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We are listener and viewer sponsored. Today as we continue our series on getting to know the Holy Spirit, we're going to talk about how to build up the inner man, the inner being. Because the Holy Spirit dwells within us as we are built up in faith in our innermost being, then we can know the voice of the Holy Spirit more, be more clearly led by the Holy Spirit, be more clearly empowered by the Holy Spirit. So 1 Peter 3 verses 3 and 4, 1 Peter 3 verses 3 and 4, speaking to the wives, your beauty should not come from outward adornment such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. So it's not saying you can't be attractive, but don't find your beauty in outward things or just try to lavish riches on you.
So modesty is important obviously, but this is more about where the real beauty is and it's not found in these outward things, especially with extravagant expense. So of course you can seek to look your best, but even beyond that there is an inner beauty. He says your beauty should be that of your inner self. What's the inner self? What's the inner self?
The unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is of great worth in God's sight so that beauty of the inner person can be visibly seen. And the distinction between the body, soul, and spirit is not easy to define, but I want to break this down in a way that we can distinguish between flesh, soul, and spirit. Often in the Bible, human beings are described as outward and inward, the flesh and our inner being.
So there is flesh and spirit. There's that description which would be called bipartite. We are two parts like a bicycle, two wheels.
We are bipartite. We are outer and inner. We are flesh and spirit. Other times we are described like 1 Thessalonians 5 23, 1 Thessalonians 5 23 as tripartite, tripartite, body, soul, spirit, tripartite. So what's the body? What's the soul? What's the spirit? This would be dividing the inner being into two parts, soul and spirit. So I want to go through this so that we can learn to build up our spirit.
So let me say something obvious. If you work out with weights, if you exercise, you can be really strong, but that doesn't make you spiritually strong. You can win competitions for strongest man in the world and be a complete heathen. So strengthening your body does not make your spirit strong. It's good to be healthy, but it doesn't make your spirit strong. Working out for one hour does not take the place of praying for one hour. When it comes to the soul, the mind, intellect, your emotions, you can be absolutely brilliant and you can feed your emotions day and night. That doesn't make you spiritually strong.
So let's break this down. Flesh, soul, spirit, or body, soul, and spirit, based on the division Paul uses in 1 Thessalonians 5. Other times the Bible talks about heart, mind, soul.
There are different ways of describing our inner being, but we're going to use the tripartite, the three part, like a tricycle, three wheels, tripartite description of human beings, body, soul, spirit. Everybody ready to roll? Remember, whatever you miss, just get the courage in the Line of Fire podcast.
Wherever you get your podcast or our YouTube channel, just go and you'll find all the series there. So if you're driving, you can't take notes, go back. It's good to review this anyway. So the flesh, the body contacts the physical realm. The body contacts the physical realm. Your body does not have any spiritual sense to it. Your body does not relate to the Holy Spirit leaving, speaking inside of you, the witness of the Spirit. That is a spiritual thing. This is a physical thing.
The body contacts the physical realm. In the sense of the physical body alone, the flesh is not evil. It's our physical bodies, in and of themselves, the flesh is not evil. It can be used for holy purposes, right?
You can lay your hands on someone to heal, you can encourage someone with a pat on the back, or you can punch someone in the face. So the flesh in itself can do good or evil. The body itself is not evil.
The fleshly nature is evil. However, because of the fall, the body is taken on certain desires that cannot be renewed, which will only be fully solved with our resurrected bodies. It's been said you can't crucify a demon and you can't cast out the flesh.
You crucify the flesh, you cast out demons. So the body itself is neutral, but because of the fall, there are appetites and desires we have that are sinful, that will not be totally gone, 100%, until we are resurrected. So some physical desires are legitimate, but we can abuse them. For example, the need to eat is legitimate, but it can be abused, and others and others in themselves are sinful and wrong. So in Hebrew, the word for flesh, basar, speaks of humanity in its weakness. It can just be physical flesh, like you eat basar physical flesh, but humans as flesh, they are just flesh.
