 Okay. Recording is done. Good morning everyone. Welcome to BC214, our course on developing the human spirit. Let's take a moment just to pray together and get started so the others will also sorry, join the class soon. Could somebody lead us in prayer please and then we will start. Father we thank you for this morning Lord we humble ourselves before your presence. We pray O God as we learn from your word it would speak to us and help us to know more about developing our spirits in you O God. We pray that you would speak to our hearts and establish us in your kingdom. We give you all the glory, honor and praise in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you once again. Good morning everybody. Welcome. I know we had a break last week. Sorry I couldn't take my class last week. So let's quickly review what we did the week before in a very first lecture and then we will take things forward from there. I'm going to just share the lecture one notes so that we can all see it and follow along. So we started in section one we started talking about just trying to understand some things that we see revealed to us in scripture about the human spirit. Now we began by saying that we are tripart beings spirit soul and body. First Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 23 the scriptures tell us you know that we are spirit soul and body. So we understand the body is the outer man the outer part of us the soul is our mind our intellect our ability to reason and so on and our spirit is the eternal part of us. It's the part of us that can contact the spiritual realm that can contact God and we must understand that the human spirit is the real person. The human spirit is the real person because even after the body and the faculties of the mind physically die that is when a person dies and the body everything decays the spirit continues to live and that's the real part of us continues to exist. So we said the human spirit is the real person. Then we started looking at other scriptures we looked at Hebrews 4 verse 12 where we saw that the spirit and the soul are distinct because the word of God pierces penetrates to the dividing asunder of spirit and soul. So the spirit and soul must not be confused. They are very closely intertwined but they are also very distinct the different parts of us so spirit and soul. And then we saw that it is the word of God that helps us understand the difference what is from the soul what is from the spirit because the word of God is a discerner of the thoughts and indents of the heart. So the word of God will tell us clearly help us understand clearly what is coming from the heart what is from the soul which is our emotions and our mind and so on so forth. Then we spent quite some time on first chapter 3 verse 4 where you know the in verse 3 4 of course the context is about the outward adorning and the dressing and all that but in that context Peter says that referring to the heart the spirit he says the hidden person of the heart you know so the real person is the hidden person it's the heart the heart the spirit is a real person and and and then he talks about the beauty of the hidden person which is in the sight of God of great price you know and he talks about characteristics a quiet and a gentle spirit. So these are things to keep in mind that the human spirit the heart has its own character or characteristics in first Peter 3 he is specifically talking about a quiet and a gentle spirit so those are the characteristics that he's mentioning there and like that there can be so many other characteristics of love and joy and peace and these are things that come from the spirit and he says in the sight of God it's of great value you know so God looks at our spirit he sees the character of our spirit and he said that's that's very that's what is very precious to God and that's what he's after you know he's after that because the body you know will crawl and die but the spirit is going to live and that's eternal so the beauty of the outward man is fading but the beauty of the inner man is eternal it's going to last forever and so we emphasize that from first Peter chapter 3 and verse 4. So these are some of the notes that we discovered now some things in relation to the spirit and soul in the New Testament we will find the phrase inner man quite often and when especially in the writings of the apostle Paul he uses this quite a lot and when he refers to the inner man or the inward man it's it's talking about the inner person made up of spirit and soul together you know that means there is a part of our soul that because it overlaps and intertwines with the spirit so closely you know he's talking about this inner person so when we say inner person we are referring to the spirit and soul together or inner man inward man who you are on the inside spirit and soul together so we use that or the New Testament uses inner man like that now what happens at death and this is these are the side notes just to keep us to give us a little understanding it's not as a side note what happens during death at death the body is separated from the inner man which is the spirit and soul so the body which is our flesh and blood and bones that goes into the ground it decays it disintegrates becomes dust but the inner person which is the spirit and the soul will continue either in heaven or in hell so that means this inner person that continues is conscious you know so that's why for example when we see when we read about in Luke 16 we read about this rich man and Lazarus Lazarus was a neighbor I'm supposed to this rich man went into hell and he was in torment and he cried out he said you know can he just dip the tip of his finger in water and come and touch my tongue you know so that so that means he is very conscious he's feeling these things and which you know that this consciousness so this being aware of things is part of our soul and and and so he remembers those things and he even says you know Lord you know I'm sorry he says you know can somebody go and