he goes on to define exactly by three definite, different categories what exactly that means. But for the people who can understand, I don't condemn the babes in Christ; they're just beginning. In fact, that's why I try to not do too much grammar or too much of this. It's a delicate balancing act. I have a one-room classroom full of different types of people, different types of learners inside the classroom. And I don't condemn those people either, who have fallen; we'll call it into the trap of carnality. Those are the people that maybe, I pray God will wake up and open up their eyes to look at and see. We've all been guilty in some way or another of taking Scriptures and making it just enough to apply to ourselves in such a way, that we don't really have to face ourselves. And the spiritual person who looks at all of this and says, “I'm grieved to the core because I know there's no way I've even come close to living up to this, nor can I ever.” God's not asking me to live up to some certain standard and therefore I must attain, but the sensitive soul says, “I know what God has placed in me and I know I'm able to overcome.” John says, “Whatsoever is born of God has overcome the world,” and greater is He that is in me, speaking of the Spirit of God, than he that is in the world. So I say to you today the lesson today is quite simple. This isn't about some mystical rolling around, falling down and acting crazy, but rather, if you think about it, there are a few things that give us insight into the activity of the spiritual person coming under, I use that word of out of Galatians, the rank and file of, the Greek word is stoicheion, of the Holy Spirit, being led by the Spirit, coming under that rank and file, marching in the army. And at least acknowledging that there are a few telltale signs to the one who is spiritual and it's not all about wisdom and knowledge, it's not all about some special gifts, but about the most basic, simple thing that we've tried, mankind has tried to reduce down to a certain level and put in a box that which God, that which came from God which has been poured out on and in the believer, radiating, if we're not clamping off and saying, “I refuse to,” radiating love that is from God, not manufactured, not something I think about as love, but God's love flowing through me and operating, helping me, by the way, in my calling as in each and every person's calling, specific to them to carry out the tasks they've been called to do. You'll find coupled with love always elsewhere faith and love, these two things being hand-in-hand, because without faith it's impossible to please God, but this gift that God has given enables me, enables me to get up, by the way, every single Sunday, by faith and through love and speaking the truth in love to be able to say things that, yes perhaps, are hard to hear for myself or for others, but I know that they are for the benefit of the body to build up the body, not to tear it down, to bring it together and bring it together in unity as Paul said, not to make divisions and strifes and all kinds of things that split the believers apart. This is why the world looks on and looks at the church and says, “Wow, what a joke.” Why? Because there's so many different divisions and so many different factions and so many people fighting and whatnot; what does it, what does it all look like? It looks like nothing, or then, like I said, you have the people who say, “Well, we ought to love one another,” but it's the type of love where they come along and they put their arm around you, and their version of love is the type of love that they in their human realm bring to the table. Well, heathens have that. We're not speaking of that. We're speaking of something that comes from God that's a gift that is imparted to us by the Holy Spirit, so as I said, I'm not done, but this at least gives you an indicator of while we're peeling back the layers of insanity we can also see what God has given us, and it's a great gift that we should treasure very much. That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com