It's humanity in its weakness. The Greek word sarx, flesh, can speak of carnality, can speak of sinful nature. That's why sometimes sarx in the NIV is translated sinful nature. So the Greek word for flesh is sarx. Someone who is fleshly is sarcakos.
So flesh is sarx, someone who's fleshly is sarcakos. 1 Corinthians 3.1, Paul says, I could not address you as spiritual, but as sarcakos, fleshly. 1 Corinthians 3.3, you are still fleshly, sarcakos, because of jealousy and quarreling.
You are acting like mere men. So the only solution for the flesh is to put it down, to crucify it, to give no place to it. Not in the sense where people in the past would physically whip themselves or harm themselves, but in terms of not being ruled by the appetites of the flesh. To live that way is to live as an infant in Christ. If our stomach is our God, if our impulses are our God, if we bow to those things and live for those things, then we are just infants in the Messiah.
Many people just live day by day for the gratification of the flesh. We must keep our body in subjection to us. So the flesh will never be spiritual. The flesh in itself will never have spiritual leadings, guidance. The Holy Spirit may fall in power that is so overpowering that your body falls to the ground. Jesus appears to John in Revelation 1 and he falls down like somebody dead.
The Israelites on Mount Sinai, everybody is shaking, the mountain is shaking, but that's just a physical response. The physical body itself will never be spiritual. What we do is use it for the glory of God, keep it as fit and strong as we can so that we can do the will of God.
Just look at it like this. Your car is not spiritual, your car is not called, your car is not anointed, but it gets you from place to place. If you have a mission to get from place A to place B, but you don't change the oil in your car and you don't do other things in your car, eventually that car will fail getting you from place A to B. So the body is the thing you live in, the car you drive to get you from place A to B. So since God's given me assignment to get from point A to point Z, I need a healthy body to get me there.
So you keep it healthy, you take good care of it physically, proper diet that's 90% of it, exercise, sleep, and then, and then what's the other thing? What's the other thing? Crucify the sinful desires.
Say no to them. No matter how deep they are, with the help of the Spirit, say no. You fall, you receive cleansing from the blood of Jesus and grace, and now you move forward, and now you move forward, and now you move forward. What about the soul? What about the soul? So we have the body, the soul, the spirit.
The soul speaks of the mind, the intellect, the will, and the emotions. Sukkah in Greek. Nefesh in Hebrew. Nefesh in Hebrew can even be more widely used to speak of the person, that souls were saved. It could mean inward people born again, or it could be people that were saved from a fiery building.
Nefesh should just be the self. Bless the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul, my innermost being who I am. But there are different dimensions to the Greek word sukkah as well, which we'll get to. So, the Bible is not a theology textbook, and the word soul can be used in different ways. So we have to sort out, okay, let me go to page this in the Bible where it tells me the theology of the Holy Spirit, or page this which tells me the nature of the human soul. Then you have to put verses and concepts together. So, in the New Testament, the soul is part of the inner being.
Right? The inner being is spirit and soul. So we have the flesh, that's the physical body in which we live, that's the house in which we live, that's the outward temple in which we live.
In itself, it's neutral, but it has sinful desires that we have to crucify. Then we have the inner being, the inner man, the inner person, which is soul and spirit. So, in the New Testament, the soul is part of the inner being. When you die, your soul and your spirit together go to be with God. Again, some would just say, well, soul and spirit, that's one entity, we have inner, outer. Right, but we're just, we're like dissecting.
We're dissecting human nature, and as we dissect human nature, now we can better understand what we're dealing with. Many years ago, I had, most of my stories are many years ago, so I'm almost 70 right now, but many years ago, I was playing basketball, late 70s, early 80s. I was playing basketball, and I remember dates just because of where I was living when the thing happened. I won it for a rebound and smashed this finger, and it got terribly dislocated, fractured. It wasn't treated properly, so it was frozen, like this frozen position for years.