warn my brothers you know see that means he has recollection of those things so there is that consciousness that we that seems to be there even after death you know so that's the inner person spirit and soul now let's pick up from there and share a few more things about the spirit in John chapter four which is 21 to 24 and this is a familiar passage for us what we want to emphasize from John 4 21 to 24 is that our primary engagement with God is in the spirit our primary interactions with him is spirit to spirit so John chapter 4 verses 21 to 24 let's could somebody read that for us John chapter 4 21 to 24 please John chapter 4 verse 21 to 24 Jesus declared believe me women a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem you Samaritans worship what you do not know we worship what we do know for salvation is from the Jews yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth for they are the kind of worshipper the father seeks God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth thank you so we are familiar with these scriptures what I want to point out is you know this woman Samaritan woman is trying to discuss with Jesus about the location you know which place like or which mountain must I go to you know to worship God and Jesus responses is focusing on this whole spiritual dynamic that means God is spirit so it's not about which mountain you're going to go it's not about the place from there but it is our spirit that is going to worship God you know that's why he's saying look basically if you want to paraphrase it you can worship God from wherever because it is your spirit that's going to worship God God is spirit and you worship him in spirit and in truth I mean there's a spiritual thing and it is being done in truth or in sincerity you know that you're really sincere about it that's what God is looking for you worship him in spirit and worship him in truth so our primary engagement with God is spiritual now this does not mean that God won't touch our soul and our body of course he's God over our whole being so he can touch our soul he can touch our emotions we can feel we can feel joy we can feel you know all those thing emotions and we sometimes physically also God will touch us all that is there but our primary interaction is spirit to spirit God is spirit and as we interact with him we worship him in spirit and truth another scripture that we want to look at is Philippians 3 and verse 3 it's it's it's similar to what we just read but it's also good to look at it Philippians 3 3 but Paul himself states the same thing somebody could read that for us Philippians chapter 3 and verse 3 please Philippians chapter 3 verse 3 for we are the certain sish who worship God in the spirit rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh Amen thank you so similar to what we just read in John 4 Paul is saying we worship God in the spirit same thing right we worship God we engage with God spiritually to spirit to spirit we worship God in the spirit and we are not putting any confidence in the flesh that means in our engagement with God it is not based on what I'm doing in the flesh you know it is my spirit that is going to engage with God and therefore in my spirit you know God is also going to interact with me God is going to engage with me what is interesting is not only does Paul present this in our worship of God he also says that in our service to God it is out of our spirit so it is interesting let's go to Romans chapter 1 verse 9 Romans 1 9 and somebody could read that for us we just quickly look at that for God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son Amen so Paul is saying we serve God I serve with my spirit Romans chapter 1 and verse 9 so our serving God that means our ministry is also coming out of our spirit and so you know last time in the class we just said you know of course when we're doing ministry we look we think about the natural you know what what kind of clothes we're going to wear and how we are going to you know appear in front of people okay fine that has its place we of course have to you know look clean and decent and all of those things but the work of the ministry is actually going to take place out of our spirit right so Paul says I serve God in my spirit or with my spirit no so Christian ministry then comes out of our spirit it is not the strength of our intellect it is not the strength of our physical body although of course we have to use our body and we are using our mind of course that's part of how we engage with the world but it is really out of our spirit that we serve God right so in our worship to God and in our service to God it is coming from our spirit from our spirit and that's why the spirit the human spirit is so important and that's what we're going to talk about as we move along how do we develop our human spirit in our worship of God and in our service to God so that we can do this better right we can worship him better we can serve him well because it is a work of the spirit so we covered till this last class now some additional thoughts concerning the spirit the human spirit what we seem to understand from the scriptures and you know there are only a few verses on this so I don't want to make it like a big doctrine or something but I just want to say what we can see in the scriptures is that the human spirit has a starting point a beginning like just as we are born physically there is a time there is a moment in time when God creates us and when God creates us he creates a spirit soul and body so there's a moment in time so example if somebody asks me my date of birth okay I've said now about 11th this year I was born okay that means that was my physical birth that is the time physically I came into this world but some time which approximately nine months before that some moment in time God created me as a person spirit soul and body somewhere and it happened in my mother's womb okay that's where we all begin right so while the physical process started and we don't know exactly when we don't