So finally, years later, living in Maryland, we had insurance that covered pre-existing injuries, so I had surgery done on it, and it was, could be between 20 and 45 minutes, but it ended up being longer, and they, there was a tendon that was stuck, so they cut one thing, and it didn't move still. They cut another. I mean, they were frozen. That didn't do it, and it took longer than they expected. They finally got the right one, and then it straightened out.
Then it straightened out. So what we're doing here is trying to find, okay, where's, what's actually happening? Where is our inner being? Where is our spirit?
What's the difference between soul and spirit? We're dissecting. We're cutting until we can identify. Then once we identify, now we know what to build up.
So we crucify the flesh. We renew the mind. We renew the soul. We build up the spirit.
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So call now 1-800-771-5584, 1-800-771-5584 or online at trivita.com. Thanks friends for joining us on the Line of Fire. All right, so when you die, your soul and spirit together, your inner being, go to be with God. But if you separate, if you separate the soul from the spirit, then the spirit doesn't have a mind, will, or emotions.
You can't neatly separate them into different compartments. Soul and spirit are one in certain ways, but have different aspects. Because our soul also interacts with our body, it can be carnally negatively affected. So let me just give you a little example of the difference between spiritual reality and your emotions. Let's say that you are watching some old tearjerker movie and even though you've seen it before, like, oh, it's so sad, I know she's gonna die, it's so sad. And then someone says, hey, come on, we gotta go, we gotta go.
We're late. It's like, oh, and you snap back into reality because there's nothing actually happening. Your soul, your emotions got caught up in the thing. But there's nothing actually happening, right?
You ever dream, ah, ah, it's just a dream. But your emotions got caught up in it. Spiritual reality is everything's fine. Spiritual reality is there's danger. There are differences between what we feel, our emotions, what we think, and what is spiritually real. The soul is primarily the natural being, the natural man. If it is ruled by the spirit, it will be used for spiritual purposes.
If it is ruled by the physical or sinful nature, it will be used for sinful purposes. We must renew our minds. We must renew our minds.
Mind, soul here being used interchangeably. Judaism divides humanity, a human being, into two yetzer, two inclinations. Yetzer, inclination. There's yetzer hatov, the good inclination. Yetzer hara, the evil inclination. Yetzer hatov, the good inclination.
Yetzer hara, the evil inclination. There are some traditional Jews, when they will go for prayer, they put a black belt, just like a, I don't mean belt with buckle, just like a black sash rope, and they tie it around their waist to make a distinction between the lower nature and the higher nature. Just a symbolic thing. It's not like God divides us into the physical lower and the physical higher. But this aspect of our mind, our mind can be a tool either way. Our body can never be holy in itself, but it can be set apart for holy purposes. Our mind can be renewed to be holy, or our mind can be pulled down and be filthy.
The spirit wants to pull it up, the flesh wants to pull it down. So the Greek word for soul, as we said, suke, and the word for soulless, sukakos. So flesh, sarx, fleshly, sarkakos.
Now soul, suke, soulless, sukakos. 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14. The natural, the sukakos man, does not understand the things of the Spirit of God. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
Let me read that again. 1 Corinthians 2, 14. The natural, the sukakos man, does not understand the things of the Spirit of God. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2, 15. The spiritual person judges all things. So we'll get to the word for spiritual in a moment. So there's a difference between the natural person and the spiritual person. Paul contrasts spiritual with soulless in a similar way that he contrasts spiritual and fleshly.
Many times it is so easy for us to be soulless, to just think based on our human reasoning, to think based on our feelings, as opposed to what does God, what does the word say? What does the word say? Hebrews 4.12.
Think of this, Hebrews 4.12. The word of God is living and active, sharper than a double-edged sword. It pierces to the very division of what?
What does it say? Soul and spirit. So there's the sinners, the flesh, it pierces there. But it pierces the division of soul and spirit and it's a discernment of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Many times it's hard for us to distinguish between our emotions and the Holy Spirit.
Our emotion, our thoughts, and the witness of the Spirit. The word of God cuts right like that. Cuts between soul and spirit.