know exactly how but Almighty God is the one who creates the human spirit so he created the human spirit see man cannot create the human spirit God created so some moment in time God created and what we can see in scripture is that just as there is a physical growth of the body the the organs the human spirit can also grow in it and we feel it from the human spirit has faculties just like the physical body has faculties and we will identify those faculties and these faculties can be developed in the human spirit so if you look at Hebrews 12 let us read those two verses please and Hebrews chapter 12 and we will look at verse nine and we'll also look at verse 23 somebody could read these two scriptures for us Hebrews nine uh Hebrews 12 nine and 23 Hebrews nine Hebrews 12 nine furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the father of spirits and live verse 23 to the general assembly and church of the first ball which are written in heaven and to God the judge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect okay thank you now the reason we picked out these two verses is because both these verses are talking of something saying telling us something about the spirit in verse nine Hebrews 12 nine the writer of Hebrews is calling God as the father of spirits so he is the father the one who creates or gives life gives birth to every human spirit so you're the father of spirits every all of us every human being every human spirit started there because God created he's a father but very interestingly then in verse 23 he's saying he's talking again about the spirits but he's saying the spirits of just men made perfect so of course he's talking about people who have come to know God who are been born again and they're part of the church and so he's talking about believers here so he's talking about the spirits of just men or just people people who have been justified made perfect made mature no so that word perfect is being brought to maturity so he's saying it's our believers you think the spirits of these people just people that have been made mature or grown up you know so interestingly and we will of course see other passages that the human spirit is has been made or it is it has gone through this growing process by which it has come to a place of maturity spirits of just men made perfect brought to maturity so our human spirit has a beginning God is the father creator and we are seeing the human spirit is also being made mature being made perfect it's growing you know and there will be other scriptures that we can see now as part of this what is interesting the Bible seems to indicate and you know it's generally referred to as a stage of innocence a stage of innocence now why is this important and why are we making mention of it is because we cannot you know we cannot say this so I don't want to argue I don't want to fight about this I'm just you know sharing this as okay this is something that seems to be there in scripture but you know we don't we can't say everything for sure but it seems like that the human spirit when it is born it is born innocent it is not born so that's a stage of innocence and then after that there is a place where God holds the person responsible for sin now we know and we will look at all these we know that you know from the time out of sin there is sin in this world and by default there is a propensity to go and sin but it seems like there is a time period when God by default holds the person innocent and after the leaders now you're responsible now how can we say that let us look at all these scriptures together let's go to Romans chapter seven so I don't want to present this as you know okay this is the only way it is no I'm presenting it more as here are a few scriptures and again there are not many here are a couple of scriptures that seem to indicate it so just keep it in mind maybe it will help us understand things but even if we don't know this fully well it's okay we understand it in heaven but let's look at this in Romans chapter seven verses seven to ten somebody read this please Romans seven seven to ten Romans chapter seven verses seven to ten what shall we say then is the law sin God forbid no I had not known sin but by the law for I had not known lust except the law had said thou shall not covet but sin taking occasion by the commandment brought me in brought in me all manner of evil desire for without the law sin was dead for I was alive without the law once but when the commandment came sin revived and I died and the commandment which was ordained to life I found to be unto death thank you okay so Paul of course in Romans when he's talking about his life under the law and how he struggled with sin where the law told him you know okay this is the right thing to do and he wanted to do it but he didn't have the power to do it so that's Romans chapter seven but while he's describing that he says in verse nine Romans seven nine he says I was alive once without the law but when the commandment came sin came alive or sin revived sin came alive and I died so this is one scripture and like I said you know we don't have too many scriptures on this but this is one scripture where people when I say people have Bible scholars those interpret scripture Bible teachers think that this seems to indicate a stage of innocence so while we we know that you know in Psalm 51 verse 5, Psalm says in sin my mother conceived me so I was it's like he's saying I was born like as I was born in sin and Romans 5 12 says you know sin passed upon every person so while we do understand that the fall is upon every person the human race and by default we are born in under sin yet it seems to indicate Romans 7 9 that there is a stage of innocence where Paul says I was alive without the law what does he mean I was alive without the law so you think about Paul he was born a Jew that means he was born under the law he was born a Jew they already had the law but he still says I was alive without the law meaning without the knowledge of the law so the law