Cuts between soul and spirit. And this way, okay, nah, that was just my, I was just getting worked up. Those are my own desires. I wanted this to happen so I thought this, I felt this. How many times, come on, let's be honest, especially as Pentecostals, Charismatics, we really thought the Lord was saying something because we really wanted it. That's what we wanted him to be saying.
We really wanted it. You know, you won't have to go to school tomorrow. Yeah, the Lord's saying I won't have to go to school tomorrow because it's a big test.
I have to take it. I'm not ready for it. No, no, that wasn't the voice of God saying it. That wasn't the voice of God. So what is it about the soul that's negative and harmful? Soulless, sukakos, is never used in the New Testament in a positive sense. Soulless, sukakos, refers to not being Spirit-ruled, not being Spirit-dominated. It means the natural part of you is the primary ruling force. We can see things, we can see things not through the sinful nature, jealousy, envy, but through natural eyes. So this is a major hindrance to the Spirit.
We cannot see things through analysis and reasoning alone. So there's one thing carnal fleshly desires, they're driving us. I think the Lord's telling me to go out and get drunk.
No, no, no, that's your flesh wanting it. But other things are all reason, just trying to figure it out, figure it out, figure it out, how I feel, my emotions, as opposed to what does the Word say, what is the Spirit saying. We can be in the presence of God and be completely oblivious to it if we're soulless.
In other words, if we're not Spirit-sly sensitive, the Holy Spirit can be doing things and we're completely oblivious to it. And you can't think or reason or hype your way in the Spirit. I'm going to get in the Spirit, I'm going to get in the Spirit, come on, get in the Spirit, get in the Spirit. I'm going to sink myself into the Spirit. No, there's a different connection.
It's frustrating. Oh, we'll explain plainly how to build up the inner being. If the soul in and of itself is neutral, why is soulless always negative in the New Testament? Because it is the soul of a natural fallen human being. So, suke, soul in and of itself, is not negative or positive. But sukkah, soulless, is always negative.
Why? Because it's giving way to human fallen thinking, desires, ways of life. Jude chapter 1 verse 19. Jude chapter 1 verse 19. Those who divide you follow mere natural instincts and are sukkachos. This is the description of what's in Jude verse 19. Those who divide you follow mere natural instincts.
They are sukkachos. They are soulless. These men were claiming to be spiritual and said the believers did not have the Spirit. Oh, you guys don't have Spirit. We are the enlightened ones. We have Spirit.
Jude says, no, these men are the ones who are sukkachos. Their religiosity, which on the outside looked spiritual, was merely natural. People who are spiritual are not swayed by the mere appearance of spirituality. People who are spiritual are not swayed by the mere appearance of spirituality. The next broadcast of the last one of this week, I'm going to talk more about the innermost being, the spirit, explain the difference between flesh, soul, spirit, body, soul, spirit, and then spend the rest of our lesson talking about how to build up the inner being, how to build up the inner being. I want to just confess it is really easy for me to get soulish, to live in the natural realm. My mind racing. It is like Jacob.
I am going to plan this. Or what do people think? Or just the energy of activity. It is much harder for me to step back and be with God. I don't mean turning my mind off. I mean renewing my mind, bringing it to a place of peace and of rest and communion.
I can be so distracted. Pull here and here and here and here. We are going to make this happen.
We are going to work this out. God is saying just worship me. Slow that mind down and set it on God. Set it on divine truth.
See we don't do like the Hindu om. We are just going to meditate or whatever custom that is. Empty our minds of everything. No, that is the tool of the devil. Just empty your mind of anything.
I know it is going to fill that. The flesh and the enemy. No, we want to renew our mind with biblical truth. Sometimes, I have just been in prayer recently with some challenges and attacks. We are coming our way very intense.
Some of the worst attacks we have ever been through. I just lay in bed late at night bedtime and just quietly, almost silently. The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd.
This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you are being enriched in the word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we are making a difference. So, go to TheLineOfFire.org. TheLineOfFire.org and click donate.