was there it was given to all the Jewish people but till he didn't understand the law he says I was alive but when the commandment came verse 9 that means when I understood the commandment then I died that means now I was held responsible for my choices and my actions and of course I did the wrong thing so sin brings death so I died so it seemed like there's the stage of innocence and again I don't want to present this like as a ultimate doctrine I'm just saying it seems like that you know there's a stage of innocence when the person is not very aware of you know the law the commandment and so until then okay yeah you're born under sin but God doesn't hold you responsible but once you understand the law then God holds you responsible right so pigs and a wife of what relevance would this be because some people ask okay when a baby dies does the baby go to heaven or does the baby go to hell then we'd say you know yes it is true that we are all born under sin because Adam sinned and we're all born under sin but can the baby be held responsible when it has no knowledge you know it hasn't uh people say the age of accountability hasn't come to that place where it understood the law can God you know send that child to hell and so that's where we begin from verse 9 we say okay there seems to be this stage where God doesn't hold even though the human is default born under sin it doesn't hold that spirit responsible until the understanding comes of the commandment so you know so based on that we say maybe you know until that age of innocence in that stage of innocence or until that age of accountability the baby who dies will go straight to heaven and so that's that's kind of how we say it but again you know I don't want to because there's not too much in the scriptures we can't uh you know say this with clarity but there seems to be and I just wanted to share that right but what we do know is I'm going to the next point is that because of sin the human spirit starts off in that place of sin and because by one man sin came into this world death passed upon everybody death passed on the human race so we are born that you know we start off like that so we see this and let's go to divisions too so let us understand the condition of the human spirit uh understand all right this is the way we all start off spiritually being born into this world Ephesians chapter two versus we can read I guess we could read this one and two Ephesians two one and two somebody could read that Ephesians chapter two verse one and two as for you you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the way of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient so paul is telling us you know god made us alive but what was our our our condition before god made us alive we were dead in sins and we also walked according to the prince of the power of the yeah that's referring to satan the spirit that works in those who are disobedient so before we were born again before god made us alive spiritually we were dead now that doesn't mean our spirit was didn't exist our spirit existed but our spirit did not have life from god and instead he says in verse two the spirit of disobedience was or rebellion was working in our spirit yeah so that's what that was our spiritual condition or the condition of our human spirit before we were born again you know we were we did we were dead and satan was actually working in us we go to chapter four Ephesians 4 paul explains that further and we can just look at verse 18 Ephesians 4 18 someone could read that Ephesians 4 18 having their understanding darkened being alienated from the life of god because of the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart thank you so again here he's talking about the condition of the unsaved person so Ephesians 2 1 2 and 3 and Ephesians 4 17 18 he's talking about the condition of the human spirit before being saved before being born again here he's saying in verse 18 our understanding was darkened we couldn't understand spiritual things we were cut off from the life of god so we didn't have the life of god so that's what it means but that is spiritual death it means we don't have the life of god in our spirit so it says they were cut off from the life of god and their hearts was blinded their ignorant heart was blind so this is the condition of our spirit or for every human person before born again they be our spirit swollen body but our spirit is dead is blinded doesn't have spiritual understanding dead means it doesn't mean it's not that is there but doesn't have the life of god doesn't have god's life instead the devil is working he's the spirit of disobedience that rebellion is working through our spirit moving us to do all the evil things our hearts are hardened and blinded we can't understand spiritual things it's like we like so the bible says we are in darkness there's darkness over our human spirit but that is where this born again experience comes right so when we are born again and i'll just quickly summarize it because we we know that when we are born again what happens to our human spirit god gives his life the life of god comes into our spirit the very life and the nature of god comes in and the spirit of disobedience that was at work is banished no longer you cannot work in this person's spirit anymore because this spirit is now surrendered to Jesus Christ so the holy spirit comes to dwell in our spirit so before that there was a spirit of rebellion working in our human spirit now god the holy spirit has come to dwell in our humans that's what bible says yet the temple of the holy spirit christ dwells in your hearts and we are born again god gives us his own life and nature now spirit and our eyes are opened we begin to understand spiritual things we have come into the light we're no longer in darkness so this has happened to our human spirit when we got born again so that's why we've become new creation in our spirit you know god is it's it's it's dramatically changed now from where we were he says you were dead spirit of disobedience was working you did not have the life of god your spiritual understanding was darkened your heart was hardened now we've come to Jesus the holy spirit is in us christ is dwelling in us we have the love of god our heart is opened god our eyes are open we understand spiritual things we're in the light so we're born again but what i want to emphasize now is this human spirit this born again human spirit can grow and spiritually can grow and some of the scriptures that we are familiar with first beat two and verse two he does grow of as newborn babies desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby so he's he's he's talking about the human spirit obviously he's not talking about the physical body because he's writing to grown people so to the grown people he's saying like newborn babies you desire the milk of the word so obviously he's not talking about our natural physical growth he's talking about a spiritual growth and he's saying desire the milk of the word so you can grow by it so that growth has to do with the growth of the born again human spirit you can grow there or in second Peter 3 and verse 18 he says grow in grace and in the knowledge of our lord Jesus Christ grow in the grace and in the knowledge no again spiritual growth growth of the human born again human spirit the human spirit the born again human spirit can grow that means it can mature it can increase in grace talking about character and virtue it also grow in knowledge meaning the understanding the learning the revelation spiritually we can increase we can grow so as we've mentioned and there are several other scriptures here we can see where we can increase in revelation Ephesians 1 18 Colossians 3 10 talked about increasing in revelation we can know the will of God that means the human spirit begins to understand will of God this is what God is pleased this is what God wants for me so the human spirit begins to understand that the human spirit can also become strong you know we can grow in strength Ephesians 3 16 so just given these we will talk in depth about the faculties or developing the faculties of the human spirit but I just mentioned this here saying that look we are born again but it's born again each be developed each it's a knowledge to grow in grace and needs to go in strength in other areas of development okay so let me just pause here and see if there are any questions is everybody with me so far any questions here right it's your question John um it says uh this be applicable to what meant each challenge so yeah so you know uh that's also a question we can ask right uh you know what about those who are born you know mentally challenged they don't have the ability to understand things you know uh so we don't have clear chance to go back to what we understand when something but because you don't understand the content uh they may be alive to God he says I have a live most likely again I'm saying most likely looking in words sure um that's the way God would probably you know deal with that not holding them for their sins against them you know and that's all that's that's how we would think that God would deal with them how would live with God to decide on this yeah any question so far what we've covered right so what we've said we've tried to see to make see the journey how the spirit was before being born again and now that you're born again uh we've got the life of God but that doesn't mean this this spirit is in its full full state right we see in scripture that that born again human spirit has to be developed it has to grow and that is the objective of this course how to develop the born again human spirit that means the spirit that has come to life in Christ how to develop that because the Bible tells us to grow in grace to grow in the knowledge to grow in strength to grow in knowing the will of God so how do we grow the human spirit to you know to become all this and eventually the Bible has called us God calls us to grow to the fullness of Christ to be like Christ so how do we make this journey that's the part of this what we're going to cover in this course okay so I think I will pause here today there's a little note about the soul and what will happen when somebody dies I'll I'll just quickly review this or mention about this in the next class and then we will kind of dive into you know okay what are the faculties we will identify what are the faculties of the human spirit as we see in scripture and how do we develop each of those faculties of course everything based on the scriptures based on what the Bible teaches right so we're not not talking anything outside of the Bible everything from the scriptures but I hope this journey is clear we are born again we are new creation in Christ but the spirit has to develop it has to be made mature it has to grow and that's what we want to understand how to grow it according to the scriptures so let's stop here for today and any questions please feel free to ask all right let's pray together and then we will ramp up our class anybody wants to pray please pray Sada we want to thank you for the life of our pastor for the life of our student for the life of our max college we want to thank you for bringing us together we want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to listen to your word I want actors to continue to breath our pastor so that we impact the greater knowledge in us who also ask that you make us receptive make give us a receptive heart and a receptive mind so that we can intake all what they are impacting on us and we continue to go on out and become the salt and the light for this community that we serve we want to thank you for everything we want to thank you and want to continue to bless your name let your name be blessed let your name be glorified from everlasting to everlasting this and every other masses will ask in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus amen thank you amen amen thank you thank you everyone and uh we'll see you again soon god bless bye now thank you